Lesbians and Bisexual Fiction Writers

edited by Harold Bloom

Lesbians and Bisexual Fiction Writers covers 200 of the most important women writers of English, grouping authors culturally and by genre, from 18th-century diarists to new writers of experimental prose. Each volume covers approximately 15 authors and includes a concise biography, a selection of critical extracts, and a complete and up-to-date bibliography of the author’s publications 

Bisexuality: Making the Invisible Visible in Faith Communities

by Marie Alford-Harkey & Debra W. Haffner

Is your faith community open to people whose sexuality does not fit into the categories of gay/lesbian or straight? Does your faith community have access to resources about bisexuality and bisexual people? This guidebook is designed to help congregations understand bisexuality and to encourage faith communities to “make the invisible visible.”

Religious leaders and congregations can use this guidebook to inspire theological reflection and action in their faith communities. Bisexuality is often invisible in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organizations, society as a whole, and in faith communities and denominations. Although many mainline denominations and congregations have made great strides in welcoming and affirming lesbian and gay people, and some have even begun to respond to the specific needs and concerns of transgender people, the “B” in the LGBT acronym is still largely ignored. When a congregation welcomes and recognizes people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, it contributes to a positive image of religion among people who may have rejected religion as intolerant or irrelevant. Such congregations become safe spaces for youth who are exploring their sexuality and have questions. In addition, embracing bisexual persons makes it possible for those persons to be open about their identity and helps create a more open atmosphere in the faith community, encouraging authenticity and community among members. Congregations that embrace bisexual persons can also help heal the suffering caused by the invisibility of bisexual people in society.

This guidebook is written to address the broad spectrum of American congregations. The information it contains will be relevant or adaptable to Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, and Islamic faith communities.

Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema: Images of Growth, Rebellion, and Survival

by Justin Vicari

In recent decades, male bisexuality has become a recurring topic in international cinema, as filmmakers and their works challenge our ideas about sexual freedom and identity. In all of these films, more than a dozen of which are covered here, bisexuality is treated both as an actual practice and a complex metaphor for a number of things, including the need to adapt to changing environments, the questioning of rigidly traditional male roles and identities, the breakdown and regeneration of the structures of families, the limitations of monogamy, and the stubborn affirmation of romantic love.

Bisexuality in the United States: A Social Science Reader

by Paula C. Rodriguez

For years bisexuality was considered merely a transitional stage between a person’s presumed heterosexuality and “true” homosexuality, or vice versa, and was thereby regarded with suspicion by the lesbian and gay community and contempt by the “straight” world. The study and understanding of bisexuality has surpassed the stereotyped representations of previous eras (e.g., Basic Instinct), but few books attempt to seriously engage the subject as a whole. Paula Rust at last rectifies this absence in the literature by presenting the first interdisciplinary and comprehensive review of social scientific research and theory about bisexuality.

With contributions by sociologists, psychologists, historians, political theorists, and others, the book yields an overall picture of what we know, and what we don’t know, about the subject. The book provides a wealth of information about the lives and experiences of bisexual people. Articles cover early research in which bisexuality was conceptualized as “situational homosexuality,” pioneering research on bisexuality as an authentic sexual orientation, scholarship on bisexuality in the context of AIDS research, the phenomena of “bisexual chic” and biphobia, queer theory, and the contemporary relationship between academia and political activism. Selections include theoretical and empirical studies from social science perspectives as well as popular writings about the growth of the bisexual movement in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Pansexuality: A Panoply of Co-Constructed Narratives

by Karen Morgaine

Pansexuality: A Panopoly of Co-Constructed Narratives expertly weaves contemporary research on sexual and gender identity with personal narratives of individuals who have navigated social norms and constructs to carve out an understanding of their own sexuality. The text provides readers with an innovative and intimate lens through which they can begin to understand the dynamic nature of sexuality. 

The text begins by providing readers with theoretical and historical context regarding nonbinary sexualities. The following chapters outline the methodologies the author used to support and generate new research on pansexuality—including one-on-one interviews, collage, transcript poetry, and a qualitative survey—and the results of that research. Eleven chapters highlight the personal stories of individuals who identify as pansexual and other nonbinary sexualities, summarizing important experiences, defining moments, the meanings they attach to sexuality and gender, and observations they have made over the years, testimony gleaned from the author’s interviews with them. 

Embodying modern research that explores the fluidity of gender and sexual identity, Pansexuality is an illuminating text that is well suited for courses in gender studies, human sexuality, and sociology.

Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain

by Kate Harrad

Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain is the first of its kind: a book written for and by bisexuals in the UK. This accessible collection of interviews, essays, poems and commentary explores topics such as definitions of bisexuality, intersections of bisexuality with other identities, stereotypes and biphobia, being bisexual at work, teenage bisexuality and bisexuality through the years, the media’s approach to bisexual celebrities, and fictional bisexual characters.

Filled with raw, honest, first-person accounts as well as comments from leading bisexual activists in the UK, this is the book you’ll buy for your friend who’s just come out to you as bi-curious, or for your parents who think your bisexuality is weird or a phase, or for yourself, because you know you’re bi but you don’t know where to go or what to do about it.

Bisexual Living

by Julias Fast and Hall Wells, PhD

These in-depth interviews with uninhibited swingers and lonely divorcees, with liberated heterosexuals and outspoken homosexuals expose the bisexual life-style and what its practitioners get out of it.

Is it abnormal… immoral? Is it increasing? Does it threaten marriage and family life, or enhance it? Does it promote promiscuity? Does it lead to homosexuality?

The best-selling author of Body Language and a noted clinical psychologist have produced an important and startlingly candid study of the way some Americans live.

Including an interview with Dr. Wardell B. Pomeroy, coauthor of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.