Hypatia, Inc.

Queer Ethics; Or, The Challenge of Bisexuality to Lesbian Ethics Author(s): Elisabeth D. Dumer Source: Hypatia, Vol. 7, No. 4, Lesbian Philosophy (Autumn, 1992), pp. 91-105 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810080 .

or,The Challengeof QueerEthics; Ethics to Lesbian Bisexuality

D. DAUMER ELISABETH

and socialpositionbetweentwo opposed sexual Due to its problematic political and lesbian theorists both has been as cultures, bisexuality often byfeminist ignored The essayarguesthatbisexuality, a conceptand a realmof experiences. precisely and sexed identities,is notionsof fixed gendered becauseit transgresses bipolar oureffortto devisean andfeminist theorists, enhancing by lesbian usefully explored and to develop to alterity. ethicsof difference waysof responding nonoppressive

In her recent book LesbianEthics:TowardNew Value, Sarah Hoagland affirmsthat lesbian existence, because it "challengesthe social construction of consciousness: "the concepof reality," holds a promisefora transformation of in material female not defined terms of an other" tual, possibility agency with Concerned this nourishing promise,Hoaglandoffers (Hoagland1988,6). a wealth of strategiesfor creatingvalues that wouldenhance lesbiancapacity to separate from heterosexualism-"a way of living," in Hoagland'swords, "that normalizes the dominance of one person and the subordinationof another"(7)-and to respondto differencesamong lesbiansin ways that do not replicate forms of domination but enable moral agency and authentic choice. That the experiencesand views of bisexualwomen are absent froma book on lesbian ethics might surpriseonly a few of its readers.In this essay, however,I shall proposethat an explorationof bisexuality-as an experience as much as a moral, social, and epistemologicalpoint of view-contributes significantlyto feministand lesbiantheorizing,and especiallyto the endeavor, so admirablyadvanced in Hoagland'swork, of devising alternative, nonoppressivewaysof respondingto alterity. Beginningwith a poetic renditionof the experiencesand fitful reflections of a fictitiouswomannamedCloe, I will, in thlesecondpartof the essay,explore the theoretical implicationsand transformative promiseof Cloe's ostensibly missingor indeterminatesexualidentityfora feministantihomophobicundervol. 7, no. 4 (Fall1992) byElisabeth D. Daumer Hypatia

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standingof sexualityand gender.'Finally,I will show how a seriousexamination ofbisexualitydrawsout the implicationsof recent workon lesbianethics, most fully developed in Hoagland'sbook, for a "queer ethics": an ethics dedicatedto creatingvalues that wouldnourishthe queerin all of us and help us-whether we are male or female, gay- or lesbian-identified,bisexual, heterosexual,or undecided-separate fromstraightness or, as Hoaglandterms it, heterosexualism.I do not anticipate a grandconclusion to the medley of voices and perspectivesthat I am here assembling. But I do hope to contribute to the burgeoningdialogueon what is still a strangelyrepressedand uncomfortable subject-the instability and fracturedness of our gendered, sexed, social and political selves-by showing its centralityto our attempt at developing an ethics of difference.2 I. We are increasinglyaware that sexuality is about flux and change, that what we call "sexual"is as much a product of languageand cultureas of nature.But we earnestlystriveto fix it, stabilizeit, saywho we areby telling of oursex-and the lead in this conscious articulationof sense of self has been taken by those radicallydisqualified forit by the sexualtradition.(Weeks 1985, 186) In an age of constructed sexualities a new type of constructed being is claiming our attention. She identifies as female. Let us call her, like earlier heroines of feminist history,Cloe. Neither straightnor gay, Cloe is also not bisexual,at least not in the traditional,still current,sense of the word-pregenderized,polymorphously perverse,or simply sexually undecided, uncomand hence Cloe can makeup her mind;but she would mitted, untrustworthy. be so much better at explaining how indeed she is making up her mind, if others-her lesbian friends worried about her relapse into an inevitably heterosexistheterosexualism, her straightfriendsenchanted or disquietedby her exoticism-if manyof these well-meaningfriendswouldn'ttryto makeup her mind for her. To be historicallyexact, Cloe owes much of her existence to the valiant strugglesof lesbian feminists who establishedoases of political and sexual sisterhood,which despite certain censorioustendencies allowed women like Cloe to move away from straightness,to explore their sexuality,their emotional, sexual attractionto other women in a welcoming environment-an environment quite different from that which older lesbians had faced and many other lesbians are still strugglingwith. Thus Cloe is deeply gratefulto these women who weatheredhomophobicostracismand enabled their youn-

