Josephine Ho 先生のみ体裁が違いますTrans‑Sexuality:
Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories
Josephine HO
ジョセフィン・ホー（何春 ）教授は、1981年にジョージア大学（米国）において言語教育研究で教育学博士号（Ed.D.）を、1992年にはインディアナ大学（米国）において英米文学研究で博士号（Ph.D.）を取得された。1988年より助教授を経て、2001年から台湾国立中央大学英語部教授。同大学にセクシュアリティ研究セン
ター（性╱別研究室 Center for the Studyof Sexualities）を創設し、以来、コー
ディネーターの任にある。
ホー教授は、台湾のセクシュアリティ╱ジェンダー研究における指導的研究者として知られており、セクシュアリティ研究を推進する学問的な活動だけでなく、セクシュアル・ハラスメント概念を台湾に定着させるなど、社会的な活動にも積極的に関与し、台湾社会における変化をもたらす上で大きな役割を果たされている。著
書として、「豪爽女人」（1994）、「不同國女人」（1994）、「性心情」（1996）、「性╱別校園」（1998）、「好色女人」（1998）などの他、編著書を多数刊行している。ホー教
授は2003年４月から８月まで、ジェンダー研究センターに外国人客員教授として赴任された。本稿はその間に行われた夜間セミナー「東アジアにおけるジェンダー╱セクシュアリティ理論と政治の諸課題」をもとにご寄稿いただいたものである。

It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely
deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind
invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon‑holes (Kinsey et. al. 639 ).
The trajectory of “bisexuality”as an identity and a movement in the Anglo‑
American world had been closely entangled in the tension‑filled intermingling ofgender/sexuality movements and cultural re‑significations in the turbulent years
between the 1960s and the 1990s. As such,bisexual formations afford an opportunity toobserve how gender/sexual categories,and struggles against such categorization,could(if only unwittingly in the latter case)produce some complicated effects that undermine
the original activist objective to build a world of inclusion and openness. The contemporary history of bisexuality further cautions against a superficial and oversimplified
inclusionary politics that may politely acknowledge the rightful existence of marginal
subjects while leaving in tact the gender/sexuality assumptions that constitute prejudiced categorization against the subjects in the first place. For the inimical effect ofgender/sexual categorization lies not only in its refusal to acknowledge subjects whose
gender/sexuality may be intermediate, ambiguous, indeterminate, or unrecognizable.
Even when newly emerged subjectivities have forced their way unto the scene with the1Josephine Ho Trans‑Sexuality:Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories

help of dramatic social change and movement activism,the newly exonerated categories
are always already imbricated by a wide array of existing gender/sexuality prejudiceswhich, if not consciously resisted, would continue to poison the alliance. After all,gender categories and identities are not only deeply implicated in the ways in which
individuals experience and present themselves,but are likewise deeply engrained in theways in which individualsʼsexualities are understood and evaluated. Considering thesex‑negativity that still surrounds us, the path to gender/sexuality understanding isbound to be lined with numerous ungrounded assumptions if not age‑old prejudices. In
the present paper,I hope to trace the emergence of the subject position of bisexuality in
the Anglo‑American context and investigate how this supposedly sexual category is
infested with gender/sexual prejudices in all its social interactions,to the extent that the
dynamic and power assumptions of “categories”are constantly invoked and applied
whenever the presence of the trans‑sexual (better‑known as the bisexual) or trans‑
gender subject is felt.

I
While both homosexual behavior and bisexual behavior had been reported by the
Kinsey reports in the 1940s & 1950s as to occupy quite significant percentages in thegeneral population of America, the practice of bisexuality curiously did not arouse any
attention or follow‑up research,in contrast with the string of researches that immediately followed upon the topic of homosexuality. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s when
a general liberalization of sexual mores prepared fertile ground for the emergence of awide variety of sexual subjectivities that bisexuality became increasingly visible. Thisvisibility, as history would have it, was constituted by a mixture of cultural significations as well as movement activism.
Predecessors of the bisexual movement,most notably the Sexual Freedom League,
had surfaced in the sexually liberating late 1960s with members closely connected toheterosexual “swinger”communities and even the San Francisco S/M community,who
were experimenting with “bisexual”interactions at the time in order to challenge
existing sexual assumptions and restrictions (Donaldson 32;Tucker, “Bay Area Bisexual History”48‑49 ). Even the early gay liberation movement was once said to be so
inclusive as to advocate sexual freedom and the potential for people to be sexual withboth genders, thus leaving quite a bit of room for bisexual behavior within the gay
movement (Paul 27). Gays and lesbians who maintained relationships with opposite‑
sex partners (esp. spouses) were rarely singled out or criticized, for it was generally
understood as a necessity, a way to survive in the heterosexual world, and identity
politics had not yet made exclusionary practices popular. There was likewise little needfor the subject position of “bisexual”to be highlighted or politicized. It was in fact themedia hype of 1974 that helped make “bi” into a stylish, chic, and trendy term,
attracting numerous models, celebrities, actresses, pop musicians, and avant‑garde2

