Click to download: Love, Rage and the Occupation: Bisexual Politics in Israel/Palestine

This text narrates the writer’s story as a bisexual activist and, through it, also the story of the bisexual movement in Israel so far. In addition, the text endeavors to highlight the strands of militarism, violence and racism in Israeli culture, with a focus on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian people. This is meant to achieve two things: first, to deconstruct the false separation between the two fields of ‘LGBT rights’ and antiwar activism; and second, to promote the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, encouraging solidarity with the Palestinian people and nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation.

* If you have any problems with downloading the file, don’t hesitate to email me and ask me for a copy (or leave a comment below).

Also: this week I’ll be starting to write my book chapter about bisexuality and feminism, so expect new snippets soon.

A note for commentators: Please remember that I’m the same person who wrote Words, binary and biphobia, or: why “bi” is binary but “FTM” is not, and that I consider these two posts as complementary. If you could avoid using my own arguments to dispute me, that would be helpful for productive discussion. Thank you.

If you’re not aware of the problems with using a binary gender system, please see this post: Not Your Mom’s Trans 101.

* Thank you to Robyn Ochs, who helped me think of many of these things.

Why this post?

(Why criticize?)

Within the mainstream bisexual movement, the links between bisexuality and transgenderism have always been thought of as close. Challenging of binaries, and the close relationship often existing between bisexual and transgender communities and politics, have been spoken and applauded by the mainstream bisexual movement (especially in the US) since its very beginnings. However and notwithstanding, in this post, I would like to raise a few thoughts about why the efforts of the mainstream bisexual movement to be trans-inclusive have been lacking. I’d like to call out specific problems within bisexual movements so that we, as a community, might be able to put work and energy into addressing these issues, and to be accountable for our communities’ cissexism* and transphobia.

This post came about because recently I’ve been noticing a disturbing tendency within mainstream bisexual discourses, to pretend as if the bisexual community has “always” and only ever defined bisexuality as (non binary) attraction to “same and other” genders, rather than as (binary) attraction to “both men and women”. This tendency is both inaccurate and dangerous, as it paints a false image of bisexual realities and histories in which the mainstream bisexual movement has used (and routinely uses) binary definitions and language widely.

In fact, definitions of bisexuality as attraction to “both genders” or to “men and women” abound in both past and present, activist and academic bisexual writing. While there have always been people in bi movements who defined bisexuality as attraction to “same + different” genders or as attraction to “more than one” gender, claiming that this is the only way bisexuality has ever been defined by “the movement” is misleading and has nothing to do with the realities and histories of bisexual movements themselves.

This argument is dangerous not only because it makes bisexual activists look like wishful thinkers at best and fabricators at worst, but also because it “relieves” the mainstream bisexual movement from responsibility and accountability about our own communities’ cissexism and transphobia. However, despite ardent denials, cissexism and transphobia both remain significant problems within many bisexual communities. As bisexual people and activists, we need to learn how to be accountable and work towards dismantling these forms of oppression in our communities, without glossing over these problems in attempts to avert biphobic accusations.

Cissexism and transphobia in bisexual communities

First off, and before I start, I have to mention that if asked on any occasion, I would say that the bisexual movement, as a whole, is light years ahead of most other activist communities (not just gay and lesbian) as far as it concerns transgender and genderqueer inclusion. I’m also aware of the huge amounts of bisexual writing about the intersections between bi and trans. I think the bisexual movement deserves every bit of respect when it comes to acknowledging these things, and this should not be dismissed in light of the critique I put forth below.

However and notwithstanding, despite awareness and declarations which encourage trans/genderqueer inclusion, the mainstream bi movement has long been suffering from several problems around transphobia and cissexism, which remain largely unaddressed. Note that when I talk about “the” mainstream bi movement, I am referring mostly to mainstream movements within the US, UK or Europe – and within those, I’m referring only to hegemonic discourse**. While it’s worth remembering that a lot of different bi communities exist all over world, and that not all of them behave in similar ways, it should still be acknowledged that there’s a huge body of bisexual work which nonetheless comprises a dominant discourse for these communities: Books, zines, articles, essays, papers, blogs, mailing lists, facebook groups, and many more. The fact that I do not live in US (or the UK, or Europe) only serves to emphasize this: I am more likely to be exposed to hegemonic discourse, because it is hegemonic.