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joyfully,often playfully, ger-i.e., newer-sisters to explore their "deviancy" safe fromthe twin spectersof internalizedguilt and externalostracism. Of course,these differencesin experienceinvariablyproducedtension and at times division. While Cloe no longer feels straight (i.e., heterosexual), indeed is passionatelynonstraight,she also does not, if the truth be told, feel that she ever came out of the closet. There had been for her no closet to begin with. Rather,her experienceof being closeted coincided with her coming out as a lesbianor,to be moreaccurate,with her firstfemalelover,whose handshe darednot hold in public, whose presence she needed to explain-not once, but again and again-to friends,family,colleagues,who, until then, had had no reasonto assumeshe was not heterosexual,like them. Like other women coming to feminismin the 1970s and 1980s, Cloe fell in love with women not out of a deep-seatedsense of sexual orientation but in the courseof political bondingand passionateintellectualconversations.Nor wasit sexualor social aversionto men that droveher to women,but something positive-enchantment and delight with the companyof people who excited her intellectually,emotionally,then sexually,who didnot expect, like men she had known, nonreciprocalaccess to her at all times. Over the months and being with women;and it seemed to her a small, years,Cloe simplypreferred and natural,step from intellectualpassionto sexual intimacy. Nevertheless, when she took that step she was deeply startled by the differenceit made. Nothing had prepared her for the sweetnessof a woman's the of a woman's breast. Nor could she have describedhow mouth, mystery she changed. Fallingfromher old sense of self, she was reborninto a new way of experiencingher body,her sexuality,her femininity.She could not even say that her new way of being in the worldwas truer. On the contrary, she walked aboutlike a stranger, to her a familiarworld, newly alive to what had appeared a familiarbody, a familiarself. But most of all, she felt enlarged,filled with wonder at her ability to give abundantlyand to receive joyfully.And to her mother,who could not help observingthe floweringof confidence and wellCloe said that now, for the firsttime in her life, she felt being in her daughter, she had a choice-a choice about whom to love, a choice in creating and re-creatingher sexuality. Cloe soon found out, however, that choosing to love a particularwoman was not, for her, the same as affirming a specificsexual identity.Not that she didn'ttryto become a lesbian.She did. But aftera briefand enthusiasticeffort at makingherself into a real sister,when Cloe lovingly invested herselfwith all the paraphernalia of lesbian feminism and fell in and out of love with a small-boneddark-haired woman, afterwhat should perhapsbe describedas a second adolescence, Cloe began to wonder:Could it be possible to relate to men and women, or the creaturesansweringto these names, not as men and women, as straight or gay, but-and here she would whisper to herself

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Of course,she was wise and self-resistingenough embarrassedly-as humans? not to voice such deluded,liberalgibberish. Nevertheless,she could not help dreaming.She would see herselfat a table he a lesbian with a beloved-was she male,he female,she a celibateandrogyne, mother?-with whom, over glasses of deep red wine, she could engage in She wasdreaming beautiful,deliciouslydouble-or triple-voicedconversations. one (althoughthis not of a genderless,sexlesscreature,nor of an androgynous a was closer to her vision), but of somebodywith whom she was not primarily or a a heterosexual. of woman, lesbian, misrecognized Navigating questions not of instabilityor indecidability identityin a postmodernage, Cloe dreamed so much as of an intimacy not regulatedthrough positionings in ostensibly stable sexual identities. Cloe longed for people with whom she could create herselfanew, again and again, and for whom she could do the same. What delusions,we might say.Poor Cloe! After a briefrelapsewith a man, closely monitored by her lesbian sisters,the question of her sexual identity became pressinglyimminent. She refused,passionately,to returnto straightness, but neither could she in good conscience call herselfa dyke. So why not say she was bisexual, as some sympatheticfriendshad tentatively suggested? YetsomehowCloe wasn'thappywith that label, even if in termsof her sexual and emotional experience it seemed closest to the truth. After all, she had loved men in her life and she had loved women, and she could not imagine That gave her ceasing to love either. But to assumethe label of bisexuality? A of her host little brief as well as own comments, remarks, pause. assumptions made this a less than savory,and hardlypolitical, identity:it seemed one was bisexualby default,for lack of commitmentand the ability to make up one's mind. True,a male friend-now homosexual,formerlymarried,and in both that bisexualshave the best of both worlds. happy-had remarked apparently A lesbian friend disagreed. To her it seemed a bisexualhad the worstof both worlds:who, she asked,wouldyourfriendsbe? And Cloe agreedwith her.Foreven if her heterosexualor hetero-identified friendstended to view bisexualitywith tolerant, sometimes condescending, curiosity,the lesbian community-as community-expressed above all suspicion, even contempt, for women "whowent back to men,"women who were on the fence. The threatof AIDS has only exacerbated suchsuspicion, "ac-dc," lesbians to view bisexual women as leading many potential AIDS-carriers. lesbian Inherently contaminated, they endanger purity.Moreover,because such women might refuseto assumeeither a clearly lesbian or heterosexual identity, they carry the taint of promiscuity,as if they were floundering, and opportunistically, back and forth between people of either promiscuously heterosexual gender-exploiting privilege on the one hand, while savoring, the of lesbian sisterhood on the other.And while Cloe was unrightfully, honey carefulnot to minimize the social ostracismenduredby gays, she could not help but feel that those who dared to call themselves bisexual were also

