Can bisexuality be a form of liberation? – Maya Mazourette

Will bisexuality take over the world? I admit it: we’re not there yet. But for the past few years this sexual orientation is slowly but inexplicably progressing. Or at least that’s what the latest survey on sexuality by the French polling institute CSA, published in 2021, showed: if 3 percent of French people declared themselves gay or lesbian, now 4 percent are bisexual and 2 percent pansexual ( pansexual) reject the “binary” character of the term “bisexual” and are attracted to women, men, transmen, and non-binary people).

But beware: To those who identify as bisexual or pansexual, we must add those who are bisexual in practice: 12 percent of French people have been in bed with at least one person of the same sex.

And this “bisexual wave” isn’t limited to France. In Britain too, the number of bisexuals has exceeded the number of homosexuals. But interestingly, the incidence is growing rapidly and steadily across channels: It affects 2 percent of baby boomers, 4 percent of Generation X, 7 percent of millennials, and 10 percent of Generation Z (10 percent). To which, according to an Ipsos survey in October 2022, 4 percent pansexuals will be added).

To understand this progress in bisexuality, it is helpful to look at the composition of the sample. In fact, young bisexuals are more often female. In 2018, researcher Mathieu Trachmann counted 0.6 percent of bisexual men in France, compared to 0.9 percent of women (INED). In Germany, in 2020, gay men were twice as likely as bisexuals, but bisexual women were twice as likely as lesbians.

For decades, science has observed greater sexual fluidity of women. Some consider this a sexual characteristic, which is relevant to neuroscience. Others like to point out that it is a more socially accepted orientation in women than in men, when this is clearly not appreciated.

The bisexual woman is a real erotic fetish, a symbol of availability, adventure and, with a little luck, great threesome encounters. We navigate the imagery of the “lesbian harem”, exploited to varying degrees of opportunism by a range of stars including Madonna and Katy Perry. In women’s lives, everything encourages them to “try with women”: the great intimacy of female friendship, the education from childhood to “pamper” each other, a more pronounced taste for seduction, and of course From, (relative) absence of consequences. In 2016, only 3 percent of French women defined themselves as bisexual. But 10 percent had slept with a woman and 18 percent said they had experienced same-sex attraction!

This universe is enveloped in glamor faces, in male territory, much less explicit bisexuality. In fact, men attract both the stigma associated with bisexual homosexuality and the stigma associated with indecision (“a real man chooses which side to take”). In the media world, the difference is clear: the invisibility of bisexual men is matched by the rise of bisexual women. latest example with essay up to september live fluidly by Mathilde Ramadier (Éditions du Faubourg). The author sees in bisexuality a form of liberation, a way of not being at the mercy of men anymore, without abandoning them: “Bisexual women are neither straight nor lesbian nor half and half. They simply allow themselves to drop the dichotomy, the binary logic. It is not division, but multiplication.”

Multiplication that involves a greater number of potential partners, but also types of attachment. 86 percent of lesbian women achieve orgasm with every sexual act, compared to 65 percent of heterosexuals. It’s hard to attribute such a difference to an “innate understanding” among women, if you take a look at the podium of the most pleasurable practices: According to the latest survey on female pleasure from Indiana University, the two most predictive factors of orgasm are the use of sex toys and Paan: Two Practices That Exclude Sex (Sex and Marital Therapy, Sept. 2022).

Of course, all is not well within the realm of bisexuality. Over the past ten years, violence caused by biphobia has increased significantly (+8 percent of verbal attacks and +6 percent of physical attacks in 2019, according to the Jean-Jaures Observatory). Even more worrying: In the United States, bisexual women are raped far more often than other women, although this is not the case in Europe.

forced monosexuality
Added to this violence are a range of paternalistic arguments: difficulties in sexual orientation are said to be typical of youth, a “simple phase” that “struggles to find themselves” or wants to feel aggressive. This process of delegitimization has a name: it is the imposition of monosexuality, that is, the obligation to choose between heterosexuality and homosexuality. This idea of ​​”choice of sides” is one of the weapons of what we call biphobia.

But bisexuality, despite discrimination, continues to gain ground, driven by a long political wave that goes far beyond the simple question of sexual orientation. Many young people (and many not so young) are just tired of the binary concept that puts men on one side and women on the other, gay on the one hand and straight on the other, with no possibility of building bridges. Bisexuality also calls into question the traditional structure of the couple, which is increasingly openly disputed, especially if heterosexual (and stuck in the routine of penetration-coitus-reproduction).

We can admit it: The idea of ​​choosing one person, just one, with whom to build an emotional, domestic, sexual, and exclusive partnership seems increasingly antiquated. And choosing her on the basis of gender, thereby depriving yourself of half the beautiful love stories and desire…let’s go back to the dinosaur era! But beware: Not so ambivalent “innovation” will necessarily take us into the future. According to Freud, we are all born with a psychic bisexuality: what if the hermaphrodite revolution was actually a return to our origins, if not to our true nature?

(Translation by Matteo Colombo)