Alternative Families, Alternative Lives: Married WomenDoingBisexuality

Abstract

Married bisexual women shake up existing socially recognizable family, gender, and sexuality orders prescribed by Western society simply by being out, bisexual, and married. Empirical research on and theoretical arguments about bisexuality in the family have been rare. A recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (2010) notes that ". . . a number of core questions [about bisexuality in the family] remain unanswered" (Biblarz & Savci, 2010, p. 490) . It is my intention to argue in favor of a new paradigm that sees relationships through a bisexual lens (rather than a hetero-/homosexual lens), allowing for simultaneous partners of different genders (polyamory) as a legitimate and lawful practice andthe creation of families through such practices to be viewed as no less necessary than the families of their monosexual peers. (In)visibility of this high-stakes way of doing bisexuality informs the ways my respondents do family.

Moving out of the Shadows: Accomplishing Bisexual Motherhood

“…In their call to expand research on bisexual parenting, Ross and Dobinson (2013) conducted a systematic literature review to find only seven papers reporting any considerations specific to bisexual parents. Specific bisexual challenges elucidated included: heterosexual passing (identified in various qualitative studies and first person accounts in the U.S. ACCOMPLISHING BISEXUAL MOTHERHOOD 9 (Arden, 1996) and Australia (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2010 a&b)); feelings of invisibility (seen in a Canadian survey and small interview study of Canadian bisexual women in pregnancy and early motherhood Ross, Siegel, Dobinson, Epstein, & Steele, 2012); or studies detailing double discrimination experienced from both heterosexual and lesbian/gay social worlds (a qualitative study of bisexual women married to men in the U.S. (Moss, 2012) and a questionnaire survey and group interview study of attendees at the U.K. Bisexual Conference (Barker, Bowes-Catton, Iantaffi, Cassidy, & Brewer, 2008)). Watson (2014) interviewed a sex and gender diverse group of 47 Australians about their gender and sexual self-identification and their experiences related to these self-identifications.…”

No One Expects a Transgender Jew: Religious, Sexual and Gendered Intersections in the Evaluation of Religious and Nonreligious Others

“…In the case of sexual and gender minorities, being nonreligious actually may reduce the ramifications of sexual and gender nonconformity because such an endeavor erases conflicts between religious assumptions and marginalized selfhood. Stated another way, people may easily make sense of an agnostic, bisexual, genderqueer person by relying on the combination of normative assumptions suggesting (1) agnostics are incompatible with American norms (Edgell et al 2006), (2) bisexuals are incompatible with religion (Barton 2012; though welcomed in some religious cases, see Harper 2010) and American mononormativity (see Moss 2012), and (3) gender variant people are incompatible with religion (see and American cisnormativity (Westbrook & Schilt 2014). The congruency of these assumptions in such a case may allow people to ignore or easily dismiss any claims by such people, but may also protect such people from explicit religious conflicts with others since they are -on average -not expected to be religious in the first place (see also Sumerau 2014 for LGBT Christians' experiences constantly having to explain their existence to other Americans).…”

Foreclosing Fluidity at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Normativities

“…This is because gender fluid people are more likely to also be sexually fluid (Hemmings ), and because systematic patterns of hetero‐ and homonormativity rely heavily upon both cisnormative assumptions about the fixity of gender, and mononormative assumptions that desires are always informed by binary conceptions of others' gender as only man or woman (Yoshino ). Before lesbian/gay life became more normalized, bi+ people faced similar outcomes to gays and lesbians, but today, for example, sexually fluid people (throughout the bi+ and queer spectrums of identities [Eisner ]) currently lag far behind lesbian/gay people in health (Jeffries ), income and wealth (Badgett, Durso, and Schneebaum ), scientific and media representation (Monro, Hines, and Osborne ), social acceptance (Cragun and Sumerau ), and familial and relationship acceptance (Moss ). Further, sexually fluid people are more likely to experience violence and mental health issues (Worthen ) and less likely to be out of the closet (Scherrer, Kazyak, and Schmitz ).…”