This paper looks at bisexuality, which is currently undergoing one of its periodic surges in interest both as an identifying label for sexual preference and as a subject for scientific investigation. Difficult to define precisely, the concept of bisexuality nevertheless exerts a fascination for what it reveals about society's changing attitudes about sex, gender, and male-female relationships.
Defining bisexuality is a relatively simple exercise: it is a sexual attraction for members of both the same and the opposite sex. Defining the bisexual individual, however, is a much more difficult matter. Marjorie Garber, in her exhaustive study of the subject, Vice Versa, begins by quoting the two best-known pieces of "common wisdom": "Everyone is bisexual" and "There is no such thing as bisexuality" (1995, p. 16). The difficulty lies in how such attraction is measured and over what period of time. If "bisexual" includes all individuals who have experienced sexual desires for or responses to at least one member of each sex over the course of a lifetime, then this encompasses most human beings and "everyone is bisexual" indeed. If, however, it is limited to those who are currently sexually involved with members of both sexes or to individuals who, given the choice of the labels "heterosexual," "bisexual," or "homosexual," would describe themselves as bisexual, then the group would be extremely small. John Leland reports, "Nobody knows how many bisexuals there are in the country, or just how bisexuality should be defined" (1995, p. 47).
Garber includes many examples of individuals who classified themselves as either "straight" or "gay," yet whose lovers included members of both genders. She talks, for instance, about writer and AIDS activist Paul Monette:
He is a gay man. He writes, thinks, lives - and will die - from that perspective. He is not bisexual. Or is he? If he was bi once does he then become a member of a gro...