ジェンダー研究 第７号

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artists to tell their individual stories of bisexuality as a proclamation of an adventurous
personality or an extra‑ordinary lifestyle. The glamour of such visibility did not,though,necessarily transfer unto the ordinary bisexuals;in fact,to bisexual activists,theconfirmation of bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior by contemporary
scholars such as Kate M illett and Margaret Mead was much more beneficial andaffirming (Donaldson 39 ‑41).
As gender/sexuality‑oriented liberation movements grew and backlashes embodied
in several important setbacks followed in the second half of the 1970s,the urgent needto validate marginal identities and lives made essentialistic and exclusionary notions ofidentity increasingly appealing and powerful. Tangentically, trans‑gender/sexual subjects found it increasingly difficult to maneuver their complicated and diverse gender/
sexuality belonging. Or,to put it differently,the fluctuating or transgressing desires andidentities of trans and bi subjects became increasingly incompatible with those movements that emphasized single‑track identity and loyalty. Bisexual activists who suffered from such essentialism and exclusion were still quite understanding of such emotional
fixations on identity, for when “people have gone through pain and soul‑searching toreach their identities,which provide them with a sense of unity,a social location,and apolitical commitment;to see those identities fluctuate would be unnerving, and would
threaten the meaning of their personal histories” (Udis‑Kessler, “Bisexuality in an
Essentialist World”58). Still, as expected, the essentialistic tendency often took theform of exclusionary practices, as bisexual activists of the Off Pink Collective in UK
observed:
the Gay and lesbian movement in the 1960s and 1970s emerged in the counterculture as an inclusive movement for sexual liberation,but has gone througha series of narrowing, first splitting up gay men and lesbians, reserving theterm gay only to men,and then further delimiting the definition of gay to thatof negatively excluding and denouncing any heterosexual attraction or
encounter. (Rose 6)
This narrowing tendency was prompted most profoundly by a historically induced
and unfortunate equation of sexual orientation with political stance. And it is here thatexisting gender/sexuality prejudices produced differential effects among the lesbian andgay communities. As the womenʼs movement in the 1970s gradually turned lesbianism
into “a political or intellectual concept”(Hollibaugh and Moraga 252),womenʼs political commitment came to be understood as encompassing a sexual desire for women that
implicates nothing in relation to men. One of the unfortunate fall‑outs of AdrienneRichʼ
s influential essay on “
compulsory heterosexuality”was to eliminate heterosexuality as a viable choice for womenʼs erotic fulfillment. For, as a compulsory act,
heterosexual intercourse came to be seen as a suspicious act of collusion with patriarchal heterosexuality, and “sleeping with the enemy”was adopted as a graphic description for such collaboration. Along a similar line of thinking,Ti‑Grace Atkinsonʼ
s phrase“Feminism is a theory; lesbianism is a practice”was said to have been narrowed to3

