Where Kinsey, Christ, and Tila Tequila meet: discourse and the sexual (non)-binary.

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Where Kinsey, Christ, and Tila Tequila Meet: Discourse and the Sexual (Non)Binary April S. Callis PhD

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Honors Program, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky, USA Accepted author version posted online: 04 Aug 2014.Published online: 25 Sep 2014.

To cite this article: April S. Callis PhD (2014) Where Kinsey, Christ, and Tila Tequila Meet: Discourse and the Sexual (Non)-Binary, Journal of Homosexuality, 61:12, 1627-1648, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.951208 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2014.951208

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Journal of Homosexuality, 61:1627–1648, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.951208

Where Kinsey, Christ, and Tila Tequila Meet: Discourse and the Sexual (Non)-Binary APRIL S. CALLIS, PhD

Downloaded by [Dicle University] at 23:08 14 November 2014

Honors Program, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky, USA

Drawing on 80 interviews and 17 months of participant observation in Lexington, Kentucky, this article details how individuals drew on three areas of national and local discourse to conceptualize sexuality. Media, popular science, and religious discourses can be viewed as portraying sexuality bifocally—as both a binary of heterosexual/homosexual and as a non-binary that encompasses fluidity. However, individuals in Lexington drew on each of these areas of discourse differently. Religion was thought to produce a binary vision of sexuality, whereas popular science accounts were understood as both binary and not. The media was understood as portraying non-binary identities that were not viable, thus strengthening the sexual binary. These differing points of view led identities such as bisexual and queer to lack cultural intelligibility. KEYWORDS identity, binary, discourse, sexuality, bisexuality, religion, media, popular science

September 17, 2009: I unlocked the door of OUTsource, the University of Kentucky’s LGBTQQIA resource center, flipped on the lights, and began cleaning up the water bottles and used napkins left over from the day before. Then I moved to the bookshelves, putting Milk and But I’m a Cheerleader back with the other DVDs before turning to the explosion of pamphlets. While I neatly placed them into piles (again), I glanced at familiar text. One, titled “Exploring Sexual Identity,” let students know that according to the Kinsey Institute, sexuality existed on a continuum. Another paper, simply

The author would like to thank Evie Blackwood, Myrdene Anderson, Alicia Decker, Ellen Gruenbaum, Erma Scarlette, and Steven McGuire for their readings and insights. Address correspondence to April S. Callis, Honors Program, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY 41099, USA. E-mail: [email protected] 1627


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titled “Kinsey Scale,” gave statistics about the percentage of men ranking as Kinsey 4s, 5s, and 6s. Once everything was in order, I sat at the main desk and pulled my laptop out. Over the next few hours a dozen students came in and out of the room, collapsing on the couch to catch a nap, setting up notebooks and flashcards at the table to study, or sitting in groups on the floor. I was often called on to look various things up on my computer, such as pictures of Carmen from The L Word and Lady Gaga Music videos. At one point, Ice (a college freshman and research participant) asked me to load up homorazzi.com and then spent close to 30 minutes looking at pictures from America’s Next Top Model. We debated the sexuality of one contestant (was refusing to label the same as being bi?), and Ice told me he would “hit that” and wondered if that made him “bicurious” rather than gay. Just after noon, a student came in and said that Brother Rick was outside preaching again. As my shift was over I packed up and walked the roughly 50 feet through the doors of the Student Center and out to the Free Speech Courtyard. There, Brother Rick was talking about his website, surrounded by a small group of heckling students. He quickly moved on to the “evils of homosexuality.” After discussing a woman who had been “infected with lesbianism,” he told us that homosexuals were not born gay, despite Dr. Levay’s research on “the hypothalamus or that other part that was shrunk in gays.” He then said that if it turned out people were born gay, maybe people were born homophobic as well. He let us ponder this briefly, before moving on to yet another topic, President Obama, who he called a “psychoterro-devil.” I listened to him sing “Long, Tall, Son of an African” for several minutes before turning away to head toward my car.

INTRODUCTION From 2008 to 2010 I conducted anthropological research focused on how individuals conceptualized sexual identities that were neither gay nor straight. Though sexuality has been classified as a binary by Western scientific and medical fields for over a century, non-binary identities are emerging in popular culture. The initialism GLBT has recently gained popularity, and bisexual and transgender have been added to organization names across the country that previously included only gay and lesbian. Further, several prime-time television shows (such as House M.D. and Grey’s Anatomy) have started include bisexual characters. Thus, although the binary of gay versus straight is still a hegemonic construction of sexuality in the United States, non-binary sexualities are becoming increasingly more visible. How has this visibility influenced understanding of sexual identity labels and the sexually


