In her text Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler concedes that though “queer” is the most appropriate identity category to describe non-heterosexual people, it cannot “fully describe those it purports to represent” (175). Holly Lewis and Sara Ahmed, through their critiques of anti-homonormativity politics and queer nationalism, prove this failure to describe the full complexity of gender-diverse and sexually diverse people makes queer people the target of queer politics and prevents the support and solidarity necessary to combat the true source of oppression. To Lewis, the queer nationalist movement based on an imaginary unity fails to protect poor and working-class queers and to dismantle capitalism. To Ahmed, the insistence on a single anti-homonormative queerness fails to protect those who appear to follow straight lines of heterosexuality because deviation is not available to them. A major group of people unrepresented by the exclusive use of “queer” are bisexual people, who, in their ability to have same- or different-sex relationships are major targets of both anti-homonormative and heterosexist policing. In this paper I will argue that ending the of only “queer” and accepting “bisexual” into queer theory discourse would describe a more nuanced queer experience, mitigate the negative consequence of queer nationalism, and lead queer politics toward solidarity.

 

To understand how the strategy of “queer” as the singular identity category those it aims to protect, it is necessary to understand the argument for that strategy. Judith Butler argues that in order to operate in the world, each person needs coherence, described by an identity category, to give them visibility and agency. However, any idea category—even one describing a marginalized identity—asserts what it is by necessarily “abjecting” that which it is not (75).  For example, asserting the identity category “heterosexual” abjects “homosexual,” both rejecting homosexuality and implying its inferiority to heterosexuality. Through the process of repeated citations, this assertion and abjection solidified the position of queer people as marginal and inferior in discourse and reality (a position supported by the heterosexual matrix, Butler’s conception of oppressive power) (75). To Butler, then, the assertion of “homosexual” as an identity category would not alleviate the imbalance of power but repeat it, inevitably abjecting both heterosexuals and those queer people not described by “homosexual,” like bisexual people (74). The task as Butler sees it is to assert an identity category that allows marginalized individuals to navigate the world while excluding the fewest people possible. With this in mind, “queer” is the only appropriate identity category (175). By virtue of being less specific than “gay,” “lesbian,” or “homosexual,” it can describe people within those categories as well as bisexuals and those with fluid sexual orientations. Asserting an identity category is a “necessary error” to Butler, and the assertion of “queer” is the least egregious error (175).

 

Though she argues for its use as an identity category, Butler maintains that it must be constantly questioned and revised to minimize the necessary harm of abjection. She concedes that even as a more open term than other options, “it [queer] will not fully describe those it purports to represent” (175) and requires “a taking stock of the constitutive exclusions that reconsolidate hegemonic power differentials” (79). In other words, one must assess who and what “queer” necessarily excludes and construes as inferior when it is asserted. Butler calls for this taking stock to be conducted by “those who are excluded by the term but who justifiably expect representation by it”—that is, queer people who do not fit into current definitions or images of queerness (174). After taking stock, the term must be revised to include those people. Butler argues “queer” will change only “to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized” (173). In other words, the identity category “queer” will change and harm less people through objection only as much as it accepts critiques made by those it should represent, yet feel abjected by it. Its success as a term to describe queer people and drive queer theory toward effective activism rests on how well it includes people and adjusts to accommodate those it unintentionally excludes.

 

Such a taking stock of “queer” reveals that its current deployment excludes a significant number of those is purports to represent. In The Politics of Everybody, Holly Lewis describes the current trend in queer theory toward a “queer nationalism.” Queer nationalism is grounded in the belief that queer people “are a genuine community based on common experience or marginalization due to sexual orientation and gender identity” (234). While queer nationalism purports to support all gender-diverse and sexually diverse people, the idea that “queer” represents a common experience is a falsehood that creates imaginary unity. According to Lewis, the “common experience” propagated by queer nationalism forgets the importance of class in defining life experiences. She cites the case of wealthy gay white men working “to expel poor and working-class Black queer and trans youth congregating near their property” in Greenwich Village (228). Clearly, the wealthy white men pledged their allegiance to property, capital, and race, not a universal queer cause based on common experience. Queer nationalism champions a notion of “queer” that does not capture the full nuance and complexity of international queer experience.

