Hybrid. Ruth Colker

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СКАЧАТЬ disabilities. The parents of the children in the elite school often supplemented the free special education that was offered to their children with additional special education. In their case, the diagnosis of a learning disability was costly. The combination of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times stories suggest that parents of all classes want educational and medical assistance for their children with disabilities. The skepticism displayed by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times suggests that schools and parents are wise to devote whatever resources are available to solving these problems since mainstream society is unlikely to empathize with their children’s problems. These children do not appear to be “truly disabled” yet need our assistance because they fit into an unnamed middle category.

      A bi perspective therefore provides us with different insights on race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. The implications of living between categories also varies enormously within categories. A bi perspective requires that we be very attentive to context. Nonetheless, openly transcending categories makes a difference, one worth exploring.

       III. The Critical Aspects of a Bi Perspective

      Critical theorists have offered arguments parallel to, yet different from, my bi perspective. Angela Harris and Kimberlé Crenshaw have questioned how feminists have historically used the word “woman” to mean “white woman” and how civil rights activists have used the word “black” to apply to all persons with any African-American heritage.⁴⁵ They have also questioned how judges have tried to force African-American plaintiffs in discrimination lawsuits to fit the category “woman” or “black” without considering the intersections of race and gender. This is sometimes called “intersectionality” theory. Other critical theorists, such as Scales-Trent, have questioned how lawmakers have created the labels “black” or “colored” to force multiracial individuals to conform to a single racial category.

      The Harris and Crenshaw critiques of racial categories are somewhat different from the critique offered by Scales-Trent. Harris and Crenshaw consider how an individual crosses several categories—race, religion, and gender. They accept the fact, however, that such markers as “black” have an intrinsic meaning. They are therefore interested in the special ways in which race, religion, and gender intersect to construct identity. Scales-Trent adds to the discussion by considering the ambiguity of the categorical markers themselves; in particular, she focuses on the ambiguity of racial markers. Scales-Trent’s intersections lie within; they are really intrasections.

      The Scales-Trent critique, as opposed to the Crenshaw or Harris views, parallels the bi perspective found in this book, insofar as a bi perspective is an intracategorical perspective rather than an intercategorical perspective. A bi perspective can provide us with special insights that we might attain through an intracategorical perspective that are overlooked in the work of Crenshaw or Harris. Questioning the meaningfulness of the labels that they employ can add to intersectionality theory.

      In applying a bi perspective to race, I have asked myself why critical race theorists have not tended to ask the intrasection questions that are central to my perspective as a bisexual. The answer, I believe, depends upon the difference between the constructions of our sexual orientation and our race. One of the first components of our identity is race: are we African-American? Caucasian? Asian-American? We consider it to be a given, an immutable fact. The significance of that racial identity may differ but it is something we “know” like most of us “know” our gender. Our sexual orientation is something that we discover as we grow older. In particular, people who have come to identify with a minority sexual identity have had to grapple with the recognition that they have moved away from the expected category, heterosexuality, to another category such as homosexuality or bisexuality. Intracategorical movement is therefore a typical experience for people who are members of a minority sexual-orientation category but is not a typical experience for people who are members of a minority racial category.

      Nonetheless, a bi perspective needs to investigate racial categories because they are, in fact, as socially constructed as sexual orientation categories. Anthropologists, for example, believe that there is insufficient difference between supposed human racial categories to constitute genuine racial categories. In addition, anthropologists agree that the vast majority of people who are labeled as “African-American” have a multiracial background. The fact that most of us do not investigate our race to question whether we belong in a monoracial category reflects the power of socialization rather than any biological reality. Thus, although multiracial existence may be quite different from bisexual or transgender existence, it is worth examining closely, as it reveals the social construction of bipolar racial categories. A bi perspective may therefore enhance our understanding of race by encouraging us to make an intracategorical investigation of racial categories. It is essential that a bi perspective investigate sexual orientation, gender, race, and disability to provide us with a comprehensive understanding of the construction of bipolar injustice in our society.

THREE Sexual Orientation

      In a 1981 decision, the South Dakota Supreme Court thought it reasonable to ask Sandra Jacobson to forego a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex. “Concerned parents,” the Court wrote, “in many, many instances have made sacrifices of varying degrees for their children.”¹ The law of sexual orientation routinely gives bisexuals the “choice” of avoiding the negative consequences of the legal system (i.e., loss of custody of children, discharge from the military, imprisonment for sexual conduct) if they will disavow their attraction to people of the same sex and flaunt their attraction to people of the opposite sex. But as one Ninth Circuit judge asked: “Would heterosexuals living in a city that passed an ordinance banning those who engaged in or desired to engage in sex with persons of the opposite sex find it easy not only to abstain from heterosexual activity but also to shift the object of their sexual desires to persons of the same sex?”² Because bisexuals find some people of both biological sexes attractive, society considers it especially appropriate to visit upon them coercion that would be unthinkable for heterosexuals.

      The blatantly coercive history of sexual-orientation policies should make us wary of developing any sexual-orientation categories under the law. Yet, some categories are necessary to develop ameliorative policies. Should the definitions that are used for ameliorative purposes parallel the definitions that have been used for subordinating purposes? Is it possible for society to create privileges and benefits for the gay, lesbian and bisexual communities without perpetuating negative stereotypes about these communities? We need to consider carefully which policies we are trying to promote as we construct these new categories in order to avoid importing destructive values and policies into the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities.

       I. Homosexual Policies That Cause Harm

       A. Cincinnati: “Homosexuals Are Not Identifiable”

      Many grass-roots attempts to restrict the rights of gay and lesbian people through voter referenda have occurred in the last decade.³ Oregon and Colorado received considerable national publicity overshadowing a lesser-known attempt in Cincinnati, Ohio, which has produced the most peculiar case law relating to the definition of “homosexual.”

      In November 1992, the city of Cincinnati passed a Human Rights Ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on race, gender, age, color, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, marital status, or ethnic, national, or Appalachian regional origin in employment, housing, and public accommodations.⁴ The passage of this ordinance caused an immediate backlash. An organization called Equal Rights Not Special Rights (ERNSR) was formed to eliminate special legal protection that was accorded to individuals because they were gay men, lesbian, СКАЧАТЬ