Re-Visioning bisexuality: rhizomatic cartographies of sex, gender and sexuality

This thesis is a sociological study of bisexuality and gender in Australian society. A theoretical frame informed by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari is deployed to analyse data from 47 interviews. It finds that the diversity of participants’ bisexual lives challenge conventional dichotomous understandings of heterosexual/homosexual, man/woman and masculine/feminine.

Erasure, exclusion by inclusion, and the absence of intersectionality: introducing bisexuality in education

Even though many schools and educational systems, from elementary to tertiary, state that they endorse antihomophobic policies, pedagogies, and programs, there appears to be an absence of education about, and affirmation of, bisexuality, and minimal specific attention to bi-phobia in curriculum, policy, and student welfare. Bisexuality continues to fall into the gap between the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality across all educational sectors. These absences and erasures leave bisexual students, family members, and educators feeling silenced and invisibilized within school communities. Indeed, these absences and erasures have been considered a major factor in bisexual young people, family members, and educators in school communities experiencing worse mental, emotional, sexual, and social health than their homosexual or heterosexual counterparts. Also of interest is the persistence of bisexual erasure in adult-developed resources and programs, even though there is increasing evidence of sexual identities and practices in youth subcultures that are adopting shifting discursive and societal constructs of sexuality, characterized by notions of fluidity, ambisexuality, and a reluctance to label their sexuality according to the heterosexual/homosexual binary. The articles in this issue profoundly engage with and problematize the three impediments to education systems when those systems engage with sexual diversity instead of sexual duality, namely, erasure, exclusion by inclusion into gay and lesbian categories, and the absence of intersectionality (wherein other facets of identity and experience that interweave with sexuality are not taken into account, such as class, gender, Indigeneity/Aboriginality, ethnicity, geographical location, and religion). 

Bisexuality in education: erasure, exclusion and the absence of intersectionality

Although many schools and educational systems, from elementary to tertiary level, state that they endorse anti-homophobic policies, pedagogies and programs, there appears to be an absence of education about, and affirmation of, bisexuality and minimal specific attention paid to bi-phobia. Bisexuality appears to be falling into the gap between the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality that informs anti-homophobic policies, programs, and practices in schools initiatives such as health education, sexuality education, and student welfare. These erasures and exclusions leave bisexual students, family members and educators feeling silenced and invisibilized within school communities. Also absent is attention to intersectionality, or how indigeneity, gender, class, ethnicity, rurality and age interweave with bisexuality. Indeed, as much research has shown, erasure, exclusion, and the absence of intersectionality have been considered major factors in bisexual young people, family members and educators in school communities experiencing worse mental, emotional, sexual and social health than their homosexual or heterosexual counterparts.This book is the first of its kind, providing an international collection of empirical research, theory and critical analysis of existing educational resources relating to bisexuality in education. Each chapter addresses three significant issues in relation to bisexuality and schooling: erasure, exclusion, and the absence of intersectionality. From indigenous to rural schools, from tertiary campuses to elementary schools, from films to picture books as curriculum resources, from educational theory to the health and wellbeing of bisexual students, this book's contributors share their experiences, expertise and ongoing questions.

[Bisexuality and AIDS. Implications for heterosexual HIV infections in women]

One of the possible pathways into heterosexual population is the transfer of HIV-virus from bisexual men to their female partners. Therefore sexual behaviour of HIV-positive and -negative bisexual men (n = 31) before and after Aids-disease was analysed. Prior to the Aids-epidemic promiscuous behavior towards male partners (about one female partner per year versus 10 male partners per year). Relatively common contacts to woman occurred within steady relationships. After contact with HIV-test and personal counselling sexual practice became significantly different. The number of female and male contacts was markedly reduced, especially female chance acquaintances were avoided; safer sex was preferred and readiness to inform female partners about bisexuality was increased. This study suggests that reduction of risk for HIV-infection of female partners by homosexual men can be achieved by means of a HIV-test and personal counselling, a possibility that should be considered in preventive concepts.

