Hegemonic Monosexuality

Abstract

Recent scholarly work has focused on the erasure and mistreatment of bisexuality in histories of sexuality. Such erasure is not only observed in academic work but also in the lived experiences of people who identify as plurisexuals. The present paper brings together studies on bisexuality, hegemony, and sexual politics to explain the discursively produced demarcation between sexualities and forms of sexual expression, and it supports a focus on monosexuality as a theoretical construct that productively addresses issues of discrimination and marginalization that people identifying as plurisexuals endure. What is put forward and challenged through this paper is the functional potential of monosexuality to maintain a sociodicy whereby the nuclear family and its contingent material implications remain not only unchallenged and normative but also inevitable.

Keywords:

• Monosexuality
• hegemony
• bisexuality
• sexualized governmentalities
• plurisexuality

Introduction

Bisexuality has been problematic as a descriptor of romantic and/or erotic desire - or desires in the plural if one extends the way they define and understand bisexuality. It has also beemn problematic as a theoretical construct through which gender and sexuality are discussed, understood, and argued for and against. Additionally, what is commonly termed as bisexual erasure (that is, the complete refusal to acknowledge - let alone accept - bisexuality as a legitimate lived experience, identity, or expression of desire and the discrimination and marginalization that is experienced by those who identify, openly or otherwise, as bisexuals) should not be undermined by theoretical discussions about bisexuality as a construct.

Indeed, through a study of 745 participants, Roberts et al. (2015) confirmed the existence of stigmatizing attitudes toward "non-monosexual" individuals by heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. What is more, their research shows that such attitudes, collectively termed monosexism, were not instigated by people unknown to the victims; rather, discriminatory behavior against individuals who engaged in plurisexuality was observed to originate from their peers, family members, and the wider gay/lesbian community. Most importantly, there have been many studies confirming that those on the receiving end of such behaviors/attitudes suffer severe psychosocial problems ranging from distress to suicide (Brewster et al., 2013; Chan & Leung, 2023; Dyar & London, 2018; Mereish et al., 2017). The aim of this paper is to reframe understandings of bisexuality within the context of what is later termed as hegemonic monosexuality.

To do so, the paper addresses the role of scholarship in positioning and conceptualizing bisexuality in a way that endorses hegemonic monosexuality, and it then attempts to contribute to the deconstruction of preexisting sexual politics so that sexual identity, including labels, expression, desire, and practices, is not bound to heteronormative and homonormative politics. Here, heteronormativity and homonormativity are used with reference to the emergence and promotion of a social hierarchy whereby heterosexuality is considered as natural and superior, homosexuality is tolerated insomuch as it accepts, celebrates, and imitates heteropatriarchal norms, and all other forms of sexual expression - with all the implications they might have on the way people participate in social life - are repudiated. To illustrate how forms of sexual expression are used as justification for enacting power imbalances and social hierarchies, the concept of sexualized governmentalities is activated in the latter part of the paper. In writing this paper, I hope to initiate a dialogue among scholars about the potential of hegemonic monosexuality to provide us with insights that can be used for the betterment of the lives of those identifying as plurisexual. In this paper, the term plurisexual is used in lieu of non-monosexual. Even though the terms are nearly synonymous, non-monosexual reproduces the pervasiveness of monosexuality as the only socially accepted form of expressing romantic and/or erotic desire and is, therefore, not preferred.

Why bisexuals are discriminated against by heterosexuals who view all sexualities but their own as legitimate, acceptable, and ‘normal’ should be self-evident and there seems to be little point in expanding on this more. Miller (2001) identifies the AIDS pandemic as one locus where popular culture targeted bisexuality and observes that bisexual men, in particular, were “[…] seen as the logical link and became an easy target for blame” (p. 99). Not only were bisexual people viewed as repugnant for engaging romantically and/or erotically with individuals of the same sex, but they were further accused of facilitating the contamination of the heterosexual, nay normal, population. Without arguing that this is the sole contributing factor to the marginalization of bisexuals by the heterosexual community, the AIDS pandemic illustrates a significant moment in time where discrimination on the basis of sexuality became overt and institutionalized. That is, those not abiding by the heteropatriarchal mandate were subjugated to marginalization and social exclusion which was a socially accepted response to what was believed to be a matter of public health safety.

