Negotiating heteronormativity: Exploring South African bisexual women’s constructions of marriage and family

Abstract

Although heteronormativity remains firmly in place in many contexts, challenges to a construction of heterosexuality as natural and superior increasingly emerge. However, despite increasing visibility of such challenges, bisexuality remains largely absent from such debates. Bisexual women occupy a potentially interesting position in discourses around heteronormativity and this paper explores how heteronormativity functions in the accounts of 13 South African bisexual women. Through a discourse analysis of interview data, a discourse of heterosexual marriage as normative and socially valued is identified as exerting a powerful influence on participants’ constructions of relationships and families. The findings further explore ways in which bisexuality is complicated by such a heteronormative marriage discourse and indicate a lack of integration of a bisexual identity in participants’ accounts. We suggest that drawing bisexuality into debates around heteronormativity can contribute to increased positions from which to challenge the coercive effects of heteronormativity.

Keywords

Bisexuality discourse analysis heteronormativity marriage discourse South Africa women

Heteronormativity proposes a cultural gold standard that stipulates what counts as appropriate and socially valued subjectivities (Califia, 2000). It includes a ‘vast matrix of cultural beliefs, rules, rewards, privileges and sanctions’ that work together to maintain heterosexuality as normal, natural and superior (Oswald et al., 2005: 144). A central way in which heteronormativity is constructed and maintained as a powerful societal discourse, is through evoking the institution of heterosexual marriage as normal and socially valued. Intertwined with this is the notion of creating a traditional nuclear family, in the context of a heterosexual union. Heterosexual marriage, in its current cultural form, can be described as heteronormative in that it works to permeate a specific arrangement of sexual and gendered practice with a ‘tacit sense of rightness and normalcy’ (Berlant and Warner, 1998: 554). The influence of heteronormativity then extends beyond stipulating a specific marital and family configuration to include the normalisation of certain types of sexualities and genders (Ingraham, 1994). Butler (1990) refers to this regulatory function of heterosexuality as the heterosexual matrix, where heterosexuality is constructed as desirable and normal. The heterosexual matrix implicates a ‘causal continuity among sex, gender, and desire’ (Butler, 1990: 22). This regulative influence is emphasised in Rich’s (1980) notion of compulsory heterosexuality:

The power of compulsory heterosexuality is that for those whose lives conform to its demands, it acts as a constant reinforcement and regulatory mechanism, producing its compliant readers as viable social subjects and regulating any thoughts they might have about alternative gender roles or sexual choices. For those who do not conform to its demands, on the other hand, compulsory heterosexuality acts as a mechanism of exclusion and oppression, because it consistently constructs them as outsiders, aberrant and bad. (Cranny-Francis et al., 2003: 19)

By constructing individual subjectivity in relation to heterosexuality, any practices that resist this regulatory framework position the person as outside of what is normal and considered a legitimate subject (Cranny-Francis et al., 2003). Rubin (1984) refers to the charmed circle of sexuality where certain sexualities, such as heterosexual, marital, monogamous and reproductive are considered to exist inside the circle of privilege, while other ‘deviant’ or ‘abnormal’ sexualities are placed on the outside of what is considered acceptable in the sexual value system. Very few studies have explored how bisexual women negotiate these regulative effects of heteronormative discourse. In this paper, we use a feminist poststructuralist framework to explore how a group of South African bisexual women engage with marriage and family discourse.

Although LGBTI individuals are generally denied access to heteronormative privilege, Seidman (2001) refers to a normalising logic of heteronormativity where gay men and lesbians who reproduce an image of the ideal ‘normal’ citizen by conforming to every other aspect of what is socially accepted, bar their sexual identification, are tolerated and granted a certain level of privilege in society. It has been argued that bisexual individuals have greater access to such heterosexual privilege, compared to gay men, lesbians and transgender men and women (Bower et al., 2002). Clarke (1981) asserts that bisexuality is a safer identity than presenting as lesbian or gay, for bisexuality retains the possibility of at some point having a heterosexual relationship. Garber (2000: 17) refers to the belief that it is easier to come out as bisexual compared to coming out as gay, quoting a bisexual youth who stated that claiming a bisexual identity allows you to ‘recognise your feelings but not totally alienate yourself from society’.

