TheEpistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure KenjiYoshino* In thisarticle, Professor Kenji Yoshino seeks to explainwhy the category of bisexualityhas beenerased in contemporaryAmerican political and legal discourse.He firstargues that the invisibility ofbisexuality relative to homo- sexualitydoes not reflect the incidences of those orientations in thepopulation. Definingbisexuality as thepossession of more than incidental desire for both sexes,Yoshino shows that the major sexuality studies demonstrate that the inci- denceof bisexuality is infact greater than or comparableto theincidence of homosexuality.Yoshino explains the erasure of bisexualityby positing that bothself-identified heterosexuals and self-identified homosexuals have overlap- ping interestsin theerasure of bisexualitythat lead theminto an "epistemic contract"of bisexual erasure. These interests include: (1) thestabilization of exclusivesexual orientation categories; (2) theretention of sex as an important diacriticalaxis; and (3) theprotection of normsof monogamy.Noting that suchcontracts tend to becomevisible only when they are challenged,Yoshino describeshow bisexualshave increasinglycontested their own erasure. Fi- nally,Yoshino examines the effects of bisexual invisibility and visibilityin the legal realm,focusing on thesexual harassment jurisprudence of recentdec- ades. * AssociateProfessor, Yale Law School. I thankAkhil Amar, Ian Ayres,Jennifer Gerarda Brown,Ariela Dubler, Bill Eskridge,Oren Izenberg, Robert Post, Bill Rubenstein,Vicki Schultz, RevaSiegel, and Amanda Tyler. I am also gratefulto participants in workshops at ColumbiaLaw School,Fordham Law School,and Yale Law School,as wellas studentsin myTheorizing Sexual- ityseminar at Yale and LarryLessig's Advanced Constitutional Law seminarat Harvard.Rick Baker,Romana Mancini, Ravenna Michalsen, Zachary Potter, Rose Saxe, and EricSonnenschein suppliedexcellent research assistance. 353 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.76 on Sun, 2 Jun 2013 16:33:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 354 STANFORDLAWREVIEW [Vol.52:353 INTRODUCTION ..... 356 I. THE ERASUREOF BISEXUALS ....363 A. BisexualInvisibility . .364 1. Bisexualinvisibility defined . .364 2. Evidenceof bisexual invisibility . .368 B. BisexualErasure . .370 1. Bisexualitydefined . .370 2. Thestudies . .377 a. Kinsey(1948 & 1953).380 b. Mastersand Johnson (1979) .382 c. Janusand Janus (1 993) .383 d. Wellings(1994) .383 e. Laumann(1994) .385 f. Critiquesof the studies ........................................... 386 C. BisexualErasure as a Cause ofBisexual Invisibility ... 388 II. THE EPISTEMICCONTRACT OF BISEXUALERASURE ........................... 388 A. DifferentExplanations . ............................389 B. TheEpistemic Contract Defined . .........................................391 C. Strategiesof Erasure . .............................395 1. Straightdeployments of thestrategies . .........................395 2. Gaydeployments of the strategies . ............................397 D. TheEpistemic Contract as a Cause ofBisexual Erasure ... 399 III. MONOSEXUALINVESTMENTS IN THE EPISTEMICCONTRACT .......... 399 A. Stabilizationof Sexual Orientation . ..........................................400 1. Sharedinvestment ......................................... 400 2. Straightinvestment ........................................ 402 3. Gay investment ........................................... 404 B. BisexualityDestabilizes the Primacy of Sex .................................. 410 1. Sharedinvestment ......................................... 411 a. Destabilization........................................... 412 b. Thetension between public and private treatmentsof sex ........................................... 413 2. Straightinvestment ........................................ 415 3. Gay investment ........................................... 417 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.76 on Sun, 2 Jun 2013 16:33:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Jan.2000] BISEXUALERASURE 355 C. BisexualityDestabilizes Norms of Monogamy .............................. 420 1. Sharedinvestment .............................................. 421 2. Straightinvestment .............................................. 423 3. Gay investment.............................................. 426 D. OverlappingMonosexual Investments as a Cause ofthe Epistemic Contract .............................................. 428 IV. SELF-IDENTIFIEDBISEXUALS AND THE EPISTEMIC CONTRACT ....... 429 A. BisexualCapitulation to theEpistemic Contract .......................... 430 B. BisexualResistance to theEpistemic Contract ............................. 