Kelley --
You make a really good connection here. I also think of this as a really important part of the weird lesbian wars over essentialism that Butler's reacting to...charging people with fakery in response to being labelled fake, instead of challenging the value and existence of "real" identities...
>I'd also add that within the lesbian/gay liberation movements of the 70s a
>similar sort of charge of failure was lodged at bi's as failed
>gays/lesbians. Bi's were somehow failing to fully embrace their true
>gay/lesbian identity in order to take advantage of het privilege. This was
>prominent enough in the 80s and I experienced it often enough, though for
>me it was in academia and not among non-academic lesbians/gays who
>generally really didn't care. Some did, but the vehemence wasn't as
>strong. Don't know why.
I experienced this even in the early 90s and late 80s... still do sometimes now, but less so, and mostly among somewhat older people. some of the people i've known who were most assholic about bisexuals are straight now. haha. (a parallel with seventies feminism; most of those most hostile to men and masculine sexuality eventually went straight). it's amazing how fast all this is changing. I agree the essentialism/panic about bisexuals has been worse in college towns/academic-type environments, I think it's partly because those subcultures are just more self-righteous about everything. also more obsessed with the whole notion of het privilege, people who are in many ways privileged are often -- out of a combination of guilt and repressed entitlement -- peculiarly focused on whatever specific exclusion they're experiencing.
I think particularly lesbians have finally realized that heterosexual privilege is just not simple. you cant claim that relations with men are the most oppressive thing in the whole world *and* that heterosexuals are the most privileged people in the whole world -- two of the many inane and contradictory underpinnings of the anti-bisexual/"bis are fake gays" dogma. more important, everyone is figuring out that human desire is just damn complicated and that mainstream society is doing a rather efficient job of policing it already thank you very much.
Liza