Hybrid. Ruth Colker
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involved with a man. The person who had “nominated” me immediately responded by agreeing with my assessment of the situation. I learned that he later described the conversation to someone else and called me a “coward” for being a bisexual rather than a lesbian. It was not until I met a woman who identified herself as a bisexual and who explained to me that there was a bisexual community that I came to feel more comfortable with that label and orientation.
Today, I feel comfortable with the label of bisexual and cannot imagine being involved with a man (or woman) who did not share my feminist vision and commitment to equality for lesbian and gay people. By doing childcare, housework, food shopping, and so forth, my male partner facilitates my feminist and lesbian political work rather than hinders it. The assumption that the reverse would be true is obviously the result of stereotypical thinking about “all men” but, in addition, is deeply insulting about my taste and preferences. Why would anyone think that I would pursue a relationship with anyone— male or female—that prevented me from doing legal and political work?
Not all lesbians and gay men have such a spiteful view of bisexuals. I have found, in fact, that some lesbians and gay men have been more supportive of my fluid sexuality than I have been myself. The gay and lesbian community also seems to have progressed in recent years toward greater inclusion of bisexuals; recent anthologies on bisexuality25 reflect this trend. Bisexuality, however, challenges people’s feelings and actions concerning inclusiveness. When women who have had sexual relations with people of both sexes, and who do not disavow those relationships as authentic expressions of love and commitment, can exist within the community of women in their wholeness rather than as stereotypes, then we will have created a more genuine feminist and lesbian politics.
Individuals who cross racial lines have suffered similar problems. Maria O’Brien Hylton was rejected by some members of the black community during the Northwestern Law School appointment process because she did not have a strong enough black identity. One member of the black community described Hylton as not authentically “black” because unlike most African-Americans, she was not the descendant of “twelve generations of enslaved Africans.”26 Other members of the black and Latino communities questioned whether Hylton would be a mentor and identify with the needs of minority students.27 Hylton’s multiracial background, along with her conservative law and economics views, made her an unacceptable candidate for some members of the black community.
Hylton’s story also reflects how these negative attitudes can make an individual feel uncomfortable in continuing to do political work within the black community. Before the controversy surrounding her candidacy, Hylton described herself as being involved with many black community organizations and identified as “black.” This experience, however, caused her to say: “Woe unto the next black person they try to hire. . . . May he or she have really thick skin.”28 Certainly, Hylton will pause before she checks “black” on an employment application in the future, and possibly she will pause before joining a black organization, wondering if she will be considered “black enough” to be a proper member. If such categorizing causes Hylton to retreat from political work on behalf of the black community then the categorization battle will have had a profound negative effect on her and others.
Gregory Howard Williams similarly has been stymied by racial categorization. Williams is the child of a white mother and light-skinned black father who “passed” as white when Williams was a young child. Williams looks “white” but, subsequent to his parents’ divorce, was placed in an impoverished household with dark-skinned black relatives and friends. He tells a story of applying for a sheriff’s position with the Muncie Police Department. Due to political pressures, they needed to hire a black sheriff. Williams applied for the position so that he could support himself to finish his college degree. A local black minister opposed Williams’s appointment, claiming that the sheriff’s department was trying to hire him in order to preserve a “lily white” appearance. Responding to such political pressures, Williams considered withdrawing his name from consideration. A cousin gave him the following piece of advice which convinced him to remain in consideration: “Let the politicians worry about who’s black and who isn’t. Nobody in Muncie ever gave you any breaks just because you looked white. You’ve had to take just as much crap as anybody I know, black or white. ... If you’re in a position to arrest some brothers, you are gonna be fair—not like some of the hillbillies they got on the department.”29 The cousin’s prediction proved true, as Williams reportedly worked hard within the department to ensure that blacks and whites received fair treatment. Had he listened to the local minister, the community would have been deprived of Greg Williams’s fair policing and he might never have been able to afford to finish college, attend law school, and eventually become the Dean of the Ohio State University School of Law.
Categories also have debilitating effects on people with disabilities. Children’s behavior can be criticized or praised depending on whether they have been categorized as “disabled.” A story told to me by an activist in the community of people with disabilities illustrates this point. Two children are on a hike with their parents and need to urinate. The able-bodied boy goes discretely behind a tree to urinate, and people say, “Oh, isn’t that cute—that boy needed to pee and went behind that tree.” Another child, with mental retardation, also goes discretely behind a tree to urinate, and people say, “Oh, isn’t that horrible—that retarded boy has no control and had to pee in public!” The same behavior receives a different response depending upon the perceived category of the child. If we could move beyond labeling, we could respond to the children based on their behavior rather than on our stereotypes about the categories in which they belong.
II. Categories Can Serve Constructive Purposes
A. Categories Can Broaden People’s Understanding of Identity
Nonetheless, categories also have a positive utility. The label “bisexual” can threaten a society that orders itself on neat bipolar concepts. The common stereotype of a bisexual person is one who always has at least two sexual partners. That stereotype arises out of the assumption that gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people are purely sexual creatures—at all moments being involved with all eligible sexual partners. (Society has trouble imagining a celibate or monogamous gay, lesbian, or bisexual person.)30
Naming bisexuality can broaden people’s understanding of human sexual experiences by acknowledging the existence of a fluid spectrum rather than rigid bipolar categories. “Rather than naming an invisible, undernoticed minority now finding its place in the sun, ‘bisexual’ turns out to be, like bisexuals themselves, everywhere and nowhere. . . . The erotic discovery of bisexuality is the fact that it reveals sexuality to be a process of growth, transformation and surprise, not a stable and know-able state of being.”31 Bisexuality is not simply another static category.
The terms “gay” and “straight,” by contrast, assume a sexual exclusivity—that a person always only has sexual partners of the same or opposite sex:
These terms [gay and straight] are convenient simplifications for the idea that most people engage in sexual relations with only one sex. To get a clear perspective on the part homosexual behavior plays in the total range of American sexual experience, we should first take a look at bisexuality to evaluate its significance in the gay (and straight world). There are certainly far more individuals with bisexual experience than there are lifelong exclusive homosexuals.32
For women, in particular, bisexuality often seems to be an accurate description of their feelings. In a 1976 Ms. Magazine article, a large number of women reported “that when they fell in love it was with a person rather than a gender.” 33
Gay and lesbian people have been defined by society so that they have little identity beyond their sexual identity within mainstream culture. As one of my students once said, if you are defined as a lesbian, you have a lesbian breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Or, alternatively, as a gay activist in Louisiana observed, “I often wonder what people think I do in the two minutes of my day when I am supposed to not be engaged in sex!” Bisexual people can also be defined in that way—as irresistibly