The above and indeed any discussion related to the marginalization of non-heterosexuals by heterosexual people is rarely startling, at least to people with an interest in matters of gender and sexuality. Similarly unsurprising is that bisexuals are discriminated against by homosexuals, as well. Ault (1994) is perhaps one of the first to focus on “[…] the marginalization within a marginalized community” (p. 107) that bisexuals experience from homosexuals. In her study, Ault (1994) focuses on the ways in which bisexual women are discursively constructed “[…] as deviant others” (p. 107) by lesbian women, recycling the oppression they have experienced as non-heterosexual women to those who are plurisexual. Here, one can observe a transition in the way sexual expression is viewed. Rather than focusing on the gender of the people who are romantically and/or sexually involved, the focus now shifts in the consistency of such configuration.

In other words, non-heterosexual women in Ault’s (1994) study recycle the oppression they have received from heterosexuals and direct it toward those who engage in romantic and/or erotic relations with people irrespective of the gender they identify with. Ault (1994) continues by identifying as a possible cause of such marginalization to be lesbian women’s perception of bisexuality as “[…] a deep and formidable challenge to both personal identity and movement politics” (p. 108). That is, bisexuality is viewed as contributing to a possible erasure of the struggles of homosexual people to be acknowledged under the law and in society for being homosexual. A rough simplification of this is as follows: if the gender of one’s romantic and/or erotic partner does not matter, then the fights of the gay and lesbian liberation movement would have a significantly reduced impact. Ault (1994) rightly suggests that doing so contributes to the re-inscription of “[…] heteropatriarchal systems of domination” (p. 108) this time by lesbian women instead of heterosexual men.

While providing an explanation as to why heterosexuals and homosexuals insist in disregarding bisexuality as a legitimate form of sexual and/or romantic expression, Yoshino (2000, p. 362) argues that the stabilization of sexual orientation, the retaining of sex as a dominant feature of social demarcation, and the domination of monogamy as a norm contribute to the marginalization of plursexuals. Although this is a point that this paper will turn to shortly, it is important to note the emergence of homonormativity - and the relevant socio-political interests that accompany it - as a platform that enabled the discrimination against bisexual and by extension plurisexual people by heterosexual and homosexual populations. In short, the somewhat limited, primarily legal rights that were on offer for homosexual cisgender men and women in the 1990s came with a caveat: the observation, adoption, re-inscription, and manifestation of heteronormative and patriarchal regulatory behaviors. This is further supported by Angelides (2001), Du Plessis (1996), James (1996), and Yoshino (2000), among others, who situate the erasure of bisexuality within a discourse of “[…] political interests” (Yoshino, 2000, p. 353) of both heterosexuals and homosexuals which, in order to be maintained, dictate the “[…] social erasure” (p. 357) of bisexuals. As McCann (2022) argues, anything outside the well-guarded borders of monosexuality is viewed as “[…] a “contaminating” force that discomforts straight and queer spaces alike” (p.73, emphasis in original).

The erasure of bisexuality in the academy

In addition to socio-cultural responses toward and the lived experiences of bisexual people, it is important to consider how bisexuality has been treated by scholars at a theoretical and/or conceptual level. In doing so, I aim to highlight the shortcomings of bisexuality as a construct in its inability to account for contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality. Hemmings (2002, p. 1) argues that the position of bisexuality within an imagined continuum between heterosexuality and homosexuality, somewhere in the middle, confirms and even reinforces binary configurations - and by extension normative views - of gender and sexuality. Interestingly, they situate this ‘positioning’ of bisexuality within queer and feminist theory. They write that her “[…] primary aim is to investigate the repeated production of bisexuality within much queer and feminist theory as an abstract and curiously lifeless middle ground” (p. 1). However, a research study by Galupo et al. (2017) confirms that such positioning of bisexuality is not only an epistemological matter, pertaining to academic discussions of theorists of one tradition or another; rather, they show that such a positioning is also observed in the day-to-day lives of individuals and the societal responses they encounter continuously by people who refuse to acknowledge bisexuality as a legitimate expression of sexual desire. As such, the production of bisexuality as abstract is established and promoted by people for people creating an ontology whereby monosexuality is not only normative, compulsory, or dominant; but such an ontology does not even allow room for deviating from monosexuality given that anything other than strictly heterosexual or homosexual desires are non-existent.

