culture schlock

I’m writing about bisexuality for my first essay. It’s proving to be a tricky beast. Not only do I not have a real idea of what I am precisely writing about but I have a lot of reading and I’m trying to write from that and it’s going all over the place!

It’s also raising some fascinating but gluey issues for myself. That it co-insides with my break-up is bizarre (not to mention unfortunate timing). I was going to write an auto-biographical essay, having conversations with myself about my own sexual history and identity, interviewing friends and family about how they view me in terms of my sexuality. Now that seems to be a bit too indelicate and raw. I may still include some of these things – who knows? I did write my ‘sexual biography’ and it could come in useful. For now I am trying to come to grips with all the different arguments and theory. Also I am trying to define what I mean by ‘gender’. God, it’s so hard! Even with all the theory at my disposal. Or maybe BECAUSE OF all the theory at my disposal – it confuses and confounds me!

Then I have to define what I mean by bisexual…

It never ends…!

But thank giddy for people like Greta Christina (real name?!) who writes things like ‘that smacks of liberal bullshit’ (to paraphrase – I don’t have the chapter in front of me) and also the article, ‘ Drawing the Line: Bisexual Women in the Lesbian Community’ in which she asks, ‘Is a lesbian: a woman who only fucks other women? That would include bi women who're monogamously involved with other women. A woman who doesn't fuck men? That would include celibate straight women. A woman who would never get seriously involved with men? Rules out lesbians who've been married in the past. A woman who never has sexual thoughts about men? That excludes dykes who are into heavy and complex gender play, who get off on gay men's porn, or who are maybe just curious. Do you have to be 100irected at women and away from men in thought, feeling, word, and deed from birth to death to qualify as a "real" lesbian? That would rule out all but about two women on the planet. I hope they can find each other.’ [1]

Hallelujah!

Those who know me will wonder why I’m using the terms ‘lesbian’ here at all. And I answer thusly: it’s for the essay: part of it is exploring the term ‘lesbian’ as well and it asks the question (or Elizabeth Daumer does…) ‘is it possible [for a woman] to have a lesbian relationship with a man? Or a heterosexual relationship with a woman?’ and so I have to question what a lesbian relationship is and this is always fore grounded in politics.

So, what has it meant for me? Well I am still juggling the label: what does ‘being bisexual’ mean to me? Does it define me, sum me up? I keep saying ‘it’s everything and it’s nothing’ and I do believe that really encapsulates it for me: it is a fundamental part of who I am and it is also not ‘who’ I am. I need the label and I don’t need it. It explains ‘who’ I am, it doesn’t begin to explain it.

Part of the reason for this is that I really don’t think people on the whole ‘get it’. I don’t know if only another bisexual would ‘get it’, even though their desires, attractions, relationships, history etc are very unlikely to be the same (not that any two lesbians are the same, or gay men or straight men or women…these are all much more ‘givens’ though. Which is the point really). I don’t feel I have to define it, explain it, justify it, analyse it so much to another bisexual and maybe that is the shared experience: the criteria, the rigidity, the uniform of that sexual identity label isn’t the same as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’. ‘straight’ is usually such a given it’s not even analysed in this fashion: just in upholding ideas of masculinity and femininity.

And so, if I have to define the indefinable and can’t or if i can’t give a satisfactory answer to the person asking (or indeed to myself, though I now have the freedom of not wanting it because I know it’s not there) then maybe that’s what bisexuality IS.

And maybe that’s why it is everything and nothing: it is a huge part of ‘who I am’ but at the same time I can’t say what that is. And I really don’t think I should have to! If people want to say who they ‘are’ then so be it, but this need to understand, to get it, to be able to fit you into that idea…I just don’t get it!

Perhaps this is why this is such a challenging, difficult but addictive essay to write.

I hope to write further on my progress. For now I should get back to writing the bloody thing itself.

[1] Copyright 1990 Greta Christina. Originially published in On Our Backs.

http://gretachristina.com/drawingtheline.html accessed Friday 11th November 2005.