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johnaggreyodera's review
5.0
I have many times engaged in bisexual erasure. Despite ardent attempts by activists and theorists to get us to think of gender identity and sexual orientation as existing within spectrums, sexuality and gender are still primary referenced as binaries. It is thus fairly easy to, in quotidian conversation, say the words, “So is (s)he gay or straight?” Saying these words implies that these are the only two available options: that one is either attracted to people of the same gender identity, or to people of the opposite gender identity. It implies that we do not take seriously cases when individuals profess to/ actually are 1. Attracted to people of both gender identities - are bisexual, or 2. Attracted to people of neither gender identity - are asexual.
In this clearly and convincingly argued work (a long law review article; not really a book), Kenji Yoshino argues that 1. Bisexuality in contemporary American culture is invisible relative to homosexuality, and 2. This invisibility is not the result of bisexual nonexistence, but rather bisexual erasure. Though the phrase “bisexual erasure” has made its way to common parlance, it is important to note that Yoshino was one of the first people to use it, and to theorize about it.
Yoshino begins with a series of important caveats; caveats whose truth values he is largely agnostic about, but that he thinks are necessary for the sake of his argument. To speak about bisexual identity, he thinks, is to assume some very contested propositions - 1. That only two sexes exist - male and female - thereby erasing say, intersex individuals, 2. That it is possible to make clear distinctions between sexual orientation and gender orientation - i.e. say that if a man is attracted to both “butch” and “femme” women, then the man is heterosexual, despite the fact that the subjects of his attraction, while of the same anatomical sexual identity, have different gender orientations. Yoshino thus recognizes that the categories we operate within once these caveats are in place (bisexuals, homosexuals, heterosexuals and asexuals) are contingent; not natural kinds to be discovered; these categories do not exist outside our speaking of and writing about them. Nevertheless, these categories affect how we live and think. Yoshino’s question is thus this: Why, once we have divided the (sexual) world into these contingent categories, have we then gone on to erase bisexuals (and asexuals)?
Yoshino contends that there are at least three ways one could be seen to be bisexual: 1. If one engages in more than occassional bisexual conduct, 2. If one experiences more than occassional bisexual desire, and 3. If one self identifies as bisexual. Yoshino argues that desire is the best metric for conceptualizing bisexuality (at least insofar as the claims he makes in his article go). This largely makes sense: many men who engage in situational homosexuality - say those locked up in prisons, or those who engage in sex with men for pay, or, those men from some tribes in Papua New Guinea who have to orally inseminate/ be inseminated by other men as ritual initiation; but who otherwise identify as heterosexual- and neither experience bisexual desire nor engage in bisexual conduct , are not usually conceived of as homosexual/ bisexual. In the same vein, anyone can self identify as bisexual, without engaging in sexual conduct with people of both gender identities, nor experiencing sexual desire for them, and this, again, Yoshino does not view as constituting bisexuality. On the other hand, so long as one experiences more than incidental sexual desire for people of both gender identities - whether they act on these desires or not, and whether they self identify as bisexual or not, Yoshino thinks they fit the definition of bisexual - at least insofar as this definitions coincides with the subject of erasure.
Yoshino attempts to theorize bisexual invisibility - to identify and elucidate an invisibility that is specific to bisexuals qua bisexuals. There are several kinds of sexual invisibility - 1. a general cultural attitude that elicits squeamishness about sex, making it improper for anyone - hetero, homo or bi, to speak about sex. 2. A taboo directed specifically at same sex desire - “no promo homo” - which views homosexual desire as unspeakable or disgusting - “The unspeakable vice of the Greeks”, for example. This affects only people who showcase same sex desires, both homosexual and bisexual. 3. The elision of bisexuality/ asexuality, where we operate using the straight - gay binary. This affects only bisexuals/ asexuals, and is done by both straight and gay people.
Yoshino cites studies (Kinsey 1948 & 1953; Masters & Johnson 1979; Janus & Janus 1992 etc) which show that bisexuals, when thought of using the "more than incidental desire" metric, exist in numbers equal to or greater than those of homosexuals. At the same time, Yoshino provides data on both academic and popular coverage of sexuality. The studies show that relative to homosexuality, bisexuality is hardly spoken about - both by academics as well as by popular media.
Yoshino thus comes up with a name for this phenomenon, where despite their significant numbers relative to homosexuals, bisexuals are largely elided. He terms this “the epistemic contract of bisexual erasure”. Yoshino thinks there are three possible explanations for this, 1. Ontic: That we have a binary that only includes homos and heteros precisely because that is all that exists - like day and night; male and female. 2. Cognitive: That even if not everything exists in binaries, it is a human tendency, due to limited cognitive capacities, to conceive of things as such. 3. Political: That bisexuality is invisible because we have political obfuscated the continuum it exists within, not because, like the ontic theory suggests, only binaries exist, or like the cognitive theory holds, we are cognitively incapable of conceptualizing sexuality outside that binary. Yoshino believes the political explanation, erasure, is what best explains bisexual invisibility.
