RobinsonTheory (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} robinsontheory) wrote,@ 2007-10-01 10:46:00 |
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rough draft, portion of chapter one
Statement of The problem: What does Polyamory have to Do With Bisexuality?
[This is a portion of my first chapter. I've removed the footnotes for formatting reasons. I've also got lots of extra bits and pieces floating around which will eventually fit in here.]
Theologian Richard McBrien wrote that our first theological question is “Who am I” or “Who are we?” It is in our attempt to understand our own lives, claimed McBrien, that we begin to explore what is typically thought of as “religious issues” – God, Jesus, church, and morality.
As a bisexual woman, the question “who am I?” has been answered for me many times over by external forces. I am “greedy,” “lying,” a “conformist” who is “really either heterosexual or homosexual.” My sexuality is “a fearful compromise,” “intrinsically disordered,” and the “ultimate perversion.” The bisexual movement of which I am a part is a “danger to the lesbian community far greater than any threat by homophobes." Of all the answers I have received about who bisexuals are the most common has been that we are promiscuous, content only with both a male and female partner, destined (perhaps doomed) to leave a man for a woman or a woman for a man. In more neutral terms, the message is that bisexual identity ultimately mandates a polyamorous relationship structure.
Challenge of Polyamory to Bisexual Politics
To be a politically active bisexual is to be faced with a plethora of issues, each of which clamours for priority. Nearly all of the issues of systemic homophobia and heterosexism that are relevant to gays and lesbians (e.g. employment, bullying and violence, legal inequality) also apply to bisexuals. In addition, although people of all sexualities may choose not to be monogamous, bisexuals alone are identified as inherently non-monogamous. In voicing his opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Donald Nickles, a Republican Senator from Oklaholma, stated that "bisexual by definition means promiscuous, having relations with both male and female.” He called legally protecting bisexuals “a serious mistake."
Polyamory is a divisive issue for bisexuals in two ways. First, it creates a schism within the bi community itself. Bisexuals initially addressed this issue as a myth to be dispelled. Yes, they assured everyone, bisexuals can be monogamous. But within our community there was also a growing polyamorous movement. Bisexual activist Pepper Mint sees bisexuality and polyamory as strongly linked. “In our current cultural moment,” he writes, “there is a certain inevitability about this connection: anywhere polyamory goes, bisexuality will travel with it. Poly activism is bi activism.”
In addition to creating divisions within our own community, polyamory is an issue that separates us from lesbian-identified women. Certainly, some lesbians are polyamorous, as books such as The Lesbian Polyamory Reader show. Yet monogamist values remain foundational to the lesbian community, and in some cases serve as boundary markers, separating bisexuals from lesbians. Paula Rust’s research revealed that lesbians felt less accepting of bisexual women when they viewed them as having relationships with both men and women than when they viewed them as having attractions to both men and women. Rust also found that bisexuals were twice as likely as lesbians to be involved in multiple partnerships. The issue is thus practical as well as theoretical, with lesbians being opposed not only to what they think bisexuals do, but also to what many bisexuals actually do.
One possibility is that identity labels may reflect goals and values as much as they do sexual history. Only 29.5% of the bi women interviewed by Rust saw monogamy as their ideal relationship structure, compared with 45.7% of lesbians. Rust’s work makes clear that there is a connection of some kind, even if only behaviourally, between bisexuality and polyamory. I hope my research can provide a glimpse into what that connection might be, and how it might function for bisexual women. This can provide bisexual women with a greater self-understanding from which to build connections with lesbians.
While polyamory may draw lines within our own queer women’s community, it also ties bisexual women more closely with non-conforming heterosexuals. A 2002 study by polyamory journal Loving More Magazine found that 50% of their four hundred respondents identified as bisexual, 45% identified as heterosexual, and only 5% identified as gay or lesbian. That same year social psychologist Gregory Herek found that heterosexuals rated bisexuals more negatively than any other minority group, with the exception of intravenous drug users. If polyamory is chosen mainly by heterosexuals and bisexuals then such a bond could be a foundation for coalition-building between bisexuals and non-conforming heterosexuals. Given Herek’s finding, any issue on which political alliances might be forged between bisexuals and heterosexuals becomes significant.