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possible? To answer this question, I conducted 17 months of participant observation, archival research, and 80 interviews in Lexington, Kentucky. This article will focus on just one section of my larger research. During introductory interviews carried out in my pilot study, I found that individuals drew heavily on national and local discourses of the media, religion, and popular science when articulating sexual identity. The “search for the gay gene,” Tila Tequila, Alfred Kinsey, and “the church” were all referred to by multiple participants when they discussed the etiology, visibility, or performativity of non-binary sexual identities. This led me to the two interrelated questions that will be the focus of this article. One, do these areas of discourse portray sexuality in a binary or non-binary light? And two, how did individuals draw on these areas of discourse to articulate their understanding of the sexually possible? Through a literature review and archival research, I found that each of the three areas of discourse provide competing “truths” that posit sexuality as both a system of two categories and a more nebulous entity outside of dualistic classification. Although religion, the media, and science have historically been understood as constructing sexuality as binary, each area also provides an alternative model of sexuality as something fluid and outside of binary classification. In the media, though most portrayals of sexuality are heterosexual or gay/lesbian, the sexy bisexual female has recently become a frequent character trope. And though most individuals think of biological studies of gay (versus the unstated straight) genes and hormones when discussing science, scientific discourse also provides the frequently called upon Kinsey scale, which paints a picture of sexuality that is anything but binary. Finally, though religion in the United States often portrays sexuality as a binary of heterosexual/incorrectly sexual, sexual integrity classes and ex-gay ministries provide a space within the church where sexuality is fluid and neither gay nor straight. However, although each of these areas of discourse can be seen as offering a dueling truth about sexual identity, Lexingtonians did not experience them in this way. When discussing religion, individuals interviewed for this project painted a picture of a strict dualism of heterosexual and homosexual, never mentioning the possible non-binary reading of ex-gay individuals. When asked about the media, individuals did discuss “TV bisexuals,” but they found this to be an invalid identity model, negating a non-binary reading. When discussing popular science, individuals did indeed draw on both binary and non-binary constructions of sexuality, often unironically using both in one answer. However, people drew on popular science in a much less direct way than religion and the media, making it difficult to ascertain how much this area of discourse was influencing their understanding of sexual identity.

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METHODS Lexington, a midsized city of 300,000, was chosen as a research location because of its complex relationship with non-straight sexualities. The city boasts four gay bars, three gay religious organizations, several gay/straight associations, and a Pride center, and it has been named one of the top 10 cities for GLBT persons to live in (Caldwell, 2007). However, Lexington is also the site of multiple fundamentalist Protestant churches with “sexual integrity” and ex-gay programs. Lexington’s positioning at the interface of liberal and conservative discourse, with non-straight sexualities understood as both accepted and as abomination, made it the ideal research locale. Research took the form of participant observation, archival research, and 80 semistructured interviews. Participant observation was carried out over the course of 17 months and took place in three types of locations: local bars, community organizations, and community events. These spaces were chosen because of their importance within the GLBT community (Ingram, Bouthillette, & Retter, 1997; Woolwine, 1998), comprising what one lesbian scholar has called the “institutional base” of the GLBT population (Lockard, 1986). Further, these spaces have been highlighted by a local historian as the most important to Lexington’s GLBT community (Jones, 2001). Along with several meetings at Lexington’s Pride Center, church events at both Hope Springs and the Unitarian Universalist Church, and GLBT events at the Green Lantern and Al’s Bar, I also volunteered at OUTsource, the University of Kentucky’s GLBTQQIA (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and allied) center. I conducted archival research to assess changes in how sexuality had been written about in Lexington. The three sources were the Lexington Herald-Leader (the local newspaper), the Kentucky Kernel (the University of Kentucky’s official newspaper), and the Gay and Lesbian Service Organization’s monthly newsletter, the GLSO News, which has been in publication in Lexington since 1977. For the Herald-Leader, I used an online database of all articles published since the newspapers inception in 1983. I searched for key terms such as sexuality, homosex, bisex, queer, and lesbian. For the Kentucky Kernel, I used a database of articles on the topic of sexuality that was created by the university’s Gay/Straight Alliance. Finally, to conduct archival research into the GLSO News I skimmed every issue from 1977 until October of 2010, noting changes in language use. The cornerstones of this research were the 80 interviews that I conducted between 2008 and 2010. These interviews were each between 1 and 2 hours long, and they took place in the public place of the participants’ choosing. Participants were located through Institutional Review Board approved flyers hung in coffeehouses and bookstores, as well as through snowball sampling and blurbs sent out over various listservs. These flyers and blurbs specified that the interviews would deal with sexual identity but



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stated that I was “looking to interview adults of all sexual identities (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and so forth), as well as all ages (over 18), genders, and ethnicities.” All participants were asked to choose a pseudonym that they would be referred to in all research notes and publications. When asking about these three areas of discourse, I used very similar questions for each. Participants were asked, “How is sexuality depicted in the media?” and “What sexual identities are shown in the media?” for that section of the interview. The interview portion dealing with religion again focused on questions such as “How was sexuality presented to you by your church?” and “How does religion depict sexual identity?” Finally, when questioning about popular science, I asked, “How does science depict sexual identity?,” and “What causes people to have different sexual identities?” Depending on interviewee answers, I would then either follow up with questions designed to elicit more information, or I would move on to the next interview segment. Of the individuals who were interviewed for this study, 34 identified their gender as female, 30 as male, and 16 as trans or other (including gender queer or androgynous). Four identified as African American, one as native American, three as Hispanic, and the rest as Caucasian. Ages ranged from 18 to 63, with the average age being 30 years old. All individuals lived in Lexington at the time of the study, with the average participant living there for roughly 10 years (times ranged from 4 months to over 40 years). Finally, the sexual identities of participants can broadly be grouped into three categories. Twenty-eight individuals identified as straight or heterosexual, 15 as gay or lesbian, and the other 37 as non-binary (including bisexual, queer, pansexual, heteroflexible, trisexual, non-identified, multiple labels, and various other identities). At the completion of my fieldwork, all interviews were transcribed, and then interviews, archival data, and field notes were coded and recoded according to prevalent themes.

