In a recent meeting with my supervisory team, one thing that came up is that I need to define bisexuality in my research. This might seem relatively straightforward, but it has proven to be a complex issue to unpick. This is especially down to bisexuality being somewhat neglected in academic study, meaning there is little consensus, but also because I am using metaphorical depictions of bisexuality in the Gothic alongside explicit ones. My first challenge, therefore, was to develop my own taxonomy of bisexuality.
In my research, I came across an article by Kenji Yoshino entitled The Epistemological Contract of Bisexual Erasure, in which he posits that bisexuality can be defined along three axes: self-identification, desire, and conduct. In brief, self-identification refers to individuals who embrace and use the term “bisexual” to describe themselves. Conduct refers to the physical act of bisexuality, and desire refers to the romantic and/or sexual attraction a person feels. A taxonomy of bisexuality may be based on one of, or a combination of, these axes.
For my own relying on the desire axis. While there will be cross-over with self-identification and conduct, I believe that desire is the most effective axis when looking at fictional content. Self-identification is too limiting, with television being notoriously slow in using the label, and using the conduct axis bot only warrants the inclusion of “ritual” and “situational” bisexuality (e.g. bisexuality as a rite of passage into adulthood, bisexuality for financial reasons) which I do not read as a bisexual identity, and would exclude bisexual virgins, biromantic asexuals, and metaphorical depictions of bisexuality (e.g. through vampirism). While these other approaches have their uses in sociological study, I think it is only through the desire axis that a meaningful sample can be gathered for media analysis on bisexual identity.