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subjectedto a sort of ostracism,not only by the largersociety but by lesbians as well. II. It is a ratheramazingfact that, of the very many dimensions along which the genital activity of one personcan be differentiatedfromthat of another(dimensionsthat includepreference for certain acts, certain zones or sensations, certain physical types, a certain frequency,certain symbolic investments, certain relationsof ageorpower,a certainspecies,a certainnumber of participants, etc. etc. etc.), preciselyone, the genderof object choice, emergedfromthe turnof the century,andhas remained, as the dimension denoted by the now ubiquitouscategory of "sexualorientation."(Sedgwick1990, 8) Prompted by my readingof Sedgwick's of theCloset,fromwhich Epistemology the above quotation is taken, I recently arguedduringa dinner with friends that we ought to problematize more stringentlythe relationsbetween sexual sexual acts, identity, politics, and gender. Inspiredby Sedgwick'sdazzling of description the infinite multitude of ways in which sexuality could be definedwerewe not as exclusivelyfixatedon rivetingit to the genderof whom we are attractedto or sexualwith, I impersonated Cloe and wonderedif it was for woman a and a man to in a lesbian possible engage relationship.After all, if, as some lesbian theoristslike MoniqueWittig have suggested,a lesbian is "outside the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically"(Wittig 1981, 53), why,then, could it not be possiblefor a man to resisthis designatedgender (includingthe relationsof dominationembodied within it) and assumea lesbian identity?3 On a theoretical level, at least, Sedgwick'sobservationsadd a twist to Wittig's construction of lesbian that gives rise to exciting-or disturbing-questions and possibilities:How would we define the relationshipbetween a female lesbian and a gay man, who, like a characterin CarylChurchill's CloudNine wantsto be a lesbian?Wouldtheir relationshipbe heterosexual,even though neither partnerviews her/himself as straight? Could such a union not be called "lesbian" in the utopianfeminist sense of the term?Both partners, afterall, insist on being not a woman and not a man; and for both, gender identificationis secondaryto, or entirely determined by, their commitment to establishing a relationship that resists the dominationof heterosexuallygenderedpositions. One of myfriendsimmediately pinpointedwhatwasto her mostproblematic aboutthis proposition.It would,she said,effaceher own identity as a lesbian, and, by stretchingthe termbeyondany intelligible,usefulboundaries, perpet-

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uate lesbian invisibility in new and dangerousways. She also asked, disbelievingly,who-i.e., what woman,what man-would want to define their relationship in this manner, and how would the concept of heterosexual privilegefit into this scheme?Since these areseriouscharges,I'dlike to respond to them in some detail. Let us startwith the second. In light of Cloe's desultoryattempt to fashion for herself a sexual identity from the startlingdearth of currentlyavailable that she would think options (hetero, homo, or bi), we ought not be surprised as as a lesbian between a woman and a up something improbable relationship man. Since she herselffeels no longerstraight,she wonders,of course,how to name her current relationship to a man. Is it heterosexual just because it impliescertainsexualpractices-namely, penetration-that can or cannot be Is it heterosexualbecauseclearlyshe is a woman, at least anatomperformed? he a man?Is it heterosexualbecauseit conformsto the dominant and ically, idea of a "normal" relationship-and thus also reapsthe benefitsof heterosexualprivilege-despite the fact that the individualmembersin this relationship might view themselvesas "queer"? Cloe is not obliviousto the sociopoliticalconnotationsof engagingin what to most wouldlook like a heterosexualrelationship.Nor is she unawareof the social endorsementand a certain privilegesconferredupon this relationship: and financial relative benefits; visibility;legal safetyfromhomophobia(she is froma womanwho is lesbian-idenalso affectedby homophobia,if differently tified and lives in a relationship with another woman).4 Cloe would not, moreover,seriouslyinsist on describingeither herself or her relationshipas lesbian. Yet her half-mischievousproposalto do so reflects her increasingly of the manypossiblesexual and genderedselves, the many dizzyingawareness and fantasiesand relationships-whether sexual, erotic, attractions, passions affectionalor intellectual-that remainfrustratingly silenced,unspokenin the discoursesof sexualitycurrentlyavailableto us. Her own sense of the fissures and contradictions (between sexual and political identities, political and personal,emotional commitments,etc.) that attend her way of being in the world has produced in her a hunger for language differentiatedenough to capture the wealth of contradictionsthat pervadesthe efforts of individual men and women to subvertor modifydominantconstructionsof genderand sexuality. I have so farresistedcalling Cloe "bisexual" becauseit seemsto me that the term "bisexuality," rather than broadeningthe spectrumof available sexual of two basic and diametriidentifications,holds in place a binaryframework to a recent anthologyon this cally opposedsexual orientations.Contributors that bisexuality, when madevisible,disrupts Name,affirm subject,BiAny Other a "monosexual framework" aboutthe immutabilby challenging"assumptions divisionsinto discrete ity of people'ssexualorientationsand society'ssupposed groups"(Hutchins and Kaahumanu1991, 3).5 Yet the variouseffortschroni-