The “epistemic contract” that makes bisexuals invisible is “a contract the way a social contract is a contract”. It is an agreement, implicit or otherwise, between groups with distinct overlapping interests - in this case, straights and gays. How does this go about? Straight people do this by, for example, declaring that bisexuality as a category does not exist - that it is only a halfway house towards homosexuality; or by acknowledging bisexuality as a class, but erasing individuals within it - e.g. by saying a bisexual individual is simply a closet gay, or going through a passing fad; or finally, by acknowledging an individual’s bisexuality, but then attaching a stigma to it - e.g. the view that bisexuals were the conduit of HIV transmission from the infected gay population to the uninfected straight one. Gay people elide bisexuals as a class, then term them as simply “gay” or “queer”; or, like straights, they elide them by saying bisexuals are simply going through a fad; one that culminates in monosexuality; or, because of how important politicization is to gayness, gay people may deride bisexuals as fence-sitters, cop-outs, lusters after “heterosexual privilege” etc. They may also themselves pretend to be/ act bisexual, then revert to gayness, thus confirming the thesis that bisexuality is simply a fad or a halfway house.
Why this epistemic contract? For straight people, Yoshino contends that bisexuality threatens their heterosexuality. Within a homo-hetero binary, one only needs to prove that they are attracted to members of the opposite sex for them to be hetero. When bisexuality comes into play, it is not enough to prove that one is attracted to members of the opposite sex: one also needs to prove that they do not desire members of the same sex - and this is impossible since we cannot prove a negative. For gays, bisexual erasure is a means to maintain the “immutability defense” - if homosexuality is an intrinsic trait that people cannot control, then it is much less stigmatized than if it were simply a “choice” or an “option”. But even if we were to expand immutability outside the binary, such that we have immutable homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals and asexuals, the gay person would still have a problem. They would then, like the straight person, have to prove a negative: are they immutably gay or immutably bisexual but only expressing homo conduct and identification?
Furthermore, some gays may elide bisexuality due to an interest in effective political mobilization: bisexuals may be seen as “flight risks” - that they have the choice to abandon gays and their political projects when the going gets tough, and go on to lead straight lives.
Yoshino provides numerous other analyses for his thesis (that I do not have the time to get into it). But these above are the main points, and this is a book (long article) that I would highly encourage everyone, more so those like me who have a very rudimentary understanding of sexuality, to read.
In this clearly and convincingly argued work (a long law review article; not really a book), Kenji Yoshino argues that 1. Bisexuality in contemporary American culture is invisible relative to homosexuality, and 2. This invisibility is not the result of bisexual nonexistence, but rather bisexual erasure. Though the phrase “bisexual erasure” has made its way to common parlance, it is important to note that Yoshino was one of the first people to use it, and to theorize about it.
Yoshino begins with a series of important caveats; caveats whose truth values he is largely agnostic about, but that he thinks are necessary for the sake of his argument. To speak about bisexual identity, he thinks, is to assume some very contested propositions - 1. That only two sexes exist - male and female - thereby erasing say, intersex individuals, 2. That it is possible to make clear distinctions between sexual orientation and gender orientation - i.e. say that if a man is attracted to both “butch” and “femme” women, then the man is heterosexual, despite the fact that the subjects of his attraction, while of the same anatomical sexual identity, have different gender orientations. Yoshino thus recognizes that the categories we operate within once these caveats are in place (bisexuals, homosexuals, heterosexuals and asexuals) are contingent; not natural kinds to be discovered; these categories do not exist outside our speaking of and writing about them. Nevertheless, these categories affect how we live and think. Yoshino’s question is thus this: Why, once we have divided the (sexual) world into these contingent categories, have we then gone on to erase bisexuals (and asexuals)?
Yoshino contends that there are at least three ways one could be seen to be bisexual: 1. If one engages in more than occassional bisexual conduct, 2. If one experiences more than occassional bisexual desire, and 3. If one self identifies as bisexual. Yoshino argues that desire is the best metric for conceptualizing bisexuality (at least insofar as the claims he makes in his article go). This largely makes sense: many men who engage in situational homosexuality - say those locked up in prisons, or those who engage in sex with men for pay, or, those men from some tribes in Papua New Guinea who have to orally inseminate/ be inseminated by other men as ritual initiation; but who otherwise identify as heterosexual- and neither experience bisexual desire nor engage in bisexual conduct , are not usually conceived of as homosexual/ bisexual. In the same vein, anyone can self identify as bisexual, without engaging in sexual conduct with people of both gender identities, nor experiencing sexual desire for them, and this, again, Yoshino does not view as constituting bisexuality. On the other hand, so long as one experiences more than incidental sexual desire for people of both gender identities - whether they act on these desires or not, and whether they self identify as bisexual or not, Yoshino thinks they fit the definition of bisexual - at least insofar as this definitions coincides with the subject of erasure.
