If the point of my research on the geographies of bisexual men is, in part, to resist fixing a male bisexual identity, to discourage an imag(in)ing of ‘the’ bisexual subject of which my research attempts to speak, then I must conceptualise bisexual men (…) not as a group with unifying commonalities, but rather as a series of individuals who, for the purpose of the study, have come together and form a group. (McLean, 2003, pp. 40–41)
I find this observation inspirational because of the fact that only one participant, at the time of the interviews, was involved in the Dutch organised bisexual community. I do not understand these individuals as forming a bisexual community based upon social, cultural, and/or political practices. I see them as individuals who live their lives outside the organised bisexual community and, quite probably, outside other bisexual communities. I argued elsewhere for a communitarian approach, instead of a more liberal approach to bisexual citizenship, to become visible and claim space in (national) government policies and address specific needs of bisexual individuals (Maliepaard, 2015; see also Monro 2005). The above analysis of the interviews shows, however, that most participants often do not (want to) come out as bisexual, do not (want to) communicate their bisexuality. This does not mean that their bisexual identity is not important to them, but that communicating bisexuality is often just not relevant for the participants. To come out or to disclose one’s sexual identity, attraction, or desire does not serve a purpose.
While bisexual passing is sometimes understood as using one’s privileged position of being able to assume membership of heterosexual and/or gay/lesbian communities, I understand
passing as just not proactively communicating one’s bisexual identity. As shown, people can passively assume membership of gay, lesbian, or heterosexual communities (to name the most well-known communities based on sexual identity) in all kinds of everyday practices due to our tendency to see things in binaries, compulsory monogamy, and mononormativity. Because sexuality and relationships do not arise in most everyday activities, people are understood as straight by default and gay/lesbian when they express same-sex desire (in sayings and/or doings). Theodore Schatzki’s theory of practice helps to understand how organised activities shape people’s sexual identity negotiations; it becomes clear that passing is rarely the outcome of rational choices or a form of harm reduction, but is a manifold of doings and sayings that is constituted in everyday routines. Passing is in fact the outcome of people not finding it relevant, appropriate, or acceptable to discuss sexuality and relationships in particular practices or encounters in these practices. Schatzki’s practice theory makes clear that identifying bisexual practices, and subsequently participating in bisexual practices and expressing bisexuality is a continuous challenge for bisexual people as well as non-bisexual people.
A Schatzkian perspective on the organised bisexual community suggests that people who do not participate in the different practices that constitute this community are unable, or at least less able, to relate to others who are part of the organised bisexual community. This paper provides evidence for this assumption and therefore identifies an important thread to the self-perpetuating nature of the organised bisexual community. Research participants do not feel part of or participate in the Dutch organised bisexual community due to internal binegativity, rejection of boxes (including the bisexual box), understandings of particular practices (i.e. constantly positioning bisexual people as victims and invisible), and having personal support networks. Finally, one could argue that passing works against political and cultural claims for bisexual citizenship, but also against participating in, and the imagining of, a bisexual community. Bisexual passing in everyday routines and organised activities challenges one of the core practices of the organised bisexual community in the Netherlands: creating bivisibility.
Notes
1. I differentiate between coming out and disclosing one’s sexual identity. Disclosing one’s sexual identity refers to spontaneous communications via verbal, non-verbal, and material clues. Coming out refers to a heteronormative practice that is understood by research participant as confessing one’s non-heterosexuality so that heterosexuals can deal with this person’s non-heterosexual attraction, desire and/or identity.
2. Robyn Ochs’ definition has, for instance, a prominent position on the website of the Landelijk Netwerk Biseksualiteit (2017)
5
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the two reviewers and editor of the Journal of Bisexuality for their valuable comments which helped me to further emphasise the key points of this paper. I would like to express my gratitude to Roos Pijpers and Huib Ernste for our discussions on practice theory and conceptualisations of community practices and their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. This paper also benefited from conversations with bisexuals on expectations of, and experiences with, the organised bisexual community in the Netherlands.
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