Bisexual Erasure

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Title – Bisexual Erasure: Why is popular culture afraid of fluid sexuality? Introduction – Bisexual erasure or bisexual invisibility is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, news media and other primary sources. In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can include denying that bisexuality exists. It is often a manifestation of biphobia, although it does not necessarily involve overt antagonism. According to scholar Kenji Yoshino, there are three main investments that motivate both self-identified homosexuals and heterosexuals to seek to culturally erase bisexuality. These motivations are firstly, sexual orientation stabilization. This relieves people of the anxiety of having …show more content…

The same has occurred even with people who identify themselves as bisexual. Examples include the abovementioned Robyn Ochs, a bisexual activist, who was publicly misidentified as a lesbian on the day of her wedding; Ani Di Franco, whose 1998 marriage to Andrew Gilchrist was portrayed in both gay and mainstream media as renouncing lesbianism even though she had been out as bisexual since the very beginning of her career; Cynthia Nixon, who faced public criticism in 2012 when an awkwardly-worded interview quote about her bisexuality led many to believe she was saying she had chosen to become a lesbian; Madonna, who has called herself bisexual in interviews and has frequently engaged in public acts of same-sex intimacy with other female celebrities, but is typically portrayed by media as a heterosexual woman who dabbles in lesbian imagery for pure shock value, with any possibility that she might be genuinely bisexual getting discounted entirely; and Lady Gaga, who has recently been labelled heterosexual by the media following her engagement to model Taylor Kinney – despite the hermaphrodite rumours that plagued her during the early years of her career – even though she has publicly identified as bisexual, among several …show more content…

The research aims not only to explain the concept of bisexual erasure, but also to understand its underlying causes and the implications of such an attitude on the larger bisexual community. The research specifically analyses the role of media in the portrayal and representation of those celebrities that identify themselves as bisexuals, and aims to bring out instances of misrepresentation or falsification of the same. The research also tries to determine the reasons for the unaccepting stance towards bisexuals by both the straight (heterosexual) and the queer (pertaining to alternate sexualities) factions of society. Ultimately, the research aims to bring greater clarity to the issue so as to help create a better understanding of the

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