‘A REAL LESBIAN WOULDN'T TOUCH A BISEXUAL WITH A BARGEPOLE'

Abstract

Drawn from an investigation of the construction of collective identity in DIVA magazine between 1994 and 2004, this article considers the discursive contestation of the boundaries necessarily, though never straightforwardly, erected in the process. Analysing first a selection of articles and second (and more substantially) debates about who ‘we’ are in and between readers' letters, the article focuses on the ‘trouble’ posed by bisexuality in this era. Readers draw on and contest a cluster of interrelated characterisations of bisexuals: as undecided, as a kind of pollutant, and as inadequate facsimiles of ‘real lesbians', as well as more or less open characterisations of ‘us’. These arguments are necessarily managed editorially, and always ‘end’ with calls for acceptance. This does not fully recover the ambiguity with which bisexuality is handled, however, and the article concludes by discussing the dilemma(s) faced by the imagined community.