This notion of bisexuals passing as straight has been problematised by accounts from bisexual women that challenge the claimed ease with which their access to heteronormativity is constructed (Bower et al., 2002; Rust, 1993). Although bisexual women might be perceived as sharing in heteronormative privilege, in many respects they face the same risk of violence and prejudice that lesbian women are confronted with (Ault, 1996). In South Africa, constitutional and legal protection of sexual orientation is in place, yet discrimination persists and there are instances of violent attacks on women in same-sex relationships, particularly in South African townships (Motswapong, 2010). Media reports focus on lesbian women as the victims of violence, yet bisexual women are of course also at risk, as any indication of involvement with a woman makes them vulnerable, regardless of the specificity of their sexual identification. It appears that although bisexual women’s experiences might differ in many respects from those of lesbian women, there are aspects of shared victimisation and discrimination that detract from a view of bisexual women as enjoying uncomplicated access to heterosexual privilege.

Although heteronormativity remains firmly in place in many contexts, pockets of resistance have developed. In South African discourse, similar to many other countries, challenges have emerged to the heteronormative gold standard. This has been seen in growing numbers of research accounts that deconstruct normative notions of heterosexuality (Shefer et al., 2000; Tracey, 2007) as well as in advances in securing legal rights for LGBTI individuals, where South Africa legally recognises same-sex civil unions through legislation introduced in 2006 (De Vos and Barnard, 2007). There is also increased visibility of same-gendered family configurations, reflected in a growing body of research that explores how South African lesbian women navigate motherhood and the marginalisation of lesbian family unions (Distiller, 2011; Lubbe, 2007). Although bisexual women are not explicitly included in these legal and research accounts, such challenges to heteronormativity have resulted in greater freedom to define ‘marriage’ and ‘relationships’, where dominant constructions of marriage have been altered and expanded (Bonthuys, 2008). Such challenges have also allowed for greater flexibility in how individual subjectivity is constructed with individuals increasingly being able to claim sexual identities that vary from the heterosexual norm (Stobie, 2004).

However, despite increasing visibility of such challenges to heteronormativity, bisexuality is largely absent from these debates in both international and South African contexts. Bisexuality remains under-researched in South Africa and the handful of available studies are typically concerned with describing bisexual practice and not self-aware bisexual identities (e.g. Lane et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2009). In international contexts challenges to heteronormativity are mostly framed in relation to gay and lesbian realities (e.g. Bevacqua, 2004; Kitzinger and Wilkinson, 2004) and heterosexual realities (Jackson, 2006), with Stobie (2004) commenting that the potential for bisexual discourse to disrupt heteronormativity is not currently being realised. This has the consequence that there is a lack of research that explores how bisexual women negotiate heteronormativity. Bisexual women occupy a potentially interesting position in discourses around heteronormativity and same-sex resistance to their hegemony. In this study we explore how heteronormativity functions in the discourses of self-identified bisexual women.

Methodology

I (IL) used convenience sampling to select initial participants, identifying interested participants through my own social network and through organisations active in LGBTI spaces. Subsequent participants were identified through snowball sampling. Following Wood and Kroger’s (2000) guideline, I continued interviewing participants until I had sufficient data to build and support analytical claims. The final group of 13 participants resided in urban areas in Johannesburg and Pretoria, in the South African province of Gauteng. Their ages ranged between 20 and 29 with ten participants describing themselves as white and three as black. All of the participants self-identified as bisexual women with seven of the participants being single, five being partnered in monogamous same-sex relationships and one being partnered in a monogamous opposite-sex relationship. All of the participants shared a relatively privileged socio-economic status and had either completed a tertiary degree or were in the process of completing one. The study was granted ethical approval by the University of Pretoria Research Ethics Committee; participants provided written informed consent and were assigned pseudonyms to ensure anonymity.

We made use of in-depth interviews, conducted by IL, to collect data. We used a semi-structured interview guide to direct the interviews, which lasted between two and four hours, and acknowledge the influence of the interviewer in co-constructing meaning. The majority of the interviews were conducted with only one participant present; three of the interviews were joint interviews conducted with couples. In these instances I interviewed both partners separately as well as jointly. Seymour et al. (1995) note that despite a researcher’s intentions, social and practical considerations often result in a second person being present and contributing during an interview. This is even more likely when interviewing connected participants, such as friends or partners, as was the case in this study. Including joint interviews in addition to individual interviews had the benefit of shifting the balance of power by reducing my influence and foregrounding the interaction between participants (Wilkinson, 1998). In this sense, conducting joint interviews in addition to individual interviews contributed to rich interactive data and greater equality during data collection.