Yoshino attempts to theorize bisexual invisibility - to identify and elucidate an invisibility that is specific to bisexuals qua bisexuals. There are several kinds of sexual invisibility - 1. a general cultural attitude that elicits squeamishness about sex, making it improper for anyone - hetero, homo or bi, to speak about sex. 2. A taboo directed specifically at same sex desire - “no promo homo” - which views homosexual desire as unspeakable or disgusting - “The unspeakable vice of the Greeks”, for example. This affects only people who showcase same sex desires, both homosexual and bisexual. 3. The elision of bisexuality/ asexuality, where we operate using the straight - gay binary. This affects only bisexuals/ asexuals, and is done by both straight and gay people.
Yoshino cites studies (Kinsey 1948 & 1953; Masters & Johnson 1979; Janus & Janus 1992 etc) which show that bisexuals, when thought of using the "more than incidental desire" metric, exist in numbers equal to or greater than those of homosexuals. At the same time, Yoshino provides data on both academic and popular coverage of sexuality. The studies show that relative to homosexuality, bisexuality is hardly spoken about - both by academics as well as by popular media.
Yoshino thus comes up with a name for this phenomenon, where despite their significant numbers relative to homosexuals, bisexuals are largely elided. He terms this “the epistemic contract of bisexual erasure”. Yoshino thinks there are three possible explanations for this, 1. Ontic: That we have a binary that only includes homos and heteros precisely because that is all that exists - like day and night; male and female. 2. Cognitive: That even if not everything exists in binaries, it is a human tendency, due to limited cognitive capacities, to conceive of things as such. 3. Political: That bisexuality is invisible because we have political obfuscated the continuum it exists within, not because, like the ontic theory suggests, only binaries exist, or like the cognitive theory holds, we are cognitively incapable of conceptualizing sexuality outside that binary. Yoshino believes the political explanation, erasure, is what best explains bisexual invisibility.
The “epistemic contract” that makes bisexuals invisible is “a contract the way a social contract is a contract”. It is an agreement, implicit or otherwise, between groups with distinct overlapping interests - in this case, straights and gays. How does this go about? Straight people do this by, for example, declaring that bisexuality as a category does not exist - that it is only a halfway house towards homosexuality; or by acknowledging bisexuality as a class, but erasing individuals within it - e.g. by saying a bisexual individual is simply a closet gay, or going through a passing fad; or finally, by acknowledging an individual’s bisexuality, but then attaching a stigma to it - e.g. the view that bisexuals were the conduit of HIV transmission from the infected gay population to the uninfected straight one. Gay people elide bisexuals as a class, then term them as simply “gay” or “queer”; or, like straights, they elide them by saying bisexuals are simply going through a fad; one that culminates in monosexuality; or, because of how important politicization is to gayness, gay people may deride bisexuals as fence-sitters, cop-outs, lusters after “heterosexual privilege” etc. They may also themselves pretend to be/ act bisexual, then revert to gayness, thus confirming the thesis that bisexuality is simply a fad or a halfway house.
Why this epistemic contract? For straight people, Yoshino contends that bisexuality threatens their heterosexuality. Within a homo-hetero binary, one only needs to prove that they are attracted to members of the opposite sex for them to be hetero. When bisexuality comes into play, it is not enough to prove that one is attracted to members of the opposite sex: one also needs to prove that they do not desire members of the same sex - and this is impossible since we cannot prove a negative. For gays, bisexual erasure is a means to maintain the “immutability defense” - if homosexuality is an intrinsic trait that people cannot control, then it is much less stigmatized than if it were simply a “choice” or an “option”. But even if we were to expand immutability outside the binary, such that we have immutable homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals and asexuals, the gay person would still have a problem. They would then, like the straight person, have to prove a negative: are they immutably gay or immutably bisexual but only expressing homo conduct and identification?
Furthermore, some gays may elide bisexuality due to an interest in effective political mobilization: bisexuals may be seen as “flight risks” - that they have the choice to abandon gays and their political projects when the going gets tough, and go on to lead straight lives.
Yoshino provides numerous other analyses for his thesis (that I do not have the time to get into it). But these above are the main points, and this is a book (long article) that I would highly encourage everyone, more so those like me who have a very rudimentary understanding of sexuality, to read.
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