Bisexuality: A Contemporary Paradox for Women

Journal of Social Issues, Summer, 2000 by Paula C. Rodriguez Rust

Paula C. Rodriguez Rust [*]

The cultural construction of "lesbian" and "heterosexual" women in late-nineteenth-century European cultures created both the possibility of conceiving the "bisexual" woman and the belief that bisexuality cannot exist. Social scientists have suggested several alternatives to dichotomous constructions of sexuality to facilitate the conceptualization of and therefore empirical research on, bisexuality. This article reviews these alternatives and summarizes the current state of research on bisexuality, including research on "situational homosexuality" (behavioral bisexuality), recent national probability studies on sexual behaviors and identities in the United States, the meanings of bisexual self-identities among women, masculinist biases in methods of assessing and theorizing sexual self-identities, and prejudice against bisexuals. The article concludes with suggestions for future social scientific research on bisexuality.

As we end the second millennium and begin the third, bisexuality is both uniquely conceivable and uniquely inconceivable in Western culture. This paradoxical position is the result of larger social and cultural factors that have shaped not only modern bisexuality but modern sexuality in general. Understanding bisexuality, therefore, is a key to understanding the cultural and historical factors that have affected not only bisexual but also lesbian and heterosexual women. In this article, I briefly describe the historical changes that produced the contemporary bisexual paradox, and I show how contemporary attitudes toward bisexuality result from this paradox. I then review social scientific efforts to reconceptualize bisexuality for the purposes of scientific study and summarize empirical research pertinent to bisexuality among women, including research on "situational homosexuality," the prevalence of bisexual behavior and identity in the United States, the meanings of bisexual self-identities and the ways in which women use sexual self-identities, racial and ethnic differences in patterns and meanings of bisexuality, and evidence of prejudice against bisexuals among heterosexuals and among lesbians and gay men (see also Rust, 1999, 2000).

Historical Paradoxes

Prior to the development of the concepts of the "lesbian" and the "heterosexual woman" as distinct types of people in the late nineteenth century, women in European and European-derived cultures were defined primarily by their familial relationships with husbands and children (Katz, 1995). Marriage served primarily economic and procreative functions rather than emotional functions, and women were expected to form their closest emotional bonds with other women (Smith-Rosenberg, 1975). Even if and when these bonds became sexual, women were not seen as "lesbians" because of their same-sex activities nor as a "bisexual" because of their simultaneous marriages to men, but as "women" because of their familial relationships with husbands and children. Thus, the tacit practice of bisexuality coexisted with the nonexistence of a concept of a (bi)sexual individual.

The late-nineteenth-century shift toward viewing women and men as eroticized individuals produced not only lesbians and heterosexual women, but also the possibility of conceptualizing bisexuality as a combination of lesbianism and heterosexuality. The gendered nature of the distinction between lesbianism and heterosexuality was critical in producing this possibility. If the newly eroticized individual had not been classified according to the gender to which she was attracted, the idea that she could be attracted to both genders would be unnecessary and nonsensical. The paradox lies in the fact that the same nineteenth-century beliefs in the mutual exclusivity of womanhood and manhood and in the inescapable importance of gender that produced concepts of gendered eroticism also produced the belief that sexual attraction must be directed toward either men or women. If men and women are "opposite" genders, then attractions toward women and men must also be opposite attractions that cannot coexist simultaneously within a single individual. If one is attracted to a man, how can one simultaneously be attracted to a woman who is everything a man is not and nothing that he is?

Ironically, therefore, the construction of lesbianism and heterosexuality pulled the rug out from under bisexuality. Whereas women in the nineteenth century might have enjoyed some freedom of bisexual expression in a culture that did not conceive of lesbians or heterosexuals, let alone bisexuals, the contemporary belief that lesbians and heterosexuals do exist has led to the possibility of conceptualizing bisexuality while also producing the belief that bisexuality cannot exist and thereby eroding the cultural space available for women's bisexual expression. The factors that have created this bisexual paradox are the same factors that have created contemporary lesbianism and heterosexuality. Understanding bisexuality among women, therefore, has the potential to shed light not only on the sexuality of bisexual women but also on the sexuality of lesbian and heterosexual women.