Some context on this: the idea of monosexual privilege has been a hotly debate subject among bisexual people on tumblr. This post came on the tail end of a loooong debate involving a lot of people and a lot of different views. For more background: read these posts by Shiri Eisner, this post by pareia, and these discussions on tumblr.
This is the post as it appeared on my tumblr on Jan. 26, 2013.
I’m adressing this post to the people I argued with yesterday over
the concept of monosexual privilege and in particular to Shiri Eisner,
as the creator of the monosexual privilege checklist. It is based on
yesterday’s discussion and today’s clarification from Shiri Eisner on the intent behind the checklist.
I would like to make it clear that I write this as a bisexual woman
who is very interested in bisexual politics and devotes a lot of time to
thinking and writing about it. My stake in this is that I would like to
see bisexual politics that are revolutionary, that speak to our
experience as bisexuals, that are well thought out and well reasoned and
useful tools for bringing down the binaries – in short, I want the same
as you. So please do not dismiss my arguments here as privilege-denial,
or as internalized monosexism.
While you see two different axes of oppression, one straight-queer
and one monosexual-bisexual, I (and others, but I can only speak for
myself in this post) see only one straight-queer axis of oppression with
different consequences for the different oppressed groups and a degree
of horizontal hostility as a result of that.
In one of my many, many, many posts on the subject of monosexual privilege yesterday, I said the following:
So far, I have seen no examples of monosexual privilege that
is generally available to gay people. Some of it is available to white
middle-class cis gay people who conform to heteronormativity, some of it
is available to gay people only in LGBT spaces. The former is an
example of the privileged group extending privilege to a select few of
the non-privileged as a reward for buying into their ideology, the
latter does not count as it is a subspace separate from mainstream
society.
This got buried in a wall of text and nobody responded to it so I’m
putting it in its own post and bolding it. I will add that another
category exists: rights that the gay community had to fight tooth and
nail to have, which we don’t have yet because our problems haven’t been
prioritized. I would argue that hard-won rights (especially those that
are relatively recently acquired and only in a specific set of
countries) have no place on a privilege checklist. If necessary, I am
willing to go through the checklist point by point and show that each of
them belongs in one of these categories.
Now I should add that I am well aware that monosexual privilege is
not claimed to originate in the gay community. However. If you construct
a group of people as a privileged group by virtue of sexuality, it has to make sense to talk about that group as privileged by virtue of their sexuality.
If what you describe as monosexual privilege is not available to
everyone you define as monosexual, even when taking the other axes of
oppression into account, it’s time to look at who actually holds the
privilege in question. In this case, I think it clearly is
heterosexuals. The reason why those of us who criticize the idea of
monosexual privilege focus so heavily on lesbians and gays in relation
to this is twofold. 1) We all agree that heterosexuals hold the
privileges listed and 2) it is when we apply the concept of monosexual
privilege to gays and lesbians as subsets of the proposed monosexual
group that we see how little sense it makes to talk about them as
monosexuals.
The monosexual privilege checklist was accepted by many, including
myself, without critical thought. It speaks of the unique problems faced
by bisexuals and it was such an emotional experience to see it all in
list form that I didn’t initially question the chosen template, or its
implications.
Since then, I’ve seen a lot of criticism of how prolific the format
of the privilege checklist has become, how it’s used on all forms of
oppression without taking into account whether the form of oppression in
question actually fits the original model. This has become widespread
and many people now don’t realise that when you create a privilege checklist, you are implying an underlying axis of oppression with your non-privileged group on one end and everyone else at the other. The
format of the privilege checklist cannot and should not be divorced
from this political analysis of oppression, or it is meaningless.
Think of the first privilege checklist, the white privilege
checklist. It was created to show white people how they are privileged
in ways they rarely even think about. Behind it is an analysis of racial
oppression that shows white people as privileged over all other racial
demographics. This is true regardless of how various non-privileged
racial groups are oppressed in different ways, or receive varying
degrees of provisional access to the privileges described, because
whiteness is monolithic. Because regardless of intersecting gender,
class or sexuality oppressions, it makes sense to speak of a relatively
uniform white experience. Because I, as a poor person, a woman, a
bisexual, a person with a mental illness, living in a country with a
vastly different racial history and social dynamic from the US, I can
still read the white privilege checklist and have my mind blown by all
of the privilege I never realised I had. It works because although
whiteness is mostly never considered by white people, white people are
still a group with clearly defined membership, even though it mostly
becomes clear through definitions of who isn’t white.