Bisexuality and family: narratives of silence, solace, and strength

This article examines the constellation of factors that come to bear in the family domain for bisexually desiring, behaving, or identifying individuals. Specifically, it interrogates the prevailing conditions that hinder or encourage disclosure of bisexuality and the consequences of such action. It argues that the family is uniquely situated at the interface of private and public domains of sociality, and, thus, negotiation of sexuality is herein constructed through the articulation of the "the family closet." Analysis draws on doctoral research that investigated the sociological nexus of sex, gender, and bisexuality in an Australian sample. Data collected via 47 in-depth interviews comprised a sex-/gender-diverse cohort including men and women, as well as transgender, cross-dressing, genderqueer, and intersex individuals. From this diversity of narratives the family environ emerged as a primary locus of personal and social challenge. Case studies taken from the data demonstrate how disclosure of bisexuality to family of origin was a selective process predicated by a range of sociocultural considerations such as religion, geographical location, and dominant discourses of gender and sexuality. These narratives foreground a spectrum of family responses spanning total estrangement, silence and/or denial, tentative acknowledgement, or complete acceptance and support. Whether encountered as sites of negative resistance or positive acceptance, respondents' stories illuminate the capacity to forge strategies of coping, resilience, and empowerment. A theoretical framework informed by the nomadic philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is deployed in order to explain these findings.

Erasure, exclusion by inclusion, and the absence of intersectionality: introducing bisexuality in education

This chapter introduces and problematizes the three impediments to sexual diversity and bisexuality in education, namely, erasure, exclusion by inclusion into gay and lesbian categories, and the absence of intersectionality (wherein other facets of identity and experience that interweave with sexuality are not taken into account, such as class, gender, Indigeneity/Aboriginality, ethnicity, geographical location, and religion). It introduces each chapter as well as reflecting on where further research is needed.

A emoção em rede: as éticas e estéticas Emo

O presente trabalho consiste em analisar as características mais marcantes da tribo urbana Emo, cuja origem se encontra no estilo musical emocore. Trata-se de um estudo que pontua basicamente a música, sexualidade, moda e sentimentalidades no imaginário emo, apresentadas como elementos que se configuram em élans comunitários da tribo. Dentro da perspectiva da Pós-modernidade, a pesquisa não objetiva encontrar razões ou justificativas para o comportamento dos jovens da tribo, apenas ponderar algumas temáticas sob a ótica do imaginário, tribalismo urbano e conceitos de corpo dentro do viés já explorado em pesquisas de Comunicação Social. Tendo a rede social Facebook como principal terreno para realização da netnografia, foram analisadas publicações em perfis e fan pages desmistificando a tribo e mostrando as diversas facetas destes jovens. Ao abordar temas polêmicos como bissexualidade, androginia, suicídio e automutilação, o estudo mostra como os emos se colocam socialmente dentre suas lógicas subversivas e contraditórias elucidando outras formas de ver o mundo. Os conceitos de tribalismo urbano de Maffesoli (1987) guiaram os passos deste estudo que se valeu da ótica deste e de outros autores que tratam questões da Pós-modernidade

Counterstories: who counts as lesbian?

Coming out midlife is a profound and life‐changing experience—it is an experience of self‐shattering that entails the destabilisation of identity, and of family relationships. Entailing a displacement from social insider to outsider, it is a difficult, but also exhilarating, journey of self, and sexual, discovery. This thesis is an examination of the experiences of nine women who undertook that journey. This dissertation is very much a search for understanding—for understanding how one can be lesbian, and how one can not have known, following a lifetime of heterosexual identification—as well as a search for why those questions arise in the first place. I argue that the experience of coming out midlife exposes the fundamental ambiguity of sexuality; and has a significance that ranges beyond the particularity of the participants’ experiences and speaks to the limitations of the hegemonic sexual paradigm itself. Using the theoretical lens of three diverse conceptual approaches—the dynamic systems theory of sexual fluidity; liminality; and narrative identity—to illuminate their transition, I argue that the event of coming out midlife should be viewed not merely as an atypical experience, but rather we should ask what such events can tell us about women’s sexuality in particular, and the sexual paradigm more generally. I argue that women who come out midlife challenge those dominant discourses of sexuality that would entail that women who come out midlife were either in denial of their “true” sexuality throughout their adult lives; or that they are not really lesbian now. The experiences of the women I interviewed demonstrate the inadequacy of the sexual paradigm as a framework within which to understand and research the complexity of human sexuality; they also challenge hegemonic understandings of sexuality as innate and immutable. In this thesis, I explore that challenge.

