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Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics [Hardcover]

Jennifer Baumgardner (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)


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Book Description

February 20, 2007
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.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sometimes confused but ultimately insightful, this cultural study pries open that ambiguous can of worms called "sexual choice" and looks at it with eyes wide open. Baumgardner, coauthor of the "third wave feminist" Manifesta, discovered her own bisexuality shortly after graduating from college, when she unexpectedly fell in love with a "girlie girl" co-worker at Ms. magazine, which was, significantly, the first place she "truly saw women without men as being successes, not failures." Her story of how she explored her "urge toward bisexuality as a means to figuring out how to have a satisfying, truly equal and truly intimate relationship" weaves a personal thread through the book. In between, she evokes the heady days of second-wave feminism, lauds Ani DiFranco as the quintessential bisexual of her generation and analyzes the TV heroine Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a powerful, vulnerable, tragic, feminist superhero. Baumgardner controversially argues that bisexuality, especially in younger women, is more widespread than we think, and that recognizing this "could harness the multiplicity of attraction that Kinsey described" and "lead to better relationships, both political and sexual, between men and women." Her insistence that bisexuality has the potential to further the goals of feminism and gay rights challenges the limitations of "gay" and "straight." (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

"Images of bisexuality in ads, on TV, and in erotica reflect the lives of real women and girls--including me," Baumgardner says, noting that during the last decade she has encountered "hundreds of girls who have had significant experiences with other women and not simply in order to turn on their boyfriends." She theorizes that female bisexuality represents an evolution in women's feminist consciousness and sexual freedom. Today's high-school and college students, straight-identified and in favor of gay-straight alliances and clubs, will be the next generation of parents, and they will view these struggles over sexuality "as bigoted as segregation." Employing telling details from her own and others' experiences, Baumgardner consistently emphasizes the need for listening to women's stories rather than focusing on the gender of their sex partners. Part memoir, part pop-culture study, part analysis of a bisexual community (including Anne Heche, even), this significant contribution to sociosexual and gender studies helps build bridges from feminism to the gay rights movement. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (February 20, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374190046
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374190040
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #884,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Walking the Line and Loving It, February 28, 2007
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This review is from: Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics (Hardcover)
Reading Jennifer Baumgardner's Look Both Ways is like discovering that you share a secret with a friend you've known all your life. Part-memoir, part-cultural critique, the book is essential for anyone who wants to understand bisexuality and how it fits into our culture. On a personal note, as a woman who's been repeatedly rejected and trampled on by men, Look Both Ways helped me to realize it's not so strange to find the emotional support I need in relationships with women. Using Ani DiFranco, Anne Heche, the L-Word, and Virginia Woolf as her gateways into pop culture, Baumgardner both deflates and embraces the bisexual stereotypes she discusses. As a single mom and an advocate for feminism and reproductive rights, Jennifer Baumgardner is a pillar of strength in a world of Paris Hiltons. Today, people might be willing to embrace "alternative" lifestyle choices if you'd label yourself so they can package you up and stack you on the shelf with the rest of the queers. In this book, Baumgardner makes the point of saying it isn't that easy--sexuality is a complicated creature, with every experience, every moment of one's life influencing who we choose to love. With interviews from women from all walks of life, Look Both Ways helped me to really consider and ultimately embrace the ambiguities of my sexuality--she helped me lift the stigma I'd associated with my relationships past. And I can't think of anything more important than a book that makes you stop and reevaluate your life for the better.
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars It's a sexuality, not a political orientation, March 21, 2008
Other reviewers have praised this book to high heaven. Therefore, I will not go over what the author does well--they have done it for me. I will simply critique what drove me INSANE about this book: The notion that, for men, bisexuality is a sexuality, but for women, it is an "evolved" political statement, a "feminist choice", or a way of experimenting in the college and post-college years. Maybe this is true for some women (and if it's true for many women, it would certainly explain why so many so-called "bi" women from my college years are now monogamously married to men and never even think about women sexually). Yet certain bi women have sexualities very much like bi men: They are sexually aroused by women as hot bodies and faces. They did not need to attend a women's studies class or work at Ms. magazine to find this to be true; they knew it from puberty. I would have preferred if the author had explored this type of bisexual woman a bit more. In addition, I felt that she took the 'sex' out of bisexuality, at least when it came to bi women having sex with other women. Again, there are some bi women who find sex with women to be just as (if not more) physical, libidinous, lustful, and frenzied than sex with men--not the sexual equivalent of a commercial for herbal tea or feminine hygeine products. Female bisexuality is not some kind of fad that grew out of riot grrrl, the 1990s brief moment of third wave feminism, or the shrill warblings of folk singers. For some at least, it is no different than male bisexuality: desiring sexual activities--as distinguished from sappy romantic friendships--with both genders and both genders equally. In the author's view, it seems no more than a brief girl-girl kiss after a stereotypical weepy bonding moment over how much 'boys stink'. Lastly, not all lesbians are or desire masculine women. One does not have to be bisexual to both look feminine and exclusively desire feminine women.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on bisexuality I've read in a long time, March 20, 2007
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This review is from: Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics (Hardcover)
By far the most interesting, most readable and most satisfying exploration of bisexuality I've read, and certainly the most interesting book on the intersection of bisexuality and feminism ever written. Baumgardner is young, and of a different generation, but her thoughts and experiences are completely in line with my own, and so of course I embrace them as brilliantly insightful.

The connections to feminism are fascinating, though she gives short shrift to male bisexuality. That said, her insights are fascinating and her weaving of personal anecdote with a more global and maturing political awareness is well worth reading.

This book belongs on the bookshelf of every one interested in human sexuality, and especially those active in the Queer community.

A remarkable book.

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
If you're walking down the street in London, you'll find helpful words stenciled on the street at most crosswalks: look right, reminds one, where the traffic whizzes by on the left side of the street. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
gay expectations, bisexual women, love with women, bisexual woman
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Alix Kates Shulman, Amy Ray, Anne Heche, Gloria Steinem, Jan Clausen, Kate Millett, Liza Featherstone, Elton John, Naomi Weisstein, Lion's Head, Matt Damon, Meg Daly, Audre Lorde, Dolores Alexander, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Jonathan Franzen, Naomi Wolf, The Corrections, Anne Koedt, Ellen Willis, Melissa Ferrick, Meshell Ndegeocello, Mother's Day, Rita Mae Brown
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