Interviews were conducted in locations suggested by participants, with one interview being conducted at IL’s home, five at the participant’s home and seven in a coffee shop/restaurant. The interview guide was loosely structured around three main themes, informed by the focus of the broader study within which this paper is situated. Firstly, I explored how participants construct meaning around bisexuality. Secondly, I explored how they negotiate their identity as bisexual in relation to others, and lastly I was interested in how their gendered subjectivity as women intersects with their sexuality. The current paper reports only on the instances during the interviews where participants’ talk appealed to discourses of heteronormativity. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Although I included contextual aspects such as hesitations and pauses when transcribing, this was done in a denaturalised manner where the focus was on the accuracy of the ‘meanings and perceptions created and shared’ during the interview, instead of capturing the full details of the mechanics of speech (Oliver et al., 2005: 1277). Despite excluding some details of speech during transcription, I remained mindful of retaining aspects of non-verbal communication in the transcripts and attended to practices such as participants’ postures, gestures and facial expressions, which I based on notes taken during the interviews as well as my own reflection immediately after conducting each interview.

The transcribed interviews were analysed using a feminist poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis, informed by Foucauldian (1969/1972, 1976/1990) and Butlerian (1990, 1993) theory. We followed Parker’s (1992: 5) formulation of a discourse as a ‘system of statements which constructs an object’, where discourses are conceptualised as coherent structures of meaning. Although discourses are historically situated and change over time, such a conceptualisation assumes that statements in a discourse cluster around ‘culturally available understandings as to what constitutes a topic’ (Parker, 2002: 146).

Poststructuralist theory has been criticised for positing a subject without agency, where the subject exists with no inherent meaning aside from its historical constitution through discourse (Dean, 1995). Butler (1990) has responded to such criticism with her theory of subversion, where she argues that certain practices have the potential to trouble authoritative performatives of gender and sexuality and in that way show up their constructed character. It is possible for ‘marginal practices and identities that exploit the paradoxical ‘constitutive outside’ of the hegemonic norm’, to disrupt the naturalness of the norm and produce alternatives to monolithic forms of power (Boucher, 2006: 117). Theorists of sexuality have argued that bisexuality, as a category of identity that potentially destabilises gender and sexuality binaries, is particularly well positioned as a transgressive sexuality that can trouble heterosexual coherence (Firestein, 1996; Owen, 2003). To this end, McAvan (2007: 5) notes that bisexuality ‘problematises the sex/gender/desire matrix, for though it will at times be necessarily ‘opposite’ sex related, it makes the once-and-forever nature of heterosexual identity impossible’. Butlerian subversion then provides the possibility that marginal identities, such as bisexuality, can potentially trouble the taken-for-granted naturalness of the heteronorm.

With this subversive potential of bisexuality in mind, our guiding question during analysis was to explore how heteronormativity functions in participants’ accounts. We first read and re-read all the transcribed interviews, noting our initial impressions and personal responses to the material as we went along. We then analysed each interview separately, following Parker’s (2002) guidelines, before integrating the analysis across interviews. Specific stages in Parker’s (2002) guidelines for analysis that informed our approach include attending to how discursive objects are drawn on and constructed in the text; identifying the implications of these constructions for subjectivity; commenting on points of overlap and contradictions between discourses; identifying which institutions are supported or subverted through the discourses; as well as exploring the ideological effects of the discourses. As a final stage of analysis, we found it valuable to share summaries of the findings with interested participants to continue the process of shared meaning making and to incorporate their comments in the analysis (Madill et al., 2000). We also assumed a reflexive approach and critically reflected on our own investment in the research topic and how our own identities, experiences and ideological commitments contributed to and shaped this research (Wilkinson, 1988).

Findings

In the following section we consider how heteronormativity functions in the accounts of participants, particularly as it relates to their evocation of a (heterosexual) ‘marriage and family’ discourse. This heteronormative discourse appears to impact on participants’ subjectivity in varied ways and functions as a meta-discourse around and through which the lives of the bisexual women in this study are shaped. This influence is exerted despite the fact that none of the participants are married or intending to marry in the immediate future (either in an opposite-sex or same-sex configuration). The prevailing influence of this discourse illustrates its taken-for-granted nature – despite positioning themselves as outside heteronormativity through identifying as bisexual, participants still engage with a marriage and family discourse in shaping their subjectivity, their romantic relationships and their notions of family. The discussion that follows is structured to describe four different ways in which participants, as bisexual women, engage with this discourse.

‘You have this image ready-made’: Marriage and family discourse as familiar

The first position is one in which participants align themselves with an idealised version of marriage and family discourse. Despite indicating an awareness of how not all traditional heteronormative families fit this idealised description, participants’ talk reflected romanticised notions of marriage and family – what one participant, Taryn, refers to as ‘that picture idea of what a family is’. This idealised version of marriage and family discourse is described as a normative expectation that cannot easily be questioned or resisted. Jennifer refers to this when she describes how, when growing up, she was certain that she will ‘end up’ married to a man and will have children in a conventional way:

In my head it was ‘I’m going to get married to a man, and have children, and done’. Cause that’s what your parents say, and that’s what you see around you, that’s what’s expected of you.

