Book-It 'o9! Book #15
More of the Fifty Books Challenge! This was a library request out of a need to read something happy about GLBT "issues" since another book I'm reviewing is so... damn depressing. Onward!
Title: Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics by Jennifer Baumgardner
Details: Copyright 2007, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): For the acclaimed author and activist Jennifer Baumgardner, bisexuality has always been more than the “sexual non-preference of the ’90s.” In Look Both Ways, Baumgardner takes a close look at the growing visibility of gay and bisexual characters, performers, and issues on the national cultural stage. Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out. With intimacy and humor, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she’s undergone to reconcile the privilege she’s garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she’s derived from her relationships with women.
Part memoir, part pop-culture study, Look Both Ways connects the prominent dots of a bisexual community (Alix Kates Shulman, Ani DiFranco, Rebecca Walker, and, of course, Anne Heche) that Baumgardner argues have bridged feminist aims with those of the gay rights movement. Look Both Ways is a compelling and current study in bisexual lives lived secretly and openly, and an exploration of the lessons learned by writers, artists, and activists who have refused the either/or paradigm defended by both gay and straight communities.
Why I Wanted to Read It: As I mentioned above, I was and am plodding my way through a dense, very depressing oral history of the GLBT rights movement and desperately needed something uplifting (as well as inclusive to me; the GLBT rights movement as described in the book is really the GL rights movement).
How I Liked It: I will try to keep my flail to a minimum. The title isn't entirely accurate. "Bisexual politics" would be better suited as "bisexuality and feminism". Whether more or less a product of the book's memoir feel, Baumgardner mainly focuses on the female bisexual.
And on the memoir note! I've bitched about many books of this and the past decade ripping off David Sedaris's style of humorous self narrative (no matter what the topic) and although the author intersperses her own experience with the experience of the greater whole, it's shockingly not obnoxious. It's just honest.
The book touches on a number of issues. The role of gender in bisexuality, feminism in bisexuality (which makes up a large part of the book), bisexuality in pop culture, biphobia from gays and lesbians, LUGs (making direct reference to one of my more quoted Onion articles), visibility, the fact that we so rarely hear the B in the GLBT defended, and many more (Baumgardner devotes an entire chapter to Ani DiFranco which was a bit unsettling at first, but she does make a convincing argument for DiFranco's place in bisexual history).
Like I said, this focuses mainly on bisexuality from a bisexual woman's perspective but I think it's an invaluable resource for us. And not just us bisexuals, or us in the GLBT community, or even my generation, but any forward thinking, progressive individual.
So many seeds of thought are both planted and explored in this book, but possibly my favorite is
"Bisexual is a lousy word for bisexual."
something I've always thought. Now go read the book.
Notable: Baumgardner identifies herself as being born in 1970, which arguably makes her of Generation X. The anti-Boomers, the third wave feminists... still, an interesting passage occurs when Baumgardner reflects back to her years as an intern for Ms magazine.
"In 1993, I stood poised at an unfamiliar intersection of attraction, sex, and love-- and I looked both ways. My world was New York City, and it looked like this:
Dinkins was mayor. No one walked down the street or sat at a café or drove their car while yakking on a cell phone. There were no Starbucks. I bought fifty-cent coffee from vendors stationed in aluminum carts. I hadn't heard of the Internet or the Web, and when I did, I took to using that early-nineties überterm, the Infobahn (a German spin on information superhighway--- fortunately, both terms fell out of use). Dot-coms had yet to be invented, much less to inflate and then implode. E-mail was something that a few VAX geeks at my college used, but it had nothing to do with real life. Ellen was not out, and 'outing' (the gay community's version of a suicide bombing) loomed as potential annihilation, terrorizing closeted homosexuals. Grunge was but a year or two old. Riot Grrls were writing each other love letters and starting bands. Kate Moss was causing a sensation with her waif look. PC meaning 'politically correct' was as popular a term as PC meaning 'personal computer'. A rakish and idealistic Bill Clinton had just become president number forty-two, seemingly a victory for the politically correct, myself included. Doomed, intelligent Hillary was still being presented as a partner, not a First Lady, and the Clintons still believed that the nation would see that as a good thing. Bill's 'Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow' idealism had retracted enough to squeeze out gays from the military. George Stephanopoulos was considered hot. (pages 13-14)
How many times has the '50s, '60s, and '70s been recalled similarly? Enough so that you probably know the maybe four songs used on rotation for each respective flashback. How odd to have the early-nineties finally getting its due (sort of?) as a cultural touch point and UNironically.
