I am often saying that it’s important to do more research on the bisexuals. It’s important to break bisexuals (and ideally bisexuals subcategorized by gender) out into our own demographic groups; it’s important to consider bisexuals as a unique category of people with our own unique experiences, not as an undifferentiated subset of LGB (or, even worse, people who are defined by the gender of our partner). It’s only been through research that truly considers the bisexual person that we’ve been able to discover how dire things are for bisexuals across America: how bisexuals are more likely to live in poverty, to have poor mental and physical health, to be subjected to rape and intimate partner violence, and so on and so forth. That research is crucial, and we should all be asking for more of it.
However.
There’s another type of bisexual research that I kind of loathe. Let’s call it the “Why Are People Bi?” category of research. You’d think that this wouldn’t still be a going concern, not after decades of research into “Why Are People Gay?” resulted in a big shrug and revelation that, well, it’s actually lots of reasons, but apparently it still is. Hence this article over at the academic publication The Conversation that suggests that we can figure out why women are more likely to identify as bi than men are by… hooking up censors to ladies’ vulvas and showing them porn. More or less. Just typing out that sentence made me tired.
It’s not that I’m against genital arousal research, not exactly — I think there are useful things to be learned by examining the genitals in various states of arousal, by trying to figure out what is (and isn’t) going on during orgasm. But there’s a whole sector of it that just seems like it is destined for bad ends; particularly when it attempts to use genital arousal data to override what people think and feel about themselves and their identities. Notably, one of the studies referenced in that Conversation piece was led by a guy who said that his research proved that there were no straight women — and trust me, much as it breaks my heart to have to admit this, some women do be straight.
Another theory floated in that Conversation piece is that women are more likely to be bi because we’re just more empathetic, and while I find that slightly less offensive than hooking up censors to women’s hoohas to determine if they’re bisexuals or just liars, I have to say it just doesn’t sit well with me either. Because, seriously: who gives a shit why anyone is bi? People are bi, just like they’re gay and straight, and that really is all anyone needs to know. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it*, right?
(Also, why does no one ever do any research into why people are straight? I would like to know why so many people are straight, seems fucking weird if you ask me.)
At its heart, this research is just one more attempt to shove the queers into a box, to make sense of our existence by finding some scientific root. But not only are we almost definitely inexplicable (again, decades of research found absolutely no “gay gene,” just a number of potential factors that could enhance the likelihood of queerness), the very attempt to explain us is an attempt to ignore our actual needs, to prioritize heterosexual comfortability over bi people’s basic rights and actual lives. And to that I say, well, no thank you.
Bi people are here, we’ve always been here, and maybe that confuses people. But genital proddings and DNA swabs and analyses of lady empathy isn’t going to offer any clarity. Frankly, more people should just get comfortable with being confused.
* Shout out to anyone else who watched The Simpsons as a kid and automatically finishes that sentence with “we don’t want anymore bears”
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😂😂😂 “Also, why does no one ever do any research into why people are straight? I would like to know why so many people are straight, seems fucking weird if you ask me.”
So true 😀