Concept of Bisexuality among Finnish Bisexuals

Reasons for Lack of Bi-Activity in Finland

The subject of my presentation is the definition of bisexuality as a concept among Finnish bisexuals, and it is mainly based on my master's thesis that I made in University of Oulu. My vantage point was cultural model theory, but I decided to exclude the theory from this presentation to give more space for the experiences and thoughts of Finnish bisexuals. The other subject of the presentation is to ponder the lack of bi-activity in Finland. I will tell you about the experiences and thoughts of Finnish bisexuals and how they define their bisexuality. I'll enliven the presentation with quotations from the interviews I made. But I will start the presentation with my personal experience of bi activity in Finland.

Very recently I was organizing a bi-discussion group in Oulu, my home town. There had been some requests for Oulun Seta - a local ILGA member association - for such a group. However, only 4 people showed up to the first meeting. The group wasn't a great success later. The group gathered togheter about once in every five weeks, because the group members felt that meeting every other week would be too often. But during the spring the bi-discussion group withered away. This was not a first time a bi-discussion group was organised in Oulu: few years ago a similar attempt was made and only two people showed up for the first meeting. All right, Oulu is quite small town: there lives about 300 000 people in Oulu and surroundings - so maybe there are not enough bisexuals around? Anyhow, several other discussion groups have succeeded: for example a group for transvestites has been a success, as well as group for women oriented women. So why bi-group couldn't be? This failure of bi-group is not an isolated phenomenon in Finland. I have heard of other attempts to organize a bi-discussion group, bi-mailing list etc, but bi-activity seems to fail.

When I started writing my thesis I was well-aware of the state of bi-activity in Finland. At the time I started the study, there was only one bi-oriented discussion group in Helsinki, organized by Seta. I thought that it might be hard to find enough different interviewees for my study - I thought that I could be satisfied, if I found about ten interviewees that wouldn't be my friends. I did interview some of my bisexual friends also, but for the sake of reliability I did not want interview too many of my bi-friends. However, more than 50 bisexually identified people contacted me during few months after I had advertised my study and I had several contacts even after I had finished making the interviews. So there are lots of bi-people in Finland - why isn't there much bi-activity? I think that the best reason for lack of bi-activity in Finland is the definition of concept of bisexuality and the variation of bisexual people.

First I will tell a little bit about my interviewees. I made 40 interviews. 9 of my interviewees were male, 31 were female and there were not transgendered people among them. 30 of them were born in 1970's or 80's, so the majority of my interviewees were quite young - under thirty during the study. Therefore the great generalization could be that bisexuals in Finland are young and female. But this isn't the whole truth - the elder bisexuals that I interviewed seemed to hesitate speaking about bisexuality openly, while young were very open. The elder bisexuals tended to find bisexuality a problem more often than younger bis. So it may very well be that elder bi's cannot be reached through this kind of study.

It seems also, that it is easier to say you're bisexual if you're woman than if you're man - non-heterosexuality is still seen to threaten manhood somehow. When I talked with the male interviewees, many of them wanted to emphasize that bisexuality does not affect their manliness, while womanliness was not an issue in interviews of women. Many of my male interviewees also stressed, that they don't feel themselves ordinary and traditional men. They found manliness and machoism the same thing and wanted to reject machoism and masculinity as negative things.

I could divide my interviewees to three groups, that I named "Problem oriented", "Swingers" and "Identity-conscious". The interviewees were divided to groups by the general tone of the interviews - not by one characteristic. So for example everyone, who had problems with bisexuality was not put to the group of problem oriented bisexuals. The interviewee had to find bisexuality mainly problematic to be defined problem oriented. The groups of problem oriented interviewees and swingers were quite small, about 5 persons each. The biggest group was the group of identity conscious bisexuals.

Table 1. The groups of interviewees
The figures are estimates - some interviewees couldn't be defined only to one group.

The problem oriented interviewees tended to be elder than others, born in 50's and early 60's, when identity conscious interviewees were quite young. Swingers' age varied. There were also some interviewees that were between the groups - some were very identity conscious but still the interview was problem oriented - some were fullhearted swingers that had strong identities. I will describe the different groups further now.

Problem oriented bisexuals tended to describe bisexuality as a problem and the problems of bisexuality were the main subject of the interview. Some said that they had actually suffered being bisexual. The eldest informants had lived most of their lives in the age when homosexual relationships were crime or homosexuality was defined as a disease in Finland - the criminalization ended in 1971 and in 1981 homosexuality was removed from the list of diseases. Homosexuality had been virtually a taboo till the end of 1980's, so the eldest informants remember the times of discrimination very well and discrimination had also affected their sexual identities.