Josephine Ho Trans‑Sexuality:Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories“Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice”(Udis‑Kessler,“Identity/Politics”
18). As lesbianism became the only viable sexual identity for feminism, “
the politicalaspect of lesbian identity came to be, for some women, even more important than its
value as a description of their affectional or erotic preferences”(Ochs 229 ). Consequently, lesbian identity as an erotically charged subject position was being banished out ofsight, not to mention the identity of bisexual women who dared to insist on a double
relationship with both women and men:“At the end of the 1970s, rather than being awomen‑loving woman, a lesbian was a woman who did not sleep with men”(Udis‑
Kessler, “Identity/Politics”23).
Significantly,while bisexual women in the lesbian camp were denounced as opportunistic traitors, gay men as a community did not seem to feel the same strength ofresentment or sense of betrayal as lesbians did toward the bisexuals among them evenat the height of identity politics. Robyn Ochs has noted that due to the“power dynamics
associated with a sexist society,”the accusation of “sleeping with the enemy”did notseem to carry the same connotation of surrender or disdainfulness for gay men as for
lesbian women (231). In the gay camp,bi men,“re‑appropriated as gay,either ceased
to exist as a separate and separable category, or else were put down as closeted, self‑
hating,or self‑ignorant men who wereʻreallyʼgay if only they had the courage to say()
so” Garber 26 . In other words, bisexuality was considered an act of betrayal in thelesbian camp but,and not without gender connotations, an act of cowardice in the gay
camp. Bisexuality among gays and lesbians were perceived quite differently also
because of another important gender/sexuality assumption:under the influence of what
Teresa de Lauretis termed “the belief ofhom (m)osexuality”(from theroot word hommo,
meaning male), the purpose of all sex tended to be seen as male gratification, andwomen were never considered agents of sexuality. Consequently,bisexual gays were
believed to have the best of both (heterosexual and homosexual) worlds, but bisexual
lesbians were said to be sacrificing their lesbian lovers so as to help themselves play into
the hands of men. As political infighting spread among the homosexual communities,
lesbian‑and gay‑identified bisexuals were gradually realizing “what shifts in the social
institutions, psychic lives, and systems of meaning within the lesbian and gay communities made our identity and our movement not only possible but necessary”(Udis‑
Kessler, “Identity/Politics”18), thus the politicization of the bisexual identity.

II
The invalidation or denunciation of bisexuals in the gay and lesbian communities
was much more than a political vendetta;in fact, the resenting labels heaped upon thebisexuals reflected a massive emotional force behind such indictments. For the discontent directed at bisexuality was significantly and deeply intertwined with other culturally‑induced sexual discontents against multiple partners, against promiscuity,
against sexual openness, etc. The occasional or habitual promiscuity of gays could be4

ジェンダー研究 第７号

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relegated to a defect of individual conduct, an acceptable reality; but the structural
multiplicity of bisexuals, even when it was only a potential instead of a reality, wasbeyond acceptance. For the bi identity itself announced a rejection of one gender,one
sexual partner, one choice, one love a rejection of all that is highly treasured by amonogamy‑minded culture.
As identity politics transformed lesbian and gay politics, and as exclusionary
definitions replaced inclusionary practices in the gay and lesbian movement, bisexuals
came to be cast as “indiscriminate, disease‑ridden, unwilling to commit, promiscuous,
opportunistic, apolitical, cowardly,in a phase, and deceitful”(Young 53). Worse,theywere also referred to as “fence‑sitters, traitors, cop‑outs, closet cases, people whose
primary goal in life is to retain ʻheterosexual privilege,ʼpower‑hungry cold‑hearted
seducers who use and discard their same‑sex lovers like so many Kleenex” (Udis‑
Kessler,“Bisexuality in an Essentialist World”51). The labels themselves bespoke ofa profound resentment that could not be adequately explained by mere politicalestrangement. Judging from the prevalence of such labels in the lesbian community inparticular, the resentment stemmed not only from a sense of forlorn bitterness toward
occurrences of personal erotic/emotional infidelity. It also reflected a poignant recognition of the harsh realities of existing gender inequality

expressed as legitimate and“profitable”patriarchal heterosexuality that madeanypossibleinclusion ofa different‑
gender object‑choice a predetermined and inevitable tragedy. Whether bisexuals choseto act upon their bi potential or not, the mere insistence of their bisexual identity
affirmed a structural openness that presaged an imminent threat for their lovers.
Suspected of disloyalty in personal relationships and alienated as traitors to the homosexual cause, it was little wonder that bisexuals frequently experienced “a feeling ofpolitical and personal homelessness”(Schuster 267).
If the gay and lesbian community suffered from gender/sexuality assumptions in its
evaluation of bisexual gays and lesbians,the confusions and complexities in maneuvering personal erotic relationships as well as bisexual identities likewise did not escape theimpact of the same assumptions. Just as other sexual minorities who had to do withoutsocial and cultural support, bisexuals often had great difficulties explaining their identity to their lovers in the looming melancholy of potential insincerity,promiscuity,and
infidelity all poisonous for the construction and maintenance of intimate relationships
within highly monogamy‑minded culture. A strong sense of guilt might also result forthe bisexual because mainstream culture looked negatively upon individuals (of any
sexual orientation)who chose to live a seeminglypoly‑amorous lifestyle,exemplified bymany of the morally condemning labels attached to bisexuals. In addition to suchpressure from a sex‑negative culture,bisexual lesbians and bisexual gays who chose to
take action on their bisexual potentials might also be seen as fulfilling the culturalstereotype that the bisexual “social‑climber”would always forsake his/her lover of asexual minority for another lover who belonged to mainstream heterosexuality. Of
course, such valuations reflected nothing of the soul‑searching and painful strugglingthat many bisexual subjects themselves were going through, groping in unchartered

