ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that self-identified straights and gays have entered into an epistemic contract to erase bisexuality. The epistemic contract is a political model that could be profitably applied beyond the sexual orientation context to other intermediate identity categories. As in the bisexual context, the tendency to adopt narrow binarizing definitions of race can be traced to anxieties felt by both the dominant and the subordinate groups. The epistemic contract of bisexual erasure is a particularly powerful one. Bisexual erasure is more stable than gay erasure because straights and gays are the most powerful constituencies in both of these contracts. The epistemic contract of "don't ask, don't tell" is less a case of real interest convergence between straights and gays than it is a case of compromise. The fact that both gays and straights erase bisexuals suggests that this intermediate orientation threatens interests that both straights and gays possess.