This is not transferable to the idea of monosexual privilege. There
is no monolithic group of monosexuals. It is not a concept except in our
minds as bisexuals. Heterosexuals may see gays and lesbians as less
threatening on some levels (as expertly pointed out by Kenji Yoshino in
his essay The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure) but they do not
experience straights and gays as one group. There is no cohesion there
as there is with whiteness. The extent to which gays and straights have
common interests in the suppression of bisexuality is still, as Yoshino
describes it, a subconscious contract between two groups with different
motives, investments and privileges. It is still a contract between one
privileged group and a minority. Intersectionality doesn’t even begin to
explain the complete lack of cohesion in this supposedly privileged
group.
So here is my problem. If the unique situation of bisexuals does not
fit the privilege-oppression framework in the sense of bisexuals being
oppressed by monosexuals, and if this framework is not even necessary in
order to describe and explain the unique experience of bisexuals or the
interests of gays and lesbians in bi erasure, why should we use it?
It’s faulty, flawed, oversimplifying and unnecessary. It brings far
more harm than good. And to be honest, it feels appropriative to me.
I’m not saying the list should be completely chucked. With a few
changes, it could be a list of consequences of bi erasure. A list of
specific oppressions for bisexuals under heterosexism. Shining a light
on bi specific oppressions is a good thing, a necessary thing. It does
not need to be a privilege checklist to do that.
Here is what I suggest: we can talk about bisexual erasure and
biphobia as a consequence of heterosexism and sometimes an expression of
horizontal aggression. We can even talk about monosexism as a subset of heterosexism
in which bisexuality is specifically targeted for the threat it
represents to heteronormativity. But if we talk about monosexism among
gays and lesbians we should make clear that we are talking about
internalized shit and attempts to make an oppressed group look more
palatable to the privileged group (homonormativity).
15 February 2013
12 February 2013
Review: Biphobia and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics
In December, I bought three used books on Amazon, all about
bisexuality. Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics – Sex,
Loyalty and Revolution by Paula C. Rust (now Rodríguez Rust) is the
first of these I finished, and by far the one that most captured my
imagination.
The book is about lesbian attitudes towards bisexuality and bisexual women, their causes and effects. The basis for the book is ostensibly a questionnaire written by Dr. Rodríguez Rust which was answered by 427 women, of which 332 identified as lesbian and 45 identified as bi. (The rest preferred not to label themselves, were uncertain or identified as heterosexual with bi tendencies.) She details the methods she used to ensure that she got a representative sample and I’m pretty sure she did succeed, at least with the lesbians. Sadly, there were too few bisexual respondents for this study to say anything meaningful about bisexuals.
She adds to this a study of the way bisexuality has been mentioned or discussed in major gay/lesbian publications, and a look at the (at that time) relatively new bisexual press.
The real strength of the book, though, lies in her analysis of lesbian politics, the history of lesbian politics and the way this history shaped the way lesbians saw bisexual women in the late 80s to early 90s. Depressingly little enough has changed that I think it is still very relevant today.
Dr. Rodríguez Rust’s main argument is that hostility towards bisexual women in the lesbian community stems from an unresolved conflict between two different political traditions with two different conceptualizations of lesbianism.
The first political tradition she describes is the one that arose in the early 1970s, when lesbians had to politicize sexuality in order to convince straight feminists that lesbian issues were feminist issues. This process gave birth to lesbian feminism, where the lesbian identity was politicized and de-sexualised. The lesbian was constructed as a feminist ideal, living a life away from patriarchy, supporting only other women. The definition of lesbian changed from ”woman who is attracted to women” to ”woman who does not have relationships with men” so that all women could become lesbians if they chose. Women who identify as bisexual, seen through the lens of lesbian feminism, are the ultimate traitors – even worse than heterosexual women – because they take ”energy” (time, resources, support) from lesbians but don’t give any back, instead going ”back” to men to give their energy to them. Because, in this view, bisexual women have the capacity to choose lesbianism but choose instead to keep supporting patriarchy by remaining available to men.
