Abstract
What does it mean to think more fluidly about sexual identities—to move beyond the dichotomy of heterosexual or gay/lesbian and stretch our understandings of what it means to be a person who perhaps identifies with neither category? Rooted in historical and cross-cultural contexts, Surya Monro’s Bisexuality: Identities, Politics, and Theories utilizes qualitative interviews and case studies from persons in India, the United States, Colombia, and the United Kingdom to paint a portrait of the fluidity and complexity of bisexual identities grounded in lived experiences. Monro addresses topics ranging from heterosexism to biphobia to the hypersexualization of bisexuality, in a manner both theoretically solid and approachably nuanced—blending the density of theory with the reality of lived experiences so as to inextricably weave the two into a portrait of what it means to identify as bisexual.
Building upon social theory, post-structuralism, intersectionality, and feminist materialist gender analyses to understand bisexuality, Monro emphasizes the need for grounding these analyses in the “realities” of social structures such as the family and workplace. Covering aspects of lifestyle, community, employment, and citizenship, Monro effectively depicts the intricate lives of diverse bisexual persons, simultaneously different from and akin to those of non-bisexual persons. The text culminates with the question of how to make the world a better place for bisexuals and others who do not identify as heterosexual, lesbian, or gay. Through her critique of larger social movements, such as feminism and the lesbian and gay movements, which often serve to perpetuate the marginalization of those who identify as bisexual, Monro concludes with a call for more inclusiveness in these movements to help prompt bisexual visibility, recognition, and a cultural shift in support of bisexuality.
Monro’s text resonates with the spirit of third-wave feminism in its post-structuralist interpretations of gender and sexuality integrated with a focus on both micro- and macro-level gender politics and power relations. Citing means of resistance and agentic responses—such as turning experiences of workplace discrimination into fuel for challenging colleagues’ stereotypical attitudes about bisexuality or becoming active in bisexual organizations—Monro speaks of the spirit of the feminist movement as one of empowerment and strength. Throughout each chapter, Monro provides examples of major terms shaping the lived realities of bisexuality. Biphobia, for example, describes the “double-discrimination” faced by bisexual persons from both heterosexual and lesbian and gay people. Heteronormativity and the presumed heterosexuality of bisexual persons who “look straight,” or are dating opposite-sex partners, demonstrate the general erasure of bisexuality. The hypersexualization of bisexuality as “exotic,” while erasing the potential for one to identify as both bisexual and asexual, and the commodification of “performative bisexuality” between women for the pleasure of men, exemplifies the broader impact of patriarchal ideals in shaping views of what it means to be bisexual.
Monro transcends binaries by discussing transgender, queer, and gender-diverse persons who might identify as bisexual (situated within trans and queer theory and the LGBT and feminist movements more broadly), acknowledging that just as patriarchy shapes the focus on men as the starting point, so too has early feminism shaped the focus on cisgender persons as the starting point. Monro describes bisexual identities as traditionally overlooked, even within feminist and interdisciplinary LGBT studies—a critique masterfully crafted in an effort to not point blame but to highlight the need for increased awareness of the historically overlooked “B” in the LGBT community and mainstream feminism. Monro compensates for shortcomings in adequately capturing all the cultural nuances of bisexuality by providing an approachable, informative contribution to the scholarship which is both humble in acknowledging its own limitations and brazen in pointing out the ways in which feminism and LGBT studies have failed to address bisexuality. The book will appeal to researchers, academic feminists, and social scientists interested in developing a better understanding of bisexuality through academic scholarship.