And the hegemonic discourse about bisexuality, that I see from my own vantage point, is one talking about “both genders” or “both sexes”, treating bisexual and transgender people as if we’re two discreet populations, a movement generally lead by cisgender people (making it, de facto, a cis movement), engaging in tokenism, and many more things – even as they talk about trans inclusion and patting themselves on the back. Clare Hemmings talks about this in her book Bisexual Spaces when she says that in general, bisexual communities in the US and the UK have a tendency to speak of themselves as if they’re “already inclusive” without actually concerning themselves with the dirty details and of actually working to include marginalized groups (not just trans/genderqueer people, but also people of color, working class people, disabled people, and many more).

From a personal perspective, I can cite two (kinds of) incidents that disturbed, and continue to disturb me. The first is pretty typical for me: Reading any kind of book or anthology about bisexuality, ever (except Clare Hemmings’ book) – and I’ve read a whole lot – I often need to curb my irritation and frustration with the amount of “both genders” that I need to read just to get through a single text. It’s stopped me several times from reading bisexual anthologies fully in one batch – I needed whole months of breaking it down. Even while reading a single piece, I often have to stop, take a deep breath and make a conscious effort to move forward. Often it is not the only problem, but most of the time, it’s definitely one of the most disturbing ones. This frustrates me all the more because as a genderqueer bisexual person, it seems as though I can never really get it right – or rather, can’t ever be gotten right. In bisexual texts I’m erased as a transgender person, and in transgender texts, I am erased as a bisexual person. I’ve seen very few texts that successfully incorporate the two – it’s usually either one or the other.

The second thing which works very strongly in my head is my experiences from BiCon 2010. After years of reading all the self-congratulatory ‘inclusive’ texts of the US and UK bi movements, I was shocked with how little trans/genderqueer inclusion was actually taking place. I mean things like language, people saying “LGB” instead of “LGBT” or saying “both genders”, discussion topics which never seemed to incorporate viewpoints or issues related to transgender people, I mean the teeny-tiny amount of workshops and spaces explicitly targeting trans/genderqueer people or issues (As I recall, there were only 1-2 workshops specifically targeting trans people. The other two trans-only spaces, during the lunch breaks, were a last-minute effort organized by my girlfriend). One evening I sat down with quite a few other trans and genderqueer people (most of whom were local) and we had a long conversation about transphobia at the convention and in the bi community in general. People were definitely feeling marginalized. And yet, throughout the convention, many cis people were still praising the bi community for being so trans-inclusive.

For me this is even more disturbing by comparison to the Israeli bi community: We grew out of the transgender community, and our politics are intimately related to transgender politics. The community here is led by trans and genderqueer people, and the rest are mostly allies. Transphobia is routinely called out and is not tolerated, our language and our politics incorporate multiple gender identities and trans issues. People who join the community without knowing these things are subsequently educated about them. This is our local ‘hegemonic discourse’ – there’s no such thing as “both genders”.

These are all issues that are generally unspoken in American/western bi communities. Moreover, in my experience online, when they are mentioned, they are generally silenced or met with pretty heavy criticism. For example, in a recent incident on one facebook group, some people actually argued that acknowledging that some bi people were attracted to more than just two genders might make others “feel uncomfortable”.

I could go on for much longer on this (and I do intend to, in my book). However, I think that even these few and rather associative examples are enough in order to point out a significant problem within mainstream bisexual communities. Despite speaking itself as if it’s trans/genderqueer inclusive, the bisexual movement in fact shares much of the cissexism and transphobia of mainstream society and of lesbian/gay communities. As a movement which largely proclaims allegiance to the transgender movement and to trans/genderqueer people, it is our responsibility to take up these points of criticism and to turn them into productive work towards eliminating transphobia and cissexism in our communities.

Afterword: concerning attraction

Some people have suggested to me that there’s nothing wrong with defining individuals’ bisexuality as attraction to “men and women”, since some people actually are attracted only to cisgender men and cisgender women. So to briefly reply to this:

I don’t think that being attracted only to cis men and women is overtly/deliberately transphobic and evil. I don’t think that such people intend to hurt anyone or to practice cis privilege on anyone’s back. However and notwithstanding, I do find that this tendency resonates with cissexist social standards.

