#bisexual chic

[daisiesonafield-blog]

An interesting history of queer bisexuality & pop culture

For anyone, but especially all millennials, emos and those exploring in the 00s - lots of interesting reflections on queer and bisexual experiences and portrayals in media in the 00s.

[babiiface95]

I intended to wear a skirt today. Instead I look like the biggest bro to ever bro😂

[shelaughslikemarilyn]

In support of gay marriage, I painted my lips in rainbow colors today! I live in Poland and unfortunately almost every minority has a hard time here. I felt bad celebrating Valentine’s Day knowing so many people around me feel discriminated. Let’s spread loooove!!!

[criticalinvert]

“Under the headline "Bisexual Chic," another article in Newsweek declared authoritatively that "Bisexuality is in bloom." It quoted a famous female music star, who said one of the greatest loves of her life was a woman-a Vassar sophomore who had recently begun dating a man after four years of exclusively lesbian relationships-and two psychiatrists with opposing views-"Bisexuality is a disaster for culture and society," one proclaimed, while the other, the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, announced, "It is getting to the point where heterosexuality can be viewed as a hangup." In the same week, Time, not to be outdone, described in a piece called "The New Bisexuals" both the triumphs and the trials of this sexual phenomenon, from the biographies of celebrated actresses and writers to the appearance of best-selling novels, memoirs, and attention-grabbing bisex films to, once again, the divided views of the psychiatric community: "It has become very fashionable in elite and artistically creative sub-groups to be intrigued by the notion of bisexuality," said one expert, while another deplored both bisexuality and homosexuality as symptoms of a developmentally troubled childhood. "Bisexuals," declared a third, "generally do not have the capacity to fall in love with one person.'' There is nothing surprising in this, you may think. Competition between newsmagazines frequently produces similar stories in similar weeks, and the omnipresence of "bisexual chic" from pop stars to films and talk shows makes it an obvious topic for media notice. As Newsweek itself proclaims, with proprietary pride, "the news media have become a confessional for celebrities who are rushing out of their closets to join the new bisexual chic." What may be a little surprising, though, is the dates of these two articles. Both were published in May 1974 - roughly twenty years ago. The female music star with a woman lover was folk singer Joan Baez and, in Time's version, the very-bisexual Janis Joplin. Among the actresses cited were Tallulah Bankhead and Maria Schneider. Cross out the names and replace them with new ones and you'd have stories fit to print in a newsweekly of today. The psychiatric experts included names still frequently cited in omnibus articles about bisexuality, pro and con: doomsayers Charles Socarides and Natalie Shainess, supporters Judd Marmor of the APA and John Money, the specialist in gender identity at Johns Hopkins University. The obligatory accompanying photographs included a crossdressed male model with his arms around a man and a woman (Newsweek) and a group of "partygoers at a bisexual liberation gathering in a Manhattan apartment." Nor were the early seventies the first time around for "bisexual chic" as a social and cultural phenomenon even in this century. "Bisexual experimentation" in the twenties has been linked to the popularization of Freud (or "Freudianism"), the advent of World War I, and a general predilection for the daring and unconventional: bobbed hair, short skirts, the rejection of Prohibition and "Victorian" strictures. Novels by Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, and Sherwood Anderson; plays by Sholem Asch and Edouard Bourdet; the popularity of drag balls (held in such mainstream venues as the Hotel Astor and Madison Square Garden); the vogue among  whites and blacks for bisexual Harlem blues songs and singers, the instant success in America of Marlene Dietrich-all of these declared "bisexuality" a sign at once of freedom and transgression. Why, then, all the fuss about bisexuality in the nineties? (We are speaking here of the 1990s-although the bisexual lives of such figures as Sarah Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde mark out another period of bisexual "experimentation" and "chic" a century ago.) Is sexuality a fashion-like platform shoes, bell-bottomed trousers, or double-breasted suits - that appears and then disappears, goes underground, only to be "revived" with a difference? Is it that "news," by its very nature, must always be "new" to be noticed? Do we need to keep forgetting bisexuality in order to remember and rediscover it?

There are some important differences between the fascination with bisexuality today and that of twenty years ago. In the seventies, still the period of the self-styled Sexual Revolution, the ostensible objects were freedom, and the breaking down of boundaries. Bisexuality and the drug culture promised the experiences of the borderline, the edge, the antibourgeois. Bisexuality, and its uneasy sometime-synonym, androgyny, were signs of the times. Just a few years after Stonewall, when feminism, Gay Liberation, and the Lesbian Nation were beginning to gain visibility and strength, bisexuality looked in part like a crossover tactic, an anything-goes lifestyle in which anyone could play. Twosomes were out; to be a pair was to be square. Communal living, "swinging," "threesomes," group sex-these were the media cliches of the time. To be young and bisexual in the seventies meant in part to find the media and the music industry describing a life that uncannily matched one's own desires, and, as all popular media do, also created them. It was still very dangerous to be out and gay. If you were bisexual, you could be accused then, as now, of seeking what would come to be known as "heterosexual privilege." But what if you really did desire both women and men?   

Bisexuals in the 1990s are still sometimes said to be guilty of wanting "heterosexual privilege" (or of getting it whether they want it or not), but the Sexual Revolution is long gone. In place of the dissolution of borderlines, today's cultural politicians offer the strictures of Identity Politics. Borderlines are back: Ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual minorities assert their visibility and, thus, their power. Although action groups like Queer Nation offer a kind of inclusiveness, a fellow-travellers' umbrella under which can cluster lesbian, gay, bi-, transgender, and other groups, subverting static concepts of gender and flaunting practices from sadomasochism to drag, there is still a sense of turf battle, and a certain flavor of moral martyrdom, in the sex wars of the nineties. The appearance of "biphobia," a word coined on the model of homophobia, suggests that the opposition to bisexuality is a mode of social prejudice. Straight people may stereotype bisexuals as closeted men who deceive their wives with a series of randomly chosen male sex partners, spreading AIDS to an "innocent" heterosexual population, including unborn children. Some gays and lesbians also stereotype bisexuals as selfindulgent, undecided, "fence-sitters" who dally with the affections of same-sex partners, breaking their hearts when they move on to heterosexual relationships. Despite these stereotypes and resentments, however, bisexuality-and even the by now much-recycled concept of "bisexual chic"-has moved steadily into the mainstream, fueled by music videos, talk shows, sitcoms, and advertising, as well as by sexual practice.”

Garber, Marjorie. (2000). Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life.