Jennifer’s statement draws on the dominant heterosexist belief and expectation that ‘everyone is or should be heterosexual’ (Yep, 2002: 167). Her sexuality is assumed by others and by herself to be heterosexual until ‘proven’ otherwise. Going against this normative expectation requires resisting a powerful societal assumption positing heterosexual marriage as normal, natural and universally desired (Richardson, 1996). Although Jennifer describes this normative expectation as a sense of being pressured to conform to heterosexism (when she states ‘that’s what’s expected of you’) this construction also allows for a predictable, familiar and clearly outlined life-course. Liné refers to this when she says that ‘getting married with kids is kind of where you are supposed to go. It’s the easiest way for everyone’. Taryn refers to the familiarity of this discourse by stating ‘if you think about marriage with a man it’s a straightforward notion … You have this image ready-made that you can just slot in there’. In this construction, heteronormative marriage and family discourse acts as a widely familiar blueprint with clearly outlined life stages through which compliant subjects can proceed. It depicts heterosexual marriage as uncomplicated, comforting and socially valued. Part of the appeal of this idealised marriage and family discourse is then the sense of safety, acceptance and value it affords subjects who can conform to its requirements.

Although this position generally reflects an idealised version of heteronormative discourse, participants at times assumed more critical positions where they commented on the coercive nature of such a discourse, hinted at in Jennifer’s framing of this discourse as an expectation held by others. The familiar ‘ready-made’ nature of this discourse constrains individual choices that might differ from dominant discourse. Liné describes this in the following way: ‘I think in that mind-set [of getting married to a man and having children] you don’t have to think for yourself, so then you just go down that route along with all the other sheep’. The hegemonic nature of this discourse functions to limit participants’ agency and although a marriage and family discourse might provide a romanticised and ‘uncomplicated’ subject position, participants also position themselves as critical of the lack of autonomy implied in this discourse.

‘You’re always up against a husband and children’: Bisexuality as competing with marriage and family discourse

Identifying as bisexual has implications for how participants consider themselves in relation to a heteronormative marriage and family discourse. In this second position, participants drew on a construction of bisexuality as competing with an idealised marriage and family discourse. Several participants spoke about how marriage and family discourse is seen as a threat to their same-sex relationships, particularly so if their partner also identifies as bisexual. Astrid describes how, in her relationship with her bi-partner, she has a sense of always being in competition with the romanticised construction of marriage and family that is dominant in society. She goes on to talk about her sense of helplessness in not being able to provide her partner with the normalcy and social acceptance that the marriage and family discourse provides heterosexual subjects:

Astrid: It doesn’t matter how much I love my girlfriend, I can’t give her a child, that is our child. So it’s a big issue. And I have to understand that if she wants that child, biologically, and she had to leave me because she wanted that ideal family, I could never resent her … You can make your own family and obviously there’s lots of ways to do it, but there’s a romantic idea about family.

Interviewer: Ja, that you compete with in a sense.

Astrid: You do, of course you do. I would say that’s the toughest thing about bisexuality.

Identifying as bisexual and being in a same-sex relationship means that participants cannot conform to the idealised image of marriage and family depicted in a heterosexual relationship. Heterosexual marriage is constructed as resulting in ‘that ideal family’, which Astrid describes as a ‘romantic idea about family’. Contrasted to this, a family resulting from a same-sex union is (by implication) constructed as not having the same value as a heterosexual family union, which can provide for a biological child that is ‘their child’. As long as they are in a same-sex relationship, participants do not have access to the normalised subject position offered by marriage and family discourse. This echoes lesbian women’s experiences of a heteronormative rendering of same-sex families as ‘artificial’, ‘wrong’ (Clarke, 2001; Saffron, 1994) or less ‘real’ than heterosexual families (Arnup, 1996). Astrid, however, adds that this is ‘the toughest thing about bisexuality’, implying that the notion of choice differentiates bisexuality from lesbian experience in her account. She draws on the perception that bisexual partners are considered as having the option of having a ‘normal’ heterosexual relationship that is accepted and rewarded in heteronormative contexts – an option which lesbian women do not have:

And I think with bisexuality for me and with being with women, there’s always that, you’re always up against the life picture. You’re always up against a husband and children. It’s a big fucking picture, even for myself. It’s the way we all, or 90% of people want to end up, you know, in a family.

In this construction, if a bisexual partner highly values and desires the normalised subject position provided by marriage and family discourse, she could choose to be in a relationship with a man instead of a woman. Liné speaks about this in the context of dating a lesbian woman, and the fear her partner had that she would leave the same-sex relationship to ‘get married and have babies’, something that is not easily provided for in the same-sex relationship:

And the lesbian [that I dated] also thought, you know, that I will cheat. Or the fear was that I will meet the man of my dreams and get married and have babies. Because getting married and having babies is, for example, something that she cannot give me.