Even though the erasure of bisexuality is undeniable, MacDowall (2009) criticizes early academic work on bisexuality for focusing almost exclusively on bisexual erasure from sociocultural histories of bisexuality instead of attempting to “[…] historicize the category of bisexuality itself” (p. 4). She criticizes histories of sexualities for not considering bisexuality as a significant category but instead treating it in a homogenizing manner as part of the LGBTQI + term; that is, failing to account for the particularities of plurisexuality and, by extension, confirming society’s normative and exclusionary stance against plurisexuality. A different approach to the interpretation of the erasure of bisexuality from scholarly work is offered by Du Plessis (1996). In particular, they criticize histories of sexuality for promoting an impossibility of bisexuality in the permanent present which serves nothing except the maintenance of heterosexuality and homosexuality as the sole artificial-cum-authentic expressions of desire.

From the discussion so far, it emerges that the omission of bisexuality from an ontology of desire is not a matter of theory, but one of methodology. Indeed, bisexuality appears to have been systematically omitted from sociocultural and historical accounts of sexuality creating a monosexual sociodicy. What is more, the association of bisexuality, and for that matter plurisexuality, in the realm of the temporal-but-never-permanent (Du Plessis, 1996) reduces sexual desire to Hobson’s choice: one can either have monosexual desires or no desires at all. While examining bisexuality, Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Alexander (2009) identify the need to focus on the nature and essence of sexuality. Situating sexuality within a Western modern discursive understanding of exclusivity as the hierarchically prevailing and most desirable manifestation of “[…] romantic and erotic expressions […]” (p. 198), they provide a rationale as per why mainstream - or accepted - sexuality has come to be viewed interconnected to binary relations between “[…] the lover and the beloved, the pursuer and the pursued, single or married, the man and the wife, and the male and the female” (p. 198). Their discussion continues with presenting bisexuality as disruptive to the normative binaries that are commonly associated and promoted with monosexual desire, a point that finds Galupo et al. (2017) in disagreement given that bisexuality is based on - or is understood to be based on - the gender binary.

Indeed, criticisms about the treatment of bisexuality in scholarly work do not center solely around the issue of erasure and its limiting potential. Galupo et al. (2017) criticize academic work on sexualities for having spent many years using bisexuality as an all-inclusive term that attends to plurisexual desires, though they acknowledge that more recent works appear to be sensitive to the particularities of bisexuality vis-à-vis fluid, queer, pansexual, and other romantic and/or erotic expressions. In fact, they use the term bisexual to include people who identify as bisexual, pansexual, and queer, extending the use of the term to account for all individuals who identify as plurisexuals. This is what Galupo et al. (2014) and McCann (2022) term as plurisexuality. In doing so, they acknowledge that sexuality should not be envisioned as a continuum whereby heterosexuality is on the one end, homosexuality is on the other end, and everything else falls in the middle. Rather, they invite a reconceptualization of romantic and/or erotic expressions as independent, though connected, each with their own specificities. This argument is more in line with the perspective of this paper which attempts to bring monosexuality to the fore. As Galupo et al. (2017) observe, bisexuality is often perceived contra conservative understandings of sex and gender. However, it fails to account for more progressive views and more recent developments in the field of social sciences of gender and sexuality.

