Controversial feminist Julie Bindel's recent blog for the
Huffington Post equates bisexuality with a moral choice, asserting
that "if bisexual women had an ounce of sexual politics, they would
stop sleeping with men". As a bisexual woman (and feminist) who
actually chose to marry one of the men she traitorously slept with,
I'm guessing I'm well and truly off Bindel's Christmas card
list.
It's true that there was a sense in which I felt like I was being
politically active just by leaving the house with my previous
partner, a woman. A trip to IKEA to pick out a new wardrobe? Surely
a radical critique of heterosexual domesticity? But when I got
together with my next partner - now husband - no one looked at us
in that… well, interested way I'd become used to any more.
Indistinguishable from all the heterosexual couples around us, no
one really noticed us at all. With those mundane outings no longer
imbued with subversive magic, a wardrobe had become just a
wardrobe.
Although marriage for me means building a life and raising
children with the person I love, it has also meant being accepted
into a privileged club I never wanted to join, through my
bisexuality becoming invisible. I was interested to know how other
bisexual women, whose marriages looked different to mine,
interacted with their political, sexual and family identities. I
asked four women - who all identify as bisexual and feminist - how
they hold onto those two parts of themselves, while also being
married to one person.
Talking to them left me considering the ways in which my queerness
isn't invisible in my married life. My ex-girlfriend lives just
around the corner, and is not just a friend and godmother, but an
active part of our daily family life. Another ex-girlfriend was
bridesmaid at my wedding. So maybe things aren't always as
conventional as they look. I don't feel I've given up my feminism,
my right to belong to the queer community, or my sexual politics,
but I do now look further afield than IKEA to express them.
Read the rest of this interview in the October issue of
DIVA on sale from September 27 2012.
Buy it online here
divadirect.co.uk
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