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cled in this anthologyto constructa bisexualidentity-distinct fromheterosexual and homosexual identities while comprisingaspects of both-do not alwaysbearout the radicalpotential of its affirmation.6 Some of the contributors, for instance,view themselvesas dividedbetween homosexualand heterosexualorientations; thus LoraineHutchins, one of the describes her to editors, struggle "[accept]myself as the 70-percent straight I person probablyreally am,"while "constantly[fighting]to have the 30-percent lesbian side not be ridiculedor misunderstood" (xv). Others think of themselves as integratingboth orientations and thus, as one of the editors, quotingRobin Morgan,maintains,"[sacrificing] nothing except false categories and burned-outstrategies" Yet such (xxiv). tropesof bisexualityas either divided between or neatly integrating heterosexuality and homosexuality threaten to simplify bisexuality:on the one hand, they retain a notion of sexuality-and sexual identity-based exclusively on the gender of object choice, thus implyingthat a bisexualwoman, for instance, would be heterosexuallyinvolved with a man, homosexuallyinvolved with a woman. (Cloe, for one, finds it impossible to say, with the absolute certainty that such definitionsof bisexualityimply,that she loves men and women differently; and she finds it to that she loves them the although equallyimpossible say same, she is reluctantto ascribethe differencein these encounters-whether imaginary or real-to gender alone. Is it really alwaysthat easy, she wonders,to keep straightwhom one was loving and how?What if, by mistake,one forgot that the person holding one's hand was a man-or a woman-and if one, equallyby mistake,wereto slip into a heterosexual relationshipwith a woman, a lesbianrelationshipwith a man?) On the other hand, in their tendency to reducebisexualityto a thirdsexual orientation (or a mixtureof orientations),these tropesof bisexualitysimplify its sociopolitical implications. Bisexuality is not merely a problem of an unrecognizedor vilified sexual preferencethat can be solved, or alleviated, throughvisibility and legitimationas a third sexual option. The problemsof bisexualsare social and political ones, resulting,as Lisa Orlando,one of the contributorsto the anthology,points out, "from[our]ambiguous position... between what currentlyappearas two mutuallyexclusive sexual cultures,one with the power to exercise violent repressionagainstthe other" (224-225). To be sure, the affirmationof an integrated, unified bisexual identity, fosteredwithin supportivebisexualcommunities,might boost the psychological well-beingof manybisexualpeople. It remainsto be seen, however,if and how such increasedvisibility would contributeto our struggleagainsthomophobia, sexism, and heterosexism-the forces that have made the formation of an oppositionalsexualculturenecessaryin the firstplace. Put differently, as long as there are two mutuallyexclusive sexual cultures,and as long as it is politically essential to maintain oppositionalcultures-based on sexualityas much as on gender-the effortto disambiguate bisexualityand elevate it into

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a sign of integrationmight counteractthe subversivepotential of bisexuality as a moral and epistemologicalforce, as well as obscure its contribution to currentdiscussionsamongfeministand lesbiantheoristson the limitationsof identity politics and the urgentneed to respectdifferencesamong women. I propose, therefore, that we assumebisexuality,not as an identity that integratesheterosexualand homosexualorientations,but as an epistemological as well as ethical vantage point from which we can examine and deconstruct the bipolar frameworkof gender and sexuality in which, as feministsand lesbianfeminists,we arestill too deeplyrooted,both becauseof and despite our struggleagainsthomophobiaand sexism. What are the advantagesof assumingbisexualityas a perspective?I can think of many: 1. Becausebisexualityoccupiesan ambiguous identities, it position between is able to shed light on the gapsand contradictionsof all identity,on what we might call the difference withinidentity. This ambiguousposition, while it in the lives createspainfulcontradictions,incoherences,and impracticalities of those who adopt it, can also lead to a deep appreciationof the differences among people-whether cultural, sexual, gendered-since any attempt to constructa coherent identity in oppositionto anotherwould flounderon the multiplicityof at times conflicting identificationsgeneratedby the bisexual point of view. 2. Becauseof its nonidenticalness,bisexualityexposesthe distinctivefeature of all politicizedsexual identities:the at times radicaldiscontinuitiesbetween an individual'ssexual acts and affectionalchoices, on the one hand, and her or his affirmed political identity,on the other. By doing so, bisexualityreactivates the gender and sexualitydestabilizingmoment of all politicizedsexual identities, at the same time that it can help us view contradiction,not as a personalflaw or a dangerto our communities,but as a source of insight and that enable ratherthan repress strength, as a basis for more inclusive "we's" the articulationof difference. 3. Because of its ambiguousposition between mutually exclusive sexual cultures,bisexualityalso urgesus to problematize heterosexualityin waysthat distinguishmoreclearlybetween the institutionof compulsory heterosexuality and the effortsof individualmen and women to resistheterosexualism within and without so-calledheterosexualrelationships. Thus as feministand lesbian theoristswe need to inquiremoreintently into the possibilityof antiheterosexist heterosexual relationshipsand describe such relationshipsin ways that neither obscurehow they are impactedby heterosexualism nor collapse them univocallywith heteropatriarchy. MarilynFryetook an importantstep in this direction in a speech deliveredat the 1990 National Women'sStudies Association conference, "Do YouHave to Be a Lesbianto Be a Feminist?" In this

