Julia Shaw

Beloved Forest Feast author Erin Gleeson is back with a love letter to travel and delicious vegetarian food from her home state of California Despite all the welcome changes that have happened in our culture and laws over the past few decades in regards to sexuality, the subject remains one of the most influential but least understood aspects of our lives. For psychologist and bestselling author Julia Shaw, this is both professional and personal--Shaw studies the science of sexuality and she herself is proudly and vocally bisexual. It's an admission, she writes, that usually causes people's pupils to dilate, their cheeks to flush, and their questions to start flowing. Ask people to name famous bisexual actors, politicians, writers, or scientists, and they draw a blank. Despite statistics that show bisexuality is more common than homosexuality, bisexuality is often invisible. In BI: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality, Shaw probes the science and culture of attraction beyond the binary. From the invention of heterosexuality to the history of the Kinsey scale, as well as asylum seekers trying to defend their bisexuality in a court of law, there is so much more to explore than most have ever realized. Drawing on her own original research--and her own experiences--this is a personal and scientific manifesto; it's an exploration of the complexities of the human sexual experience and a declaration of love and respect for the nonconformists among us.

The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality

Sam Skurka

We center heterosexuality as the sun of our sexual solar system, blinding our exploration of other sexualities.

Jonathan Ned Katz argues that "the idea of heterosexuality is a modern invention, dating to the late nineteenth century."

Kinsey introduced "bisexuality as the foundational norm from which monosexuality derived"

In other words, it is not practical for most of us to get rid of labels entirely, but we must also not attribute too much power or elegance to them.

Robyn Ochs eloquently put it in 2009 :[Bisexuality is] the potential to be attracted, romantically and/or sexually, to people of more than one [gender], not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree."

..., I use "bisexual", or "bi", as an umbrella term that includes those who identify as bisexual, pansexual, plurisexual, polysexual, sexually fluid, bi-curious, and questioning...

It is not literally feeling that you are another gender, at least not for me. It's more that I feel like a mix of what society has decided are masculine and feminine characteristics.

Consistent with this, Rosie Nelson found that bisexual people see gender and sexuality as connected.

..."plurisexuals see their gender and sexuality as connected, and many reference the ways they transform outfits and impressions through feminisation or masculinisation"...

Bi quotes

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