Trans - Sexuality : Bisexual Formations and the Limits of Categories

The trajectory of “bisexuality” as an identity and a movement in the Anglo-American world had been closely entangled in the tension-filled intermingling of gender/sexuality movements and cultural re-significations in the turbulent years between the 1960s and the 1990s. As such, bisexual formations afford an opportunity to observe how gender/sexual categories, and struggles against such categorization, could (if only unwittingly in the latter case) produce some complicated effects that undermine the original activist objective to build a world of inclusion and openness. The contemporary history of bisexuality further cautions against a superficial and oversimplified inclusionary politics that may politely acknowledge the rightful existence of marginal subjects while leaving in tact the gender/sexuality assumptions that constitute prejudiced categorization against them in the first place. For the inimical effect of gender/sexual categorization lies not only in its refusal to acknowledge subjects whose gender/sexuality may be intermediate, ambiguous, indeterminate, or unrecognizable. Even when newly emerged subjectivities have forced their way unto the scene with the help of dramatic social change and movement activism, the newly exonerated categories are always already imbricated by a wide array of existing gender/sexuality prejudices which, if not consciously resisted, would continue to poison the alliance. After all, gender categories and identities are not only deeply implicated in the ways in which individuals experience and present themselves, but are likewise deeply engrained in the ways in which individuals’ sexualities are understood and evaluated. Considering the sex-negativity that still surrounds us, the path to gender/sexuality understanding is bound to be lined with numerous ungrounded assumptions if not age-old prejudices. In the present paper, I hope to trace the emergence of the subject position of