The Tension Between Lesbianism And Bisexual Women

In the 1970s, Sharon Dale Stone found a community in the Lesbian Organization of Toronto. It was there that she and other lesbian women carved a safe space for themselves within the homophobic and sexist world they lived in. Bisexual women, despite experiencing the same marginalization in society as lesbians, were distrusted and rejected by the lesbian community. Stone herself thought that bisexual women were “unsavory characters who fed on lesbian energy” (9). Fast forward to the 1980s; the discrimination of bisexual women by lesbians reached its apex as the HIV/AIDS epidemic became widespread over North America. In fact, scholars noted that “tensions between lesbian and bisexual women was much more problematic than tensions between gay …show more content…
Although sexuality is fluid, for the purposes of this essay a lesbian is a woman who is interested in women exclusively and a bisexual woman is a woman who is interested in both men and women. The sole distinction between these two sexual identities, that bisexual women are associated with men, is the root cause of the tension between bisexual women and lesbians. We cannot stereotype lesbian groups as radical man-haters, but feminism is intrinsically linked to the issue of lesbianism and bisexuality. Starting from the 1970s, the phrase “lesbian” was politicized to represent a resistance of the patriarchy and men. It was a view that “Lesbianism was the purest, most desirable manifestation of feminism”. (Ochs 229). The combination of political action and sexual identity was dangerous; lesbian women fiercely defended their lesbian practice, dissociating themselves from men and the feminine gender roles that the patriarchy has …show more content…
For example, the common accusation of bisexual women “sleeping with the enemy” (Ochs 231) originates from the power dynamics of a sexist society; lesbians find it more repulsive that bisexual women are sleeping with those who marginalize them. Likewise, gay men did not associate this betrayal with bisexual men because they are not marginalized by women. Furthermore, lesbians argued that bisexual women “dilute” (Stone 14) the lesbian feminist movement and a threat to the lesbian agenda. This led to the exclusion of bisexual women from a number of lesbian organizations, marches, and even mailing lists (Stone 5). The irony of removing active, participating women from the feminist community by accusing them for ‘diluting’ the movement was apparently not noted