Content area
Full text
Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries and Visions. Edited by Naomi Tucker, with Uz Highleyman and Rebecca Kaplan. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995, 358pp., ISBN: 1560238690
During the 1990s a number of books on bisexuality were published, addressing a significant gap in the examination of bisexuality as a distinct sexual identity. One of these was Naomi Tucker's edited collection Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries and Visions. It is a collection of personal stories, interviews, historical pieces, speeches and scholarly articles, divided into three main sections - the historical roots of the bisexual movement (reflections); bisexual politics in the gay and lesbian, straight, and bisexual communities (connections) and visions for the future (directions). Each section comprises pieces from authors with varying experience within the bisexual movement and/or gay and lesbian communities and indeed varying experiences of their own bisexuality. There are contributions from monogamous and nonmonogamous bisexuals; from bisexuals into S/ M and pornography and those who defend against the stereotypes of bisexuals as hypersexual; bisexuals who choose partners without attention to gender as well as those for whom gender is vital. Despite this, the Introduction to the book acknowledges that the majority of contributions are from white, middle-class women, and thus the collection does not necessarily represent the various class, gender, racial or ethnic diversities that make up the broader bisexual community.
The book presents a variety of opinions from these contributors about what the bisexual community should be doing and how it should be doing it, as well as where bisexuality fits into a broader GLBT/queer movement. In Bisexual Politics, some of the contributors call for an organised, separate bisexual movement that caters for the specific and unique interests of bisexual men and women. The 'Reflections' section that begins the book offers a number of ideas and strategies for bisexual organising, recognising, as Highleyman does, that bisexuals need separate spaces in order to deal with issues exclusive to bisexuals such as the experience of monosexism - the belief that partner choice should be limited to one gender only (p. 87). However, because of the diversity of bisexuality, trying to bring together a diverse group of people with differing and competing agendas can make the creation of a bisexual community with...