Plural Desires: Writing Bisexual Women's Realities

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria, B.C.

This anthology gives voice to the “intersection of ‘bisexuality,’
‘feminism,’ ‘antiracism’ and ‘desire,’” through women’s
voices, expressions, and experiences. The contents are diverse, ranging
from fiction, poetry, drama, interviews, and documented conversations to
comics, drawings, and photography.

Many of the works challenge or dismantle the traditional positioning of
desire on one side (“lesbian”) or another (“straight”). A
defiance of categorization is reflected in Janice Williamson’s
inventive, delightful, and opaque text “Strained & Mixed Fruit (after
Gerber TM): an autobificatograph,” which poetically merges a variety
of genres in its depiction of the heroine’s life as a bisexual. Andrea
Freeman exposes multifaceted sexual desire in the “Nympho Next
Door,” a wildly erotic adventure of gazing lust. Leanne Rae’s
bilingual cartoon “Lillian: The Fucking Faggot” invites the reader
into a gay bar and tells of a heterosexual cruising between a gay and a
lesbian.

As a whole, the anthology effectively demonstrates that bisexuality is
a distinct alternative between two “traditional” categorizations of
sexuality. As such, it debunks the notion of bisexuality as a trendy
field of play that precedes commitment to one side of the fence or the
other.