People often like to think about attraction as a non-political, inborn, pure, uncontrollable quality which is somehow a given, but in most cases this is not so. More often than not, our attractions are shaped by social standards of beauty and attractiveness – of who/what is “allowed” to be considered attractive, and who/what is not. These standards of beauty are of course deeply political as they are shaped by dominant social beliefs and structures: to name just a few, white people are considered more attractive than people of color, thin people more than fat people, nondisabled people more than disabled people – and cisgender people more than transgender/genderqueer people. In Read My Lips, Ricki Wilchins argues that the reason why transgender people are considered unattractive is that their/our bodies are unintelligible in terms of sexual attraction, to a culture which constructs its sexuality upon cisgender bodies. In order to be considered attractive, one must possess a body that “matches” their gender identity. This means that cisgender bodies are structurally privileged in terms of sexuality and sexual attraction – and we know what structural privileging of cisgender identity is called (that’s rights, cissexism).

Lisa Millbank of A Radical TransFeminist wrote very elloquently about how people need to challenge themselves in terms of sexual attraction to include people of marginalized groups, whom society teaches us to find unattractive: Significant Othering: Attraction Down The Privilege Gradient. I advise anyone to whom it may concern, to read this and reflect upon the contents.

* Cissexism is the social system according to which everyone is, or should be, cisgender (i.e. nontransgender), including the social system of privilege for those who are cisgender, and punishment for those who are not.
** Discourse means everything spoken, written, or otherwise communicated about a certain topic. Hegemonic discourse means a discourse created by those in power and which dominates social understandings about a given topic.

In particular, I looked at the list of countries that my readers came from, and was amazed. Apparently, this blog is read world-wide, with readers on every continent! (With an unfortunate, but unsurprising, bias towards white, English-speaking countries).

So I want to take this opportunity to thank my readers – whoever you are, wherever you are (and whether or not you celebrate the Gregorian new year). Thank you! I am deeply touched. I hope I can write more things that you would like, that would challenge, excite, infuriate and make those tiny steps into the revolution, in this coming year as well :)

<3

Click here to see the complete report.

Hegemonic discourse* about what it means to be queer (and therefore, oppressed as queer) constructs queerness as a series of visual markers: certain appearances, certain gender performances, certain clothes, and above all – the proverbial “walking hand in hand on the street” (or simply being in a same-gender relationship). Bisexual people who, for any reason, do not give away these signs, are automatically read as heterosexual by default, because what people “know” about queerness does not include markers of bisexuality. [...] However, the same social production of “queer” as this series of visual markers necessarily means that bisexuals who do give out these signals will automatically be read as gay or lesbian by default.

[...]

In both cases (unless the bi person in question is carrying a huge sign reading: “I AM BISEXUAL”), it becomes impossible to successfully pass as bi or to assert bisexual identity. [...] Since our bisexuality is not “known” to have any visual markers, and because of the incongruence between what is “known” to be queer, and bisexual behaviour, we are routinely accused of fraudulence, perceived as invisible and are forced to deal with other people’s doubts regarding our identities and our oppression.

* Discourse means everything spoken, written, or otherwise communicated about a certain topic. Hegemonic discourse means a discourse created by those in power and which dominates social understandings about a given topic.

For a full size download, go to this page.

I haven’t been able to update much lately, so here’s another tiny post just as an in-between. This is a little graphic I made, and I hope people would find this useful. Feel free to download, print or spread it around as much as you like :)

For a full-size version, click here, or just right click the picture and download it.

Apparently my post about bisexuality and the binary has managed to inspire a podcast episode. I wasn’t familiar with Gendercast before, but after listening to this, I was both fascinated and impressed, and felt honored to be mentioned on their show. Check them out, they’re very good.

As an offshoot of the need to “redeem” bisexuality and bisexual people through good behaviour*, some people might feel as if all bisexual people need to fit into certain standards of normativity, so as to avoid making other bisexuals “look bad” politically. This includes being either “not bisexual enough” or “too bisexual”**, but also includes such things as radical or “unpalatable” opinions, criticizing assimilationist ideology, speaking too much about specifically bisexual issues (rather than assimilationist gay ones such as marriage, military, adoption, etc.), addressing transgender issues, etc. (For example, some people might feel that the definition of bisexuality should remain gender binary for purposes of palatability for the general population, claiming that “maybe after” more people understand binary bisexuality, “we can start” explaining to them about non-binary genders). Many people might feel as if people with such opinions might damage the bisexual movement, much in the same way in which assimilationist gays often feel that bisexuals might damage their movement by tarring their normative image. In this way, the normativity, which is the condition for entrance into the GGGG movement, is inherited into bisexual movements whose goal is assimilation with the assimilationist gay movement. I call these phenomena “binormativity” and “bi assimilationism” respectively.

