“Bi” could be an indication of psychopathology (if it appears after and even before a declaration), an original state (Freud), a natural proclivity (Mead), a set of desires beyond the binary (Garber), or a final, evolved status (after the churn of taking sides). (And there are at least least eight types of social scientific characterizations that discursively circulate, each with varying degrees of a subject’s investment/praxis.) On its face, it’s a neither/nor; with “tensions and the passions double amplified,” bisexuality is non-dispositive at its limit. Over life, decisions accrete, tendencies seem to appear, and behavioral scales are developed. Amid all the anxiety over a proper diagnostic, we actually need a “closet for the whole world to live in.” The stakes, then, haven’t been made high enough to avoid the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” But, contra MLK, it’s about “making [un]real the promises of democracy.”
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