In a recent news article[1], I Kissed a Girl’s Cara, Lailah and Meg explained the difficulty of being bisexual in and around other queer people. The reality show’s formula has cis women and non-binary queer people partner with each other by dating, and expressing their coupledom through kissing, with the aim of being the final couple standing at the end. At each stage, the person without a partner to kiss is eliminated. Cara struggled to understand her bisexuality and was unable to discuss it with her queer friends for fear they wouldn’t understand. Her experience is a unifying one across bisexual people—the feeling of inadequacy in queer spaces, a fear of not fitting in, or not being queer enough[2]. A natural next step for Cara, it seems, is the problem that “as a bisexual, there is no one to relate to”[3].
I want to problematise this discourse. Such a discourse, employed by Cara, the BBC article, and many other bisexual activists, is one of representation and visibility. To be able to see ourselves in the media is to help give us an image of what we are supposed to be like, how we are supposed to act, behave, express our sexual identities. Another person quoted in the news article touches on interesting broader discourses around sexual identities: “You just don’t see yourself represented at all, you don’t know your own identity is a possibility” (emphasis added). Cara’s position is interesting in that there seems to be a disjuncture when discussing bisexual representation: while Cara says that there is very little representation, GLAAD claims that 19% of recurring queer characters on TV today are explicitly bisexual[4], which is significantly higher in comparison to 10 years ago, for example. The problem, however, is not the right or wrong kinds of representation, but representation itself. The concern of visibility politics is a reflection of contemporary sexual struggles. It seems we are unable to understand how to escape the clutches of hetero- and homo-normative ways of explaining and expressing sexual identities. In the contemporary discussions around bisexuality and bisexuals, we are reduced to representation – there is ‘no-one we can relate to’. Is it necessary to make our identities possible? Are identities lying dormant within us? Or are they created as we state them out loud—“I am bisexual”?[5]
Representation debates have always been present in bisexual politics in some form or another. Bisexual political movements emerged alongside queer liberation movements in the 1980s and 90s, that challenged mainstream gay and lesbian organisations. In these mainstream organisations, the focus was on attaining rights for assimilation into ordinary life – employing notions that “love is love” and “we are born this way”. Gay and lesbian movements were attempting not to rock the boat, but rather assimilate into the life of heteronormativity[6] to prove we can be the same, to cement gay and lesbian identities as men loving men or women loving women. But these approaches did not fit for emerging queer and bisexual political movements, who recognised how inadequate these heterosexual norms were to encompassing their lived realities. A significant amount of biphobia was present that painted bisexuals as ‘almost straight’, as confused, as accidental mistakes, or as an undeveloped sexuality. This is also highlighted by Gamson who quotes a person writing into a lesbian magazine at the time:
A woman’s willingness to sleep with men allows her access to jobs, money, power status […]. This access does not disappear just because a woman sleeps with women ‘too’ … That’s not bisexuality, that’s compulsory heterosexuality[8].
Hemmings also explores how common understandings of ‘the bisexual’ were shaped by and in lesbian spaces, through lesbians’ attempts to secure and maintain their ‘hard-earned’ spaces from so-called ‘heterosexuals’[7]. While bisexual political movements played a role in securing bisexual representation in Pride marches, other approaches were ultimately centred towards more liberatory sexual politics through dismantling structures and subverting ways of being and knowing.
It seems bisexuality, almost from the get-go, has had to contend with being compared to and with heterosexuality and homosexuality. Alfred Kinsey, the scientist who invented the Kinsey Scale—where heterosexuality and homosexuality and polar opposites of a sexual spectrum, and bisexuality is situated perfectly between both—made the important insight that the category of bisexuality is
patterned on the words of heterosexual and homosexual, and like them, refers to the sex of the partner, and proves nothing about the constitution of the person who is labelled bisexual[9].
Within the understandings of sexuality today, we struggle to imagine the bisexual in any other way, in part because it is already understood with homosexuality and heterosexuality in mind. We can see why, then, Cara and others might see representation as a solution – to be represented is to be visible and to tackle misconceptions of bisexuality. In coming to terms with my (bi)sexuality, I similarly struggled with this, especially when visibility politics is considered central to mainstream liberal sexuality politics.
However, representation is not liberation. Hemmings argues that identity politics within bisexual discourses risk replicating the very structures that affect how we are misunderstood[10]. To employ identity politics is to constantly limit, demarcate, and police who might count as bisexual and who might not[11]. The call for more representation is not only the limiting of what the bisexual is, but also on the imaginative potential of what the bisexual could be. Such a limitation of imagination has been discussed by people like Mark Fisher, who is famous for building on the idea that we seem to be more able to imagine the end of the world before we can imagine the end of capitalism[12]. I have discussed elsewhere (see my blog posts here) that in the capitalist commodification of the bisexual identity, the complexities and subjectivities become flattened to leave hollow, easily replicable stereotypes to squeeze maximum profits out of. Reality shows like I Kissed A Girl do similar things, preaching queer representation to replicate ‘reality’, but actually cementing heterosexual norms of monogamous relationships, heteronormative ways of doing sex, patriarchal beauty standards, and stereotypes of butch and/or femme queerness.
In the same way, this push for more representation only flattens the varieties of (bi)sexualities at play, the spatial and temporal fluidity of sexual attraction[13], and the beautiful pluralities of sex, gender and sexuality.