Further to this, in Vice Versa (Garber, 1995), arguably one of the most important works offering an archaeology of bisexuality, bisexuality is presented as the purest form of “[…] the nature of human eroticism” (p. 15) in that it allows no room for labels and, thus, restrictions as to who one might desire and how. The work of Stekel (1950/1922), who takes a slightly different approach to Freud, further attests to the same. He argues that from a psychoanalytic perspective, monosexuality is not natural to the human experience. Storr (1999) criticizes Stekel for oversimplifying not only Freud’s theories but also for oversimplifying bisexuality and plurisexual desires by not accounting for the specificities of each form of erotic and romantic expression. Indeed, Stekel’s (1950/1922) project appears to be the provision of a genealogy of bisexuality and its consideration by major psychoanalysts as either natural or abnormal. Despite the critiques Storr (1999) offers on popular accounts of bisexuality for whether or not they present a nuanced perspective through which bisexuality is to be examined, it becomes clear through their work that psychoanalysts in the early part of the twentieth century viewed monosexuality as abnormal, a situation that people get to condition themselves to adhere to as part of their socialization process. Heterosexual/homosexual discourses perpetuate a binary understanding of both gender and sexuality that are at best restrictive and oppressive.

This is not to suggest that bisexuality should be replaced by monosexuality, neither as a conceptual term nor as an identity marker. Work on bisexuality contributes significantly not only to the visibility of the bisexual experience but also to its improvement. The suggestion put forth in this paper is an invitation to reconsider sexual politics in light of monosexualities and plurisexualities in the plural to account against the danger of homogenization. Doing so separates sexual from gender politics, without claiming that they are independent from one another - they certainly are not; it acknowledges the progress that has taken place regarding expansive understandings of gender identifications and sexual expressions, orientations, desires, and practices; and it also reflects the effects - and dominance - of homonormative politics.

Avoiding considering monosexuality as a central construct that organizes sexual politics can only result in producing a critique from within the system that is structured around that which one criticizes. McCann (2022), for example, identifies such contradictions in the work of Butler, and in particular their attempt to theorize the marginalization that plurisexual people suffer. “For Butler the “problem” for those living plurisexual lives is seen as the same for those living homosexual lives: the heterosexual matrix. That is, plurisexuals are understood as oppressed by the very same dictates of heteronormative lines of gender and desire” (p. 78, emphasis in original). Not only does this allude to the previous discussion about the emergence of homonormative politics as the re-inscription of heteronormativity by gay and lesbian cisgender men and women, but it further highlights the inability of discussions around bisexuality to escape patriarchal notions of gender and the restrictions it puts onto sexual expressions and desires. In their critique of Butler’s work, McCann (2022) invites us to consider bisexuality not “[…] as another identity for consideration” (p. 72) but for the potential it offers to radically revisit and challenge theoretical positions which maintain the hetero/homo binary. However, as I have already discussed in this paper, the connotations of bisexuality are inescapably linked to both gender (man/woman) and sexual (hetero/homo) binaries.

McCann (2022) further explains that “[t]he failure of […] bisexuality to achieve comprehension under either the heterosexual matrix or homosexual norms renders it unintelligible” (p. 82). Indeed, in discussing the uneven hetero-homo binary and how norms are observed on both ends, they point not only to the exclusion but also the nonexistence of bisexuality. And yet, it is not the absence of bisexuality from a monosexual sociodicy that is significant; it is the functional potential of monosexuality to maintain a sociodicy whereby the nuclear family and its contingent material implications remain not only unchallenged and normative but also inevitable. Indeed, the latter part of this paper aims to situate monosexuality within the context of hegemony in an attempt to provide a new perspective on monosexuality, one that connects its sociocultural pervasiveness to material benefits.

Perhaps a point of McCann’s (2022) argument that this paper aims to extend is identified in the following claim: “We must understand how homosexuality is constituted against (“haunted” by) heterosexuality and plurisexualities” (p. 79, emphasis in original). One of the provisos of the argument put forward in this paper is that homosexuality and heterosexuality are both manifestations of monosexuality. It is, of course, acknowledged that matters of identity and sexual desire cannot be reduced in mathematical, almost, categories. However, such a visualization of sorts allows for a broader understanding of monosexuality, one that is not contingent on other normative views of sexuality. They further state that “[m]aintenance of the hetero/homo binary acts to constantly invoke a sense of the impossibility of plurisexualities […]” (p. 80). One can invert the argument to claim that sociocultural fixation with the heterosexual/homosexual binary is both a manifestation of and the enabling condition for hegemonic monosexuality.

