From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: soc.bi,soc.motss
Subject: Re: The War Between Us (Long)
Date: 27 Jul 92 16:25:11 GMT
Article-I.D.: athena.1992Jul27.162511.23191
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <Bs0Ku2.Cv1@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> dbshapco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Brad Shapcott) writes:
>

>
>I'm gonna drop my bomb to start with -- maybe the homosexual community
>is correct in excluding the bisexuals.  How much of our sense that
>these communities should be one, and that the tribal spirit should be
>shared comes from having a common enemy, and similar goals?
>
>I think there is a rift between the bisexual and the homosexual
>community that we try to pretend doesn't exist at times because we know
>that such dissent damages efforts to tear down the heterosexual
>assumptions.  We are together more because we are not heterosexual than
>that we are cut from the same cloth.  This isn't much of a revelation
>to most.  You'll excuse me for being shocked at realizing that being
>married didn't make me as good a queer as the rest of you, and getting
>my first taste of the bitter harvest that has been in everyone else's
>diet for so long.

I think I might be able to shed some light on this, being a gay man.
We all live in a society in which peolple invest a lot in identity -
social identity/sexual identity (one and the same, often times). We
react with hostility to anything that threatens this identity. As a
gay man, I am seen by some het men as a threat to their identity. By
the same token, some gay men may see bi men as a threat to their
particular sexual identity, an identity which affords them a place in
a particular community (however small and however disenfranchised) - a
place to be safe and a place to call home. 

Let me put it another way. I have a lot invested, socially, in being
seen as a gay man. It connects me in certain ways to certain groups,
and affords me priviledge within my particular gay community. So long
as I am solidly identified as gay, I'm safe. However, I do a lot of
speaking about gay issues on campus, and once a young man turned my
own questions and tactics around on me and asked "Have you ever had a
heterosexual fantasy?"

Well.

I'd been known for touting that finding that a certain percentage of
men who identified as het admitted to having gay fantasies. I thought
for a moment, and realized there was only one honest answer to the
question, and that answer was affirmative - for I am really no
different from the straight man whose fantasy life occasionally
deviates from his public identity, even if his behavior does not.

The idea (that I might possibly be something less than a Kinsey 6,
like maybe a 5.75, frightened me...and still...) was a threat to my
identity and to the safety and priviledge my identity affords me
within my community. Along the same lines, gay folk may indeed feel
threatened by bifolk, who can be seen as a manifestation of the threat
to identify. 

I ain't sayin' its right, just that this might be how it happens.



>Another irony is that if our society was less infantile, we would not
>need these tribes and communities to protect us from scorn and give us
>shelter against a sea of hate.  We would live in peace with our
>neighbours and in peace with our brothers and sisters, not despite our
>differences, but in celebration of them.

I couldn't agree more, and I don't think anyone could want anything
more.

>But to bring this down and bring it to a close, I think recognizing the
>inherent differences between the homosexual and bisexual community is
>important in maintaining the alliance that should be there against the
>prejudice we both face.  If I am invited into your house, I shall
>enter; if I am asked to your table, I will sit with you.  But I make no
>pretense of being the same thing that you are; I ask for no part of
>your glory, nor can I at times understand your suffering.  But I shall
>not cut off what displeases you, nor shall I hide it away.
>
>I would have that we were at peace, but I would not have that it were a
>false one.  If the rest of this has seemed puerile or silly, then
>perhaps that one sentiment can be understood.  I have said all this
>not to incite anger or drive a wedge between our communities, but so
>that if there is any bond it is a true one.

This is probably the most dignified was of stating one's position that
I've seen in a long time.




-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu