Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics. Paula C Rust
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theorists, for example, MacDonald, referred to the third sexual orientation as bisexuality. MacDonald conceptualized bisexuality as a combination of heterosexuality and homosexuality. He referred to bisexuals as persons who “can enjoy and engage in sexual activity with members of both sexes, or [recognize] a desire to do so” (1981:25). He argued that bisexuality is a distinct form of sexual orientation and that researchers should recognize it as such.
Brierley rejected the idea that bisexuality, heterosexuality, and homosexuality are distinct forms of sexuality. He suggested that individuals have numerous psychological and behavioral dimensions that form a system tending toward individualized homeostasis in the “well-integrated personality.” Some elements of this system, such as gender identity, are core and therefore more resistant to change as the system adjusts to “maintain stability and to oppose external constraints” (1984:62). These systemic adjustments produce relationships between identity, behavior, and other personality dimensions that are unique for each individual. There is, therefore, no such thing as a “heterosexual” or a “homosexual” except insofar as some individuals happen to possess the characteristics that we associate with these categories of being.
Some theorists resurrected Freud’s concept of “inherent bisexuality” (e.g., Freimuth and Hornstein 1982; Zinik 1985). Freud had argued that humans are born sexually undefined and that preferences for certain objects develop during childhood. He believed that “all human beings are bisexual by nature, in accordance with their phylogenetic and ontogenetic history” (Wolff 1971:20). If bisexuality is conceptualized as a universal human potential, then bisexuality is the original condition upon which heterosexuality and homosexuality are variations. This represents a significant departure from the concept of distinct heterosexual and homosexual essences, from which bisexuality emerges as a combination of or an unresolved conflict between these two states of being.
Drawing on the notion of a universal bisexual potential, Klein (1978) conceived of bisexuality in terms of a potential for “one hundred percent intimacy.” Bisexuality in this sense is “the most complex state of sexual relatedness with people” and calls “for a wholeness of behavior” (Klein 1978:14) and a tolerance for ambiguity, in contrast to the limits on feelings and behavior implied by heterosexuality and homosexuality. Thus, rather than a combination of homosexuality and heterosexuality, bisexuality is, in Klein’s eyes, a qualitatively different way of relating to people characterized by openness rather than limitations.
Some theorists questioned the century-old convention of defining sexual orientation in terms of the biological sex or gender of one’s sex-object choice. DeCecco and Shively (1983/84), in an oft-cited article, proposed shifting scientific attention from its focus on the sexual individual to a focus on the sexual relationship as the unit of analysis. Ross (1984), Kaplan and Rogers (1984), and Freimuth and Hornstein (1982) argued that social scientists should remove the emphasis on the biological sex characteristics of the partners in a relationship and step back to ask which characteristics serve to define a sexual encounter for the participants in the encounter. Kaplan and Rogers argued that while biological sex is an important factor in choosing sexual partners, albeit only because of the social emphasis placed on biological sex, other gender-related characteristics are also influential because genitalia themselves are not immediately observable. Taking the argument a step further, Ross suggested that individuals might choose their sexual partners on the basis of a number of characteristics, among which biological sex might be more or less important. Ross and Paul (1992) suggested that bisexuals could be conceptualized as individuals for whom biological sex is a comparatively minor consideration in choosing sexual partners, in contrast to heterosexuals and homosexuals who “have succumbed to social pressures to adopt an exclusive and stable sexual orientation” (Ross 1984:64).
Theorists who advocated abandoning biological sex-based or gender-based definitions of sexual orientation often suggested that research on bisexuals would be particularly useful in developing a new model of sexuality.8 Among bisexuals, other characteristics that are important in partner choice are not overshadowed by an exclusive choice on the basis of gender. Therefore, these other characteristics should prove to be more readily identified and studied among bisexuals than among homosexuals or heterosexuals. In fact, Ross (1984:68) asserted that “[w]e can only begin to understand the meaning of having a same-sex partner by looking at bisexuals . . . for whom gender is one of a number of determinants in partner choice.” The belief that bisexuals hold the key to understanding sexuality, including heterosexuality and homosexuality, is a far cry from the attitudes of earlier theorists who ascribed to the conflict model of sexuality and viewed bisexuals as either nonexistent or mere combinations of conflicting homosexual and heterosexual impulses.
Unfortunately, researchers have largely ignored the progress made by theorists. A review of the research literature is outside the scope of this book, but suffice it to say that most researchers continue to classify people as either “lesbians/gays” or “heterosexuals.” A few researchers recognize a “bisexual” category, and some collect Kinsey scores that are often used merely to place people into these categories. As MacDonald (1983) pointed out, these practices lead not only to a lack of knowledge about bisexuals, but also to poor quality knowledge about lesbians and gays, because people with varied sexual desires, behaviors, and identities are often lumped together within a single category. In my study, I refer to the women who participated as “lesbians” or “bisexuals” according to their own self-identities. These labels are not meant to imply that these women are “really” lesbian or bisexual in an essential sense, nor are they meant to gloss over the varied sexual experiences of the women collected under each label; on the contrary, I examine these differences and their implications. The labels are both a linguistic convenience and a way to show respect for the self-identities of the women who participated in this study.
3 BEHIND THE SCENES: HOW THE STUDY WAS DONE AND WHO PARTICIPATED IN IT
A BRIEF AND NONTECHNICAL LESSON IN SAMPLING THEORY FOR NONACADEMIC READERS
Chapters 4, 5, and 7 will present the findings of research in which I explored lesbian and bisexual women’s opinions on the topic of bisexuality. But before I present the findings it is important for you to know something about the women who participated in the study. The odds are that you and your friends were not among the women who participated, so you might be wondering how the findings could possibly be relevant to you, much less reflect your own opinions. This chapter will answer that question, and it will give you information that you need in order to draw your own conclusions about the findings. Readers who are familiar with scientific sampling methods might want to skip to the subheading “How Lesbian and Bisexual Women Were Recruited to Participate in the Study.”
It would have been impossible, for many practical reasons, to survey all lesbians and bisexual women in the U.S. Instead of surveying an entire population, social scientists usually select particular members of the population as representatives of the population and survey these people. In other words, we take a sample of the population and then we use the information these people give us to draw informed conclusions about the population as a whole. In this way, scientists use limited financial resources to focus on getting the most accurate information possible from the people they have selected, instead of obtaining poor quality information from a larger number of people.
It may seem risky to draw conclusions about a whole population based on information from just a sample, and it can be if it is not done properly. How do scientists know that the people who are sampled really represent everyone else fairly? We do, if we have drawn the sample using methods that guarantee that each member of a population has an equal chance1 of being selected for inclusion in the sample. When these methods are used, we can be reasonably certain that various segments of the population, and their opinions, are represented in the sample in the same proportion in which they appear in the population as a whole. Therefore, the sample should