Time Capsule: Vice Versa — Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life
(originally published in the September 7, 1995 issue of Metroline)
Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life is a long book. So long that it would make a great textbook for a class on the subject of bisexuality. Maybe that’s what the author (and Harvard professor) Marjorie Garber intended when she wrote the 606-page tome (55 pages of which make up the bibliography). Although readers may not get through the whole thing, it’s the book to read if you’ve already read the few good books on the topic (e.g., Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out; Close to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism).
Garber presents a scholarly but witty, in-depth treatise that looks at bisexuality from almost every angle. The book is divided into four sections: Bi Ways: Culture, Politics, History; Bi-ology: Science, Psychoanalysis, Psychomythology; Bi Laws: Institutions of “Normal Sex”; and Bi Sex: The Erotics of the Third.
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The first section gives the reader a starting point. It defines bisexuality and gives it a historical context, as well as introducing some key issues bisexuals face in both the gay/lesbian community and in heterosexual society, such as biphobia, myths about bi people, coming out as bi, and the invisibility factor. The chapter titled Bi Words includes mention of various bi publications (such as Anything That Moves and BiAngles) and bi organizations like BiCeps (the Bisexual Committee Engaging in Politics) and UBIQUITOUS (Uppity Bisexual Queers United in Their Overtly Unconventional Sexuality). The latter part of the section focuses on bisexuality and notoriety, first in the context of politics, then in the context of the arts. Garber gives many examples to show that “From Bloomsbury to Taos, from Harlem to Hollywood, from Berlin to Paris to Greenwich Village, bisexuality has left its mark on twentieth-century literature, painting, poetry, drama, and music, as well as on that indefinable thing called ‘culture’.”
Bi-ology, the longest section, starts with the story of Tiresias, who, according to myth, was transformed from a man into a woman and then back again, and so was consulted by the gods as to whether the male or female has the most pleasure during sex (read the book to find out the answer). Garber uses Tiresias as a metaphor throughout the section, which explains the relationship between classical myth and psychoanalysis (e.g., the Oedipus Complex). Chapter 7, which could be a book in itself, tells all about Freud and his colleague, Wilhelm Fliess, both of whom had a lot to say about the importance of bisexuality. So, as it happens, did Carl Jung, Havelock Ellis, and Alfred Kinsey. Chapter 8, Androgyny and its Discontents, addresses the difference between androgyny and hermaphrodism and how these concepts work their way into how bisexuals are perceived — in psychology and in pop culture. Garber also critiques various studies on the differences between gays/lesbians and heterosexuals, noting that bisexuals are often lumped into one category or another, skewing results according to the researcher’s bias.
Section three challenges the parameters of so-called “normal” and “either-or” sexuality, and illustrates how society sets up institutions to keep tabs on who’s normal and who isn’t. Examples are given of bisexuals — such as Vita Sackville-West, Leonard Bernstein, and John Cheever — who got around this by redefining marriage and “family values” in their lives. Chapter 13, Normal Schools, and Chapter 14, Erotic Education, talks about coming of age in all-girl or all-boy schools, and the importance of student-teacher and student-student love in education and “normal” sexuality.
In the last section, Bi Sex: The Erotics of the Third, Garber makes the argument that “triangular desire” is the basis of eroticism in general. She discusses the threesome as a much more universal arrangement than most of us comprehend in our romantic/sexual tunnel vision, drawing on archetypal love stories that repeat themselves in modern literature and music and have what Garber would define as a bisexual dynamic.
Use this book as a handy reference to combat the popular “there’s no such thing as bisexuality” argument…or in place of a phone book, to enhance your height at the dinner table.
Robin Nicole Whiting is a Stamford-based bisexual activist who writes regularly for Metroline.