Invigorated by strides made on the issue of equal marriage for same-sex couples, the polyamory movement has begun to demand legal recognition for its own relationships, and with some success. In September of 2005 the Netherlands registered a civil union between three partners. Following the gay liberation model, polyamorous people have formed support and educational groups within faith traditions. An understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between bisexuality and polyamory will help bisexuals determine their stand on this political movement.
Challenges to Bisexuals In Theology
Bisexuals have begun to theologize on our own behalf, as evidenced by the publication of the multi-faith anthology Blessed Bi Spirit. Although gays, lesbians and bisexuals have shared interests theologically, the conflation of bisexuality with polyamory has made achieving solidarity difficult.
Increasingly, the existence of bisexuals has been involked as a bogeyman in the debate about legislative equality. Focus On The Family, an evangelical Christian group, writes: "Those who would redefine marriage often insist that the only necessary qualification for marriage is “love.” Yet if one accepts that rationale, then there can logically be no boundaries as to what constitutes marriage; any combination or number of consenting individuals must ultimately gain the same legal and societal sanction as natural marriage. What about bisexuals? Won’t they ask to marry members of both sexes at once? " By presenting our sexual identity as innately connected with multiple partnerships, religious fundamentalists aim to foster opposition to the equal marriage movement; not for what it is per se, but for the direction such equality might lead.
Conservative Christians are not the only ones who have framed bisexuality as the limit of tolerance. A debate among Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, about whether or not to include bisexuals in their name, evoked anxieties similar to those of Focus on The Family: "Do we really want to include an orientation which by definition is non-monogamous? It seems to me we’re having enough trouble getting the church to accept monogamous lesbian and gay relationships, without asking them to branch out in this way." In this argument bisexual marginality functions to normalize gay and lesbian relationships. In this way, bisexuals present as great a challenge to the self-understanding of gay and lesbian religious groups as gays and lesbians present to mainstream religious organizations.
How should bisexuals respond? Do we proclaim our ability to be monogamous, thus marginalizing polyamorous bisexuals? Do we reject temptations to normalize our identity, even at the cost of solidarity across sexual orientation categories? Can we even begin to respond without a clearer sense of how bisexuality and polyamory come to be associated? As bisexual movements gain momentum, bisexuals are discussing the central question of who “we” are. This dissertation is a contribution to that discussion, which is at once personal, political and theological.
Statement of The problem: What does Polyamory have to Do With Bisexuality?
[This is a portion of my first chapter. I've removed the footnotes for formatting reasons. I've also got lots of extra bits and pieces floating around which will eventually fit in here.]
Theologian Richard McBrien wrote that our first theological question is “Who am I” or “Who are we?” It is in our attempt to understand our own lives, claimed McBrien, that we begin to explore what is typically thought of as “religious issues” – God, Jesus, church, and morality.
As a bisexual woman, the question “who am I?” has been answered for me many times over by external forces. I am “greedy,” “lying,” a “conformist” who is “really either heterosexual or homosexual.” My sexuality is “a fearful compromise,” “intrinsically disordered,” and the “ultimate perversion.” The bisexual movement of which I am a part is a “danger to the lesbian community far greater than any threat by homophobes." Of all the answers I have received about who bisexuals are the most common has been that we are promiscuous, content only with both a male and female partner, destined (perhaps doomed) to leave a man for a woman or a woman for a man. In more neutral terms, the message is that bisexual identity ultimately mandates a polyamorous relationship structure.
Challenge of Polyamory to Bisexual Politics
To be a politically active bisexual is to be faced with a plethora of issues, each of which clamours for priority. Nearly all of the issues of systemic homophobia and heterosexism that are relevant to gays and lesbians (e.g. employment, bullying and violence, legal inequality) also apply to bisexuals. In addition, although people of all sexualities may choose not to be monogamous, bisexuals alone are identified as inherently non-monogamous. In voicing his opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Donald Nickles, a Republican Senator from Oklaholma, stated that "bisexual by definition means promiscuous, having relations with both male and female.” He called legally protecting bisexuals “a serious mistake."
Polyamory is a divisive issue for bisexuals in two ways. First, it creates a schism within the bi community itself. Bisexuals initially addressed this issue as a myth to be dispelled. Yes, they assured everyone, bisexuals can be monogamous. But within our community there was also a growing polyamorous movement. Bisexual activist Pepper Mint sees bisexuality and polyamory as strongly linked. “In our current cultural moment,” he writes, “there is a certain inevitability about this connection: anywhere polyamory goes, bisexuality will travel with it. Poly activism is bi activism.”