Although participants resist the notion that bisexual women cannot be monogamous or commit to a long-term relationship, their reflections on their own relationships indicate a sense of being co-opted by dominant discourse where they doubt their partner’s commitment in the relationship. Their constructions of being in a same-sex relationship, as bisexual women, reflect a continued presence of uncertainty in that their bisexual partner might leave the relationship for a socially valued heterosexual relationship with a man. In this sense they draw on the terms provided by dominant discourse in constructing meaning in their relationships. Bisexuality is constructed here as a threat to the permanence and value of the same-sex relationship. Further to this, Astrid’s comment that she ‘could never resent’ her partner if she chose a normalised heterosexual relationship points to a resigned acceptance of this risk as part of identifying as bisexual.

‘It isn’t any kind of option for having a good life’: Bisexuality as incompatible with marriage and family discourse

A third position assumed by participants, in engaging with heteronormative marriage and family discourse, is one in which bisexuality is not considered as competing with such a discourse but is instead regarded as incompatible with its normalised developmental narrative. This occurs mainly through evoking a widely circulating construction of bisexuality as customarily equated with promiscuity, briefly referred to above. In such a construction bisexuality is equated with non-monogamy and loyalty to one partner is considered unlikely or impossible (Eadie, 1996; Klesse, 2005). Participants referred to how they often encounter responses to their sexual identification that position them as hypersexual and promiscuous. Sonia describes this when she states:

That's how bisexuality often gets portrayed, [that] these girls can’t get enough sex from guys so they get it from girls too … That is the common conception of what it is … [People are] just like, okay, so you sleep around a lot.

In such a construction, where bisexuality is equated with promiscuity, identifying as bisexual does not allow for a committed monogamous relationship and therefore cannot provide the ‘ideal’ outcome of the marriage and family discourse. Through evoking such a construction, bisexuality is positioned as inconsistent with the kind of stable and fulfilled life that is depicted in the marriage and family discourse. Jennifer refers to this when she speaks about her parents drawing on a construction of bisexuality as incompatible with a marriage and family discourse:

My dad just wants the best for me, and he doesn’t think that [lifestyle] is the best. He doesn’t see it as being any kind of option for having a good life, with children, a stable family, kids …

This construction of bisexuality as incompatible with monogamy also serves to destabilise the normalised life-course depicted in a marriage and family discourse. The marriage and family discourse is constructed as a linear developmental process where one proceeds through various pre-determined and socially prescribed stages, part of which includes getting married (to a man) and creating one’s own family. Gemma refers to this when describing her ‘straight friends’ as being ‘on that path-they’ve all been dating their boyfriends for the past two or three years, they’re going to have a ring on their finger, or they’re married or they’re gonna be pregnant soon, that kind of thing’.

Participants’ accounts indicate that they do not share in the mapped out narrative widely available in dominant discourse. They sacrifice the certainty that a heterosexual subject position affords and instead, as Astrid describes it, ‘you still take it relationship by relationship’. Such a description posits bisexuality as inconsistent with a stable, long-term relationship with the ultimate outcome of marriage. This stands in contrast to a normalised heterosexual relationship, which is assumed to progress through a process of serial monogamy culminating in marriage. It also stands in contrast to a normalised lesbian relationship model that prescribes a long-term, monogamous union. Social science accounts often describe a hierarchy of monogamy starting with monogamous lesbian couples at the top, followed by heterosexual couples and lastly occupied by gay men at the bottom (e.g. Blumstein and Schwartz, 1983) with Bebko and Johnson (2000: 414) referring to the commonly held stereotype of lesbian couples as ‘psychologically fused’ or as ‘enjoying a greater capacity for closeness’ than either heterosexual couples or gay men. Constructions of bisexuality as equated with non-monogamy serve to exclude bisexuality from a narrative that depicts a committed long-term relationship and render it as incompatible with marriage and family discourse, either in a same-sex or an opposite sex union.

‘Family is important to me’: Rearticulating marriage and family discourse

A heteronormative construction of marriage and family excludes same-sex relationships, yet many of the participants in the study challenged such exclusion. They drew on a transformed notion of family where it can be achieved in a same-sex relationship as well. Taryn describes this as follows:

Family is important to me. But I guess I’ve realised that if you’re with a woman it doesn’t mean that you have to let go of the notion of family, and you don’t need a husband to achieve that … I’ve kind of let go of that picture idea of what a family is, you know. Cause it’s not always that way … Who is to say two women won’t do the same if not a better job?