LITERATURE/THEORIES Two concepts are vital to this project: identity and discourse. This research takes a social constructionist/queer theory approach, positing that individuals understand their sexuality (in whole or in part) through the sexual identity (or identities) we assign ourselves/are assigned by others, through the categories present within our culture and propagated through discourse. As there is not just one structure creating the “truth” of sexuality, nor just one person interpreting this “truth,” sexual identity is a varied and shifting terrain. Identities can be viewed as biological, or cultural, or religious. They can be multiple, singular, or absent, fluid or fixed. Furthermore, identities, like culture, are created through practice. Holland and Lave noted that “subjectivities and their more objectified components, identities, are formed in practice


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through the often collective work of evoking, improvising, appropriating, and refusing participation in practices that position self and other” (Holland & Lave, 2001, p. 29). Or, to paraphrase Judith Butler (1990), we perform our identities continuously in an effort to be culturally intelligible. A second concept that I use in this work is that of discourse. As conceptualized by Foucault (1978), discourse is the written, verbal, or otherwise communicated knowledge produced by a system around a specific topic. This information is disseminated and consumed by individuals, who can then internalize, rearticulate, or reject it. Discourse creates our ideas of “truth” and is often considered self-evident. However, discourse is never singular; multiple areas of culture often vie to create, explain, or reorder knowledge. Even within a single institution (for example, politics or the education system), messages are often multiple when it comes to an area such as sexuality. Thus discourse becomes a web of “truths” that encompasses overlapping institutions and individuals and that is constructed continuously within any given location and historic moment. Theories of discourse are heavily tied to notions of power, as the more powerful the structure/individuals producing the discourse, the more powerful the discourse itself. Additionally, discourses create power relations within themselves because they articulate categorical and often hierarchical schemas for understanding the topic at hand. Three areas of discourse surrounding sexuality were analyzed through this work: those of science, the media, and religion. As stated previously, these areas of discourse were chosen as areas of study because of their salience in introductory interviews in Lexington. However, these areas of discourse have been frequently cited within social science as integral to Western understandings of sexuality. A survey of media’s place in shaping sexuality is a huge undertaking because media cross multiple axes of analysis: capitalist production versus political implications versus local and national consumptions versus identity mapping (Schein, 2008). Media are instrumental in creating imagined communities (Anderson, 1991), as well as in cementing categories of erotic speciation (Foucault, 1978). It allows individuals within society to become aware of identities, to internalize performances of identities, and to have a shared reference when discussing these identities with others. Sociologist Stuart Hall stated that mass media has become responsible for “providing the basis on which groups construct an ‘image’ of the lives, meanings, practices and values of other groups and classes” (Hall, 1977, p. 340). Further, the media, especially daytime talk shows, allow individuals to view sexualities that are intelligible only in the guise of the freak (Gamson, 1998). Although media is a broad field that includes broadcast, film, print and Internet, I focus primarily on television shows, because television was by far the most often mentioned type of media by my participants. Studies have shown that Americans watch 4 hours of television a day (Gibson, 2006, p. 257). By the time children in America are 18 years old, they have



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spent more time watching television than doing anything else except sleeping (Levina et al., 2000, p. 741). Many scholars consider television to be the most important site of media culture transmission (Renzetti & Curran, 1999; Gross, 1994), or even the most important site of cultural transmission (Osorio, 2005), worldwide. In the United States, sexuality is thought to be something essential to human beings, “a natural force that exists prior to social life and shapes institutions” (Rubin, 1984, p. 275). Because of this sexual essentialism, a second area of discourse that shapes ideas of sexual construction is that of the sciences. However, just as media include a broad range of forms, covering print, broadcast, cinema, and the Internet, so, too, is the domain of science large. Science includes fields ranging from psychology and psychiatry, to sociobiology and sociology, to sexology, and even to anthropology itself. And just as participants referred to only a narrow pool of media sexual identity representations to make their points, despite the literal hundreds of GLBT characters available, so, too, did they pull from only a narrow area of the sciences. Despite the importance of multiple fields in research on sexuality, participants turned most often to the biological sciences: to endocrinology, genetics, and neurophysiology. The only scientific area outside of the biological sciences that participants mentioned was the sex studies of Alfred Kinsey, who was himself a biologist, though his work might best be understood as sexological. The primacy of science in participants’ understanding of sexuality, and their belief that science held some sort of answers, relates back to the origin of the gay/straight binary. As discussed previously, it was scientific and medical fields that were instrumental in creating the hetero/homo/bisexual person in the first place (Foucault, 1978; Halperin, 1990; Rubin, 1984; Weeks, 1985). Thus people continue to turn to this area of discourse to better understand these “types” of people. Beyond this, the natural sciences have been given a level of prestige since the Enlightenment that ensures individuals will turn to them for answers (Lancaster, 2003, p. 10). And when it is the human body that we have questions about, it is generally to the biological sciences that we turn (Lancaster, 2003). Unlike religion, which also provides answers about humanity, there is a belief that the biological sciences are objective and thus provide us with facts, or with truth (Haumann, 1995). Because of this, biological theories are considered entirely credible, and this credibility has led findings to be widely publicized (Haumann, 1995; Herrn, 1995). The third area of discourses that is integral to understandings of sexuality is religion. Foucault (1978) posits that individuals in the West utilized the church for religious answers long before they called on science. And, despite the importance of science in current sexual categorizations, religion remains important in individuals’ understanding of what they are allowed to be, as well as why various sexual identities exist (Lancaster, 2003). It is important to note that the religious discourse discussed by Lexingtonians was generally