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Fryefirmlyasserted speech,which waspublishedlaterthat yearin offourbacks, in the radically feministlesbian that we do not but that we need to be "virgins" definitionsof the real, sense-i.e., women "in creativedefianceof patriarchal in response the meaningful"(Frye1990, 23). A seriesof lettersto off ourbacks to Frye'sspeech revealed,however,that many non-lesbian-identifiedor heterosexualwomen understoodher to affirmthe opposite-that you need to be a lesbian to be a feminist. This misreadingon the part of the respondents reflects,perhaps,their sense that manylesbianfeminists,becausethey tend to equate the difficultyof being a feminist in relation to a man with its impossibility, are unable to be curious about, or respectfulof, the antipatriarchal, antiheterosexiststrugglewaged by many non-lesbian-identifiedwomen and mothers.Of course,heterosexuallyidentifiedfeministsneed, on their part,to embracemore emphaticallyfeminismas a sign of sexual ambiguityand refuse forceof feminismby,forinstance,publicly to disavowthe destabilizing "queer" themselves from lesbianism. dissociating 4. Becausethe bisexualperspectiveenactswithin itself the battle of contradictorysexualandpolitical identifications,it can alsoserveas a bridgebetween identificationsand communities,and thus strengthenour ability temporarily to "forget" entrenchedand seeminglyinevitabledifferences-especially those of race, gender,and sexuality-in orderto focus on what we might have in common. III. It is the queerin me that empowers-that lets me see those lines and bum to crossthem; that lets me question the lies we all were told aboutwho women are,who men are, how we may properlyinteract... what nice girlsdo and don't do. The queer in all of us clamorsfor pleasureand change, will not be tamed orregulated, wantsa sayin the creationof a new reality.(Queen 1991, 20-21) fell fromstraightness-from an assumption Cloe, as I mentionedpreviously, of heterosexualityas naturaland, at leastfor herself,unavoidable-within her friends.In this close-knitcircleof friends,Cloe began groupof lesbian-feminist to conceive of loving anotherwoman eroticallyand sexually.But neither her dreamsand fantasiesnor her actualexperienceof fallingin love with a woman could entirelyconvince her that now a truer,more authentic self had surfaced within her. Insteadshe experiencedthe exhilarationof being offereda choice that she had not known-or felt-to exist:the choice to exploreher sexuality and the complex depth of her bondsto women, the choice to act in resistance to institutionalized to her own socialization, to herfearof familial compulsions, rejection and social ostracism.

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Making that choice did not, for Cloe, automatically eliminate other options-e.g., the option to love a man.Rather,Cloe entereda new perceptual framework-what I would like to call a "queer universe"-in which the fluctuationsand mutabilitiesof sexuality,the multitudeof different,changing, and at times conflicting ways in which we experience our sexual, affectional, anderoticproclivities,fantasies,andpracticescan be articulated and acknowledged. In the queeruniverse,to be queerimpliesthat not everybodyis queer in the same way. It implies a willingness to enable others to articulatetheir own particular queerness. Yet if, in Cloe'sexperience,the lesbian-feminist communityhad opened up this vision of queernessby enablingher to exploreher difference,she often felt that the same communityand culturehad also restrictedher own and other women'sself-explorationfor the sake of communalcohesion and self-protection. Thus, althoughmanylesbiantheoristsinsist on attributinglesbianismto a political choice againstheterosexualism and urgeheterosexualfeministsto realizethat they, too, do not simplyfollow a naturalcalling but choose to be, or at least to remain, heterosexual,few of these theoristshave displayedany curiosityaboutthe whole rangeof choices that mightbe openedby such initial A recent exampleof such lack of curiosity resistanceagainstheterosexualism. is Bette S. Tallen's"HowInclusiveIs FeministPolitical Theory?Questionsfor in which she assertsthat "non-lesbianfeminists,to the degreethat Lesbians," refuse to separate from men and masculine values and identify with they order"(Tallen lesbianexistence, participatein the maintenanceof patriarchal heterosexu1990, 250). Not only does such affirmation collapse uncritically of on with the maintenance the one and lesbianhand, heteropatriarchy, ality on the other,but Tallen'sarticlealso displays ism with resistanceto patriarchy, no interest in other possible ways of resistingpatriarchyand straightness.It demandsthat nonlesbian women identify with the "L-word," while demonof bisexualor othernonstraight stratingno reciprocalconcernforthe struggles women againstheteropatriarchy. Although there is no evidence to suggestthat Hoagland would not agree with analysessuch as Tallen's,Lesbian Ethicsproffersa needed and exciting antidote to the tendency of some lesbianthinkersto place the needs of lesbian identity and unity over the articulationof differences,a tendency that ultimately works to contradict the centrality of choice and individual moral agency in feminist and lesbian ethics. Believing that "if we are to form an enduringcommunity,it will not be on the basisof outside threats... of a rich traditionnor of what we find here . .. but on the basisof the valueswe believe we can enact here" (Hoagland 1988, 154), Hoaglandmaintainsthat we can only fostermoralagency in othersand ourselvesif we are willing to acknowledge differences between ourselves and others. Indeed, her whole book is dedicatedto the creationof a new ethic that wouldnourishlesbianconnection but not at the expense of suppressing differences.In pursuitof this aim, she