We're the x-files : bisexual students 'messing up tidy sex files'

Recent studies are pointing to higher rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns among bisexual-identifying young people in Australia as compared to homosexual and heterosexual young people (Jorm et aI., 2002). International research has found that bisexually active adolescent males report especially high levels of AIDS risk behaviour (Goodenow et aI., 2002). There appears to be a strong link between these findings and the under-representation and mis-representation of bisexuality in Australian school curricula, cultures and communities (McLean, 2001, 2003a, forthcoming 2004; Owens, 1998; Pallotta-Chiarolli, in preparation 2005) .

Outside belonging : multi-sexual relationships as border existence

This article draws from an ongoing Australian research project with over 60 culturally and sexually diverse women in monogamous, open, and polyamorous relationships with bisexual-identifying and/or bisexualbehaving men. Positioned within a queer feminist deconstructive theoretical framework, this research provides insights into the border existences of these women and their partners, and their negotiations of “new rules” and boundaries in order to construct healthy relationships. What are the various ways that HIV/AIDS impacts women in relationships with bisexual men? How do they deal with issues such as social, community, workplace and familial ostracism? Probyn's term, “outside belonging” (1996: 9) is applicable to the border existences of thesewomen and their bisexual male partners. Their multi-sexual relationships are both “outside” gendernormative and heteronormative constructs of marital and defacto relationships and yet “belonging,” for the partnersmay “pass” as a “normal” couple. They are also “outside” the dominant constructs of Australian gay identity and community while simultaneously “belonging” due to their partners', and sometimes their own, same-sex attractions and relationships.

On the borders of sexuality research: young people who have sex with both males and females

As D' Augelli and Grossman point out, there is an underrepresentation in LGB research of "youth who have had sexual experiences with both males and females." Indeed, Heath (2005) refers to the "silent B" in much GLBT research. And, Owens (1998, p. 55) discusses how heterosexism "formalizes a societal dichotomy of heterosexuality versus homosexuality with little room for bisexuals" in educational research. Most of the information on bisexuality has been obtained from studies with adult samples, and it is "unclear to what extent a separate bisexual cultural identity is consolidated during adolescence" (Ryan & Rivers, 2003, p.105). As Bryan, a 17-year-old bisexual young man in my research, declared: "It's simple bullshit logic! They don't have evidence of bi kids in schools because they don't want to find it and so don't write their research looking for it."

You're too queer for the straights and now too queer for the gays!

In this piece, the author traces her history and objectives as an academic, author and activist with and in gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer/questioning (GLBTIQ) issues and communities in Australia, her border zone positioning in relation to internal debates and exclusions between gay/lesbian and bisexual rights and subcommunities and the various responses to her work on bisexuality from research participants, other GLBTIQ academics and activists. The author also discusses the pivotal role the Journal of Bisexuality has played in her development.

A Foucauldian and Deleuzian reading of autopoietic bisexual lives

This paper will locate the convergence of Foucault’s and ’Deleuze’s critico-political itinerary on the ethics of autopoiesis. It will re-evaluate the aims and objectives of Foucault’s ‘ethical turn’ in the later volumes of the history of sexuality project alongside Deleuzian ideas about the processes of becoming-other. Then, using primary research from a sociological study on bisexual lives, the paper will demonstrate the consonances of their respective theoretical insights about the potential of erotic ‘pleasure’ and ‘desire’ as a force of resistance. The aim of the analysis is twofold: firstly, to set the groundwork for further dialogical exchange between Deleuzian and Foucauldian thinking; and secondly, to highlight a lacuna in queer scholarship on bisexuality.