‘My Gender Is Bisexual’: Bisexuality, Trans Politics, and the Disruption of the Western Gender/Sexuality System

Abstract

In mainstream contemporary Western discourse, ‘bisexuality’ is used as a label that ‘just’ denotes sexual identity or orientation, akin to the ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ labels, and contrary to trans identity, which deals with gender orientation. In this thesis, however, I aim to destabilize this common understanding, by pointing out the different ways that bisexuality was, and still is, not only about sexuality, but also about gender. Through a genealogical approach, I show how bisexuality was, originally, primarily about sex and gender, and that, even when it began to be used to describe sexuality (as multiple-gender attraction), it was heavily driven by, and tied to, an assumed ‘bisexual’ gendered way-of-being—an understanding that was only left behind late in the history of the concept, due in large part, as I show, to the tensions between the nascent bisexual movement and the gay and lesbian ones. Then, the research turns to the multiple affinities between bi and trans politics, in their original rejection from homonormativity and the surprising disavowal of bisexuality by many prominent trans-exclusionary radical ‘feminists,’ showing that both trans and bi identities are considered threatening to the traditional Western gender/sexuality system for the same reasons, as they question and blur the assumed dichotomies between genders, and their importance. Finally, applying Butler’s (1990) theory to bisexual identity, the thesis explains how bisexuality can be considered a form of ‘gender trouble,’ which can often be the basis for ‘unintelligible’ gender(s) falling outside of the ‘heterosexual matrix.’ This aspect of bisexuality-as-gender, which finds its most explicit expression in the ‘bisexualgender’ (or ‘genderbi’) micro-label emerged online (that is the object of a small case study), is a configuration that both disrupts, and is only intelligible within, the Western regime in which sex, gender and sexuality are mutually constructive.