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located within very specific sects of religion. Just as media could be equated with television for most individuals interviewed, and science to biology, so, too, religion often was equated with Christianity, and even more specifically to Protestantism, evangelical Christianity, and the religious right. This was, in part, due to the religious backgrounds of those individuals I interviewed, the vast majority of whom had been raised Protestant. The effects of religious discourse on issues of sexuality have been widely discussed in sociological and psychological journals. Perhaps the topic most often written about in this area is the correlation between religiosity and homophobia. Plugge-Foust and Strickland found that “of all the studies variables, conservative Christian ideology was the best predictor of homophobia” (2000, p. 240). Fisher et al. found that “frequency of worship is significantly related to antigay prejudice” for Baptists, fundamentalists, and nondenominational Christians (1994, p. 614). Wills and Crawford found Protestants “showed the least tolerance toward gay issues” and were likely to believe that gays and lesbians were going to hell, and that AIDS was a “curse from god” (2000, p. 114). Finlay and Walther found that “religious attendance and membership in certain Christian groups are also strongly associated with increased homophobic attitudes” (2003, p. 388). These findings have been replicated by multiple other studies (Herek, 1987; Whitley, 1990). The rest of this article will shed light on how sexual identity is produced through these three areas of discourse, as well as how it is consumed by individuals living in one midsized city on the border of the U.S. South and Midwest. For each area of discourse, I will first show how sexuality is produced both as binary and as non-binary. I will then delve into the ways that Lexingtonians used these areas of discourse to create mental maps of the sexually possible.

MEDIA A Brief History of Media Portrayals of (Non)Binary Sexual Identity From the 1930s through the 1970s, sexuality on television consisted of only primarily one option—heterosexuality. Though glimpses of homosexuality can be seen before the 1970s in sissy gays and murderous lesbians (Russo, 1987), these infrequent portrayals hardly constituted a visible binary. If they did, it was a binary of correct and unstated heterosexuality versus incorrect and humorous other. In the 1970s sexuality began to be portrayed as a binary of heterosexual versus homosexual as the numbers of gay and lesbian characters increased (Gibson, 2006). Although this visibility was still often in the form of a punchline, several positive characters began to grace the screen, including a gay male character on Barney Miller (Hart, 2000, p. 63). This forward momentum was temporarily slowed in the 1980s, as perception of AIDS as



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a gay disease decreased societal acceptance of homosexuality (Hart, 2000). However, this pause was temporary, and portrayals of gay and lesbian sexuality and identity continued to grow through the 1980s and into the 1990s (Gibson, 2006; Becker, 2006). Along with an increase in heterosexual and homosexual visibility, the 1990s also brought an increase in the visibility of non-gay/non-straight sexualities. C. J. Lamb on L.A. Law was portrayed as openly bisexual starting in 1991, and Tim Bayless on Homicide: Life on the Street came out as bisexual in 1998 after being a primary character on the show for several years (Tropiano, 2002). By the first decade of the 21st century, several television shows regularly portrayed non-binary characters, such as Hunter on Queer as Folk and Alice on The L Word. Analyzing GLBT characters on “scripted broadcast primetime,” in 2010 GLAAD found that five were lesbian, six were bisexual women, 25 were gay men, and zero were bisexual men (GLAAD, 2010, p. 8). This history seems to show an area of discourse that has moved from portraying sexuality as binary to one that currently portrays sexuality as more fluid. However, individuals in Lexington did not experience the media in this way. Rather, they found that non-binary portrayals of sexual identity on television delegitimized identities such as bisexual, which further strengthened the sexual binary.

Media Discourse and Lexingtonians During interviews, I asked participants to discuss sexual identity as portrayed in the media. Most participants immediately began with discussion of television, and most characterized these television portrayals as binary in some way. John, a straight male who used to identify as bisexual, stated, “they haven’t really recognized the middle ground in the media.” Scott Red, who also identified as straight, agreed, stating that on television it is always “black or white, straight or gay. There’s not much gray in there.” Ashley, a bisexual female, felt that television depicted sexuality as “you’re either this or you’re that,” with nothing in the middle. The majority of participants agreed that depictions of sexualities outside of straight, gay, or lesbian were extremely limited. Many of the people I talked to felt that the media showed sexuality as a binary to appease consumers. Sophie, a straight female, said that in U.S. society, “we like two options. We like black or white or A and B . . . If we can’t fit anything into that kind of dichotomous relationship or concept we just ignore it.” Ice said portrayals of sexuality were “either gay or straight” because if they were not, “people would get confused.” However, though participants characterized television portrayals of sexuality as binary, they were quick to point out that this binary was not weighted equally. Although there was a general consensus that more