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proposesalternativewaysof thinking about alterity,designedto enhance our to forcesthat capacity,as a groupand as individuals,to respondaffirmatively have often been experiencedas threateningto lesbian identity and commuand contradictionsarisingfromdifferences of nity-the tensions, ambiguities, as much as from differences of affecrace, class, age, able-bodiedness, sexual, tional, and intellectual choices. The strength of Hoagland'sethical model lies in its conceptualizationof moral agency accordingto which we choose to act with a full awarenessof what constrainsour ability to choose. "Choice,"Hoaglandaffirms,"is at the we arefreeandmoral verycore of the concept of 'moralagency.'It is not because that we are able to make moral it is because we makechoices, choices. Rather, agents choose in act the that we declare ourselves fromamongalternatives, face of limits, moralbeings"(231). From the vantage point of this revisionaryconcept of moral agency, Hoagland takes a close and critical look at the way in which lesbiannotions of choice arestill, and often destructively, rootedin traditional ethics, which assume"that to be ethical we must be able to control external forcesor, at the very least, that a propermoralchoice would be one in which therewere no constraintson us, no limits"(198). As a result,she explains,the focus of traditionalethics is exclusively "on whether we can blame or praise othersfor what they have done and whetherwe can be blamedor praisedfor what we have done" (198). Pointing to the implications of such ethical notions-for instance, the belief that it is alwayseasy to distinguishbetween good and bad choices, since good choices have only good consequencesand will not harmanyone-Hoagland proposesinsteadthat we directourenergies to making our choices "intelligible"and to understanding the "complexity" from them (220-28). emerging Although this conceptualizationof agency raises compelling questions about bisexuality as a moral choice, the experiences and views of bisexual women and lesbians are, as I mentioned previously,absent from Hoagland's work.Since her studydrawson the narrativesof U.S. lesbiansfrom a variety of communities, we might, of course, conclude that there were no bisexual womenin these communities.Equally likelyis the possibilitythat, if therewere such women, they did not speakup about their experiences,silenced both by their own sense of disloyaltyand by fearof not being understood,of not being able to make themselves, or to be viewed as, "intelligible." Certainly, Hoagland'sown references to women whose experiences imply a certain measureof bisexualitydo not reflect an interest in the complexity of their existence. Once, for instance, a marriedheterosexualwoman is mentioned who "keepstryingto get closerto [herlesbianfriend]and startsomethingeven though she just got pregnantand so is situatingherselfin a waythat will make it much harderto leave her husband"(218). My quarrelis not with the fact that Hoagland's attention is in this case centeredon the lesbianfriendandher difficult choices, but with her manner of describing the other woman as

