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The B word
Advocate, The, March 25, 2008 by Amy Andre, Lisa Johnson, Alicia Banks
Thank you so much for drawing attention to the lives of bisexual women ["Objects of Suspicion," February 26]. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other sources, bisexuals make up 50% of the LGB population, so it is great to see us mentioned in your pages. I was one of the bi health experts interviewed for the article, and I need to clarify a slight misquote. I was quoted as saying "[B]isexual women in relationships with monosexual partners have notably higher rates of domestic violence than [other] women," but in fact I did not discuss the sexual orientation(s) of the violent partners of bisexual women. In fact, the research on this doesn't say anything about who is being violent toward bi women. It only says that bisexual women are experiencing violence--significantly more violence than lesbians and straight women experience.
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My hope is that future research will shed more light on the impact of biphobia on bi women's lives and on the lives of everyone in the LGBT community. We are all lessened by biphobia, and we each have the opportunity to eradicate it.
AMY ANDRE, via the Internet
I am writing to correct the misrepresentation of my position on bisexuality in Jennifer Baumgardner's article. As a professor of women's studies and as director of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina Upstate, I have been a vocal supporter of bisexual identity and politics for many years. In my interview on this subject I distinguished between my professional work on campus to support self-identification within the LGBTQ community and to affirm a queer sensibility that allows for sexual fluidity and an evolving sense of self and desire; and my dating life, where I prefer not to date "bi-curious" women but would have no problem dating a queer-friendly bisexual feminist woman. In fact, frankly, I would love to date Jennifer Baumgardner, and you can quote me on that.
LISA JOHNSON, Spartanburg, S.C.
Labels are for cans. True beauty and real love are always genderless. True bisexuals are never hated.
I am weary of "bisexuals" who cavalierly bail out of lesbian relationships simply because relationships with men are easier. I am disgusted by gold-digging "bisexuals" who bilk butch lesbians as surrogate sugar daddies to children and loathsome, trifling, deadbeat men. Many "bisexuals" ruthlessly act out their internalized misogyny by emotionally abusing the lesbians they hate because they actually hate their own true lesbian selves.
When "bisexuals" stop usurping that label and brazenly using it as a pass card for pathologies and polygamy, then perhaps we lesbians will stop hating them.
ALICIA BANKS, Little Rock, Ark.
COPYRIGHT 2008 LPI Media
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
