Bisexual ethics refers to the study of how individuals navigate their bisexual identity within various cultural and social contexts, including family, workplace, religion, and community. It involves understanding the ways in which bisexuality is constructed and understood in these different settings, and exploring how it can be affirmed or stigmatized based on one's gender, race, class, age, ability, and other factors. As such, bisexual ethics helps to illuminate the moral complexity inherent in negotiating multiple attractions, relational commitments, and affective responsibilities across intersecting social contexts. In this article, I will explore how bisexual ethics reveals the challenges that bisexual people face in navigating their identities, desires, and relationships within these diverse social environments.
Negotiating Multiple Attractions:
Bisexuals often experience feelings of attraction towards both men and women, which can lead to conflicting emotions and desires. This conflict can be especially difficult when they are in a relationship with someone from either gender.
If a bisexual person is in a committed monogamous relationship with a man, but also experiences romantic or sexual desire for another woman, they may feel torn between their obligations to their partner and their desire for intimacy with someone else. Bisexual ethics offers guidance on how to navigate these conflicts by emphasizing communication and honesty as key components of healthy relationships. By being open and honest about their feelings and needs, bisexuals can find ways to express themselves while still respecting the boundaries of their partnerships.
Bisexual ethics encourages bisexuals to seek out support systems, such as friends, family members, or therapists who understand their unique experiences and can provide empathetic listening and advice.
Relational Commitments:
In addition to navigating internal conflicts, bisexuals must also consider the expectations and limitations of their chosen relationships. These could include things like monogamy, fidelity, and exclusivity. If a bisexual person has a commitment to one gender, they may need to negotiate how this affects their desires for other genders. They may also encounter pressure from society to choose one identity over another, leading them to question whether they should "come out" publicly as bisexual or stay closeted. Bisexual ethics provides frameworks for understanding these pressures and offering strategies for responding to them. One approach is to explore non-monogamous arrangements, such as polyamory or swinging, which allow for multiple simultaneous relationships. Another option is to create agreements around discretion and privacy within one's primary relationship, allowing for occasional explorations with others without jeopardizing the stability of the main relationship.
Affective Responsibilities:
Bisexual ethics addresses the emotional impact of being bisexual in a world that often pathologizes and stigmatizes sexual minorities. Bisexuals may face discrimination, violence, and exclusion based on their identities, which can take an emotional toll over time. This can lead to feelings of isolation, shame, and self-doubt, making it difficult to maintain healthy relationships with others. To counteract this, bisexual ethics encourages practicing self-care, including therapy, meditation, exercise, creative pursuits, and social connections.
Bisexuals can seek support from affirming communities, both online and offline, where they can find validation, connection, and celebration of their identities. By centering their wellbeing, bisexuals can better navigate the challenges of negotiating complex social contexts while also expressing themselves authentically.
Bisexual ethics offers a framework for understanding how bisexuals navigate competing attractions, relational commitments, and affective responsibilities across intersecting social environments. By emphasizing communication, honesty, support systems, non-monogamy, discreet encounters, and self-care, bisexual ethics provides strategies for living fully and authentically as a bisexual person. As such, it is an important tool for exploring and affirming bisexual identity, desire, and intimacy within diverse cultural and social settings.
How does bisexual ethics illuminate the moral complexity inherent in negotiating multiple attractions, relational commitments, and affective responsibilities across intersecting social contexts?
Research on bisexuality has highlighted that it is not uncommon for individuals who identify as bisexual to experience complex feelings of attraction and desire towards multiple genders at once. This can lead to challenges when it comes to navigating interpersonal relationships, particularly if these desires are not mutually exclusive between partners.