 

The oversimplified, false commonality assumed by queer nationalism establishes a norm within queer theory that leads to the policing of queer people excluded from the norm. As Lewis explains, the common experience put forth by queer nationalism is one of radical opposition to “homonormativity,” a concept referring to those queer people who conform to the values of a heterosexist world such a marriage or child-rearing (224). However, this radical queer against normativity is shaped by norms such as “consensus voting, veganism, sharing music, norms of ‘subversive’ dress” (229). As Sara Ahmed argues in Queer Phenomenology, establishing anti-homonormativity, or “the compulsion to deviate from the straight line,” as the rule for queer identity could make that deviation itself a “line” that “could have a straightening effect” (175). In other words, applying the identity category “queer” to only those queers who oppose homonormativity in word and action encourages the policing of queer people who appear to follow the straight line of heterosexuality (177). Such policing, according to Ahmed, would be “a certain injustice to those queers whose lives are lived for different points,” such as people in cultures where “outness” is dangerous or unintelligible (175). Lewis argues anti-homonormative policing disserves poor and working-class queers who may marry and pass on property not to support heterosexist systems of power but to support their families through the few methods available under capitalism (237). The policing of homonormativity in the name of protecting an imaginary unity around a radical queer identity harms the queer people queer theory and politics purport to represent and protect.

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Anti-homonormative rhetoric and policing misdirects the goal of queer theory toward the wrong target. As Lewis argues, focusing on whether queer people conform to a singular “radical” expression of queerness “swaps a concern about normative effects with actual-anti capitalist struggle,” the real target of her conception of a successful queer theory (237). Further, individual behavior is shaped by the social relations of capitalism, but capitalism may not be shaped by individual behavior (235). Further, it is not homonormativity or disputes on proper gender and sexual expression that prevents the unity of a queer movement, but the system of capitalism. While Butler argues that an increase in identity categories would “produce a greater factionalization, a proliferation of differences without any means of negotiating among them,” (76) Lewis argues that the idea of a “Universal Queerness” hinders negotiation among queers of different classes and among queer and non-queer people with anti-capitalist goals (278). As demonstrated in the Greenwich Village example, a queer elite is still an elite, and placing upper and lower-class people in the same identity category does not create common ground or unity (228). Rather, the true target of solidarity should be across class lines, since the true goal of queer theory is anti-capitalism. Since queer, trans, and intersex people are targeted by the same forces that harm poor and working-class people (14) and cis women, Lewis argues, queer people much seek solidarity with those groups “whether or not they accept queer people” (278, emphasis original). Clearly, a queer politics that rightly targets capitalism as the main hurdle to liberation can and should find the means of negotiating among identity-categories in order to achieve solidarity.

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Thus, the addition of “bisexual” as another identity category would not irreparably harm a common queer movement, but would provide the nuance necessary to represent a more diverse queer population and guide queer politics toward the real target of action. Unlike the monosexual queer identity categories “gay” and “lesbian,” “bisexual” is a common target of both anti-homonormativity and heterosexism. On the one hand, bisexuals in different-sex relationships may be seen and policed for being homonormative no matter how they act with their partner. If queerness is radical by the virtue of being queer, then the ultimate way to support heteronormativity, under the logic of queer nationalism, would be to enter in a relationship that appears heterosexual (Lewis 279). On the other hand, bisexual people in same-sex relationships, or who express themselves or follow paths in opposition to heterosexist norms, are subjected to the same homophobia and discrimination that other queer people do. Of course, it is important to remember that systems of power and inequality, like capitalism and heterosexism, are institutional and affect queer people throughout their lives beyond personal discrimination and regardless of individual actions. Still, as an identity category that deviates from both the straight line of heterosexuality and of queer nationalism, bisexuality offers a different angle from which to observe and respond to the issues at the heart of queer politics. 