5

Josephine Ho Trans‑Sexuality:Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories

territory to understand their own inclusive emotions and infatuations within the restrictive binary system of gender as well as the equally restrictive monogamous system of
sexuality.
Even within the lesbian community of the 1970s and 1980s, gender/sexuality coloring exerted very different effects on bisexual lesbians with different gender images. As
femininity came to equal desire for men within the lesbian camp, and as femmeʼsfemininity came to be seen by some lesbians as the embodiment of patriarchal oppression, bisexual femmes were viewed in an even more unfavorable light than bisexualbutches. A butch may be doing it out of a momentʼ
s weakness or for some undisclosed
purpose,but a femme must be doing it because she was plotting to jilt her lesbian loverand to throw herself into the arms of men at the most opportune moment. Little
attention was paid to the fact that the femme could be “aggressively flirting withdominant cultures in order to secure her own legibility as lesbian,as queer,as a subject
in her own right”(Hemmings 95). Gender/Sexuality prejudices seemed to have always
exacerbated the tension and complexities already present in individual erotic relationships.
It should be mentioned here that some lesbians

in particular, femmes

havealways insisted on keeping a much closer and complicated relationship with bisexuality.
In spite of being suspected by their butches of harboring a heterosexual object‑choice,many lesbian femmes maintained a strong commitment to their bisexual inclinations
and invented a wide variety of names to express their identify both as lesbians andbisexuals,: bi‑dyke, bi‑lesbians, bi‑feminist, lesbian‑identified bisexual, bisexual, bi‑affectional, formerly‑lesbian bisexual, bisexual lesbian, and bisexual femmes. The insistence has not only striven to keep lesbianness and bisexuality connected but also
maintained the possibility of a feminism that is both sensitive toward alternative erotic
choices and clear‑headed in object choices:
The plurality of names, and the combinations used, are all attempts, in ourclumsy and woman‑wordless language, to create this identity, to makeourselves recognizable. To indicate that we, as feminists and women who
recognize the realities of sexism and heterosexism, embrace our queerness,
our lesbianism,our woman‑loving,and also claim and embrace our openness
to men. (Weise xv)

III
What needs to be stressed is that the openness of bisexuality envisioned here is tobe understood not only as a long‑perceived openness to possible object choices, butmore importantly as an openness to the unknown and undetermined courses of development for identities as well as erotic desires. And it is in this re‑conceptualization andre‑characterization of bisexuality that recent theorists and activists attempt to tackle

6

ジェンダー研究 第７号

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some of the afore‑mentioned gender/sexuality assumptions and prejudices at their root.
Sexologists who had been quite unhappy about describing bisexuality with a uni‑dimensional definition based merely on genital‑oriented object‑choice have long preferred a more complicated understanding of sexual orientation. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG), for one, recognizes that peopleʼ
s sexuality may change over time.
Furthermore, in reference to the bisexual orientation, Klein et. al. proclaim: “sexualorientation cannot be reduced to a bipolar or even tripolar process,but must be recognized within a dynamic and multivariate framework”(64). After all,some people may
experience their sexuality as a lifelong constant,others as a series of stages,some as a
choice,and many as a constant flux. And more often than not,the biological sex of theobject choice is not the final determining factor in sexual orientation;a whole host ofother factors involved in a dynamic relationship must be taken into consideration. Somesexologists have even suggested that those who study bisexuality begin their research by
identifying the sexual aim variations involved, as well as observing the modes of
emotional erotic interaction with both genders (Hansen & Evans 5). In short, an
individualʼs sexual orientation is composed of sexual and non‑sexual variables which
differ over time and may include special preferences in attraction, behavior, fantasy,
lifestyle,emotional preference,social preference,or self‑identification (Klein et.al.67‑
68).
Such a more complicated view toward bisexuality has been confirmed by therealities of many bisexual lives. Bisexual confessionals often tell of experiences inlearning about oneʼs sexual orientation only after one has gone through a number of
erotic twists and turns in life,of falling in and out of love and falling in love again withpeople of varied gender/sex affiliations, of affirming one sexual identity only to findother erotic impulses at variance with that chosen identity. “The erotic discovery ofbisexuality is the fact that it reveals sexuality to be a process of growth,transformation,and surprise, not a stable and knowable state of being”(Garber 66). In her lead essay
for the volume Closer to Home: Bisexuality & Feminism (1992), Ruth Gibian proposesthat it is because our culture defines sexual orientation in terms of“sexual stasis” interms of finding a true self (and a true love) and settling there that it often encourages an invalidation of our emotional history and an erasure of conflicting feelings,
paradoxes,and ambiguities (5),thus turning bisexual lives into lives built upon nothing
but bad faith. Gibian thus challenges:“If,in other parts of our lives,we donʼt strive to
be static beings, but value growth, development and change, why should our sexual
beings be any different?”(4). The fact of the matter is, many bisexuals have alreadydemonstrated with the full, complex, and often contradictory stories of their life
histories that “sexuality is a narrative, not a fixed label”(Garber 74).
This understanding of bisexual formations as fluidity and complexity reflects therecent efforts of bisexuals and theorists to navigate the pitfalls of identity politics.
When one of the earliest bi anthologies,Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out,was published in 1991, the editors, Loraine Hutchings and Lani Kaʼahumanu, had