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homosexual characters were portrayed every year on television, participants also felt that television was overwhelmingly straight. Amy, a heterosexual female, said, “there is more recognition of homosexuality, but even that would be minuscule . . . You see more homosexual relationships on television, but one in a thousand couples versus zero in a thousand is not saying a lot.” Also, participants felt that homosexual characters were often portrayed stereotypically and were often defined solely by their sexual identities. This was seen as different from heterosexual characters, who were not often defined by their sexualities. Although a binary model of sexuality was generally seen as dominating the media, 39 participants discussed depictions of non-binary sexuality, often specifically focusing on female bisexuality. The characters of Dr. Remy Hadley (Thirteen) from House M.D. and Dr. Calliope Torres (Callie) from Grey’s Anatomy were the most often mentioned points of reference. But many felt that these portrayals were not true to real-life bisexuals. Emily, who defined herself as “on a spectrum between straight and bisexual” said that bisexuality on television was merely the “pseudo bisexuality of girls gone wild.” Jenn, self-defined as a “lesbian married to a man,” stated that bisexual women on television were shown in the same way “everyone perceives them in porn. It’s a girl who dates men and kisses other girls.” Many individuals felt that female bisexuality was not presented as an actual identity but rather as a turn-on for men, both male characters and male audiences. Bisexual/pansexual/queer-identified Jean said that bisexuality was not present in the media “unless you count those over-sexed images of women making out with each other for the entertainment of by-standing men, which is not what I would consider bisexuality by any means.” Casey, who identified as straight, said that “bisexuality is only portrayed with women in the context of a cheap thing to throw in for more sexual excitement.” These characters, sexual and for the male gaze, were seen as always femme, always sexy, and always available for men. One particular portrayal of bisexuality that participants seemed to find suspect was Tila Tequila, an Internet personality who starred in a dating reality show on MTV, A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila, in 2007 and 2008. Bisexual-identified Maria said that Tequila’s sexual antics served to “give bisexuals a bad name.” Lesbian-identified Katherine East, using almost the exact same phrasing, stated that Tequila, shown hooking up with both men and women incessantly, was “giving bi’s a bad name.” Scout, who identified as queer, said she had a problem with “the idea that bi people are just in it to get as much sex as possible, that whole Tila Tequila thing and the madness that goes along with it.” Although bisexual women were viewed as all the rage in the media, bisexual men were absent. Only four of 80 people interviewed could think of a single bisexual male on television (Jack from Torchwood). Krystal, who identified as “mostly heterosexual,” said men had to be shown as either “gay



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or straight, with no in between unless it’s a joke.” AfterEllen.com, a popular Web site devoted to portrayals of sexual minorities on television, has referred to bisexual men as the “TV exec’s kryptonite” (Warn, 2003). The visibility of non-binary sexualities was also thought to have an impact on consumers. For example, the continuous portrayals of sexualized female bisexual characters were seen by some participants as effecting female sexuality. Heterosexual-identified Scott Red, who felt that television showed “every young woman as being bisexual,” told me that this let to women feeling they had to be bisexual to attract male attention. Lily, a straight-identified female, said that these portrayals had led to it being “hip” and “trendy” for women to make out with other women, even if they did not “have those feelings.” Lexingtonians clearly noted the increase in visibility of non-binary sexualities in the media, particularly on television. However, this production of a particular type of non-binary sexuality (the sexy female bisexual) was not consumed as a viable alternative to gay or straight sexualities. The lack of legitimate non-binary identities caused informants to read the media as promoting a binary understanding of sexuality.

SCIENCE A Brief History of Popular Science Portrayals of (Non)Binary Sexual Identity The search for the biological cause of homosexuality is over 100 years old (Cecco & Parker, 1995; Lancaster, 2003). Almost as soon as “the homosexual” was created by medical discourses, individuals began attempting to figure out what might cause such a deviation from the norm. Yet, though the search for a biological cause does not have a recent origin, it has gained momentum since the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, three studies from the early 1990s were prominently displayed in popular media: LeVay’s research on “gay brains,” Bailey and Pillard’s research on “gay twins,” and Hamer et al.’s study of “gay genes” (Lancaster, 2003, p. 240). LeVay’s 1991 article pointed toward the hypothalamus as the area of difference between straight and gay men. He found that a certain portion of the hypothalamus was “more than twice as large in the heterosexual men as in women. It was also, however, more than twice as large in the heterosexual men as in the homosexual men” (LeVay, 1991, p. 1034). The report was given front-page coverage by the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time Magazine, and LeVay was a guest on several popular talk shows, such as Donahue and Oprah (Cecco & Parker, 1995). Shortly thereafter, Bailey and Pillard published their study, which found that cases of sibling homosexuality were higher in identical twins than in fraternal twins, and higher in fraternal twins than in adoptive brothers (Bailey & Pillard, 1991). From this, a biological


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cause of homosexuality was assumed. Two years later, Hamer et al. released a third study, which pointed to the X chromosome as the genetic seat of homosexuality. This research was also given front-page status in various popular publications. In each of these studies, sexuality was portrayed as a binary, with one side weighted as more natural (and thus less written about). This binary is seen as self-evident, and thus is not called into question or put to test. One study which is widely cited by participants and the media alike, but which does not present sexuality as a binary, is the work of Alfred Kinsey. This research, conducted nearly half a century before the current wave of popular biological research, did not focus on causes of homosexuality. Rather, Kinsey’s research focused on gathering empirical data on sexual activity in the United States. He found, after he and his team of researchers interviewed over 10,000 people, that over one third of those people interviewed were not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. From these data he created a 7-point scale, which measured sexuality from 0–6, defined heterosexuals (0), homosexuals (6), and everyone else as 1–5. Kinsey’s work, like that of the “big three” in the early 1990s, was featured on the cover of Time. The above shows that the popular science discourse surrounding sexuality can be viewed as supporting both a binary and non-binary construction. Unlike with the media, Lexingtonians did discuss the science of sexuality as both a binary and as a continuum. However, unlike with questions on the media, interviewees did not always tie their thoughts on sexual etiologies or identities back to a specific point. Therefore, discussion on sexual spectrums or gay genetics did not always include specific mention of Kinsey or LeVay (whereas bisexuality on television almost always included a specific example).

