Mine Own Bi-ness
Currents
For as long as I can remember, I have been driven by a profound desire to be a free agent, an individual. Being white and male in the United States means that most people default to perceiving me as part of the dominant cultural group. However, neither my white skin nor my cisgendered maleness have ever prevented me from setting myself apart from the crowd. Even if I were straight, I would nevertheless remain decidedly non-heteronormative. I would still be a BDSM enthusiast in a very vanilla society, and still polyamorous in a mainly monogamous world. My queerness is therefore not due solely to my bisexuality, but rather, as with so many of my straight brothers and sisters, to my unapologetic refusal to conform to norms around sex, gender, and relationships. I am an individual first, and LGBT second.
That being said, I have been involved in the LGBT community for over a decade. I began as a member of queer campus groups, then volunteered as a community organizer for amBi (the world’s largest bi social club). Today, I am Assistant Director at the Bi Foundation, a nonprofit think tank whose numerous projects include producing this very magazine. My colleagues and I spend most of our days thinking, speaking, and writing about bi-related issues. So, when a new study entitled “Robust Evidence for Bisexual Orientation Among Men” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year, I was overjoyed, though (for obvious reasons) not surprised.
I was elated because the results of this study offer the most compelling evidence to date that bisexuality in men is real and measurable. Given the skepticism and uncertainty that has shrouded male bisexuality, such findings are a big deal. As a bi man, I am grateful to have rigorous research that corroborates my experiences.
For this reason I was disappointed by the negative reactions so many fellow bi activists voiced toward the study. Sentiments like “We don’t need scientists to tell us what we already know”, “My lived experience as a bi person is all that matters”, and “Studies like this are degrading” were all too common on social media. These attitudes were echoed in many news outlets as well. But why would anybody in the bi community lash out at the study in such a manner? The answer is simple: identity politics.
Because I see myself as an individual first and foremost, I cringe at being co-opted by proponents of identity politics. As I have argued elsewhere, contemporary identity politics has a philosophical foundation that is antithetical to liberal values. Whereas classical liberalism centers individual liberty and related human rights, the newly ascendant narrative dominating LGBT issues revolves around shared group identities and the intersections thereof. While that framework has merits, it also has limits, limits that radicals have long since blown past as they took this approach to deleterious extremes.
According to proponents of identity politics, most LGBT people, women, and people of color are working class, which means it is impossible to truly support LGBT rights or gender and racial equality unless one is also an avowed socialist. Following this worldview, everything (and I mean everything) is reducible to a simple formula: oppressors vs. oppressed. In this framework, we are not individuals with rights to be respected by one another, but members of intersecting identity groups in an epic zero-sum struggle for power. Anyone whose identities include historically oppressive groups, such as white people, men, cisgendered people, and heterosexuals, must “check their privilege”. By contrast, anyone whose identities include historically oppressed groups, such as LGBT people, women, and people of color, must have their lived experiences centered and their conclusions unquestioningly accepted.
Within this logic, science (along with other fruits of the Enlightenment) is a tool of the oppressor. Therefore, it is not to be trusted. If we celebrate scientific discoveries, even those that serve to reify LGBT rights, we concede that the objective study of humanity is valid and worthwhile. But what if science were to prove a politically inconvenient claim? That cannot be, as the claims of oppressed groups must be accepted at face value always and forever! So, we must reject all scientific discoveries as “pointless” (at best) and “dehumanizing” (at worst).
Such is the danger of an epistemology built upon a Marxist framework rather than a liberal one. Some readers will find this logic absurd, and that is indeed the point. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude such reasoning is not a real phenomenon. Sadly, as the reactions to this study have shown, it most certainly is.
It is infuriating to have my bisexuality (which is just one part of me) used as an excuse to co-opt my whole humanity in the name of a political agenda I fervently oppose. Every LGBT person, POC, and woman who does not align themselves with a broad far left economic and cultural agenda has similarly been abused. But I refuse to let others speak for me, and I am not alone in this regard. I reserve the right to hold my own opinions on politics, economics, and anything else I damn well please. Because, as the well-known (and appropriately bisexual) playwright William Shakespeare put it:
“This above all— to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Published Sep 8, 2020
Updated Sep 16, 2022