7

Josephine Ho Trans‑Sexuality:Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories

provided a glossary that defined “bisexual”as “
people who have erotic, affectionate,romantic feelings for, fantasies of, and experiences with women and men, and/or who
self‑identify as bisexual” (369 ). When the Off Pink Collective published Bisexual
Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives in 1996, bisexuality is no longer to be understood interms of “
two,”because validation of “all of the components of social/sexual complexity”is said to have already been gradually recognized (Jordan 15). Only one year later,
another volume on bisexuality clearly states that the important dividing line is thatbisexuality transcends the rigidity of “one,”moving beyond what Marjorie Garbers
refers to as “monosexual restrictiveness”(18) and toward multiplicity:“Moving acrosssexes,across genders,across sexualities,bi‑ness warmly embraces multiple desires andidentifications while repudiating all ʻ
monosexualʼimperatives”(Bristow 225). As theself‑definition of bisexuals moves beyond the two‑gender/two‑sex system,a much more
complicated vision that seems to extend beyond traditionally‑conceived “bi”‑sexuality
also emerges. Naomi Tucker claims:“I relate bisexuality to openness. It is,for me,awillingness to acknowledge feelings, despite prevailing taboos, and to break down the
prefabricated barriers that our culture instills within us”(Tucker,“Whatʼs in a Name”)
246 .
When openness and complexity again characterize the bisexual, as it did once
before in the 1960s,other old concepts suddenly regained new currency. Writing aboutbisexuality in the mid‑1990s, Marjorie Garber proclaims:“This is the new bisexuality,
which is to say, the old bisexuality bisexuality as eroticism, ʻ
un‑pigeonholed sexual
identity,ʼnot bisexuality as the ʻ
thirdʼchoice between,or beyond,hetero‑or homo‑sex”(Garber 18). The ideas of Freud and Marcuse are returning with a new vengeance. As
Garber puts it, it is exactly in “the positive impulse toward perverseness, the erotic
appeal of transgression, the desire that itself comes from crossing a boundary thatbisexuality structures its essential being (29 ). As such,the bisexual imperative,and its
challenge to mainstream notions of “mono”‑sexuality is “to insist upon complexity, toinsist upon the validity of all of the components of social/sexual complexity, to insist
upon the equal validity of all the components of social/sexual complexity”(Jordan 15).
Such a new and liberated vision of bi‑sexuality has also tended to highlight thesubversive potential of bisexuality. A typical example reads:
Bisexuality unsettles certainties: straight, gay, lesbian. It has affinities
with all of these,and is delimited by none. It is,then,an identitythat is also
not an identity, a sign of the certainty of ambiguity, the stability of
instability, a category that defies and defeats categorization. (Garber 70)
Jo Eadie has even proposed that we embrace the idea of a “tactical identity”since “
allidentities, attributes, personality traits, beliefs and desires are negotiated differently in
different conditions”(18). In other words, an identification is an identity that we holdunto only within particular circumstances. In case questions are raised concerning theutility and validity of such an extremely fluid notion of identity,advocates assure that
“The ambiguous nature of our sexuality neednʼ
t imply any ambiguity in our politics”

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ジェンダー研究 第７号

2004(Orlando 230). After all,as they say,we can always follow Klein et.al.in distinguishing“between sexual orientation (the entire complexity and multiplicity of our experience,
including attraction, behavior, fantasies, emotional preference, social preference) andsexual identity (the name we give to best fit that experience at any given time)”(Gibian8‑9 ). A further distinction may even be suggested between sexual desires and sexual
relationships so that subjects could validate their feelings while also validate themonogamous relationship that is being maintained as long as it lasts.

