[note added 8-1-13: The following piece will be included in my next book, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, which comes out in October, 2013!]
In October, 2010, my essay, “Bisexuality does not reinforce the gender binary,” first appeared on the internet. The main reason why I wrote the piece was to illustrate how the reinforcing trope (i.e., the notion that certain genders, sexualities or identities “reinforce” the gender binary, or heteronormativity, or the patriarchy, or the hegemonic-gender-system-of-your-choice) is selectively doled out in queer and feminist communities in order to police their borders. Since queer communities are dominated by non-feminine, cisgender, and exclusively gay and lesbian folks, these individuals are almost never accused of “reinforcing the gender binary.” In contrast, more marginalized identities (e.g., bisexual, transgender, femme) are routinely subjected to the reinforcing trope. While my “reinforcing” essay received many positive responses, it also garnered some harsh criticism, particularly from within certain segments of transgender and gender variant communities. All of the critiques that I heard or read pretty much ignored my primary point—namely, the underlying forms of sexism that determine who gets accused of “reinforcing” shit and who does not—and instead focused solely on the rote assertion that the word “bisexual” (and, by association, anyone who identifies as bisexual) really does “reinforce the gender binary.”