Souto Pereira, Sandra, Sue Becker, & Glynis Gardiner (2017). Sensitive sexualities: Dichotomised discourse in the erasure of bisexuality. Psychology & Sexuality, 8(1-2), 118-131. (doi: 10.1080/19419899.2016.1255245) (Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2016.1255245)
Abstract: A combination of Q methodology and a Think Aloud task explored how cultural knowledge about bisexuality is constructed and maintained. Q methodology revealed positive interpretations of bisexuality. Critical Discourse Analysis of the Think Aloud task, however, exposed the maintenance of dualistic categories of sex, gender and sexuality acting as ‘operating systems’ and strategically guiding the social representation of bisexuality as ‘non-existent’, ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’ and/or ‘promiscuous’. The findings of this study suggest that overt heterosexism is not becoming extinct; instead, it has found rather subtle ways of incorporating itself into ‘liberal’ discourses.
Sue Becker <s.becker@tees.ac.uk> and <susan.becker@bishopg.ac.uk> is in the School of Social Science and Law, Teesside University, Middlesbrough; and the Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK.
