Doing Sexuality: How Married Bisexual, Queer, and Pansexual People Navigate Passing and Erasure

Abstract

Society’s binary understanding of gender and sexuality often render the identities of bisexual, queer, and pansexual (bi+) people invisible in everyday interactions. Furthermore, when a bi+ person gets married, they are often mistakenly presumed to have “made a choice” regarding their sexual preference or identity. What are the consequences–both negative and positive–of this perception? Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with 23 married bi+ individuals, this research extends the theory of doing gender to the context of doing sexuality to explore if and how married bi+ people attempt to make their sexual identities known in everyday interactions. Findings suggest that being married increased feelings of bisexual erasure. However, married bi+ people who were presumed by others to be heterosexual during interactions frequently reported taking advantage of passing to situationally avoid prejudice or discrimination. Applying a queer theoretical critique of heteronormativity and the binaries it reinforces, this research considers how increased visibility of married bi+ people could contribute to the deconstruction of gender and sexual binaries and the inequalities they create.