Title: Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics by Jennifer Baumgardner
Details: Copyright 2007, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): For the acclaimed author and activist Jennifer Baumgardner, bisexuality has always been more than the “sexual non-preference of the ’90s.” In Look Both Ways, Baumgardner takes a close look at the growing visibility of gay and bisexual characters, performers, and issues on the national cultural stage. Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out. With intimacy and humor, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she’s undergone to reconcile the privilege she’s garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she’s derived from her relationships with women.
Part memoir, part pop-culture study, Look Both Ways connects the prominent dots of a bisexual community (Alix Kates Shulman, Ani DiFranco, Rebecca Walker, and, of course, Anne Heche) that Baumgardner argues have bridged feminist aims with those of the gay rights movement. Look Both Ways is a compelling and current study in bisexual lives lived secretly and openly, and an exploration of the lessons learned by writers, artists, and activists who have refused the either/or paradigm defended by both gay and straight communities.
Why I Wanted to Read It: As I mentioned above, I was and am plodding my way through a dense, very depressing oral history of the GLBT rights movement and desperately needed something uplifting (as well as inclusive to me; the GLBT rights movement as described in the book is really the GL rights movement).
How I Liked It: I will try to keep my flail to a minimum. The title isn't entirely accurate. "Bisexual politics" would be better suited as "bisexuality and feminism". Whether more or less a product of the book's memoir feel, Baumgardner mainly focuses on the female bisexual.
And on the memoir note! I've bitched about many books of this and the past decade ripping off David Sedaris's style of humorous self narrative (no matter what the topic) and although the author intersperses her own experience with the experience of the greater whole, it's shockingly not obnoxious. It's just honest.
The book touches on a number of issues. The role of gender in bisexuality, feminism in bisexuality (which makes up a large part of the book), bisexuality in pop culture, biphobia from gays and lesbians, LUGs (making direct reference to one of my more quoted Onion articles), visibility, the fact that we so rarely hear the B in the GLBT defended, and many more (Baumgardner devotes an entire chapter to Ani DiFranco which was a bit unsettling at first, but she does make a convincing argument for DiFranco's place in bisexual history).
Like I said, this focuses mainly on bisexuality from a bisexual woman's perspective but I think it's an invaluable resource for us. And not just us bisexuals, or us in the GLBT community, or even my generation, but any forward thinking, progressive individual.
So many seeds of thought are both planted and explored in this book, but possibly my favorite is
"Bisexual is a lousy word for bisexual."
something I've always thought. Now go read the book.
Notable: Baumgardner identifies herself as being born in 1970, which arguably makes her of Generation X. The anti-Boomers, the third wave feminists... still, an interesting passage occurs when Baumgardner reflects back to her years as an intern for Ms magazine.
"In 1993, I stood poised at an unfamiliar intersection of attraction, sex, and love-- and I looked both ways. My world was New York City, and it looked like this:
Dinkins was mayor. No one walked down the street or sat at a café or drove their car while yakking on a cell phone. There were no Starbucks. I bought fifty-cent coffee from vendors stationed in aluminum carts. I hadn't heard of the Internet or the Web, and when I did, I took to using that early-nineties überterm, the Infobahn (a German spin on information superhighway--- fortunately, both terms fell out of use). Dot-coms had yet to be invented, much less to inflate and then implode. E-mail was something that a few VAX geeks at my college used, but it had nothing to do with real life. Ellen was not out, and 'outing' (the gay community's version of a suicide bombing) loomed as potential annihilation, terrorizing closeted homosexuals. Grunge was but a year or two old. Riot Grrls were writing each other love letters and starting bands. Kate Moss was causing a sensation with her waif look. PC meaning 'politically correct' was as popular a term as PC meaning 'personal computer'. A rakish and idealistic Bill Clinton had just become president number forty-two, seemingly a victory for the politically correct, myself included. Doomed, intelligent Hillary was still being presented as a partner, not a First Lady, and the Clintons still believed that the nation would see that as a good thing. Bill's 'Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow' idealism had retracted enough to squeeze out gays from the military. George Stephanopoulos was considered hot. (pages 13-14)
How many times has the '50s, '60s, and '70s been recalled similarly? Enough so that you probably know the maybe four songs used on rotation for each respective flashback. How odd to have the early-nineties finally getting its due (sort of?) as a cultural touch point and UNironically.