Bisexuality and multiple-gender-attraction in Britain, 1970 - 1990: a Queer oral history

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Robinson Rhodes, Martha ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0932-8275 (2021). Bisexuality and multiple-gender-attraction in Britain, 1970 - 1990: a Queer oral history. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is the first history of bisexuality in Britain. It argues that gay liberation and lesbian feminism in the 1970s and 1980s played a significant role in creating and reinforcing a binary of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’, through dichotomous political logics that worked to prevent bisexuals and those attracted to multiple genders from developing a coherent identity politics.
The 1970s and 1980s were a very particular historical moment, in which the use of the term ‘bisexual’ to describe sexual attraction was relatively new, and the binary of gay and straight was just becoming socially dominant. This thesis looks at the broader circumstances of the period to understand why and to what effect bisexuality was called into being at this particular point in time. It is therefore not a ‘recovery’ history, seeking to make bisexuality visible in the historical record for its own sake, but a case study that informs us about the late-twentieth-century political, social and cultural moment.
Gay liberationists excluded bisexuals and people attracted to multiple genders because they were associated with ‘straightness’, heterosexual marriage and the family. They were also hyper- sexualised, and thus excluded from lesbian feminism because of a constructed dichotomy between the sexual and the political. This meant that the nascent bisexual communities that developed towards the end of the period were ultimately vague and inaccessible to many. The exclusion of bisexuality and multiple-gender-attraction from radical liberationist groups challenges historical narratives about the ‘liberatory moment’ of the 1970s and the ‘queer’ inclusivity of radical politics.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):