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a designation that reducesthe complexity of her being and "heterosexual," even seems to imply that her desire for another woman is somehow less legitimatethan that of a self-identifiedlesbian. Ethics Froma bisexualvantagepoint, however,what is promisingin Lesbian is that Hoagland'sapparentindifferenceto choices that challenge notions of fixed sexual identities (whether lesbian or heterosexual) coexists with her To do so, she explains, is to "succumbto a insistence not to define "lesbian." No one ever feels compelledto explain or define context of heterosexualism. we invoke a context what they perceive as the norm.If we define 'lesbianism,' in which it is not the norm"(8). In addition,her refusalto define lesbianism indicates a reluctance to make identity simply and unproblematicallythe or "queer" cornerstoneof lesbian ethics. In a compellingly "universalizing" of lesbianism with female support agency not gesture, Hoagland equates fromheterosexualdefinedin relationto man,on the one hand,andseparation ism on the other.7Thus, while retaininga notion of lesbian that is necessarily rootedin dominantcategoriesof gender,even as it resiststhose (only a woman can refuse to belong to the category "woman"),Hoagland drives a wedge between the automaticlinking of sexualityand gender,therebyopening her of sexual identity and of both the actualpermeability inquiryto an awareness the plurality of ways in which people of all genders and sexualities resist In its universalizing force,then, lesbianismis not only separation straightness. from men (i.e., defined in terms of the gender of object choice) but also "a in turn,by designating"away Heterosexualism, challengeto heterosexualism." of living that normalizesthe dominanceof one personand the subordination of another,"is not confined to the relations between men and women but relations:"the'protective' includesas well other,not specificallygender-based, and the between relation'peace-keeping' relationship imperialists colonized, and to threats between (8). democracy(u.s. capitalism) democracy" ship Consonant with what I have called Hoagland's universalizing gestureis her acknowledgment,however cursoryand enigmatic, that heterosexualwomen women can fit and men might also fit into her ethical scheme:"Heterosexual in this schema, for example. However,they fit in exactly the way lesbiansfit in with heterosexualsociety. We fit there, but not as lesbians. Heterosexual women can fit here, though not as heterosexual women-that is, not as membersof the category'woman.'"When Hoaglandspeculates,in a whimsical remarkrelegated to a footnote and parentheses,whether "men could of lesbianism," change in such a wayas to be able to functionin the framework "Ithink it is possible.Forexample,if men changed her answeris lessreassuring: themselvesto become like dolphins-playful, intelligent, non-intrusivecreatures-they could well fit" (95). Hoagland's universalizing impulse ought not to be confused with an endeavor to be more inclusive, for while the latter sustains a conceptual of identifiableessencesconstitutedin referenceto an outside that framework

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internalboundaries, a universalizing servesas a foil to the community's gesture undercutsthis framework the belief immutable in categoriesof by challenging gender and sexuality itself. Thus Hoagland is aware that our capacity to respond affirmativelyto differenceswithin a community is enhanced not necessarilythrougha call for moreinclusivitybut ratherthrougha rethinking of the ways in which a communitydefines itself. Letting go of the "urgeto define" the bordersof lesbian community,and thus of "the metaphorof a fortresswhich requiresdefendingfrominvasion,"Hoaglandbegins to reenvision communityin termsof a sharedfocus of attention, a "groundof lesbian orqueer be-ing,a groundofpossibility"(9). Moreover, given this universalizing impulseof her work, there is no intrinsic reasonfor Hoagland'sexclusion of the moral choices of bisexuals from lesbian ethics. On the contrary,since bisexualstransgress boundaries of sexuallyidentifiedcommunitiesand thusare alwaysboth inside andoutsidea diversityof conflictingcommunities,a serious considerationof their experiencesand moralchoices would help us develop the insight that I find so promisinglyimplied in Hoagland's Lesbian Ethicsthat our ability to respondto diversitywithinlesbian communityis linked to our capacity to articulateand reimaginethe complex relations and interacand allegiances,between communities. tions, as well as the shiftingboundaries and mutability, Hence, as a sign of transgression, ambiguity, bisexualityalso providesa necessarytheoretical link between lesbian theory and the rapidly expandingfield of queertheory,on the one hand, and lesbianethics and queer asTeresade Lauretis ethics, on the other.In its currentusage,"queer," explains, is intended"tomarka certaincriticaldistance" fromthe designations"lesbian" and "gay," and a desireto "transgress and transcendthem-or at the veryleast them" (de Lauretis1991, v). Among other things, queertheory problematize is dedicated to opening up differences that, in de Lauretis'swords, "are, elided, becausetaken for granted,in 'lesbianand gay'" (vi). A paradoxically, as queerethics, I have brieflyand provisionallyproposedat the beginningof this essay,wouldsupportand nurturethe queerin all of us-both by questioning all notions of fixed, immutableidentities and by articulatinga pluralityof differences amongus in the hope of forgingnew bondsandallegiances.In doing ethics so, queer posesa creativechallengeto lesbianethics, which need neither supercedenor undercutsuch ethics but can furtherits aim of enablingfemale agency and authentic choice through separationfrom heterosexualism.In addition,however,a queerethics wouldstressthe interrelatedness of different, andat timesconflicting,communitiesandthusemphasize the need to combine forcesin our variousantihomophobicand antisexistendeavors.

