“The Fear Is That If So Many Of Us Who Are Bisexual Are Also, And Have Also Been, And Will Also Be

“In the 1970s, I saw myself first and foremost as a (radical) feminist. I did not have a primary awareness of myself then as a member of an oppressed sexual minority, which I suppose I have now. I believed that it was important to fight for the rights of all women, of whatever sexual preference, and I believe that the WLM would eventually realise this. I thought that feminists would work together to change the world. Even then, however, the writing was on the wall about the unacceptability of bisexuality. Even respected feminists believed bisexuality to be an exercise in moral and political futility. We were perceived as women who were afflicted  with a form of ‘false consciousness’. This meant that our experience was not ‘real’, not experience with which other women, other feminists, could or should identify with, or develop theory or practice from (the theory and practice of consciousness-raising should have suggested otherwise). We were the exceptions to the feminist rule. One day, it was opined, we would either ‘see the light’ and come out (self-identity) as lesbians - or we’d go back to relationships with men and stop oppressing lesbians by trying to have relationships with them in our unreconstructed state. (Opinion leaned to the view that the latter option was by far the most likely outcome, and maybe because of this, bisexual women were shunned as partners by most lesbians, thus making the theory a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Bisexual women, it was felt, could safely be disregarded.”

- Zaidie Parr, Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives



Erika Kamano