Читать книгу Hybrid - Ruth Colker - Страница 14

“Bisexuality: Not Gay. Not Straight. A New Sexual Identity Emerges” proclaims Newsweek on its cover. Shunned by heterosexuals and many gays and lesbians alike, bisexuals recently have been “discovered” by the popular media as well as conventional researchers. Nonetheless, the category of bisexuality remains elusive for most adults. Only about i percent of the adult population identifies as bisexual. Yet nearly 4 percent acknowledge that they are attracted to people of both sexes.¹

Bisexual invisibility pigeonholes individuals into gay and straight boxes. A bisexual perspective allows us to ask ourselves who we find attractive and why, rather than to presume that sexual partners are chosen on the basis of gender. This perspective broadens to a “bi” perspective² as we reject conventional bipolar categories in the areas of gender, race, and disability in understanding our own lives, as well as in responding to others.³