I have many many issues with lesbian feminism, but it somehow never occurred to me that it could be the reason behind many prejudices about us – the idea that we’re traitors to the cause, the idea that we have to make a choice, perhaps even the idea of us being icky because we might have touched a penis.
The other political tradition she describes is what she refers to as the ethnic political tradition. Dr. Rust Rodríguez says, ”the fundamental difference is that feminist arguments rely on the assumption of choice, whereas ethnic arguments rely on the assumption of essence.” (p. 162) The two political traditions are thus radically different, but this conflict was never resolved in the lesbian community – something which the issue of bisexuality calls attention to.
The civil rights movement had changed the language of political debate in the US. The arguments for ending racial oppression had been boiled down to slogans, which became powerful political shorthand that other minorities could use. In order to access these, lesbians (and homosexual people in general) had to be constructed as something similar to an ethnic group. An ethnic group has clearly defined borders, it has shared culture and history, and it is immutable. Immutability is the key political argument, here: it had become generally agreed upon that it was unfair to discriminate against people for something that is beyond their control. The cultural aspects were easily taken care of, lesbian history was constructed (mostly through reinforcement of bisexual invisibility), but in order to use this immutability defense, the absence of choice is vital – bringing this process in direct conflict with lesbian feminism.
Bisexuality threatens this concept of lesbianism in multiple ways. It blurs the borders between gay and straight, it threatens to destroy most of lesbian history (how many of those historical lesbians also had relationships with men? To acknowledge bisexuality is to admit that any of these women could have been not lesbian after all) and worst of all, it brings back the question of choice and undermines the immutability defense.
Stemming from this today is the refusal to acknowledge bisexuality at all. You know the drill – we’re in denial, we’re confused etc.
It seems very useful to me to distinguish between instances of biphobia from lesbians according to what kind of thinking they’re rooted in. Often, when people say to us: ”Make a choice, already!” we find ourselves saying that we can’t, that we’re born this way etc. This fails to hit the mark because we are arguing from two very different standpoints. Maybe a better response would be, ”Why the hell should we?”
This book only deals with bisexual women and the prejudice we face from the lesbian community, but I think parts of this analysis could be used on bisexual men and gay men, too. The political cause there is obviously not feminism or even ideals of gender segregation, but a broader issue of the struggle for queer rights being seen as the struggle between straight and gay, with rigidly drawn lines, and if you’re not with us then you must be against us. The ethnicity analysis works just as well for gay men as it does for lesbians.
In the last chapter of the book, Dr. Rodríguez Rust looks at bisexual publications to examine possible ways to politicize bisexuality. The book was written in 1995 and is thus nearly 20 years out of date, but it really got me thinking nonetheless. That, however, will have to be a different post. As will what she says about the way people conceptualize bisexuality and its effect on their views on bi politics.
I love this book for so many reasons. It’s a very nuanced look at feminism and lesbian politics, warts and all. Most of all it opened the floodgates in my mind for a lot of thoughts about bisexual politics and what we want to do. Definitely recommended reading.
[Original tumblr post here]
The book is about lesbian attitudes towards bisexuality and bisexual women, their causes and effects. The basis for the book is ostensibly a questionnaire written by Dr. Rodríguez Rust which was answered by 427 women, of which 332 identified as lesbian and 45 identified as bi. (The rest preferred not to label themselves, were uncertain or identified as heterosexual with bi tendencies.) She details the methods she used to ensure that she got a representative sample and I’m pretty sure she did succeed, at least with the lesbians. Sadly, there were too few bisexual respondents for this study to say anything meaningful about bisexuals.
She adds to this a study of the way bisexuality has been mentioned or discussed in major gay/lesbian publications, and a look at the (at that time) relatively new bisexual press.
The real strength of the book, though, lies in her analysis of lesbian politics, the history of lesbian politics and the way this history shaped the way lesbians saw bisexual women in the late 80s to early 90s. Depressingly little enough has changed that I think it is still very relevant today.
Dr. Rodríguez Rust’s main argument is that hostility towards bisexual women in the lesbian community stems from an unresolved conflict between two different political traditions with two different conceptualizations of lesbianism.
