ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that continuing to understand bisexuality as bigenderism – being both masculine and feminine – is unhelpful for a number of reasons. For one, as a term that is imported from biology, bisexuality in the sense of both-male-and-female seems to suggest that individuals have both masculine and feminine traits and desires because humans have ambiguous anatomies. Interpreting a person’s gender-incongruent thoughts and behaviors as “bisexuality” means denying the social pressures and influences. The idea of the self as dual that is implied by bisexuality-as-bigenderism fails to reflect the multiplicity of self, which has been described as one of the central features of postmodern subjectivity. The concept of bisexuality, understood in reference to gender, helped make non-binary manifestations of gender potentially comprehensible and not altogether foreign to the clinicians’ ears. The complexities that the questions reflect point to the ambiguity and uncertainty that the meaning of bisexuality implies, but complexity, is different from excessive overinclusivity.
