Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution

by Paula C. Rust and Aamna Qureshi

The subject of bisexuality continues to divide the lesbian and gay community. At pride marches, in films such as Go Fish, at academic conferences, the role and status of bisexuals is hotly contested.
Within lesbian communities, formed to support lesbians in a patriarchal and heterosexist society, bisexual women are often perceived as a threat or as a political weakness. Bisexual women feel that they are regarded with suspicion and distrust,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814774458
• ISBN13: 9780814774458
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

What do lesbians think of bisexuals?

The author identifies as a lesbian. She went to several LGBT pride parades and asked lesbians what they thought about bisexual women. Her results are diverse; some may find them contradictory or inconclusive. Still. this book has the potential to ease tensions between lesbians and bisexual women. It raises the issue of how women-loving women establish communities but also police those communities' boundaries. This is one of the few sociological studies of female bisexuality that I've found; most other books are the topic are autobiographical. Rust does say something problematic about black lesbians that I think she could have omitted from the text. Otherwise, I thought this was a great research topic. I wish someone would explore similar questions among same-gender-loving men.