ABSTRACT
As bi/queer activists and scholar-teachers, we have been thinking, teaching and writing for several years now about how sexual identity, as both a social construction and a deeply felt sense of self, simultaneously opens up and delimits possibilities of pleasure, intimacy and even community building. In particular, we have felt that bisexuality – the conscious choice to be open to loving and being intimate with partners, regardless of sex or gender – seems to challenge the limits that are placed on desire and question normalising (monosexual) identities into which so many fold their lives. At the same time, sexual identity is only so effective in challenging homophobic social norms; because of heteronormativity, for instance, bisexuality itself frequently disappears into the dominant (straight) cultural field of vision as many focus on the normative ‘straight’ relationship while thinking of same-gendered attractions and intimacies as simply ‘experimentations’ or ‘erotic excursions’. As such, bisexual sexual identity can be observed being simultaneously shoved into and out of both gay and straight communities.
