First Draft
Perhaps My Name in Itself, Is a Performance
There’s this tension that I can’t seem to reconcile. I’m on the verge of true
adulthood and all I want is something to call my own. I want solid ground beneath
my feet; I want stability in a world that’s shifting more and more towards
uncertainty. Certain social scripts are slowly falling to the wayside as millennials
prove that the baby boomer’s American dream just isn’t possible anymore. The
world is reinventing itself; but I still want that white picket fence. Or, at least the
reassurance of something to strive for. Bisexuality isn’t stable, which makes a part of
my identity unstable. My bisexuality is something I privilege, a viewpoint through
which I actively decide to look. There can be stability within instability, but that
doesn’t help me fit in.
Because when I was getting ready for my very first pride event, I spent over
ten minutes trying to figure out what to wear. How was I supposed to present
myself to these strangers, to prove that I was one of them?
The reality is this: there is no form of performance that makes one’s
bisexuality immediately clear. It’s a process, a combination of mannerisms from the
straight and queer communities, and usually the act of naming oneself. If anything, I
feel as if the only real way to present one’s bisexuality is to publically name it. To
call yourself bisexual is an act of performance.
Everyone is straight until otherwise proven, even though it’s always likely
that the proof will be questioned and challenged. This is a problem for everyone
who doesn’t identify as straight. This is a problem that brings together the gays,
lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, and everyone else under the queer umbrella. All of
us in the community are faced with this challenge of presentation and performance.
Sexual identity is both everything and nothing at the same time; it defines who we
are, but our existence spans beyond preference. Many in the queer community
struggle with both wanting recognition and to be seen as the complex individuals
they are. Many deal with wanting to have a sexual identity and not having to
constantly prove it.
***
Judith Butler argued for a concept of gender performativity, an ongoing
process of performance. We’re always presenting a created self, a created self that is
continuously being revised. It’s context that gives us the parameters for this
revision; it’s context and specific environments that tell us how to perform and
present ourselves.
It’s hard to come to term with the fact that I will always have to navigate how
I present myself. In every situation and context I have to assess my surroundings
and decide if it is an environment I can potentially reveal my bisexuality. The act of
naming oneself as other (in this case, as having a sexual identity that is not
hetrosexual) is an act of performance. For some sexualities, it is the only act of
performance that can guarantee visibility. I will only be truly seen as a bisexual if I
call myself bisexual.
But like I’ve said, all members of the LGBT community face this issue. In a
world built on heteronormativity, any performance of marginalized sexuality is up
for challenge.
***
I’m scared. That’s the plain and simple fact of my own personal existence; I’m
scared and it’s my fear that seems to motivate everything I do. Maybe that’s why I’m
inclined to believe that fear is the root motivation for every choice we make. We fear
we don’t know who we are, fear that we do and we’re not happy with that self; we
fear what other’s think of us, fear that they see the self we all inevitable try to
conceal; we fear not being able to fit in.
I think it’s fear that dictates our performances of self. It’s fear that keeps me
closeted in my home, afraid of what my pastor father will say if he knew my
sexuality. It’s fear that, when I’m surrounded by people I don’t know, motivates me
to use my ability to pass as straight. Performance depends on context and
environment, and fear plays a role in that decision process. I think it’s safe to
assume every member of the queer community has experienced this act of selfpreservation, where they let their sexual identity fall to the wayside in order to
protect themselves. If the environment isn’t safe, it’s best to play it straight.
I suppose that’s the bisexual privilege, then. Bisexuals are able to pass as
straight; we’re not “lying” when we join in on the heterosexual talk. But at the same
time, calling it a privilege feels like a lie. Because how can it be a privilege to have
my sexuality invalidated?
It isn’t a privilege having to pretend you’re something you’re not; it isn’t a
privilege having part of your identity assumed to be something it’s not.
I know I’m not the only bisexual who has spent years struggling to accept my
bisexuality. And a common reason for that struggle is the self-doubt, the voices
filling your head telling you that you don’t look bisexual, you don’t act bisexual; the
voices you inevitably hear in real life telling you it’s all just a phase. Those in the
LGBT community tell you that you’re too straight, while those in the heterosexual
community comment on how you’re too gay.
It took me years to swallow my fear of looking in the mirror.