Sibongile, in expressing her desire to have children, describes her preference for this to happen in a same-sex relationship:

I just know it (having children) won’t be in the conventional way, you know. Like I was saying earlier – as much as I’m attracted to both males and females, I see myself settling down with a female rather than a male … .

However, even in rearticulating the marriage and family discourse to accommodate same-sex family configurations, participants emphasised a sense of loss that they associate with achieving a family in a non-traditional way. As Taryn noted, she had to ‘let go of that picture idea’ of a romanticised notion of family. In rearticulating her position in marriage and family discourse, she had to give up a narrative of herself having a family in a socially valued way and ‘accept’ that she will do it in a non-traditional way. Similarly, Sibongile differentiates a same-sex family from what is regarded as ‘normal’ when she says, ‘I do want children, they just won’t grow up in the normal – what is considered normal – sense’.

Along with this sense of loss, participants also constructed achieving a family in a same-sex union as requiring work. They spoke about particular challenges in achieving a non-traditional family, such as it being costly and, for many participants, out of their financial reach. Astrid, speaking about having children in a same-sex relationship, states: ‘people are always like, ‘there are ways’, like yeah, if you’re a fucking millionaire (laughs wryly)’. She goes on to say:

It’s heart breaking not being able to say that because we love each other we can make a baby … [When in a relationship with a woman] you feel like you really have to work hard to build that family. You have to be financially extremely well off, for in vitro or adoption.

It can be highlighted that participants’ rearticulation of heteronormative marriage and family discourse is framed specifically in relation to being in a relationship with a woman. Participants rarely commented on how they would negotiate having children with a man, as bisexually identified women, and also did not speak about how this discourse can be rearticulated to accommodate bisexuality more generally. Instead they focused their discussions on how same-sex relationships can be accommodated. When participants did speak about the marriage and family discourse as it related to marrying and having children with a man, they referred to it as if they are then reverting to heterosexuality. In these instances they spoke about this traditional configuration as ‘straightforward’ (Taryn), ‘uncomplicated’ and ‘life made easy’ (Nasiphi). In a sense, heterosexuality is regarded here as having a persuasive pull against which one actively struggles when in a same-sex relationship (captured by Astrid’s statement that you ‘have to work hard’). It functions as the ‘normal’ position from which participants have to actively dissociate through the continuous assertion of their sexual identification when in a same-sex relationship, but to which they are easily returned when not.

Such self-positioning as either lesbian or heterosexual seems to erase the possibility of a more enduring bisexual identity, as it relates to marriage and family discourse. This inability to adapt marriage and family discourse to accommodate bisexuality might be due to a more general lack of discussion of bisexuality as it relates to long-term relationships and notions of family. As discussed earlier, debates that challenge heteronormative constructions of marriage and the family have been predominantly framed in relation to gay and lesbian identities. Bisexuality has typically not been drawn into these debates, possibly due to its general marginalisation in LGBTI issues (Namaste, 1994; Stein, 1992), and participants therefore likely only have recourse to a same-sex model for challenging heteronormative notions of marriage and family.

Discussion

This study identified four different positions assumed by participants, in engaging with heteronormative marriage and family discourse. From their accounts it appears that participants take up different and shifting positions in relation to such a discourse - at times supporting this discourse, at other times enveloped and restricted by it, and also in certain instances challenging this discourse. Significantly, despite claiming self-aware bisexual identities, the influence of heteronormative discourse in structuring sexuality along a heterosexual–homosexual binary remains influential and participants’ own accounts in many instances reflect this binary. This was evident in how they constructed two main options in engaging with marriage discourse – in order to gain access to marriage and family discourse, participants are either positioned as being in a same-sex relationship (conforming to a lesbian relationship model) or a heterosexual relationship (conforming to a traditional heteronormative relationship model). An integration of their identity as bisexual is not spoken about as a valid option in securing access to marriage and family discourse. This points to the continued erasure of bisexuality from the terms used in dominant discourse to construct individual subjectivity, notions of relationships and notions of family (MacDowall, 2009). Participants’ accounts convey a lack of a language to articulate bisexuality as an identity that remains relevant regardless of the gender of the person they are in a relationship with, when engaging with marriage discourse. In this manner, their accounts indicate a sense of being invisible, as bisexual women, in marriage and family discourse.

Several theorists have referred to the notion of ‘bisexual erasure’ in dominant discourses of sexuality (e.g. Du Plessis, 1996; Yoshino, 2000). Bisexual erasure is not simply the omission of bisexuality from discourses, but refers to various strategies employed by heterosexual and homosexual discourses that serve to delegitimise bisexuality (Yoshino, 2000). Du Plessis (1996: 22) notes that bisexual erasure is reflected in the ‘ideologically bound inability to imagine bisexuality concretely’, an aspect which is evident in an array of theories – from Freudian theory to contemporary queer, gay and lesbian theories. From the findings discussed in this paper, bisexual erasure also appears to be reflected in the accounts of participants in this study.