In addition to creating divisions within our own community, polyamory is an issue that separates us from lesbian-identified women. Certainly, some lesbians are polyamorous, as books such as The Lesbian Polyamory Reader show. Yet monogamist values remain foundational to the lesbian community, and in some cases serve as boundary markers, separating bisexuals from lesbians. Paula Rust’s research revealed that lesbians felt less accepting of bisexual women when they viewed them as having relationships with both men and women than when they viewed them as having attractions to both men and women. Rust also found that bisexuals were twice as likely as lesbians to be involved in multiple partnerships. The issue is thus practical as well as theoretical, with lesbians being opposed not only to what they think bisexuals do, but also to what many bisexuals actually do.
One possibility is that identity labels may reflect goals and values as much as they do sexual history. Only 29.5% of the bi women interviewed by Rust saw monogamy as their ideal relationship structure, compared with 45.7% of lesbians. Rust’s work makes clear that there is a connection of some kind, even if only behaviourally, between bisexuality and polyamory. I hope my research can provide a glimpse into what that connection might be, and how it might function for bisexual women. This can provide bisexual women with a greater self-understanding from which to build connections with lesbians.
While polyamory may draw lines within our own queer women’s community, it also ties bisexual women more closely with non-conforming heterosexuals. A 2002 study by polyamory journal Loving More Magazine found that 50% of their four hundred respondents identified as bisexual, 45% identified as heterosexual, and only 5% identified as gay or lesbian. That same year social psychologist Gregory Herek found that heterosexuals rated bisexuals more negatively than any other minority group, with the exception of intravenous drug users. If polyamory is chosen mainly by heterosexuals and bisexuals then such a bond could be a foundation for coalition-building between bisexuals and non-conforming heterosexuals. Given Herek’s finding, any issue on which political alliances might be forged between bisexuals and heterosexuals becomes significant.
Invigorated by strides made on the issue of equal marriage for same-sex couples, the polyamory movement has begun to demand legal recognition for its own relationships, and with some success. In September of 2005 the Netherlands registered a civil union between three partners. Following the gay liberation model, polyamorous people have formed support and educational groups within faith traditions. An understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between bisexuality and polyamory will help bisexuals determine their stand on this political movement.
Challenges to Bisexuals In Theology
Bisexuals have begun to theologize on our own behalf, as evidenced by the publication of the multi-faith anthology Blessed Bi Spirit. Although gays, lesbians and bisexuals have shared interests theologically, the conflation of bisexuality with polyamory has made achieving solidarity difficult.
Increasingly, the existence of bisexuals has been involked as a bogeyman in the debate about legislative equality. Focus On The Family, an evangelical Christian group, writes: "Those who would redefine marriage often insist that the only necessary qualification for marriage is “love.” Yet if one accepts that rationale, then there can logically be no boundaries as to what constitutes marriage; any combination or number of consenting individuals must ultimately gain the same legal and societal sanction as natural marriage. What about bisexuals? Won’t they ask to marry members of both sexes at once? " By presenting our sexual identity as innately connected with multiple partnerships, religious fundamentalists aim to foster opposition to the equal marriage movement; not for what it is per se, but for the direction such equality might lead.
Conservative Christians are not the only ones who have framed bisexuality as the limit of tolerance. A debate among Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, about whether or not to include bisexuals in their name, evoked anxieties similar to those of Focus on The Family: "Do we really want to include an orientation which by definition is non-monogamous? It seems to me we’re having enough trouble getting the church to accept monogamous lesbian and gay relationships, without asking them to branch out in this way." In this argument bisexual marginality functions to normalize gay and lesbian relationships. In this way, bisexuals present as great a challenge to the self-understanding of gay and lesbian religious groups as gays and lesbians present to mainstream religious organizations.
How should bisexuals respond? Do we proclaim our ability to be monogamous, thus marginalizing polyamorous bisexuals? Do we reject temptations to normalize our identity, even at the cost of solidarity across sexual orientation categories? Can we even begin to respond without a clearer sense of how bisexuality and polyamory come to be associated? As bisexual movements gain momentum, bisexuals are discussing the central question of who “we” are. This dissertation is a contribution to that discussion, which is at once personal, political and theological.
