Drawing Bisexuality Back into the Picture: How Bisexuality Fits into LGBT Legal Strategy Ten Years after Bisexual Erasure
![handle is hein.journals/cardw17 and id is 67 raw text is: DRAWING BISEXUALITY BACK INTO THE
PICTURE: HOW BISEXUALITY FITS INTO LGBT
LEGAL STRATEGY TEN YEARS AFTER BISEXUAL
ERASURE
HERON GREENESMITH
[I]f I am not free and if I am not entitled equal to heterosexuals and
homosexuals then homosexual men and women have joined with the
dominant heterosexual culture in the tyrannical pursuit of E Pluribus
Unum and I a bisexual woman committed to cultural pluralism and,
therefore to sexual pluralism, can only say, you better watch your back!'
INTRODUCTION
In 2000, Kenji Yoshino published a paper exploring the social erasure of
bisexuality.2 He introduced the paper by empirically proving that bisexuality was
invisible through a quick survey of popular news sources that featured volumes
more articles about homosexuality than bisexuality.3 Once he showed that
bisexuality was invisible, he made sure to distinguish between the incidental
invisibility of bisexuality, perhaps because of the low number of bisexuals, and its
deliberate erasure. Yoshino theorized that monosexuals-individuals who are
attracted to only one gender, such as heterosexuals and homosexuals-created an
epistemic contract4 to erase bisexuality in social culture.5 He argues that
. Heron Greenesmith is Legislative Counsel at Family Equality Counsel. She has a bachelor's degree in
linguistics from the University of New Hampshire and a juris doctor from American University,
Washington College of Law. Heron would like to thank her family for their love and support and Nancy
Polikoff for an instructive semester in Sexuality and the Law at WCL.
I June Jordan, On Bisexuality and Cultural Pluralism, in AFFIRMATIVE ACTS 132, 138 (1998).
2 See Kenji Yoshino, The Epistemic Contract ofBisexual Erasure, 52 STAN. L. REv. 353 (2000).
3 Id. at 368. To continue under his presumption and to make sure that bisexuality has not suddenly
reached a place of prominence in today's society, I performed similar searches to the same result. One
search that I conducted demonstrated that from Jan. 1, 2000 to Jan. 1, 2010, the New York Times
published well over 3000 stories including the word homosexuality and only 111 with the word
bisexuality. Another search that I performed revealed that in the same time frame, Reuters had 2343
stories containing homosexuality and only thirty-eight containing bisexuality. Finally, a search that
I conducted of all law journals over the same time period came up with over 3000 results for
homosexuality and only 425 results for bisexuality.
4 As [Yoshino] define[s] it, an epistemic contract is a contract in the sense that a social contract is
a contract. In other words, it is not a conscious arrangement between individuals, but rather a social
norm that arises unconsciously. Yoshino, supra note 2, at 391-92. It is as if these two groups, despite
their other virulent disagreements, have agreed that bisexuals will be made invisible. Id. at 362.
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Drawing Bisexuality Back into the Picture: How Bisexuality Fits into LGBT Legal Strategy Ten Years after Bisexual Erasure
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