MacDowall (2009: 4) describes bisexual erasure as the ‘ways in which bisexuality as a mature form of desire is deferred, elided, or made invisible’. This description is reflected in participants’ talk, where bisexuality is deferred when participants refer to constructions of bisexuality as an identity that is not viable in the present moment. This was evident in participants’ accounts of bisexuality as an identity that attains visibility only in reflection on past relationships, where the heterosexual/homosexual binary displaces it from the present moment. Bisexuality is also elided, where participants take recourse to either same-sex or heterosexual relationship models – but not a bisexual model – in engaging with marriage and family discourse. Lastly, bisexuality is made invisible through a lack of language to articulate long-term unions and notions of family that make specific reference to self-aware bisexual identities. In this manner, bisexuality is ‘always before, after, or outside (rather than alongside) the imposition of cultural order’ (Du Plessis, 1996: 29, emphasis in original).

Yoshino (2000: 353) refers to the erasure of bisexuality from dominant discourse as functioning on a structural level, arguing that bisexual erasure is linked to the manner in which heterosexual and homosexual discourses function to preserve ‘overlapping political interests’. One such shared interest is the stabilisation of exclusive sexual orientation categories (Yoshino, 2000). Through excluding bisexuality, homosexuality polices its own boundaries and remains a seemingly homogenous identity around which individuals can cohere and politically mobilise (Yoshino, 2000). In this sense, bisexual erasure serves the interest of gay and lesbian identity politics. Heterosexuality, as a predominantly normative sexual category, similarly maintains a homogenous (and in most contexts a privileged) identity through eliding and delegitimising bisexuality. Although heterosexuality, defined as being in opposition to homosexuality, depends on homosexuality for its meaning, it does not rely on bisexuality in the same manner. Bisexuality is then regarded as a threat as it blurs the boundaries between these two historically distinct categories (Yoshino, 2000).

In discourses related to homosexuality, two particular functions of bisexual erasure can be further elaborated on. First, discursive formulations of lesbian family configurations as assimilationist require strict boundary policing in order to maintain some measure of social privilege in heteronormative societies. Same-sex families are in this instance ‘tolerated’ in heteronormative contexts only because they are contained in a lesbian relationship model that mirrors heterosexual relationship ideals. Clarke (2003: 520) refers to the normalisation of lesbian and gay marriage as the view that ‘in fighting for the right to marry, lesbians and gay men are essentially fighting for the right to conform and assimilate, to be ‘just like’ heterosexuals’. In this sense, bisexuality is a threat to lesbian family configurations since it risks destabilising the normalising logic at work here. Within this perspective, bisexuality is considered as being too visible, in that associations of bisexual women with non-monogamy threaten more ‘sanitised’ versions of same-sex families depicted in lesbian assimilationist discourse. Bisexual erasure functions to secure the normalising lesbian family model, and bisexual women in same-sex relationships are positioned (or visually read) as lesbian to maintain this.

A second function of bisexual erasure, as it relates to lesbian family configurations specifically, is to protect the radical potential of lesbian challenges to heteronormativity. As pointed out above, lesbian family configurations have been described as assimilationist in instances in which they model heterosexual configurations. However, it is also possible for lesbian family configurations to trouble heteronormativity and in that way be transgressive. Making reference to a poststructuralist performativity framework of identity, Hemmings (2002) argues that:

… gender subversion lies in the closeness, the mirroring of heterosexuality, and at the same time in the underwriting of difference from heterosexuality. If just the former is in place, the result is not parody but approximation; if just the latter, an overdetermination of the boundary between normative and subversive. If both are in place, that difference from heterosexuality must be visible in order to be recognised by all parties in the scene. (p. 115, emphasis added)

In a same-sex family configuration, the assumed naturalness of heterosexual roles can be revealed as artificial and learned (Butler, 1990). However, the success of such a challenge to heteronormativity lies in the ultimate reading of the relationship as lesbian and not as bisexual. In this view bisexual women cannot attain the same transgressive signification as homosexuality, since a relationship with a woman is visually read as lesbian, and a relationship with a man as heterosexual. Bisexuality is then regarded as minimising this transgressive potential of lesbian discourse, since bisexual women’s opposite sex relationships can be visually read as heterosexual, and in that way minimise the political impact of lesbian families, who wish to assert their legitimacy as different from the norm. From this perspective, bisexuality’s engagement with marriage and family discourse is not visible enough, and therefore cannot be as transgressive as lesbian family configurations.