431 C. TheDissolution of the Epistemic Contract . ........................434 V. BISEXUALITYAND SEXUALHARASSMENT LAW . .................................434 A. A Summaryof the Development of the Sexual HarassmentJurisprudence ..................................... 436 B. BisexualVisibility-The Recognition and Closingof the BisexualHarassment Exemption . ................................439 1. Therecognition of the bisexual harassment exemption- bisexualvisibility ............... ............................... 440 2. (Incoherently)closing the bisexual harassment exemption-bisexualinvisibility ............................................. 442 3. (Coherently)closing the bisexual harassment exemption-bisexualvisibility (again) .................................... 444 C. Recognizingand Closingthe Horseplay Exemption ..................... 446 1. Understandinghorseplay- thehomosocial and thehomoerotic ........................................ 448 2. Recognizingthe horseplay exemption- bisexualinvisibility .............................................. 450 3. Closingthe horseplay exemption- bisexualvisibility ............... ............................... 451 D. SexualHarassment at a Crossroads . .............................454 1. Thepost-Oncale status quo .............................................. 454 2. Bisexualityas goad .................. ............................ 457 E. OtherApplications .................... .......................... 458 CONCLUSION.............................................. 460 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.76 on Sun, 2 Jun 2013 16:33:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 356 STANFORDLA WREVIEW [Vol. 52:353 INTRODUCTION Teachinga seminaron SexualOrientation and the Law, I facedan old inconsistencyso frontally that it became difficult toavoid giving it sustained attention.I began the course in what appears to be a commonway,l by pos- ingbasic questionsabout sexual orientation. I askedwhy contemporary Americansociety2 organizes people according to theirsexualities;3 why we do so onthe basis of sexual orientation inparticular;4 and why, when classi- fyingby sexual orientation, we insiston doingso withthe binary system of heterosexualand homosexual.5 In discussingthe last question, I adduced the 1. A leadingcasebook on sexualorientation and the law, for example, begins with such an in- troductoryunit. See WILLIAMB. RUBENSTEIN,CASES ANDMATERIALS ON SEXUALORIENTATION ANDTHE LAW 1-40 (2d ed. 1997) (presentingbackground materials discussing sexual classifica- tions). 2. Thesetemporal and geographical restrictions apply to thisentire analysis. These restric- tionspartially recognize that the concept of orientation is culturally specific. See note77 infraand accompanyingtext (describing Latin bisexuality). That recognition, however, will unfortunately be incomplete,insofar as itignores variations within modem American society based on, for example, culture,race, and class. See, e.g.,Will Roscoe, How to Becomea Beardache:Toward a Unified Analysisof GenderDiversity, in THIRD SEX, THiRD GENDER:BEYOND SEXUALDIMORPHISM IN CULTUREAND HISTORY 329, 330-49(Gilbert Herdt ed., 1994) (describingthe Native American berdache,an identitybased on genderatypicality that cuts across the orientation categories consid- eredhere, as an identitythat is moresocially salient in manyNative American societies than those orientationcategories). 3. Resistanceto theclassification ofpersons according to theirsexualities can be seenin that usageof the word "queer" which refers to individuals who fall outside of the realm of the "normal," eitherbecause of theirsexuality or forsome other reason. See MichaelWarner, Introduction to FEAROF A QUEERPLANET: QUEER POLITICSAND SOCIALTHEORY vii, xxvi-xxviii(Michael War- nered., 1993). Thisusage's "aggressive impulse of generalization," id. at xxvi,resists the reifica- tionof sexualityas an axis of demarcationby recastingthe conflict between sexual deviance and sexualnormalcy as onebetween social deviance and social normalcy. 4. Resistanceto theclassification of personsaccording to theirsexual orientations can be foundin Eve Sedgwick'sprovocative list of alternativeclassifications. See EVE KoSOFSKY SEDGWICK,EPISTEMOLOGY OF THECLOSET 25-26(1990). Sedgwicknotes that even if we setout to distinguishbetween people based on theirsexualities, many other axes besidessex of object choiceare available. See id. at 25. Forexample, "[s]exuality makes up a largeshare of theself- perceivedidentity of somepeople, a smallshare of others"';"[s]ome people spend a lot of time thinkingabout sex, others little"; and "[s]ome people like to have a lotof sex, others little or none." Id. Indeed,Sedgwick contends that the rise of sex ofobject choice as thecritical axis of definition was a contingentand puzzling historical development out of an era in whichsuch other axes had analogousdiacritical