Scientific Discourse and Lexingtonians The idea that sexual identity could be explained, at least partially, by biological factors was a frequent one in interviews. And although participants did not explicitly tie this to a belief in a sexual binary, the implication was obvious. Discussions of “gay genes” or “what made people gay” rarely ventured into bisexuality or other non-binary identities. When discussing the biology of sexuality, three main areas were specifically discussed by my participants: the brain, hormones, and genetics. These areas directly correlate to the three scientific studies detailed above. Tommy, who identified as straight, said, “I have no degree in knowing the physiological aspects of the brain, and how it develops. But I’m inclined to think that there’s something there that might lend to sexual identity.” Straight-identified John stated, “they’ve done brain scans and . . . what gender you’re attracted to can be determined by your neurology.” He went on to say specific sexual



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desires (such as a preference for certain hair colors or sexual positions) might also be present on the brain scans, but that we were currently unable to interpret it. The second specific area of research that participants called on was hormone research. Six of the individuals interviewed felt that research on hormones offered a way of understanding sexuality, though several others mentioned it. Casey, who identified as straight, said, “it’s possible that people are exposed to higher levels of hormones . . . so there is a biological basis for that kind of thing.” Bisexual/pansexual/queer-identified Jean thought that a large part of sexual identity might be the “hormone levels in your mother’s body while you’re germinating.” This idea of prenatal hormones was also mentioned by Heidi (a bisexual/heterosexual female), who thought that sexual identity could be explained by both genes and “hormones in utero.” The most popular response I got when asking about the origin of variant sexual identity was genes or genetics. Over 15 individuals specifically stated that genetics had an important part to play in sexual identity construction. Kqevin, a heterosexual man, said, “I think that it’s the way that DNA works in some way, you know the X chromosome and the Y chromosome. There’s probably a gay gene out there, or something like that.” Donnie, a heterosexual man in his 50s, said that sexual identity was “determined by biology, determined by genes. It has nothing to do with environment.” June, a lesbian in her 60s, said, “my brother was born that way as well. We had uncles that we knew were gay . . . so I think it’s genetic.” Various local publications have focused on the biological basis of sexuality, always presenting sexuality as a binary of heterosexual and homosexual. The first such article I found was published in the GLSO News (then called the GSO Newsletter) in 1983 and was titled “Gays are Born, Not Made.” This article was followed by a 1984 publication titled “Hormone Link Found,” which stated that a research team had “found the first clear laboratory evidence of biological difference between homosexual and heterosexual men—a dissimilar response to certain hormones” (GSO Newsletter, 1984). A front-page article in the Lexington Herald-Leader in 1991 on LeVay’s research proclaimed that “part of the brain thought to influence the sex drive of men is up to twice as large in heterosexual males as it is in homosexual males, suggesting that homosexuality could be a matter of biological destiny” (Lexington Herald-Leader, 1991). In 1992, reporting on Allen and Gorski’s research, the Herald-Leader again reported that “researchers have found a new anatomical difference in the brain structure of homosexual men and heterosexual men, a discovery that supports a theory that sexual orientation might be set by nature” (1992). The area of scientific research that was consistently brought up by participants, aside from biology, was Kinsey’s studies of sexuality and his finding on the sexual continuum. Several participants mentioned Kinsey by name.


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Straight-identified R, when talking about the sexual experimentation among him and his group of male friends while growing up, said, “Kinsey would have loved us.” Matsu, who identified as “mostly heterosexual,” worried at the start of the interview that his familiarity with the researcher would make him an invalid subject for my research. He said, “This is probably not good, I’m familiar with Kinsey’s work, that it’s a continuum, depending where you are in life.” And gay male MW, when discussing how societal opinions on sexuality were changing, said, “people are starting to identify more with a Kinsey scale.” Several other participants discussed sexuality as a continuum, though they did not specifically cite Kinsey. Sexuality was also presented as a continuum in one of the pamphlets given at the University of Kentucky’s OUTsource. Though I saw no material that supported biological causation during my year volunteering, a pamphlet published by the Counseling at Testing Center at UK, titled “Exploring Sexual Identity,” discussed Kinsey’s research. Kinsey was also mentioned at the talk given to University of Kentucky student’s by Robyn Ochs during March of 2010. Not only did Ochs hand out a flyer with Kinsey’s research and scale summarized on it, but she also handed us questionnaires and had us rate various aspects of our sexuality on a scale from 0 to 6. She then had participants move to various places on the floor labeled 0 through 6, allowing us all to visualize the continuum and the way that sexual identity was different within even a single person, depending on the question asked (sexual activity in the last month versus a lifetime, sexual attraction versus sexual action, etc.). Though Kinsey’s research was conducted over 50 years ago in the 1940 and 1950s, mentions of his work were found in several local publications on sexuality. For example, in 1982 the GSO Newsletter published an editorial in which the author stated that religious “moral crusaders are hoping to attain the Absolute ‘0 on Kensy’s [sic] scale of sexuality” (Austin, 1982, p. 2). In a 1989 article on the study of AIDS, the author cites Kinsey’s statistic that “at least 37 percent of the population had had some homosexual experience” (Lexington Herald-Leader, 1989, p. A4). Individuals who drew on Kinsey were more likely to discuss their own identities as potentially non-binary. Lily, who identifies as straight, said that she believed that “a lot of people think they’re here or here, but actually they’re somewhere in between. And the idea that you’re not necessarily one or the other is becoming a lot more accepted.” This led Lily to tell me about the attractions she had for other women. Tim, a gay man who thought sexuality was on a continuum, said, “I guess we could all be considered bisexual, but even if it’s one degree—so minute even we don’t recognize it.” He went on to say that he had sex with a woman in high school, and that at least a part of him had enjoyed the experience. Casey, who identified as “straight, I guess,” said that “I don’t think there is a label for everybody. Just look at it as a continuum. I feel comfortable saying that I have fantasies