In summary, participants’ accounts indicate a structural erasure of bisexuality in that bisexuality is at times either deferred, elided, or made invisible in their engagement with marriage and family discourse. In this manner, bisexual erasure functions to support the stability of the heterosexual/homosexual binary: heterosexuality remains intact as normative; homosexuality remains intact as either assimilationist or as transgressive.

Conclusion

Some limitations of the current study can be identified. This study focused on the discursive resources drawn on by self-identified bisexual women who are not currently married or contemplating getting married in the near future. Focusing on this particular sample had the advantage of illustrating the coercive influence of heteronormative marriage discourse, even on the subjectivities of women who by virtue of their sexual identification are positioned outside of heterosexuality and who do not necessarily anticipate getting married. However, it will be valuable for future studies to explore how bisexual women who engage more actively with marriage discourse in getting married or entering a civil partnership construct meaning around their sexual identities, their relationships and their notions of family. Future research can also benefit from exploring more diverse aspects of South African bisexual women’s experience by including the voices of participants from a broader range of subject positions, particularly those from varied socio-economic positions as well as bisexual women living in rural areas. The use of different theoretical frameworks, such as phenomenology, will also be valuable in that in contrast to poststructuralist frameworks, such approaches can productively attend to embodied and material influences on participants’ constructions (e.g. Bowes-Catton et al., 2011).

Despite these limitations, this study illustrates the need for greater visibility of bisexual identities in conversations in psychology and in society more broadly, in order to open up possibilities for bisexual women to participate in challenges to heteronormativity. To this end, some implications for policy and practice can be suggested. First, the restrictive manner in which terms such as ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ marriage is used to refer to either same-sex civil partnerships or heterosexual marriage, has been described as contributing to bisexual invisibility in marriage discourse (Stoddard, 1997; The Bisexual Index, n.d.). Some bisexual individuals in same-sex relationships might wish to marry under a civil partnership act, but without having to erase the specificity of their sexual identification when doing so. Similarly, bisexual individuals in opposite-sex relationships might wish to marry under a civil partnership act instead of a traditional marriage act, in support of their sexual identification as different from heterosexuality or as a transgression of normative notions of marriage. It might therefore be useful for legislature to allow for and facilitate such challenges by omitting gender and gendered pronouns from the terms used in civil union/marriage legislature, thus contributing to the possibility of articulating bisexual identities within marriage discourse.

Second, more specifically in psychology it will be valuable for practitioners to be aware of the complex and at times contradictory discourses that inform bisexual women’s negotiation of heteronormativity. Although popular discourse often reflects the assumption that all bisexual women embrace a transgressive identity and reject long-term partnerships or marriage, the current paper illustrates that such a monolithic construction of bisexuality (or any other category of sexual identification) fails to represent the rich diversity of positions individuals assume in relation to dominant discourse (see also Barker, 2004; McClellan, 2006). With this in mind, psychology practitioners can work towards greater visibility and recognition of bisexual women who wish to create alternatives to heteronormativity in accessing marriage and family discourse, in addition to advocating for other varied relationship configurations and practices.

Finally, Clarke (2003) cautions that focusing activism on the equal treatment of same-sex marriage risks strengthening the notion that marriage is the ideal outcome in relationship recognition. Although some bisexual women might wish to participate in marriage discourse, others might wish to reject such a relationship model altogether (Yip, 2004). Adding lesbians, gay men (and potentially bisexual men and women) to legal and popular definitions of marriage will not necessarily function to destabilise the institution of marriage, ‘but rather reinforce marriage as the ideal, as the ‘gold standard’ in relationship recognition’ (Clarke, 2003: 524). Expanding marriage and family discourse beyond the boundaries of heterosexual unions risks depoliticising identity movements, and could limit the potential for lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals to challenge the privileging of normative heterosexuality (Clarke, 2003). Efforts to increase bisexual visibility in debates around marriage and family should therefore be wary of becoming assimilationist through uncritically endorsing marriage as the ultimate standard of equality and should instead focus on increasing the recognition of varied forms of relationships.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their careful engagement with the manuscript and invaluable suggestions for revision.

Author Biographies

Ingrid Lynch is a lecturer at the Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria, South Africa. She has published in the field of critical gender, sexuality and health studies. Her current work focuses on how bisexual identities are enabled and constrained by different discourses. This includes an exploration of ways in which dominant discourses and binary orders can be challenged and expanded by South African women claiming a bisexual identity. Her other research interests include reproductive decision-making in same- and opposite-gendered relationships and feminist theories.

David Maree is the Head of Department and a full professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research interests include gender studies, assessment and cognitive psychology. In his current research he investigates a social cognitive perspective of women's professional participation in science, engineering and technology.

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