Coming out Through an Intersectional Perspective: Narratives of Bisexuality and Polyamory in Italy

ABSTRACT

Through an intersectional perspective, the author analyzes what it means to perform a bisexual and polyamorous identity in the Italian familistic welfare regime. Considering the intersections of polyamory and bisexuality, the author employs the Greimas semiotic square to read the process of coming out experienced by people who shared their experiences on polyamory: two interviewees define themselves as bisexual ciswomen, and one self-defines as a transsexual gay man in a primary relationship with a self-defined bisexual cisman. Afterwards, the author explores how they live their intimate lives through compulsory invisibility, coming out, and staying invisible. Finally, the author focuses on how the existence of non-normative communities opens up the possibility of meeting other bisexual people in a context where there are no bisexual communitie, and argues that this process allows people to self-identify as bisexual and polyamorous in the public sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• bisexuality
• coming out
• heteronormativity
• polyamory

Notes on contributor

Beatrice Gusmano is a research fellow in the project INTIMATE— Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe (2014–2019), funded by the European Research Council. Within this research project, she focuses on LGBTQ polyamory, lesbian/bisexual mothers accessing ARTs (Artificial Reproductive Techniques), and friendship between LGBTQ people who decide to cohabit in adult life. She defended her PhD dissertation at the University of Trento (Italy) in 2009, with a thesis on the construction and management of nonheterosexual identities at work. Her main research interests are Queer intimacies and kinship, consensual/ethical nonmonogamies, LGBT local public policies in Europe and in Italy, bullying, and gender education. She is currently member of the Board of the ESA Research Network on Sexualities.

Notes

1. “The term ‘bisexual’ is generally used in minority Western cultures to refer to an individual who experiences sexual attraction to more than one gender” (Bowes-Catton & Hayfield, 2015, p. 42).

2. “[Polyamory] means having multiple loving, often committed, relationships at the same time by mutual agreement, with honesty and clarity” (Veaux & Rickert, 2014, pp. 7–8).

3. “Neoliberalism rejects [social] rights. It argues that citizens have their own responsibility to ensure themselves against social risk […]. It has attempted to break down the relation between social and political citizenship” (Lister et al., 2007, p. 52).

4. Given the qualitative and sociological approach of this research, please refer to Baiocco et al. (2015), Lingiardi et al. (2016), and Pistella et al. (2016) for quantitative and psychological data on coming out and sexual stigma in Italy.

5. BDSM is an acronym that stands for bondage/discipline; dominance/submission; sadism/masochism. It “is the umbrella term used to describe a set of consensual practices that usually involve an eroticized exchange of power” (Turvey & Butt, 2016, p. 24).

Additional information

Funding

FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (ERC Grant Agreement nº 338452).