Swingers described bisexuality as a turn on, and for them bisexuality meant sexual play. They emphasized the importance of sexuality in bisexuality. All of the swingers had mainly heterosexual relationships, while homosexual relationships were part of sexual play between partners. Often that meant a situation, in which heterosexual couple takes third person to bed. Usually the woman was bisexual and had sex with a female friend partly to entertain the man. Some of the swingers said that they don't actually indentify as bisexuals - they call themselves bisexual because they have both men and women as sexual partners. Swingers did not consider bisexuality as an essential part of their identity as did the identity conscious bisexuals. They described bisexuality as a different way to express their sexuality. Most of them also said that they couldn't live in homosexual relationship although they had homosexual contacts.

The identity conscious group of bisexuals was the biggest one, and I concentrated especially on their thoughts. Identity conscious bisexuals had very strong bisexual identities and strong opinions on bisexuality. They pondered the meaning of bisexuality, bisexual identity and the position of bisexuality in society. Most of them were open about their bisexuality, while the problem oriented and swingers tended not be out of the closet. The identity conscious bisexuals found bisexuality an essential part of their identity.

As I told earlier, the identity conscious bisexuals were the biggest group. They seemed to be open and eager to speak about bisexuality, and they also read the queer mailing lists and magazines. It is difficult to reach those bisexuals that think bisexuality as a personal problem or just a sexual play - they don't tend to read queer magazines or be part of the queer community. Swingers and those, that think that bisexuality is a personal problem don't necessarily identify as bisexuals, so they might never answer to a study like this.

The variation of bisexuality makes it more difficult to have a bisexual community: swingers said that they would need a place to meet new sexual partners while problem oriented bi's needed a therapy group. Some identity conscious bisexuals said that they don't actually need any bi-activity because of their strong identities. They said that they don't need any backup to be bisexual and therefore they do not need bi-community neither. The incoherence of bisexual people might be one reason for failure of bi-activity in Finland. Finnish bisexuals don't tend to have common needs and urges that they could fill with bi-community.

There is also some tendence to categorise different bisexuals - I admit, that I'm doing that also. Especially identity conscious interviewees tended to look upon swingers and say that they are actually heterosexuals that just want to have fun. Interviewees around thirty snickered to teenaged bis. Those who had stable relationships with men or women pondered the meaning of their bisexuality if they will never have any other relationship than current. Although my interviewees were very certain about their own bisexuality they tended to be confused about the bisexuality of other people. Who can call oneself bisexual, after all?

However, most of my interviewees tended to define bisexuality in quite the same way, were they swingers, problem oriented or identity conscious bisexuals. To them, bisexuality meant an attraction towards different genders, men, women and transgender people or attraction towards people regardless of gender. Attraction included sexual, romantic and emotional attraction. Virtually all of my interviewees agreed this core definition of bisexuality. Some wanted to simplify the concept by saying that bisexuals are able to love both men and women - the word 'love' combines both erotic, emotional and romantic feelings.

Most of them also said that bisexuality does not actually mean loving men and women but forgetting the sexes and genders altogether. Many said that they do not fall in love with a gender or sex but a person. They question the division of people into two genders. The questioning of gender division is another key definition of bisexuality. Especially identity conscious bisexuals said that they feel themselves quite androgynous.

The next definition of bisexuality was to define bisexuality as a multifaceted and ambiguous: there isn't one truth about bisexuality, one final definition. All of my interviewees emphasized the multifaceted nature of bisexuality. They wanted to stress that every bisexual builds one's bisexual identity by oneself and therefore general definition of bisexuality cannot exist.

So bisexuality was considered essentially multiform and complicated. This is both the weakness and the strength of bisexuality. On one hand the definitions of bisexuality remain blurred and the bisexual community is more difficult to be formed. On the other hand the complicatedness of bisexuality can be the basis of identity, because bisexuals can live free of different limitations. Bisexuality can also deconstruct categories and limitations in the general level of society and be a motor of cultural change.

According to interviewees the recognition and accepting bisexuality were the initial acts during the identity constructing process. Some emphasized the meaning of recognition while others stressed accepting. Especially those who said that they had known to be bisexuals very young said that accepting one's bisexuality was the key step during the identity construction. Those who had found their bisexuality in later age said that it was easy to accept one's bisexuality once it had been recognised, but very hard to recognise one's bisexuality in heavily dichotomised culture.

