white_hart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_hart) wrote2019-08-01 07:33 pm
white_hart) wrote2019-08-01 07:33 pm
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Reading: The Bi-ble
I first heard of Edinburgh-based feminist micropress Monstrous Regiment Publishing last autumn, when I listened to a podcast interview with the founders, Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond. They mentioned The Bi-ble, an anthology of essays about bisexuality they'd published, and as I was going through one of my frequent not-queer-enough how-can-I-be-bi-and-ace episodes of soul-searching I felt seen and comforted by the broad definition of bisexuality they used (no, you don't have to have slept with people of more than one gender, or any gender at all; even if you never have sex you can still be bi). When I saw on Twitter a few months ago that they had launched a Kickstarter to reprint the book and publish a second volume, I signed up to back them and received my copies of both books a few weeks ago.
There are 19 short essays in The Bi-ble, covering a diverse range of bisexual experience. There are male, female and non-binary authors; cis and trans authors; black, white and Asian authors; abled and disabled authors; authors who identify as bisexual, pansexual, or simply queer. I really liked the broad perspective this gave me; it makes it very hard to cling to the idea that there is One True Way to be bi. I particularly enjoyed reading Lisa-Marie Ferla's essay about the process that led her to choose to be open about her sexuality despite being in a straight-passing opposite-sex relationship; Sarah Barnard's account of being bi in fanworks fandom; and Mel Reeve's exploration of bisexual representation in LGBTQ+ history, but all of the essays were interesting. If I have one criticism, it's that the diversity of voices in the book doesn't seem to extend to age; as essay after essay referred to the authors using MySpace and MSN messenger to communicate with schoolfriends, and coming out at 15 in the mid-noughties, I began to feel very old from my vantage point of having left school when the internet was barely a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, at a time and in a place where being known to be anything other than straight might well have been literal suicide, not just social suicide. It would have been really nice to hear the voices of some people over the age of 40, and I really hope that the second volume, which I have yet to read, rectifies this.
There are 19 short essays in The Bi-ble, covering a diverse range of bisexual experience. There are male, female and non-binary authors; cis and trans authors; black, white and Asian authors; abled and disabled authors; authors who identify as bisexual, pansexual, or simply queer. I really liked the broad perspective this gave me; it makes it very hard to cling to the idea that there is One True Way to be bi. I particularly enjoyed reading Lisa-Marie Ferla's essay about the process that led her to choose to be open about her sexuality despite being in a straight-passing opposite-sex relationship; Sarah Barnard's account of being bi in fanworks fandom; and Mel Reeve's exploration of bisexual representation in LGBTQ+ history, but all of the essays were interesting. If I have one criticism, it's that the diversity of voices in the book doesn't seem to extend to age; as essay after essay referred to the authors using MySpace and MSN messenger to communicate with schoolfriends, and coming out at 15 in the mid-noughties, I began to feel very old from my vantage point of having left school when the internet was barely a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, at a time and in a place where being known to be anything other than straight might well have been literal suicide, not just social suicide. It would have been really nice to hear the voices of some people over the age of 40, and I really hope that the second volume, which I have yet to read, rectifies this.
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I hear you on the feeling of comfort re: a broad definition. The essays and opinions I encountered from actual bi people and bi organisations have always been overwhelmingly open: they never said that sex was required to know you're bi, or that you couldn't be attracted to trans people. To the contrary. But I encounter a lot of misinformation and malicious stereotyping mostly from non-bisexual groups (including my "favourite," the grasping at straws/splitting hairs to create an artificial divide between bi- and pansexuality that historically and materially never existed) ... and it is exhausting.
ETA: oh great, they require a credit card. *sigh* Apparently I'll have to get one after all.
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Editing now I'm home and not typing on my phone to add that I can't remember if it addresses age either - I think it might do, but I've actually only skimmed it rather than getting round t reading it properly. I think that's partly because I got it and then immediately went into a no-I-can't-be-a-proper-bisexual funk, but also because the structure of thematic chapters with quotes from contributors rather than individual essays made it feel a bit more serious and heavyweight than the individual pieces in the Bi-ble. I should try to get to it soon, though!