IV
Individuals should be allowed to navigate their own
trails through the possibilities, complexities, and difficulties of life in postmodern times. Each strategy andeach set of categories has its capabilities, accomplishments, and drawbacks....Categories...are all imperfect,
historical, temporary, and arbitrary....We use them toconstruct meaningful lives, and they mold us into
historically specific forms of personhood. (Rubin 477 )The emphasis on openness and complexity in bisexuality is much more than asimple theoretical feat. It has found echoes in the life stories of many who can now
confess and discuss the realities of their differently‑constructed sexual lives realities
that have always already transgressed beyond the hegemonic, exclusive, two‑gender‑
oriented system of comprehension. In fact, with the rigid compartmentalization ofbinary systems loosened, a wide variety of alternative sexual encounters and experiences have now become both thinkable and speakable.
The most naughty example may be the not‑so‑unusual intimate relations between
gays or lesbians with someone of the opposite sex. Pat Califia once recounted when hewas still a lesbian,she had stumbled into performing fisting for a gay man. Should thiserotic encounter be considered heterosexual or homosexual? Should Califia be considered bisexual? The questions are meaningful only if we limit ourselves to thinking interms of the genitals. For,as Califia is keen to notice,“M en at handballing parties donʼtusually cruise each otherʼs dicks. They cruise each otherʼs hands and forearms”(184),
and it was Califiaʼ
s small hands that made the gay men grant her the opportunity tolearn. Genitals are hardly the first or the only factor that makes up erotic attraction or
arousal after all. Califia is also unequivocal about that:“when I turn on to a man itʼsbecause he shares some aspect of my sexuality (like S/M or fisting) that turns me on
despite his biological sex”(185). In other words,bisexuality becomes a moot term whensexuality is understood beyond genital terms. In another example of the mutual desire
and fascination between famous lesbian Joan Nestle and gayman John Preston,the non‑genital nature of such an erotic desire between a man and a woman is by no means
heterosexual but “utterly queer”(Hemmings 96). Perhaps,as Gayle Rubin reads butch

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Josephine Ho Trans‑Sexuality:Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories

and femme as “ways of coding identities and behaviors that are both connected to anddistinct from standard societal roles for men and women”(467),“bisexual”acts should
also be read as both connected and distinct from standard gayand lesbian and heterosexual roles. And if we follow the same line of inquiry, then the seemingly problematic
lesbian desire for masculinity in FTMs or for transgendered butches, the seemingly
uncharacterizable desire of a pre‑op MTF for an effeminate gay, and many otherunconventional combinations, desires that have long been subjected to suspicion andquestioning, would also acquire some room for breathing.
As such cases continue to surface when brave souls choose to validate and affirm
their feelings and experiences despite social and sexual stigma, the community of
marginal sexualities is once again reminded of its complacency in regard to the limitsof gender/sexuality categories and related assumptions and prejudices. For to view
these un‑orthodox relations as heterosexual or homosexual would be a gross misrepresentation of what was going on. And to describe these subjects as “bisexual”in thedimorphic sense of the word would be likewise an over‑simplification. Gender/sexuality
categories are simply unable to arrest the real‑life subjects that are said to inhabit them;nor could such categorization comprehend the complex dynamics of gender/sexuality
formations.

Just when you thought a new category has been installed to adequately

describe a certain kind of subjectivity, a closer look reveals other innuendos: “Somebutches are psychologically indistinguishable from female‑to‑male transsexuals....Theboundaries between the categories of butch and transsexual are permeable”(Rubin 473).
And when a gender subject decides to shift categories, the same exact person falls
utterly out of favor overnight:“
A woman who has been respected, admired, and loved
as a butch may suddenly be despised, rejected, and hounded when she starts a sex
change”(Rubin 475).
These and more examples like them have already demonstrated the impact ofgender/sexuality categories and their cultural loadings upon marginal sexualities,often
resulting in painful bickering and estrangement. As trans‑sexuality, a sexuality thattranscends and transgresses the biology‑oriented categorization, perhaps bisexuality
and its ramifications may be better served if we adopt bisexual sexologist and activist
David Loureaʼ
s broad vision for bisexuality in the last interview he gave:
Of course itʼs not just about sex. Itʼs about a way of being. Itʼs about heright for us to be different, the right for us to express who we are....The
political issues are far greater than just our sexuality; they involve issues ofpower and dominance. They involve issues of misogyny...of class struggles...
Notes
1 This paper was first read at the Fifth International Super‑Slim Conference on Politics of Gender/Sexuality
held by the Center for the Study of Sexualities,National Central University,December 13,2003.See http://
sex.ncu.edu.tw/conference/slim/slim5/5th SLIM .HTM
2 Kinsey had said in both the Male and Female volumes that it was impossible to determine the number of10

