ETHICAL

THE ETHICAL SLUT
consider themselves gender-blind. Some can be sexual with either sex
but romantic with only one, or vice versa. And so on, through all the
spectrums of bisexual attractions and choices. Bisexuals challenge a
lot of our assumptions about gender, and many bi's can tell you what
is different for them between sex with a woman and sex with a man.
This interesting and privileged information can provide all of us with
new stories about sex and gender.
The increasing visibility of bisexuality has led to some challenges
to traditional definitions of sexual identity. Specifically, we are having
to look at the fact that our sexual attractions may say one thing about
us, while our sexual behaviors say another, and our sexual identity
says yet a third. Questions like these are eating away at some of the
traditional boundaries we place around sexual identity, much to the
dismay of purists of all orientations. Your authors, sluts that we are,
enjoy this kind of fluidity and appreciate the opportunity to play as
we like with whoever looks good to us without relinquishing our fundamental
sexual identities.
Janet's path toward her current identity as a bisexual has been a
confusing one: it was nearly a decade after she began having sex with
women before she began to feel comfortable using the term to describe
herself.
I felt turned off by the trendiness of "bisexual chic," and under some
pressure to claim an identity that didn't feel right to me. And at the
same time, I was hearing some genuinely cruel judgments from both
heterosexuals and homosexuals about bi's.
Add to that the difficulty I was having sorting out my own feelings-I
knew my feelings toward women were different from those
toward men, and I wasn't sure what that meant-and things just got
very confusing. As a result, it wasn't until I knew for sure that I was
capable of having both sexual and romantic feelings toward both men
and women-and until I felt strong enough to claim the identity in
the face of all those negative judgments-that I finally began calling
myself "bisexual."
I look back on my life now and see that I've generally expressed my
domestic urges toward men but that my romantic and sexual feelings
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