* “Redeeming bisexuality through good behaviour” is something I explain in the previous paragraph inside the book. I mean the need for many bisexuals to “prove” that they belong in the LGBT movement by actively contributing to it (and, correspondingly, feeling as though bisexuals who are not LGBT activists do not deserve inclusion in the movement).
** “Too bisexual” and “not bisexual enough” are terms that I define previously as expressions of internalized biphobia directed by bisexuals towards other bisexuals. “Too bisexual” means someone who fits the bisexual stereotypes (cheating, being “promiscuous” i.e. sexually independent, having unsafe sex, etc.). “Not bisexual enough” means someone who doesn’t fit the acceptable “standard” of “true bisexuality” (not having had sex/relationship/emotions with people of at least two genders, etc).

Bisexual and pansexual identities often look the same:

• Both bisexual and pansexual people might feel desire towards people of any amount of genders. People who feel desire towards people of more than one, more than two, many, multiple or all genders can identify as bisexual or as pansexual (or really anything else): The word people use to name their sexual identity does not predict or convey the number of genders they might desire.
• Both bisexual and pansexual people might be cisgender, transgender* or genderqueer*: Whether people identify as bi or pan does not predict or convey their gender identity.
• Both bisexual and pansexual people can support transgender* and genderqueer* liberation/rights: Whether people identify as bi or pan does not predict or convey their levels of such support or their levels of transphobia/cissexism.
• Both bisexual and pansexual people can support bisexual* liberation/rights: Whether people identify as bi or pan does not predict or convey their levels of such support or their levels of biphobia (and yes, people who identify as bi can be biphobic, too).

Bisexual identity and pansexual identity are not the same:

• Bisexuality comes from a type of political thought based on sexual identity, pansexuality comes from a type of political thought based on gender identity: Talk to a bi person about bisexuality, they’ll often talk about sexuality and desire, and focus on biphobia; talk to a pan person about pansexuality, they’ll often talk about transgender and genderqueer identities, and focus on transphobia.
• The definition of pansexuality is often dependent on the definition of bisexuality (and, dare I say, the rejection thereof): If bisexuality is defined as desire towards people of more than one gender, pansexuality can be defined as desire towards people of more than two genders; if bisexuality is defined as desire towards people of many genders, pansexuality can be defined as desire towards people of all genders; if bisexuality is defined as desire towards people of genders similar + different than our own, pansexuality can be defined as desire regardless of gender. But: both bisexuality and pansexuality can – and have – been defined as any of these things.

And herein lies the problem: many pansexuals feel the need to define bisexuality as attraction to no more than two genders (a definition which most outspoken bisexuals here on tumblr vehemently dispute) in order to constitute the difference as related to desire rather than as related to politics. This is where all the erasure and biphobia comes into play and where it gets fucked up, violent, silencing and oppressive.

Another problem here is that this kind of dependency on meaning and comparison erases pansexuality as an identity in its own right. I’d like to believe that pansexuality can stand quite well on its own [excuse my ableist language, I couldn't find an alternative phrase] without being dependent on bisexuality like that.

My advice to everyone on this issue is to stop this focus on the desire-related differences between bisexuality and pansexuality: none can be defined in any way that can be agreed by everyone. Concurrently, I would also advise people to stop defining other people’s identities for them: they can do it perfectly well themselves. Since the pansexual side of the debate is usually the one doing these things, I urge pansexual people to consider the power relations here (obviously working against bisexuals), to take responsibility for themselves on the personal level, and to call each other out and encourage accountability on the community level.

To the bisexual side I would say… try not to assume that all pansexuals are necessarily biphobic or against us. Memes such as “police all the bisexuals” convey a lot of justified pain and anger, but they’re still in bad taste as they assume exactly that. Yes, many of them are, and yes we have grown used to expecting a lot of bullshit coming from that direction… but then again, many are not, and we might find even more allies within them yet.

Really, my dream in that regard is to have an awesome shiny bi/pan movement to make an awesome shiny bi/pan revolution with.

Solidarity for all.