LOOK BOTH WAYS: BISEXUAL POLITICS | JENNIFER BAUMGARDNER (FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX)
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A largely bourgeois liberation struggle, feminism has always linked the pursuit of justice with the pursuit of self-actualization. Feminists have worked toward concrete, egalitarian goals–suffrage, access to education, abortion rights–but the movement has also offered the fuzzier prospect of personal transformation and utopian bliss. Thus early feminists hoped that when women gained the vote they’d cleanse political culture, creating a more peaceful, more honest world. Similarly, Betty Friedan wanted women to have more and better jobs outside the home not primarily because it would make them richer or more powerful, but because it would make them happier. Personal dissatisfaction is tied to institutional inequality–with the result that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that the two aren’t necessarily the same thing.
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But at least when she connected her depression with her oppression, Friedan was actually depressed. In her new book, Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, Jennifer Baumgardner tries to build a political identity out of what appears to be, at worst, mild irritation. Baumgardner, coauthor of Manifesta, a 2000 primer on third-wave feminism, is bisexual, and she insists that “at least in some ways, bisexuals are an unliberated, invisible, and disparaged social group.” Bisexuals, in particular bisexual women–Baumgardner’s main concern–are not taken seriously because they’re seen as either gay women afraid to come all the way out or as straight women flirting with a hip, edgy lifestyle.
Moreover, it’s hard to see how bisexuality challenges male prerogatives when it’s so thoroughly incorporated into mainstream male fantasies. If the amount of bi-girl imagery pervading pop culture is any indicator, guys love the idea of women sleeping with each other, especially if they’re also willing to sleep with men. Baumgardner pays lip service to this phenomenon, but she never really comes to terms with it. Certainly, she never acknowledges that male bisexuality is a fundamentally different cultural phenomenon from female bisexuality. She recounts seeing a movie audience erupt with disgust after seeing a scene in which two men kiss. But it doesn’t seem to occur to her that if the kiss were girl-on-girl the reaction would almost surely have been titillation rather than repugnance.
For both gay rights advocates and feminists, acknowledging bisexuality can be a step toward the mainstream–a way to leverage some support that might not otherwise be available. (There’s an unremarked analogy here to the position of biracial blacks in some early abolitionist and civil rights narratives.) Baumgardner says some dumb things, and her tone is way too chipper. But her basic contention–that bisexuals deserve to be taken seriously, and that if they are both women and gays will benefit–is probably right.