ジェンダー研究 第７号

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persons who were“homosexual”or “heterosexual.”Still,it was possible to determine sexual behavior at any
given time,and the report listed 37% of males had at least one same‑sex experience to orgasm (Kinsey et.
al.650).In comparison,46% of the males surveyed had engaged in bisexual‑‑that is,both heterosexual andhomosexual‑‑activities or “reacted to”persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives (656).
3 It is likely that before bisexuality got its media boost and a definite social image in 1974,people were justexperimenting with and exploring all kinds of sexual possibilities in group orgies without pinning it down
to bisexuality.Bisexual activist David Lourea recalled in an interview:“
If you were lying down blindfolded
and a number of people were touching you,you couldnʼ
t tell whether they were male or female....Oh!A lightbulb goes on!M aybe there isnʼt a difference?”(Tucker,“
Bay Area Bisexual History”48)That is to say,thenature of those sexual contexts had made gender and status irrelevant for consideration/satisfaction ofdesire.
4 The idea of bisexuality was considered so harmless to the gay crowd that when gay historian Dennis
Altman wrote Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation in 1971,he even optimistically predicted that a greater
acceptance of human sexuality will reduce the stigma associated with unorthodox sexualities and spur an“
increase in overt bisexuality” (246). It was of course not clear whether Altman had in mind moreheterosexual men finding homosexual sex acceptable and palatable,or more gay men finding heterosexual
sex acceptable and palatable.
5 In the month of M ay 1974,two leading US popular magazines,Newsweek and Time,concurred in featuringbisexuality as the newest chic with symptomatic titles such as “Bisexual Chic:Anyone Goes”and “The New
Bisexuals”(Garber 18‑19 ).
6 Sandra Bernhardt and David Bowie were the most notable examples. M ore recent listing includes Drew
Barrymore and Angelina Jolie.
7 The Rightʼ
s aggressive offensive on abortion rights since the mid‑1970s,Anita Bryantʼs 1977 effort to “
Save
the Children”from the “
recruitment”of homosexuality, and the stall of the Equal Rights Amendments
ratification process in 1974 were some of the most profound cases of setback (cf. Seidman 99 ).
8 Udis‑Kessler also cautions that such essentialistic tendencies might “change bisexuality from a potential‑
for‑either to a requirement‑for‑both identity,and this,in fact,is what happened.The lore which developed
described bisexuals as people who could not be satisfied with either sex, but who had to be involved withboth, usually at the same time.Bisexuals then became stereotyped as swingers who eschewed commitment
and were promiscuous because there was no other way to categorically describe the bisexual drive thatparalleled the homosexual or heterosexual drive”(”Bisexuality in an Essentialistic World”60).
9 Ironically, while lesbians narrowed their self‑definition to exclude any contact with patriarchy and its
heterosexuality, it was also at this exact historical moment that the predominantly heterosexual womenʼ
sorganization known as National Organization of Women (NOW ) began narrowing its definition of womenin general by declaring that the “lavender menace”is hindering feminismʼs effort to recruit more womenfrom the general population (Ochs 230). The exorcism was so deeply felt that lesbians who had alreadyexperienced discrimination in the New Left attended the 1970 NOW convention by wearing T‑shirts thatproudly proclaimed their stigmatized label “Lavender Menace.”This was also when Rita M ae Brown and
M artha Shelley, known lesbians, were driven out of the womenʼs movement (Adam 97;Echols 213‑15).
10 Teresa de Lauretis, “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Repression”, Theatre Journal 40.2 (1980):155‑77.
11 Such a view, heavily laden with a gender‑only power analyses frequently associated with cultural
feminism,finds an interesting parallel characterization in Janice Raymondʼs vendetta against transsexuals.
12 The first bisexual groups then developed in the 1970s in large U.S.cities.The National Bisexual Liberation
Group was originally founded in New York in 1972 and claimed a large membership in the U.S.and abroadby 1975 with its publication “
The Bisexual Expression,”probably the earliest bi newsletter.New York Cityʼs
Bi Forum began in 1975,San Francisco Bay Areaʼ
s Bi Center opened its door in 1976,and Chicagoʼ
s BiWaysformed in 1978.
13 In response, a whole array of names has been developed by bisexuals to resist the weight of stigma and11

