Sunday, March 18, 2007

Bisexual Healing

"Cringing is often a sign of unfinished political business,” according to feminist author Jennifer Baumgardner.

She should know. Since 2002, Baumgardner has been spearheading the confessional “I had an abortion” campaign—most recently captured in the documentary film Speak Out: I Had an Abortion (www.speakoutfilms.com)—and in her new book, Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, she’s tackling a topic that makes both straights and gays wince: the explosion of young women experimenting with bisexuality.

“The label bi sounds bad,” writes Baumgardner, “because at least in some ways, bisexuals are an unliberated, invisible and disparaged social group.” And yet, she notes, according to Alfred Kinsey’s famous studies (and a more informal survey of Nerve.com personals), more than 30 percent of women have had or seek same-sex encounters.


Read all at link above.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just remember that the figure she quotes from Kinsey does not take into consideration the age at which the encounter(s) occurred. Many people have homosexual encounters during the years at the beginning of puberty when sex is new and explorations of body and senses are happening.

Unfortunately, of all the "bi" people I've known, none have had stable relationships. Maybe that has to do with the fact that they are not readily understood by the folks on the ends of the sexual spectrum.

But, not to disparage Ms. Baumgardner, but an experiment or curiousity does not define sexuality.

Gay and Straight has more to do with affectational preference than sexual preference, in my opinion. One can be sexually curious about the same sex (or other sex) and even have experiences but not feel comfortable in a relationship with a person of that sex.

I just wish we could get away from this idea of "sexual preference" altogether. It's not who you screw - it's who you love that counts.