The first political tradition she describes is the one that arose in the early 1970s, when lesbians had to politicize sexuality in order to convince straight feminists that lesbian issues were feminist issues. This process gave birth to lesbian feminism, where the lesbian identity was politicized and de-sexualised. The lesbian was constructed as a feminist ideal, living a life away from patriarchy, supporting only other women. The definition of lesbian changed from ”woman who is attracted to women” to ”woman who does not have relationships with men” so that all women could become lesbians if they chose. Women who identify as bisexual, seen through the lens of lesbian feminism, are the ultimate traitors – even worse than heterosexual women – because they take ”energy” (time, resources, support) from lesbians but don’t give any back, instead going ”back” to men to give their energy to them. Because, in this view, bisexual women have the capacity to choose lesbianism but choose instead to keep supporting patriarchy by remaining available to men.
I have many many issues with lesbian feminism, but it somehow never occurred to me that it could be the reason behind many prejudices about us – the idea that we’re traitors to the cause, the idea that we have to make a choice, perhaps even the idea of us being icky because we might have touched a penis.
The other political tradition she describes is what she refers to as the ethnic political tradition. Dr. Rust Rodríguez says, ”the fundamental difference is that feminist arguments rely on the assumption of choice, whereas ethnic arguments rely on the assumption of essence.” (p. 162) The two political traditions are thus radically different, but this conflict was never resolved in the lesbian community – something which the issue of bisexuality calls attention to.
The civil rights movement had changed the language of political debate in the US. The arguments for ending racial oppression had been boiled down to slogans, which became powerful political shorthand that other minorities could use. In order to access these, lesbians (and homosexual people in general) had to be constructed as something similar to an ethnic group. An ethnic group has clearly defined borders, it has shared culture and history, and it is immutable. Immutability is the key political argument, here: it had become generally agreed upon that it was unfair to discriminate against people for something that is beyond their control. The cultural aspects were easily taken care of, lesbian history was constructed (mostly through reinforcement of bisexual invisibility), but in order to use this immutability defense, the absence of choice is vital – bringing this process in direct conflict with lesbian feminism.
Bisexuality threatens this concept of lesbianism in multiple ways. It blurs the borders between gay and straight, it threatens to destroy most of lesbian history (how many of those historical lesbians also had relationships with men? To acknowledge bisexuality is to admit that any of these women could have been not lesbian after all) and worst of all, it brings back the question of choice and undermines the immutability defense.
Stemming from this today is the refusal to acknowledge bisexuality at all. You know the drill – we’re in denial, we’re confused etc.
It seems very useful to me to distinguish between instances of biphobia from lesbians according to what kind of thinking they’re rooted in. Often, when people say to us: ”Make a choice, already!” we find ourselves saying that we can’t, that we’re born this way etc. This fails to hit the mark because we are arguing from two very different standpoints. Maybe a better response would be, ”Why the hell should we?”
This book only deals with bisexual women and the prejudice we face from the lesbian community, but I think parts of this analysis could be used on bisexual men and gay men, too. The political cause there is obviously not feminism or even ideals of gender segregation, but a broader issue of the struggle for queer rights being seen as the struggle between straight and gay, with rigidly drawn lines, and if you’re not with us then you must be against us. The ethnicity analysis works just as well for gay men as it does for lesbians.
In the last chapter of the book, Dr. Rodríguez Rust looks at bisexual publications to examine possible ways to politicize bisexuality. The book was written in 1995 and is thus nearly 20 years out of date, but it really got me thinking nonetheless. That, however, will have to be a different post. As will what she says about the way people conceptualize bisexuality and its effect on their views on bi politics.
I love this book for so many reasons. It’s a very nuanced look at feminism and lesbian politics, warts and all. Most of all it opened the floodgates in my mind for a lot of thoughts about bisexual politics and what we want to do. Definitely recommended reading.
[Original tumblr post here]
DIVA Biphobia Redux
This was originally posted on my tumblr on 13th March 2012, in response to this post.
A few days ago I posted about the biphobic comments that appeared on DIVA’s facebook wall when they asked about lesbians, bisexuals and dating. Well, the article is in the current issue of DIVA and they have this teaser up on their website:
I’m very, very disappointed. This is a gross misrepresentation of what happened in that thread. I saw one single comment from a bi woman who was adverse to dating lesbians because she’d had horrible experiences with biphobia in the past - this after seven very biphobic comments, including the unforgettable “I wouldn’t go near a bi girl cus i dont want box germs passing on to me from there men:-(:-( rank.com.”