Josephine Ho Trans‑Sexuality:Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories

to describe their identity and existence. Some of the bi‑affirmative buttons photographed in Bi Any Other
Name include:“Happy Bi Nature,”“Bi‑phobia Shield,”“
Bisexual and Proud to be Lesbian,”“
Unity is our
Bi Word,”“Blatantly Bisexual,”“Bi the way, donʼt assume Iʼm gay,”“
Safe Sex Bi All M eans,”“
Bisexualand Proud to be Gay,”“Stop,this is insulting to bisexual power”(Hutchins & Kaahumanu,214).When Liz
Nania wrote about the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, she was also
thrilled to find “glittery signs proclaiming:ʻ
Weʼ
re Not Fence Sitters,Weʼ
re Bridge Builders,ʼʻ
Bisexuality isa Viable Option,ʼand ʻ
Equal Opportunity Loverʼ”(366).
14 Ironically,in the lesbian world,a proclamation of being bi is read as surrendering to heterosexuality;yetin the heterosexual world,the same proclamation of being bi is read as a refusal to abide bythe heterosexual
norm.Dvora Zipkin once retorted defiantly:“
Bisexualitysays,ʻeven ifI am sleeping with men,do not assume
that I am heterosexual,for I am gay too.I,too,live,affirm and validate a lesbian lifestyle.After all,Iʼ
m gay
tooʼ
”(63).
15 Many lesbians who came out in the 1970sʼatmosphere of political identities turned toward heterosexuality
in the 1980s.They were bitterly resented and were awarded the hateful terms of“
hasbians”or “ex‑lesbians”(Young 77‑79 ).
16 In contrast to such efforts to recognize the coexistence of the lesbian and the bisexual in the same subject,others labels have been read as deliberate efforts to avoid the ʻbiʼword:“gay married men, lesbians who
sleep with men, heterodyke, heterosexually married gay men, queer hetero‑sex, heterosexual women who
swing with women, lesbians with ʻ
boy‑toys,ʼlesbians and gay men who sports‑fuck with the opposite sex,”
etc. (Hutchins & Kaahumanu 216)
17 Along with the gay‑affirmative adoption of the term “queer”as an in‑your‑face self‑description by gays,
lesbians, and other sexual minorities, the San Francisco‑based bi publication of Anything That Moves also
adopts the negative stereotype, anything that moves, as a label of self‑pride in 1991.
18 As to the changes in sexual orientation,they may come about “
because of personal choices,circumstance,
meeting a particular person or persons, or, simply, because of oneʼs most basic sense of self”(Zipkin 62).
19 Feminists such as Esther Newton and Shirley Walton have likewise expressed their discontent withexisting sexual vocabulary, claiming that we need at least four different concepts to “communicate witheach other about sex”
:sexual preference, erotic identity, erotic role, and erotic acts (244‑248). Existing
sexual identities such as heterosexual,homosexual,or bisexual obviously say very little beyond the biological sex of a personʼ
s object choice. In fact, such terms reflect what has been termed the “
genitalization ofhuman sexuality”(De Cecco xiii).
20 Not all theorists of bisexuality are as upbeat as Garber.Stacey Young cautions that “
we need to recognizethat bisexuality is imbricated in the homo/hetero binarism that structures the rest of society it does nottranscend that dichotomy,though it may in some cases work to subvert it.Our task should be to interrogate
this imbrication with an eye to how it might be transformed not to circumvent that difficult work as if byfiat”(69 ). Gayle Rubin has likewise cautioned against crudely equating sexual orientation with sexual
identities and political positions (480n).
21 Andy Plumb, who says he has been a “bisexual‑transvestite, a quadrisexual, a male lesbian, and an/post‑modern sexual being,”now describes himself as a Bi‑Bi Sexual doing the
drogyne, a ʻDonʼt label meʼ“transgend‑dance”(18).
22 Gayle Rubinʼs essay on catamites and kings aptly describes such awkwardness.
23 Rubin further observes, “Obnoxious behavior that would be tolerated in a butch will often be considered
intolerable in an FTM. Like other groups of stigmatized individuals, transsexuals are often subjected toparticularly stringent standards of conduct”(482n).

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