It becomes therefore significant to develop new understandings of how, and to what ends, sexuality continues to be used as the basis for sociocultural hierarchal distinctions among and across people. Ault (1994) argues that “[d]ecoding lesbian discourse hostile to bisexual women begins to raise new questions and to press further our understandings of how systems of domination along lines of social demarcation reinforce one another” (p. 120). It is, indeed, this that the present paper focuses on, though without explicitly focusing on one gender or another: hegemonic monosexuality as a system of domination through social demarcation. Fuller (2020, p. 64) defines monosexuality as being attracted to one - and only one - cis/trans gender, while McCann (2022, p. 71) expands this definition to consider it “[…] a key structuring force in defining the possibilities of socially intelligible sexuality”. In tandem with McCann, I wish to further explore the structural element of monosexuality. It is for this reason, that a distinction between hegemonic monosexuality and compulsory monosexuality must be made. Alluding to Rich’s (1980) concept of compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory monosexuality has been used by scholars such as James (1996) to explain why one is automatically assumed to be attracted either to people of the same sex or to those of the opposite one. James (1996) further argues that the term does not simply explain such an instance of unconscious bias that deems plurisexual desire statistically unlikely; rather, it emphasizes that plurisexual desires are deemed to be and treated as deviant. The discussion now turns to hegemony and its relation to sexuality and sexual politics so as to highlight what is hegemonic about monosexuality as a structuring force.

Sexual hegemony

Anderson (2017) presents readers with a journey of the genealogy of the term hegemony across the centuries, leading to the impossible task of finding a trans-historical definition of hegemony, an invitation to consider the socio-political context within which the term is used at different times throughout history, and, I would argue, an understanding of the term and its close relation to materiality, material gain, and control over material resources. Despite its initial use to distinguish the form of governance that is achieved through “[…] attachment or consent” (Grote, 1850, p. 394) from other types of governance which are achieved through force (Wickersham, 1994), hegemony has been invariably used to mean different things by different people in different times and places (Anderson, 2017). Perhaps one of the first to isolate the specificity of hegemony in its material outlook from all other forms of governance or “[…] general authority” (p. 3) was Schaefer (1932) who locates hegemony within contexts of conflict.

In a similar vein, Pfizer (1832), commenting on the issues that arose with the processes toward the unification of Germany, understands hegemony as affording “[…] the development of a public life, the interaction and struggle of different forces” (p. 175) which, together, would contribute toward the predominance of peace; here, peace is used not only as a signifier of the absence of geopolitical conflict, but primarily the presence of a domestic societal balance. Anderson (2017) observes a very similar understanding of the function of hegemony in “[…] uniting all oppressed sectors of population as allies under its guidance” (p. 14) when discussing the Russian revolution, the event that most likely prompted Gramsci (1975) to focus his socio-political observations on hegemony. However, Gramsci identified hegemony as the locus of the coexistence of violence/force and consent whereby “[…] force does not overwhelm consent but appears to be backed by the consent of the majority, as expressed by the so-called organs of opinion” (p. 59). Here, Gramsci situates hegemony within the context of capitalism in its economic and societal manifestations which “[…] must propose a set of descriptions of the world, and the values that preside over it, that become in large measure internalized by those under its sway” (Anderson, 2017, p. 21). In other words, hegemony not only explains but also enables the maintenance of those in power - that is people, institutions, norms - in capitalist societies.