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Because bisexuality may “appear oblique, strange, and out of place” in both queer and straight environments, it offers an alternative method for queer theory to interact with both queer and straight people (Ahmed 179). Bisexuality has a different relationship to straightness than homosexuality. Butler argues, “It may be that if a lesbian opposes heterosexuality absolutely, she may find herself more in its power than a straight or bisexual woman who knows or lives in its constitutive instability” (77). In her terms, because bisexuality would not reject heterosexuality outright, it would not participate in the harmful process of abjection as strongly as an assertion of homosexuality, if it would produce an abjection of straightness at all (77).  Perhaps avoiding a complete rejection of heterosexuality, and the values that come with it, could be a useful method for queer theory to avoid queer nationalist and anti-homonormative pitfalls. This ability to know or live in straightness also gives bisexuality a different relationship to queerness than homosexuality. In Ahmed’s terms, the openness of bisexuality to different-sex relationships might make the familiar queer avowal of all heterosexuality strange. In this way, bisexuality deviates from the straight line of queer nationalism and its singular conception of “queer” and offers queer theory a new conception of queer identity to support. As Ahmed argues, “a queer phenomenology would involve,” not a new straight line to follow, but “an orientation toward queer, a way of inhabiting the world by gibing ‘support’ to those whose lives and loves make them appear oblique, strange, and out of place” (179). As a sexual orientation that “slips” from exclusionary concept of a common experience of queerness, bisexuality is the “queer” that queer theory should support. 

 

In discursive terms, “bisexual” has undergone the kind of questioning, accounting for historicity, and revising that Butler claims would perfect the category “queer,” making it a term especially well-suited for deployment in queer theory. Though the term “bisexual” was coined at a time when it was widely accepted that there were only two sexes (and that bisexuality itself was a disorder), current definitions by bisexual rights organizations and activists show an evolution away from enforcing a gender or sex binary (Thorpe). A collection of several definitions of “bisexual” on bisexual activist Robyn Och’s website demonstrates not only the proliferation of definitions, but the openness within each. Many feature terms like “more than one gender,” “any sex or gender,” or “people of various sexes and/or gender identities,” which shows an understanding of both the variety of genders beyond woman and man as well as an expansive understanding of sex. They also note that desire may change or be uneven, and may be physical, sexual, or romantic (robynochs). One can hardly imagine a person purposed to be represented by “bisexual” that would not find themselves in these definitions. Och’s personal account at changing her definition of bisexual in response to the complaints of non-binary friends (robynochs) represents a “yield[ing] to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized” (Butler 173). Also, some sources account for and correct historical, exclusionary definitions of “bisexual.” A recent Huffington Post article describing the creation of the bisexual flag is quick to point out that though the pink and blue stripes are commonly associated with “women” and “men,” they are actually representative of the more inclusive “same-sex” and “different sex” attraction. Further the lavender stripe for “bisexuality” represents a melding of these attractions rather than an attraction to both sides of a binary (Churchill). The use of the term “bisexual” alongside “queer” in queer theory would not only provide an example of the adaptability both terms must maintain, but would serve as a visible reminder of the complexity of experiences “queer” purports to represent, preventing another fall into a straight line of queer identity.

 

As Butler states, claiming an identity category should not be the final goal of queer politics (173). However, since the claiming of the single category “queer” has real-world effects in the form of queer nationalism and exclusionary anti-homonormativity policing, the identity categories queer theory does and does not claim merit discussion. Including “bisexual” in queer theory could also lead to real-world effects. These effects could be on the personal level like finding representation through a more accurate term, but could also be large scale, like directing queer politics toward more productive goals than policing homonormativity. It could encourage any queer movement against institutional oppression to account for the specific, unique needs of bisexual people alongside a larger community, queer and otherwise. Deploying more inclusive terms alongside “queer” in queer theory discourse could be the foundation of a movement that achieves solidarity within and across identity categories and leads to further, concrete action.