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NOTES 1. The firstpartof this essayservedas an introduction to mypresentation "Feminist deliveredat the 1991 Biphobia;or, What Does SexualityHave to Do with Gender?" North CentralWomen'sStudiesAssociationconferencein Athens, Ohio. I wouldlike to to thankSandraRunzoandKateMehuronfortheirhelpfuland challengingresponses the present,extendedversionof this presentation. andgender, see especiallyButler(1990), 2. Forrecentworkproblematizing sexuality (1991). Sedgwick(1990), Fuss(1989 and 1991), de Lauretis 3. Diana Fussasks a similarquestion when she points to Monique Wittig'sand attitudeto male homosexuality: AdrienneRich'sproblematic "giventhe way in which challenge the currentnotions of gay men, in their social and sexualpractices,radically and the 'naturalness' of heterosexual desire,one wouldthink that they, too, masculinity disruptand disable the logic of the straightmind (or what Rich prefersto call the 'institutionof compulsory (Fuss1989, 47). heterosexuality')" 4. In the welcome and usefulanthologyBi Any OtherName: Bisexual people speak out,which I will discussin moredetail below,the painfuldifficultiesof bisexualpassing to the problems of multiracial arecompared, by a numberof contributors, people.Indeed, and in her reviewof the anthology,AuroraLevinsMoralespoints out that "bisexuality mixed racialheritagefeel so similarbecausethey pose the same kind of challenge to a claimto a complexhumanitythat undermines deeplyheld ideas society.Both represent of category:the societal belief in immutable,biologicallybased groupingsof human beings"(Morales1992, 24). is a termcoined by 5. Accordingto the editorsof Bi Any Other Name,"Monosexual the bisexualmovement to mean anyone (gay or heterosexual)who is attractedto just one sex, their own or the oppositeone" (Hutchinsand Kaahumanu 1991, 10). 6. By saying this I wish in no way to question the tremendoususefulnessand me that my own thoughts and timeliness of this anthology. Apart from reassuring experienceswere sharedby many other people, the anthology has also providedan startingpoint for the presentstudyof bisexualityand lesbianethics. important from Sedgwick'suseful distinction between 7. I take the term "universalizing" and "universalizing" of homo/heterosexualdefinition. understandings "minoritizing" definition is "an issueof active imporAccordingto the firstview, homo/heterosexual fixedhomosexual fora small,distinct,relatively fromthe latter tanceprimarily minority"; in the lives of people it is an "issueof continuing,determinative importance perspective, across the spectrum of sexualities" (Sedgwick 1990, 1). My linkage between is one that emergesclearlywithin recent work in queer and "queer" "universalizing" the preference forthe term"queer" over "lesbian" and theory.Thus, to MichaelWarner, it rejects amongother things,an aggressive "gay" "represents, impulseof generalization; a minoritizing in favorof a logic of tolerationor simplepolitical interest-representation more thoroughresistanceto regimesof the normal.The universalizing utopianismof versionsof lesbianand gay queertheorydoes not entirelyreplacemore minority-based theory-nor could it, since normalsexualityand the machineryof enforcingit do not beardown equallyon everyone"(Warer 1991, 16).

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REFERENCES trouble. New York: Butler,Judith.1990. Gender Routledge. Churchill,Caryl.1985. Plays.London:Methuen. Daumer,Elisabeth. 1991. Feministbiphobia;or, what does sexualityhave to do with at North CentralWomen's StudiesAssociationconference, gender? Paperpresented 19 October,Athens, Ohio. A Journal de Lauretis, Cultural Teresa,ed. 1991. Special issueof Differences: of Feminist Studies 3(2). Frye, Marilyn. 1990. Do you have to be a lesbian to be a feminist?off our backs August/September. New York: Fuss,Diana. 1989. Essentially speaking. Routledge. . ed. 1991. inside/out: Lesbian New York: theories, gaytheories. Routledge. ethics:Toward new value.Palo Alto: Instituteof Hoagland,SarahLucia. 1988. Lesbian LesbianStudies. eds. 1991. Bi any othername:Bisexual Hutchins,Loraine,and Lani Kaahumanu, people speakout. Boston:Allyson Publications. name:Bisexual Morales,AuroraLevins. 1992. Firstbut not least.Review of Bi any other Women's Reviewof peoplespeakout, ed. LoraineHutchins and Lani Kaahumanu. Books9(6): 23-24. Orlando,Lisa. 1991. Lovingwhom we choose. In Bi any othername.See Hutchinsand Kaahumanu. Queen, Carol A. 1991. The queer in me. In Bi any othername. See Hutchins and Kaahumanu. EveKosofsky. 1990.Epistemology Sedgwick, of thecloset. Berkeley: Universityof California Press. Tallen,Bette S. 1990. How inclusiveis feministpoliticaltheory? Questionsforlesbians. In Lesbian and cultures, ed. JeffnerAllen. Albany:State Universityof philosophies New YorkPress. Michael. 1991. Introduction: Fearof a queerplanet.SocialText29: 3-17. Warner, 1985. Sexuality anditsdiscontents. London:Routledgeand KeganPaul. Weeks,Jeffrey. Issues1(2): 47-54. Wittig, Monique. 1981. One is not borna woman.Feminist