Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics. Paula C Rust
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stand look; it is printed in color on glossy paper with photos or artwork on every two-page spread and commercial advertisements covering one-third of the page space.
The banner on the cover of Out/Look described the magazine as a “National Lesbian & Gay Quarterly.” The first issue of the magazine was published in Spring 1988. In Spring 1992, Managing Editor Robin Stevens announced that the magazine was in financial trouble and needed contributions. In the following issue, Stevens announced that contributions had exceeded the amount necessary to bring the magazine back to financial health and that it was no longer in danger of folding. It was the last issue of Out/Look ever published. Out/Look focused on lesbian and gay male culture and ran cover and feature stories about political and cultural issues that arose within the lesbian and gay communities rather than news about our gains and losses vis-à-vis heterosexual society. The fact that Out/Look called itself a “Lesbian and Gay” magazine, whereas The Advocate calls itself a “Gay and Lesbian” magazine is symbolic; Out/Look achieved a greater balance in its coverage of lesbian and gay male topics. Gender balance had been a goal of the magazine since its inception, and this goal was reflected in the magazine’s editorial staff, which ranged from forty to sixty percent female.3 With a circulation of 17,000, Out/Look was not as glitzy as The Advocate. The front and back covers displayed color artwork, but the inside pages were printed in black and white on non-glossy paper and had far fewer commercial advertisements than The Advocate.
When Out/Look folded, subscribers received issues of the new magazine 10 Percent. The masthead of the first anniversary issue described the magazine as “The magazine of people, arts, and culture for lesbians and gay men.” The magazine is less narrowly focused on gayness than some other “lesbian and gay” magazines; although most articles concern specifically gay-related topics, others take gayness for granted as they focus primarily on topics of more “general” interest. For example, some articles in the “Environments” department would fit well in Homes magazine except for the respective genders of the people who own the gorgeous homes pictured in the large, full-color photographs. 10 Percent caters to the reader who can afford to take ski vacations4 and start small businesses.5 It provides some political information, but 10 Percent is most accurately described as overtly apolitical with a subtle leaning toward the conservative end of the gay spectrum. While other lesbian and gay magazines reported on the March on Washington, 10 Percent gave readers tips about which gay historical sites to visit after the March.6
Lesbian Contradiction boldly proclaims itself “A Journal of Irreverent Feminism.” The name says it all. Whereas 10 Percent avoids controversy, Lesbian Contradiction has rushed headlong toward controversy since the very first issue, dated Winter 1982/83. Whereas Out/Look attempted to balance representation of women and men, Lesbian Contradiction is exclusively for women. Whereas The Advocate represents the gay mainstream, Lesbian Contradiction takes lesbian feminism as thesis and antithesis. Lesbian Contradiction is a forum for the debate of the “issues” that are so plentiful in lesbian feminism. Published on newsprint four times a year, Lesbian Contradiction does not accept commercial advertising and reports 1,000 paying subscribers.
COVERAGE OF BISEXUALITY IN THE LESBIAN AND GAY PRESS
The treatment of bisexuality in The Lesbian and Gay Press in the 1980s and 1990s shows several patterns. The most dramatic pattern is a historical one. In the 1980s, the issue was constructed in terms of lesbians or gay men having heterosex. Not until the late 1980s or early 1990s did bisexuality per se emerge as an issue. Some lesbian and gay publications made this transition earlier than others. Publications also differed from each other in the degree to which they presented the issue as important or controversial. Some portrayed bisexuality as an issue with important implications for lesbian and gay politics in general, devoting a great deal of space to articles about bisexuality and subsequent letters from readers. Other publications gave bisexuality little more than passing mention or treated it as an uncontroversial news item. Finally, once bisexuality per se became an issue, different publications identified the source of controversy differently and gave voice to different interest groups.
With its long publishing history, The Advocate provides a rare opportunity to observe the construction of bisexuality as an issue through the 1980s and early 1990s. In the 1980s, The Advocate published articles bearing titles like “Gay Men, Lesbians and Sex” by Pat Califia (July, 1983), “Yes, I’m Still a Lesbian—Even Though I Love a Man” by Harriet Laine (July, 1986), and “Unresolved Harmonies: The Ups and Downs of Not Quite Coming Out” by Mark Chaim Evans (November, 1989). None of these authors felt that the term “bisexual” described their experiences, although the theme of each article was the fact that the author had sexual desire or actual sex with members of both sexes. Califia acknowledged the possibility that her behavior might appear bisexual to others and explained why she could not identify herself as bisexual. In the same article, she offered an analysis of the social construction of sexuality and identity politics that placed bisexual identity on a par with other sexual identities. Laine did not mention bisexuality once. On the contrary, Laine considered herself no less a lesbian because she was having sex with a man and would “like to think that the definition of lesbian is not so constrained” that it excludes sex with men. Likewise, Evans referred to bisexuality only once, commenting that “I find it hard to believe in bisexuality.”
The articles by Califia, Laine, and Evans represent the opinions of Califia, Laine, and Evans, but the letters to the editor that followed these articles represent the opinions of The Advocate’s readers. These letters indicate that, to the extent that The Advocate’s readers felt there was an issue at all in the 1980s, they accepted the authors’ construction of the issue as one of heterosex among lesbians and gays; none reconstructed the issue in terms of bisexuality.
For example, subsequent to Califia’s article, The Advocate printed one brief letter to the editor in which a male7 reader expressed his appreciation of Califia’s ability to “share bodies with other-gender partners without suffering identity crisis.”8 The letter did not use the term bisexual, but implicitly applauded Califia’s ability to resist such a classification. Three years later, Laine’s article generated a more lively response. Two male readers applauded Laine for her humanity and humanism and chastised those who would demand that she conform to narrow sexual scripts, and one female reader reproached Laine for presuming to call herself a lesbian and expending her energy on a man instead of using it to support womyn and the lesbian community9—exactly the attitude the male readers had condemned. None of these readers used the word “bisexual;” the male readers complimented Laine’s “humanity,” and the female reader informed Laine that she was “at least during the act, a heterosexual. Not a lesbian.” Evans’s article generated no controversy, possibly because as a man, Evans was not subject to lesbian identity rules and because, unlike Laine, he did not seek to defend his choices as informed and intentional. Instead, Evans invited readers to understand his story as an unfinished process of coming out, a familiar and politically unthreatening construction of his experience. Regardless of what accounts for the differences in the vigor of readers’ responses to these three articles, one thing is clear: the issue for all three authors and their readers was not bisexuality; the issue was people who identify as lesbian/gay having sex with members of the other sex.
But some of The Advocate’s readers were beginning to think about bisexuality as an issue and to communicate this view to the magazine. In 1985, two letters to the editor criticized the magazine’s previous year-in-review issue for missing opportunities to refer respectfully to bisexuality. One female reader asked why the word bisexual was put in quotation marks in a paragraph about Elton John and asked the magazine’s gay readers not to