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about women, but I don’t believe that puts me in any sort of category.” In all of these cases the idea of a sexual continuum allowed the participants to openly discuss sexual actions/attractions they held outside of their sexual identity. Interviewees in Lexington very clearly drew on two areas of scientific discourse when discussing sexuality: studies analyzing gay brains/genes/hormones and Kinsey’s work on the sexual continuum. However, though participants would talk about genetic and hormonal studies in terms of gay versus straight, they often embraced non-binary identities for themselves, and they frequently went on to discuss sexuality as a continuum. Eight of the 80 individuals interviewed believed both that homosexuality was “caused” by genetics or hormones and that sexuality was a continuum. For these individuals (who identified as gay, straight, and non-binary) there was no conflict between the two points of view. Therefore, it seems that some Lexingtonians consume the scientific discourse as bifocal, just as it is produced.

RELIGION A Brief History of Religious Portrayals of (Non)Binary Sexual Identity The prevalence of overt religious messages on the topic of sexual identity in the United States can be traced back several decades. In response to civil rights victories in the 1960s and 1970s, the late 1970s and early 1980s saw the creation of several conservative, evangelical organizations that combined religious appeals with political strategies in an attempt to thwart the gains of gays and feminists (Gallagher & Bull, 2001, p. 7). Through their use of media, science, and grassroots political movements, it is this “religious right” that has come to dominate the religious (and also political) discourses on sexuality (Herman, 1997). In the discourse of the right, sexuality and gender are strict binaries that must be preserved. Heterosexuality, along with correct femininity, is considered both natural and biblical, while the homosexual and the feminist are coded as unnatural sinners. Since the late 1970s, the religious right has “made antigay activity central to its political practice and social vision” (Stein, 2006, p. 141). In 1977, Anita Bryant led a faith-based campaign to “save our children” from predatory gay men (Gallagher & Bull, 2001). In 1980, Reverend Jerry Falwell preached that “the feminist and gay-rights movement had eroded the ‘moral fiber’ of the country” (Shaw, 1997, p. 10). By the late 1980s, individuals and organizational leaders within the religious right were writing books, making documentaries, and spreading their vision through television programs. These publications portrayed homosexuality as sinful, and homosexuals themselves are shown to be diseased and the seducers of children (Hardisty, 1995; Herman, 1997).


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One impact of the increased focus of evangelical religion on sexuality has been an increase in ex-gay ministries in the United States. While ex-gay ministries on the surface seem to support a defined binary (incorrect homosexual identity versus a correct heterosexual identity), being ex-gay is not as clear-cut as this. Wolkomir noted that being ex-gay required that individuals “simultaneously distance themselves from homosexuality and embrace it as the temptation against which their mettle as Christians was measured” (2006, p. 114). Ex-gays did not become heterosexuals. Rather, ex-gay Christians were “embroiled in a struggle against homosexuality that could, and perhaps was even likely to, fail” (Wolkomir, 2006, p. 147). Erzen likewise noted that being ex-gay is a state “being in flux between identities,” where individuals never become fully heterosexual, but rather “become part of a new identity group in which it is the norm to submit to temptation and return to ex-gay ministry over and over again” (2006, p. 14). This led Erzen to draw a parallel between the ex-gay movement and queer activism and theory, because both highlight the instability and fluidity of sexuality (2006, p. 15). Thus the religious discourse surrounding sexuality in the United States can be viewed as bifocal: supporting both a binary and a non-binary construction of sexuality. However, individuals in Lexington did not view religious discourse in this way at all. Throughout my interviews, religion was only articulated as a producer of binary sexual identity categories. Although examples of religion as non-binary were present in my field research and in archival notes, interview participants did not experience it in this way.

Religious Discourse and Lexingtonians During my research interviews, religion tended to be associated with negative messages about all sexual identities outside of heterosexuality. In this point of view, sexuality was often presented as a binary of heterosexual versus incorrectly sexual. This binary was clearly stated by various preachers I heard who preached at the local colleges and universities. One such example was detailed in the introduction to this article. In September of 2009, Brother Rick stood outside of the Student Center at the University of Kentucky and said that if homosexuals were born that way, so were homophobes, and sang a song about the evils of homosexuality. Several months later, a group of preachers standing in the same spot held up a sign listing homosexuals as people who were going to hell and talked openly about the sin of homosexuality. The view of religion as a negative binary force was also prevalent in the interviews I conducted. Straight-identified Tommy said, “nowadays, religion drills into people’s heads that if you’re gay you’re going to hell—if a man lies with a man, he’s sinning, he’s going to hell.” In this point of view, same-sex activity is seen as indistinguishable from sexual identity, leaving no room for bisexuality or other non-binary identities. Donnie, a straight male, said that



