Customer Reviews

Bi Lives: Bisexual Women Tell Their Stories

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, I discovered the various ways women define their bisexuality: some by the capability of loving people regardless of gender, some by being attracted to people of either gender, and some by experience. It also showed that bisexuality is not a "new" thing, as many would have us believe. The ages of these women range from 21 to (if I recall correctly) late 50's. One woman is handicapped, two others are in a three-way marriage (to each other, with a man), one identifies as a lesbian (though acknowledges that she is attracted to both sexes) and doesn't trust women who identify strongly as bisexual. If you want to see the entire rainbow of sexuality, read this book. If you want to have your sexuality affirmed, read this book. If you are just plain curious . . . read this book.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The questions were a bit repetative, but that wasnt necessarily Bad, as the reader gets to see how different each woman's answers were.
Id definitely recommend this, not just for glb individuals but for heterosexual people that would like to learn about some bisexual perspectives.

In "Bi Lives: Bisexual Women Tell Their Stories ", Kata Orndoff interviews a diverse group of bisexual women about their sexual identities and experiences, challenging the bigotry and myths perpetuated by both the radical right and sadly enough, certain elements of cultural feminism. How does biphobia manifest itself in the lives of bisexual women? Just as bi men have been scapegoated for transmitting hiv/aids into the female heterosexual population, bisexual women have been similarly blamed for bringing hiv/aids into the lesbian community (an insidious variation of the 1970's idea of bisexual women contaminating the lesbian community with "male energy".) Moreover, bisexual women are often told that they are actually confused lesbians (or confused heterosexuals), that they are lesbians trying to maintain some level of heterosexual privilege, that they are anti-feminist for sleeping with men, or that their bisexuality is an expression of "false consciousness" which could be overcome with the proper lesbian feminist indoctrination. As independent female sexuality is generally demonized in our sexist, erotophobic society, bisexual women are furthermore simply dismissed or pathologized. For feminists, lgbt activists, bi-curious individuals, and bisexual allies interested in issues of female sexual autonomy, this is an interesting text. Especially useful are the safer sex guidelines provided by Robyn Ochs. That said, I do wish that Orndoff would have interviewed at least one bisexual transgendered woman, but despite this oversight, this is anyway a compelling and informative sociological study.

After searching again and again for a book about bisexual women that wasn't just sex stories I came across this one. I wanted something I felt I could related to and was insightful- so I tried this book. In some ways it did meet what I wanted. Yet just about after the 3rd interview I started to lose interest. It became very repetitive, same questions from the interviewer, many women complaining about lesbians not accepting bisexuals, and continuous themes of feminist ideas (which I got tired of the most) Overall the idea of this book is great, and at first initiated well but quickly became predictable. I would have liked to see the interviewer ask more in depth questions based on each women's story. Though it would probably mean less women's stories included.I felt the talk of safe sex was a great idea to include as too many media related things seem to forget to mention such an important topic.
Personally, this would have been best for me to just pick up at a library to skim through, not something to buy. It is a good start though. I like that it touched on the actual love and seriousness of the bisexual female community, and not just smut like many other books seem to do.