Guidelines for Researching and Writing About Bisexuality

Abstract

The authors are a group of researchers and writers who work on bisexuality, organize bisexual research conferences, and take part in discussions on many bisexual and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) academic forums. The authors have noticed, over the years, many problematic tendencies in research that focuses on, or includes, bisexuals. The authors therefore felt that it would be useful to come up with a list of ‘good practice’ guidelines for people researching and writing in this area. These should be particularly useful to those new to the area when they send out their calls for participants, to avoid alienating those participants or finding themselves ‘reinventing the wheel’ with their studies. Hopefully, the guidelines will also be helpful for experienced researchers to reflect on their research practices.

KEYWORDS:

• research
• guidelines
• bisexuality
• participants
• accountability
• ethics

Notes

1. Those who have remained in the gender that they were assigned at birth.

2. With gratitude to Jacob Hale for the suggested rules for writing about trans from which some of these points were adapted. This work by BiUK is copyrighted, but licenced under a Creative Commons BY Licence. No further permission is needed to reuse or remix (with attribution), but it is nice to notify them if you do use it.