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central Kentucky was religious and conservative, having “a very strict and literal interpretation of the Bible, with gay seen as being wrong.” He told me that bisexual and gay were both understood the same way—as abominations. Several other participants explicitly linked religious discourse to a binary of heterosexual versus damned. Because of this binary understanding of sexuality, non-binary sexualities such as bisexuality were rarely discussed in connection with religion. Jenn stated that for most of the people she knew in Lexington, sexuality could be divided into “straight and abnormal.” She said they would not even mention bisexuality if you asked them what sexualities exist, because “it just wouldn’t dawn on them that people do that.” Straight-identified Madison said that because “bisexuality encompasses doing a homosexual act,” it would therefore “fall under the umbrella of those that are going to hell,” according to the church. Lily, another heterosexual woman, said that, in the church, bisexuality and homosexuality “were treated as all the same.” Ex-gay ministries came up in multiple interviews, as several local churches have sexual integrity courses. However, participants discussed these programs only in terms of a sexual binary. Tim, a self-identified gay man, said that he and his significant other had talked about making shirts that read “I found my husband at Southland’s Reformation Program.” He felt that the program had reaffirmed his gay identity, with no mention of sexual fluidity. Of the 14 individuals who mentioned ex-gay ministries (many of whom had first- or secondhand knowledge of someone who had participated in them), sexuality was presented as a dualism of incorrect/gay and correct/straight. In the course of my research I visited one of the churches that held sexual integrity classes. I found it surprising that one of the male sexual integrity members was a vocal presence at the large group meeting, which we all attended at the start of the night. Before we split into small groups he got up on stage, let his wrists fall limp, and said “I bet you can guess what I’m struggling with.” He then introduced himself as “someone who struggles with sexual integrity.” In conversation, he did not refer to himself as straight, but nor did he consider himself gay anymore. He identified as “struggling with sexual identity,” but mostly strongly as “Christian.” For this individual, ex-gay ministry was seen as creating a sexual non-binary. Ex-gay ministries were also occasionally written up in Lexington news. In 1999 the front page of the Herald-Leader ran a story about CrossOver Ministries, which (at the time) claimed to have “served 1,765 gays, lesbians, transsexuals and transvestites.” In 2003 the director of CrossOver Ministries, Melissa Fryrear, was interviewed for another article in the Herald-Leader, where she stated that anyone can change their sexual identity “with God’s help.” (Lockwood, 2003, p. B4). Both articles acknowledged that moving from homosexuality is a process, and that there are often back slips. This area of “slip” can be read as sexual fluidity. However, despite the potential

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for this reading, none of my participants articulated ex-gay sexualities as anything other than binary.


CONCLUSION In Lexington, sexuality was understood in part through the lens of science, media, and religion. Participants would use these discourses as locations of a common language, allowing them to speak about gay genes or Rosie O’Donnell and be understood. These discourses were also used in the performance of identity, such as when Christian preachers would loudly proclaim homosexuality to be a sin or when GLBT students would sing “La Vie Boheme” over top of said preachers. This last example shows that these areas of discourse also intertwine and are not neatly divided into three separate categories. News stories about ex-gay ministries and Kinsey’s studies combined media with science and religion, while OUTsource discussions often utilized all three in short spans of time. A literature review shows that the discourses produced by the church, the media, and the scientific community in the United States can be read as both supporting and refuting the sexual binary of heterosexual versus homosexual. This bifocality of discourse creates competing “truths” of sexual identity, without one clear message being produced by each of these structures. However, in Lexington, two of these three areas of discourse were read as producing only one “truth.” The media did indeed provide examples of non-binary sexualities. However, the oversexed, experimenting female bisexual was not seen as portraying a valid identity, and bisexual men were not seen at all. Within religious discourse, sexuality was understood as a strict binary of heterosexual and homosexual/abomination, with non-binary sexualities lumped into the latter category. Despite the prevalence of ex-gay ministries in the area, participants read these potential queering spaces as binary. Only the popular understanding of the scientific discourse seemed to support a bifocal reading of sexuality as both binary and not. Why were these areas of discourse understood so differently by research participants? This might partially be explained by the historic timeline of shifts in each of these areas. Kinsey’s research was published several decades before the 1990s saw a proliferation of gay gene/hormone/brain studies. Thus rather than a shift from a binary toward fluidity, popular science can be read in reverse: it was instrumental in creating the homosexual/heterosexual binary in the first place, but it quickly provided an alternative. Ex-gay movements have become visible only since the 1980s (Besen, 2003), with non-binary sexualities in the media becoming visible shortly thereafter. Perhaps the length of time that these alternate constructions have been in existence helps explain participants’ varied understandings.


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In Lexington, participants struggled with notions of bisexuality, often questioning whether or not it was a valid sexual identity. Individuals who identified as other than gay or straight were labeled by others as confused or in denial (see Callis, 2013). Understanding the ways that these identities are both produced and consumed at the local and national level allows light to be shed on the contention surrounding these sexualities. Individuals, drawing on local and national discourses, received a conflicting view of non-binary sexualities. They are impossible through the church, present but invalid through the media, and both possible and impossible through science. This conflicting point of view creates a series of sexualities that are not quite culturally intelligible. Lacking this intelligibility, and thus legitimacy, identities such as bisexual and queer remain on the borderlands of identity, only afforded a partial status of truth.

FUNDING This article was written with the support of a Bilsland Fellowship from Purdue University.

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