Julia Shaw: ‘I had so many questions about bisexuality’

J ulia Shaw is a psychologist at University College London and part of Queer Politics, a thinktank that studies the research of equality and rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer community. Her new book, Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality, draws on her experiences of being bisexual and her background in the psychological sciences to explore and celebrate a sexual identity she says remains marginalized.

I was writing my second book when I began researching bisexuality and writing this book. I was writing about how important it is for people to know who they are. I came out as bisexual in that book because I felt like a hypocrite for telling other people to be out and not being out myself in public.

There were a lot of questions about bisexuality. I thought I would finish a few books. I decided to write a book instead of writing those books. If I was having a hard time finding those answers, other people were too.

The Kinsey scale, a measure of bisexuality, was published in 1948 by Dr Alfred Kinsey. How did the Kinsey scale change the field of study? A lot of people were queer because Kinsey found that half of men and 25% of women were not 100% heterosexual. People often refer to the Kinsey scale when talking about sexuality.

People cringe when they say ‘bi’, or don’t say it, about themselves, because they’re worried about the reaction

Bi people are invisible in research on sexuality, which is a problem for them. Most people who fall in the middle of the Kinsey scale refer to themselves as gay or straight, even if they are not captured by a label. Asking how people behave and who they find attractive is more accurate than asking people what their labels are. Research isn't willing to accept that. It's bad for data analysis to have complexity.

The book examines bisexuality in the animal kingdom and the struggle of evolutionary biologists to explain why animals engage in homosexual behavior if they don't get pregnant. How did you come to the conclusion that bisexuality is the originary state in the evolution of sexuality? A number of researchers, including in the evolutionary sciences, say we have misinterpreted animal behavior for a long time by imposing our sense of decency and our heterosexual bias on to animals.

There is a lot of sexual activity between animals of different genders. It doesn't matter if you also have sex with the same sex as long as you are able to reproduce. I assumed that I was a deviation and it was interesting.

There is a positive reading of the original state of sexuality with a negative reading of it by Freud. Freud thought everyone was bi and I have to correct this many times. He didn't mean it in a good way. It was a negative thing to be bisexual as an adult.

When you say you are bisexual, there are a couple of things that are thrown at you. One is that you want to be the center of attention and the other is that you want to perform for men. It is thought that it is a phase. There is a huge problem with this idea being held by homosexual and queer people. Bi people feel like they are being pushed out of queer spaces.

The word "queer" gained particular prominence in recent years as people became more comfortable talking about their sexual identities. Is it true that the term "bisexual" hasn't been embraced in the same way? People cringe when they say it, or don't say it, because they're concerned about the reaction. I don't want the reaction I get when I say "bi" and "queer" to be too vague. We shy away from that word due to internalised biphobia. Since the 90s, it has been lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer. The "B" has not been seen or heard. I believe that lesbian and gay people need to be more aware of bi people.

Bisexual people are more likely to suffer from poor mental health and substance abuse. Bisexual women are more likely to be raped and to experience different types of sexual assault. Bi women have a lot of stigma because of the sexualisation of women and the hypersexualization of bisexuality. People take more liberties with how they touch you, how they talk to you, how they sexualise you, and whether they are likely to assault you. It's something we see in the treatment of bisexual kids. The problem of bisexuality is not going to be solved until we break down the stereotypes.

The study of history can tell us about the evolution of attitudes towards sexuality. It is a new idea that it is something you are rather than doing. Historians often jump too far when trying to make queer people visible. There is a gay person if there is any evidence. People want to do that. It erases bi people. Most of those people have had relationships with both men and women. It's difficult to say that they are exclusively homosexual.

The relationship between heterosexuality and monogamy is discussed. One of the most harmful stereotypes about bisexual people is that they can't be trusted in relationships. It is an absurd thing to say if you think about it for more than a few minutes. The relationship between bisexuality and consensual non-monogamy is something a lot of bisexual people think about a lot and they get asked about a lot. Heterosexuals and monosexuals should ask themselves if they can be monogamous. The world would be a better place if you were alone. It's useful to have that conversation in a way that deconstructs heterosexual expectations.