What I saw was a lot of horrible comments from lesbians, and then a lot of bisexuals and lesbians objecting to the horrible biphobic things that were said. Nobody denounced all lesbians as “narrow minded bigots.”
She’s trying to present both sides of this argument as equally horrible when that’s just not the truth. Bisexuals were defending themselves. How can “hey, you’re saying some horrible things, we have feelings too” ever compare to “bisexuals are full of STDs”? To “I don’t want to be with a woman who’s slept with a man?” To “there’s no such thing as a bisexual?” I have major problems with the last paragraph, too, but I’m too tired to unpack my feelings about it right now.
Another thing that bothers me: the tone of this article. It seems to say that things are somehow magically getting better. Really? When biphobic comments like that are concidered acceptable by so many people? When DIVA don’t even care about their bisexual readership to delete even the most horrible ones? Bull. Shit.
Of course, I have no idea how the rest of the article goes. Apparently you can get a free digital issue if you dowload their iPhone/iPad app from the apple app store. I have no apple products. Is there anyone out there who does and would be willing to download this and share at least the gist of the article?
A few days ago I posted about the biphobic comments that appeared on DIVA’s facebook wall when they asked about lesbians, bisexuals and dating. Well, the article is in the current issue of DIVA and they have this teaser up on their website:
Bye, biphobia
Can lesbians and bisexuals find love together?
Dr Meg Barker is a senior lecturer in psychology and a relationships therapist at the Lesbian and Gay Foundation in Manchester. She is also one of the authors of The Bisexuality Report (published in February), which examines bisexual invisibility and exclusion.
When it comes to dating, Barker points out, one of the issues is that “bisexual” is a an umbrella term covering everyone from bi-curious straight girls, whose interest is experimental, to women who acknowledge their attraction to men but are mostly drawn to other women. Both these kinds of women may call themselves bisexual but will probably relate very differently to lesbians and the LGBT community.
In most cases, lesbians who avoid dating bi women say that it is their own bad experiences that put them off, while bi women describe the pain of rejection by those who see their identity label as a danger sign.
It’s important to recognise that everyone’s experience is real, says Barker. “We need to understand what it’s like from both sides; that’s the answer here, for lesbian partners or potential partners to tune in and imagine what it might be like to feel distrusted or told you can’t really claim your identity.
“At the same time, the bi partners need to reflect on what it might be like to be with somebody who is constantly saying that they’ve got this identity that makes it feel like they might not be there in the future. Why might a lesbian partner who’s had some of those experiences in the past be a bit distrustful and struggling? What might you do to reassure them? It’s about empathy really.”
Read the rest of this feature in the April issue of DIVA
I’m very, very disappointed. This is a gross misrepresentation of what happened in that thread. I saw one single comment from a bi woman who was adverse to dating lesbians because she’d had horrible experiences with biphobia in the past - this after seven very biphobic comments, including the unforgettable “I wouldn’t go near a bi girl cus i dont want box germs passing on to me from there men:-(:-( rank.com.”
What I saw was a lot of horrible comments from lesbians, and then a lot of bisexuals and lesbians objecting to the horrible biphobic things that were said. Nobody denounced all lesbians as “narrow minded bigots.”
She’s trying to present both sides of this argument as equally horrible when that’s just not the truth. Bisexuals were defending themselves. How can “hey, you’re saying some horrible things, we have feelings too” ever compare to “bisexuals are full of STDs”? To “I don’t want to be with a woman who’s slept with a man?” To “there’s no such thing as a bisexual?” I have major problems with the last paragraph, too, but I’m too tired to unpack my feelings about it right now.
Another thing that bothers me: the tone of this article. It seems to say that things are somehow magically getting better. Really? When biphobic comments like that are concidered acceptable by so many people? When DIVA don’t even care about their bisexual readership to delete even the most horrible ones? Bull. Shit.
Of course, I have no idea how the rest of the article goes. Apparently you can get a free digital issue if you dowload their iPhone/iPad app from the apple app store. I have no apple products. Is there anyone out there who does and would be willing to download this and share at least the gist of the article?
Biphobia and lesbians, a facebook case study
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