***
Issues of gender and sex and sexuality tend to overlap. It’s only been in
recent theorizing that sex and gender have been separately defined. Historically, it’s
been in bisexuality that all three have converged. Presently, bisexuality is
understood as, put simplistically, attraction to two genders. But back when H.D. was
an analysand under Sigmund Freud, bisexuality was primarily thought to be when
there were either two psyches in one body, both male and female, or when there
were traces of both male and female genitals in one body. It was this dualism that
explained H.D., according to Freud.
It was in some of her letters to Bryher during her second round of analysis
that H.D. addressed how this dualism affected her performance of self. The letter on
November 24, 1934 includes the admission that H.D. is that “all-but extinct
phenomina, the perfect bi- [bisexual].” In the same letter, she explicitly
acknowledges her having to perform as both man and woman to satisfy herself: “I
can keep up being a ‘woman,’ even a ‘nice woman’ for about two hours, then I get
terror of claustraphobia, this is no joke -- and have to get to an intellectual retreat,
book or pages -- to prove I am man. Then I prove back again.” Because she saw
bisexuality as being, in a sense, both psychically both man and woman, the
performance of this was to perform both gender roles. H.D. felt the need to express
masculine and feminine traits in order to validate -- to herself? Or to those family
and close friends she might have felt an obligation to prove herself to -- herself as a
whole. In a later letter, she again confided in Bryher, “I have tried to be man, or
woman, but I have to be both.”
Writing became H.D.’s primary means of bisexual performance. In another
letter she told Bryher, “I have to be perfect (in balance), I get that in writing, and will
now become more abstract toward the writing in life, now I know WHAT I am. O, I
am so very grateful and happy.” Freud encouraged H.D.’s writing, stressing her role
as a poet. This was another expression of H.D.’s dualism, her bisexuality. For though
she challenged the idea of male-centred creativity in Notes on Thought and Vision,
writing and creativity was still a masculine thing. The feminine thing was to not
write. She explained to Bryher, “I have a sort of split-infinitive, or dual personality.
One of them is writing and one is NOT writing. I am doing my best to get the two
together.” H.D. felt the need to unite her masculine and feminine selves, to find a
means of performance through which she could express her true bisexual self.
Though I see writing as becoming H.D.’s primary source of bisexual
performance, the issue of context still comes into play. Both before and after Freud’s
inspiration, H.D. wrote prose detailing experiences of romance and attraction to
men and women. Asphodel, Bid Me to Live, HERmione, and Paint It Today all deal
with bisexual themes; while the works are fictional, there are connections to be
made to H.D.’s own (documented) romantic experiences. Bid Me to Live was the only
novel published while H.D. was still alive. Because even though writing was a
context in which H.D. could freely express herself, audience reception threatened
her safety. H.D. could write what she wanted, but the act of publishing had potential
to endanger.
In 1928 Radclyffe Hall was put on trial over her novel, The Well of Loneliness.
Its lesbians themes brought an obscenity trial, resulting in the ordering of the
destruction of every copy. This must have scared H.D., frightened over what might
possibly happen if her own works somehow got released. Fear was most likely the
strongest motivator behind H.D.’s decision to perform her bisexuality through
writing, but never through the publishing of that writing.
***
I think performance is personal. Everyone has to figure out how to best
represent themselves (depending on the context of their environment). Personally, I
find power in naming myself. I don’t know how to “be” and “act” bisexual other than
to continue following my own instincts. My source of bisexual empowerment and
validation is through calling attention to the sexuality as a category, knowing that if I
don’t speak up for myself and those silent around me, no one else will.
But for a close, mostly closeted, friend, her bisexual performance is selfacceptance. Knowing that she is and she has the potential to act (if ever free from a
family culture that invalidates her identity) is enough. For other bisexuals I’ve
interacted with, the act of romantically and sexually pursuing two genders, allowing
the use of homo- and heterosexual social scripts to dictate their advances, is
performance. I think, to make a generalization, it’s a combination of the three to
define the “bisexual performance.” To perform bisexuality is to accept oneself, to
name and vocalize that self acceptance as bisexual, and to act in some degree.
Performance is personal, and performance is scary. But there’s no feeling
quite like that of reward when you realize you’ve been true to yourself.