Bisexual political movements in the 1980s and 90s, alongside calling for representation within LGBTQ+ movements they helped to build[14], also advocated for new ways of imagining sexuality, gender, relationships, and ultimately ways of being outside of these normative frameworks and models. One site where this occurred is in the 1990s bisexual magazine Anything That Moves (ATM). ATM sought to challenge the normative sexuality position, and instead attempted to rally bisexual people under an almost infinite bisexual label and towards movement:
This magazine is about ANYTHING THAT MOVES: that moves us to think; that moves us to fuck (or not); that moves us to feel; that moves us to believe in ourselves, and To Do It For Ourselves![15]
ATM rallies a radical challenge to ways of being bisexual, and drives a radical politics based on moving the bisexual to enact a prefigurative sexual politics that builds communities, recognise diversities and pluralities, becomes creative, and embodies alternate “movement away from external and internal limitations and validation”[16]. This politics rejects acceptance from outside, representation from external creators. Instead, ATM call for communities and creativity to be made by bisexuals, with bisexuals. It pushes the limits of how we understand (bi)sexualities and (bi)sexual liberation. ATM become a site, a prime example, of a powerful radical bisexual imagination in action.
Powerful lessons can be learnt from ATM and the bisexual political movements of the 80s and 90s. Through this creative act of rebellion against the mainstream assimilationist movements, a possibility of radical reimagining becomes conceivable where they once were not. What emerges is a possibility to create community, build affective ties, connect over what bisexuality might mean in self-expressive embodiments and in liberation struggles. The calls for bisexual representation emerge through wants of visibility, yet in building collectives and experimenting together in queer communities we do just that—we reject a need for external gratification and validation for our sexualities, because our communities know us, validate us, love us, create with us. In this we end the (limited) desire for representation and visibility, unpick our limited imaginations, and begin to reconceptualise limitless futures.
A revival of a bisexual imagination that advocates towards things, moves towards movements, advocates for an expressive, artistic, subversive (bi)sexualities are necessary. I am certain that the political project of ATM is one that contemporary bisexual politics needs to return to. ATM demonstrates the budding space for new kinds of imaginings and experimentations of (bi)sexualities to flourish, it encourages a political movement aimed at creating dialogue, expression, community, and DIY prefigurative attitudes. In this, there is potential to unlock new ways of imagining possible futures of (bi)sexual liberation. In this, there is potential to rid ourselves of the desire for visibility politics that have been inadequate for representing the bisexual. In this, there is potential to create, generate, move. Such an operation is not in opposition to Cara’s wants for bisexual representation per se, but it is a dislodging of the discourses of representation as the most important bisexual political struggle. I Kissed A Girl might demonstrate bisexual people, but it does not seek to challenge heteronorms, experiment with new ways of being, or build communities with imaginative potential. Therefore, like ATM suggest, we must Do It Ourselves.
[1] See https://www.bbc.co.uk/articles/c88z6ggdyjpo
[2] Lots of bisexual research since the 1980s, when bisexuality became more heavily explored by bisexual theorists and activists, have explored how bisexual people are often deemed inadequate in queer spaces. In a US context, I find that Callis does an excellent job at highlighting how bisexual couples who are read as straight by queer people are mocked in queer spaces, saying things like “Who let the straights in?”. You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460713511094
[3] As stated in the header of the article.
[4] https://glaad.org/glaads-2021-2022-where-we-are-tv-report-lgbtq-representation-reaches-new-record-highs/
[5] Judith Butler, among many queer thinkers, challenges this notion of identities. In their book Giving an Account of Oneself (2005), they argue that the process of coming out is not necessarily liberation as its normally considered, because it imposes new expectations onto someone and their behaviour. To call oneself a lesbian, for example, is to enforce an expectation that one must sleep solely with women.
[6] This is explored by Gamson (1995) in terms of queer politics and the usefulness of identity labels: https://doi.org/10.2307/3096854
[7] Hemmings, C. (2002). Bisexual Spaces: A Geography of Sexuality and Gender. London: Routledge.
[8] Gamson, 1995: 389.
[9] Kinsey and Pomeroy et al., 1998: 657, cited in Hemmings, 2002: 23.
[10] Hemmings, 2002: 30.
[11] Hemmings, 2002: 31.
[12] Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism (2011) explores how capitalism has colonised our imaginations to the point that capitalism appears natural, ultimately restricting how we might imagine a way out. I don’t agree with all of his analyses, particularly in the problematic way he analyses fatness, however his ideas for subversion within systems of domination are incredibly useful.
[13] By this I refer to the fact that many bisexual people discuss their sexual identities as fluctuating over time. There is no ‘perfect’ static bisexual as Kinsey imagined, but rather attraction might wax and wane throughout life and in different spaces.
[14] Robyn Ochs is famous for her bisexual activism, and calling out biphobia in lesbian spaces, arguing that these spaces are her spaces too: https://robynochs.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/bisexuality-has-always-challenged-normse28094even-in-the-queer-world-the-nation.pdf
[15] You can find the full archive of Anything That Moves (ATM) here: https://archive.org/details/anything-that-moves/Issue%20%231%20%281991%29/page/n1/mode/2up
[16] Anything That Moves, 1991: 2.
imaginaries 
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