Sexualized governmentalities

At this point in this paper, I would like to continue the discussion by referring to scholarship in the field of hegemony and race. Indeed, race and sexuality, despite their differences, share many common characteristics. As categories, they have both oscillated between essentialist and anti-essentialist understandings (Hall, 1988), they hold “[…] no intrinsic meaning, [but they] contribute to the unequal stratification of society […]” (Saha, 2021, p. 7) and, even though many of us understand them to be social constructs, they “[…] produce very real, material effects” (p. 7). Similarly, racial and queer identities have been used as excuses for the dominance of some people over others (Back & Solomos, 2000), but they “[…] can also act as a source of collectivity and resistance” (Saha, 2021, p. 8). The reason for turning to scholarship of race is to activate and adapt Hesse’s (2000) concept of “[…] racialized governmentalities” (p. 9). Although not in absolute concert with hegemony, Hesse’s concept situates discourse, with its Foucauldian understanding as power and knowledge, at the center of the discussion about dominance, power, and the racialized Other. For Hesse, it is through discourse that people, societies, cultures, ideologies construct race and racialized identities to Other and subjugate them.

In a similar fashion, one can think of sexualized governmentalities to explain the discursively produced demarcation between sexualities and forms of sexual expression. Although neither in direct opposition nor in a symmetrical power relation, sexualized governmentalities describe how certain scripts of sexuality and sexual expression have come to dominate others. Indeed, histories of sexuality confirm that at different points in time, certain forms of sexual expression were dominating others. What once was seen as a purely heteronormative dominant culture has now come to be replaced by a hetero/homonormative one whereby it is not the gender of the people engaged in sexual relationships that matters but how they conduct themselves in public. The makeup of the couple becomes insignificant insofar as the following two provisos are met: the genders of both parties are fixed and in tandem with their biological sex, and their public life is productive both in terms of their contribution to the material productivity of their society as well as their investment to parenting children. In other words, sexualized governmentalities describe the existence of such scripts, while hegemony explains how people who follow this script come to dominate those who do not. This is a point that I turn to below but before doing so, it is important to reflect on the transition from a purely heteronormative to a hetero/homonormative culture.

Fraser (2008) discusses a tension between politics of redistribution and politics of recognition in the field of social justice. Indeed, following the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the early 1990s, the gay/lesbian liberation movement shifted toward the former, a politics of redistribution, by demanding legal recognitions that would result in material gains. In so doing, not only did public narratives of homosexuality shift toward “[e]motional conformism, romantic fulfillment, and gay cheerfulness” (Love, 2008, p. 55), but also the “[…] normal gay” (Seidman, 2002, p. 161) became part of mainstream society. Duggan (2002) discusses homonormativity and explains that it “[…] is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (p. 179). In contrast with bisexual activism and organizing which started to cohere in the 90s, the shift in the socio-political status quo of the period described by Duggan above is not different to the academic work of the time which, as discussed earlier in this paper, silenced, erased, or even disregarded bisexuality - and plurisexuality for that matter. Holthaus (2015, p. 27) explains that the sociocultural context of the global North, especially following the AIDS epidemic, contributed to the emergence of activist groups that advocated for sexuality-related rights, including the rights of bisexual people. However, bisexuality appeared to be an obstacle to the mainstreaming of gay and lesbian people which is why, despite the inclusion of the B in LGBT activist groups of the time, there was little to no attention to advocating for equality, acceptance, and/or recognition of non-homosexual people. Plurisexuality was - and arguably still is - seen as a threat to both heteronormative and homonormative politics and culture.

Although Fraser (2008) argues that the two, politics of redistribution and politics of recognition, are not in opposition, the emerging scholarship on bisexuality appears to be promoting the latter: respect for difference and aversion for assimilation. However, I argue that such attempts that focus on bisexuality, instead of plurisexuality, are bound to fail. Bisexuality might be disrupting and challenging normative understandings of sexual desire to an extent, but its essential attachment to the gender binary does not allow it to be theoretically productive. Hetero/homonormative politics dictate that whether a man is in a couple with a man or a woman is of no concern inasmuch as the couple conforms to the hetero/homonormative doctrine. I argue that it is more meaningful to consider monosexuality/plurisexuality as alternative theoretical constructs in binary-though-not-symmetrically antithetical opposition. These have the potential to escape the rigid adherence to fixed gender identities and are more likely to be disruptive.

