Hegemonic Discourse in an Oppositional Community: Lesbian Feminists and Bisexuality

Abstract

This paper analyzes hostility toward bisexual women within lesbian feminist discourse. Based on interviews with feminist lesbians, this study uses a deconstructive approach to explicate the resonance of lesbian objections to women identifying themselves as bisexual with broader, dominant discourses on gender, sexuality, and racial purity—discourses that feminists often criticize as oppressive. The article identifies several specific discursive "techniques of neutralization" through which some lesbians construct bisexuals as "deviant others" against which the lesbian subject is defined as socially central, personally integrated, and morally pure. Broadly, the study analyzes marginalization within a marginalized community and the imbrication of dominant discourse in politically oppositional communities.