LGBT Studies and Queer Theory by Karen Lovaas

Author:Karen Lovaas [Lovaas, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, LGBTQ+ Studies, Gay Studies, Sociology, General, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781136569913
Google: R-Soccbe93AC
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

HISTORICAL REVIEW OF BISEXUAL THEORIZING

Within the context of sexual minority activism and scholarship, attending to the topic of bisexuality is uneven at best and more often simply absent. Those scholars and activists who do address bisexuality as a political and sexual identity often underscore the multiple ways bisexuality is marginalized. In their 1977 social psychology article on bisexuality, Phillip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz argue that, “such behavior has been seen as a curiosity, and no attempt has been made to integrate the occasional data on bisexuality into any coherent scientific view of sexuality” (p. 31). Writing in 2000, sociologist Paula Rust notes that,

in the midst of the explosion of research on sexuality in the 1970s and early 1980s, few people noticed the absence of research on bisexuality. For the most part researchers had adopted the popular conception of sexuality as dichotomous, that is, as composed of two opposite and opposing forms of sexuality known as homosexuality and heterosexuality. (p. xiv)

The dearth of research and scholarly input regarding bisexuality as a concept itself continued until the mid 1980s when several factors, including HIV/AIDS, nascent bisexual political activity, and theoretical epistemological shifts across academic disciplines, converged and led to the development of a more sustained and coherent discussion of bisexuality.

The following sections provide a brief review of this recent bisexual history, focusing primarily on scholarship and activism within a U.S. context.3 While seeking to avoid hard and fast disciplinary distinctions, we have loosely grouped our discussion under the headings of bisexual activist narratives, psychological research, and other social sciences/humanities accounts of bisexuality. Each of these categories points to the various ways in which bisexuality has been conceptualized and argued for by activists and scholars.4 The historical review we provide sets the stage for better understanding how bisexuality is integral to current queer theory, as an academic area of study as well as an epistemological position. Drawing from film scholar Maria Pramaggiore’s (1996) description, we understand bisexual epistemologies as “ways of apprehending, organizing and intervening in the world that refuse one-to-one correspondences between sex acts and identity, between erotic objects and sexualities, between identification and desire” (p. 3).5

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