Bisexuality: Narrating Sexual Fluidity

Abstract

This chapter attends to bisexuality in places where it is not specifically named, such as in narratives of sexual fluidity over the lifespan. Building on a history of bisexual research addressing sexual desires, practices, and identities alongside biphobia, the chapter proposes a life narrative framework for the sociolinguistic examination of bisexuality that approaches sexual desires as both signs and effects. An analysis of a personal biography describing the process of lesbian self-realization at the end of state socialism in Hungary highlights the impact of compulsory heterosexuality on women’s lives, exposing the effects of gender hierarchy and its associated economics on the interpretation and realization of same-sex desire. However, the analysis also reveals continuities between the previous socialist culture of silence regarding homosexuality and the current capitalist culture of sexual objectification, which upholds heterosexuality by encouraging “performative bisexuality.” The chapter stresses the importance of attending to situated hierarchies of class, gender, and sexuality in the sociolinguistic study of bisexuality.