Returning to the discussion of sexualized governmentality, hegemony, and the role of these concepts in the discussion of monosexuality, there appears to be friction between discourse and hegemony. However, Hall (1997) and Saha (2021) provide compelling arguments to support the importance of considering the two concepts together. “The concepts of hegemony and governmentality/discourse understands (sic) that power does not operate as a simplistic top-down monopoly; the dominant culture is positioned within power just as much as the dominated” (Saha, 2021, p. 14). Therefore, one can easily consider the culture that sits in the dominant position in the power continuum, in this instance monosexuality, producing scripts that affirm its dominance and Other/subjugate/dominate plurisexuality. However, the question that warrants attention is the role of consent on the part of people who identify as plurisexuals. In other words, what is to gain from consenting one’s subordinate position in the power continuum, or even simpler, why it is theoretically productive to discuss hegemonic monosexuality instead of compulsory monosexuality.

It is indeed the discourse of neoliberalism that enables the hegemony of monosexuality by providing those who do not conform to scripts of not only social but also material exclusion. In other words, the new hetero/homonormative order promotes a separation between a politics of redistribution and a politics of representation (Fraser, 2008) whereby one can engage in either/or, but never in both/and. Advocating one’s plurisexual desires allows them to engage in a politics of representation but excludes them from not only a politics of redistribution but from any claim to material gain. Through stigma, shame, and social exclusion, plurisexuality does not only disenfranchize people from the possibility to engage in a politics of representation in light of their potential exclusion from a politics of redistribution, but it is scripted as a non-option as a result of the neoliberal directive that places the politics of representation and the politics of redistribution in an asymmetrical continuum where the latter assumes a prominent place. What is hegemonic about monosexuality is the impossibility of plurisexuality through the subjugation of those whose desires are non-monosexual into a reality that encourages the suppression of such desires.

Conclusion

This article explored the complexities and challenges surrounding bisexuality as a construct and it aimed to reframe understandings of bisexuality within the context of hegemonic monosexuality, where heteronormative and homonormative politics perpetuate social hierarchies and marginalize non-monosexual identities. Initially, the article revealed the shortcomings of bisexuality as a construct, particularly in its positioning as a middle ground between heterosexuality and homosexuality, reinforcing binary configurations of gender and sexuality. Such positioning not only occurs in academic discussions but is also observed in society, perpetuating the erasure and marginalization of bisexuality. The article further explored the need to reconsider sexual politics in light of both monosexualities and plurisexualities to avoid homogenization. It highlighted the view that even though bisexuality disrupts normative binaries associated with monosexual desires - offering potential for challenging theoretical positions that maintain the hetero/homo binary - the connotations of bisexuality remain linked to gender and sexual binaries. The article emphasized the need to develop new understandings of how sexuality is used as the basis for sociocultural hierarchal distinctions. It examined the concept of hegemonic monosexuality as a system of domination through social demarcation and explored the distinction between hegemonic monosexuality and compulsory monosexuality. The goal of the article to shed light on what is hegemonic about monosexuality as a structuring force and to challenge the existing limitations on sexual expressions and desires.

The latter part of the article introduced the concept of sexualized governmentalities to describe how certain scripts of sexuality and sexual expression come to dominate others, leading to the transition from a purely heteronormative to a hetero/homonormative culture. Fraser’s tension between politics of redistribution and politics of recognition in social justice was discussed in relation to the gay/lesbian liberation movement’s shift toward a politics of redistribution after the AIDS crisis. Homonormativity emerged as a politics that upholds dominant heteronormative assumptions while promising the possibility of a depoliticized gay culture. The emerging scholarship on bisexuality tends to promote a politics of recognition, respecting difference and avoiding assimilation. However, the essential attachment of bisexuality to the gender binary limits its theoretical productivity. Instead, considering monosexuality/plurisexuality as alternative theoretical constructs in binary-though-not-symmetrically antithetical opposition appears more meaningful and disruptive.

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Notes on contributors

Angelos Bollas

Angelos Bollas, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the School of Communications. His research interests include masculinity and sexuality from sociological and cultural studies perspectives.