The last definition of bisexuality is a curious one. When I asked the interviewees, what bisexuality meant for them, remarkably many said that it meant freedom. Bisexuality was freedom to love, freedom from restricting roles of man or woman, freedom to be oneself, freedom of choice and thought. The word freedom describes the idealistic thoughts linked to bisexuality.

Therefore bisexuality was not "only" a sexual identity, but part of a larger postmodern and individualistic worldview that the interviewees had. The religious and political attitudes of the interviewees tell something about their worldview. About 40 % of the interviewees said that they are not members of any religious community and more than half said that they are not religious at all. Especially the amount of the interviewees that do not belong to any church was remarkably great: most of the Finns belong to some religious community, and 85 % belong to Evangelic-Lutheran church. Those who described themselves religious said that they are liberal Christians that do reject fundamentalism. I did not research the political attitudes of my interviewees, but they seemed to be very liberal and not conservative at all.

Table 2. The definition of bisexuality according to Finnish bisexuals

Bisexuality is defined also through prejudices - what bisexuality is not tells also something about what bisexuality is.

The interviewees had confronted many different prejudices. There are two key prejudices that had many forms. First is the prejudice of nonexistence of bisexuality and another is the prejudice of bisexuality as hypersexuality. Most of the interviewees recognised these prejudices and had some opinions on them.

Table 3. The key prejudices of bisexuality and bisexuals

The informants had faced the prejudice of nonexistence of bisexuality in different forms. The most common way to claim that bisexuality does not exist was to say that bisexuality is just a passing phase. This was very common prejudice that bisexuals had to confront both in gay and lesbian community and in heterosexist society. However, most of my informants did not want to reject altogheter the thought of bisexuality as a passing phase: many said that it might very well be a passing phase for someone and that they have no right to generalise their thoughts to other bisexuals, though all of my informants said that bisexuality is not a passing phase for them personally.

Another way to claim nonexistence of bisexuality was to say that bisexuality is just a trend, that people are bisexual to be fashionable or for the sake of originality. Many of my interviewees had confronted this prejudice: their friends or families might have said that bisexuality is just a way to be modern and hip. Some of them also said that bisexuality as a trend is actually not just a prejudice but a fact. Bisexuality and bisexual iconography is used in advertising, fashion and popular culture and in this context it can be said that bisexuality is trendy. Some interviewees found the prejudice negative and diminishing. They said that making bisexuality just a trend makes it temporary also - next winter bisexuality might be out as well as platform shoes. Others thought that trendiness of bisexuality is positive - bisexuality gets visibility through trendiness and raises awareness and might change attitudes.

Hypersexuality was another key prejudice. This prejudice has two sides: on one hand this prejudice reflects the common thought that bisexuals are polygamous and on the other it diminishes bisexuality just a sexual play, a foreplay even. Almost all of my interviewees rejected this prejudice - they said that bisexuals can have different sexual practices and that they can arrange their lives in nonconformist way, but that does not mean that prejudices can be generalised to every bisexual.

Most of my interviewees had varying thoughts about prejudices. Most of them had really confronted prejudices, but they did not necessarily claim them to be negative and false. My interviewees wanted to warn against generalising: in some cases prejudices can also be true or if not true, at least positive. Sometimes prejudices can also reflect reality: especially swingers said that they really feel themselves more sexually active and creative than general hetero- or homosexual population. They considered this prejudice actually positive: society calls bisexuals hypersexual because society itself is overprudent and therefore society is sick somehow.

Most of my interviewees said that there isn't any existing bi community in Finland. Some of my interviewees had participated bi-discussion group, or were members of bi-mailing lists, but most had not experiences of any kind of bi activity. However, most had some contacts to Seta, Finnish ILGA member association that is mostly concentrated on lesbian and gay issues. Some were very active members of Seta, even, but most had attended parties, parades and different discussion groups. Especially women who had stable relationships with women were active members of lesbian community. So my interviewees were not totally isolated from queer issues. But why most of them did not want to be bi-activists?

The experiences and opinions tended to be quite similar among my interviewees despite the fact that they could be divided to different groups of bisexuals. Therefore the common opinions and experiences proof, that there is a possibility of bi-community to be born or to be created - Finnish bisexuals have a lot in common. However defining bisexuality as a multifaceted and varying phenomenon tends to create an athmosphere where bisexuals feel alone in Finnish society: bisexuals feel that they wouldn't find common ground with other bisexuals if they attended bi-activities. Maybe raising awareness of bisexuality and the experiences of bisexuals will create a new athmosphere in which a living and active bi-community is possible.