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Journal of Bisexuality
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Discrimination at the Intersections: Experiences
of Community and Belonging in Nonmonosexual
Persons of Color
G. Lim & B. Hewitt
To cite this article: G. Lim & B. Hewitt (2018) Discrimination at the Intersections: Experiences
of Community and Belonging in Nonmonosexual Persons of Color, Journal of Bisexuality, 18:3,
318-352, DOI: 10.1080/15299716.2018.1518182
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15299716.2018.1518182
Published online: 30 Oct 2018.
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Discrimination at the Intersections: Experiences of
Community and Belonging in Nonmonosexual Persons
of Color
G. Lim
a
and B. Hewitt
b
a
Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia;
b
School of Social and Political Sciences,
University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
ABSTRACT
Researchers have established that both nonmonosexual, and
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) persons of
Color face unique forms of alienation. However, little work has
been undertaken to examine how these identities interface
with one another. The authors conducted in-depth interviews
with nonmonosexual persons of Color (n ¼5) and nonmono-
sexual White persons (n ¼5) residing in Melbourne, Australia to
explore intersections of racial minority and nonmonosexuality.
Nonmonosexual persons of Color simultaneously contended
with heterosexism and homophobia within ethnoracial com-
munities, and racism in White LGBTQ communities. These were
typically insidious and subtle, but more explicit forms of dis-
crimination were also common. Contrasting with their White
counterparts, participants of Color rarely experienced discrimin-
ation within LGBTQ communities to their sexuality. Instead, as
race is a highly visible marker of difference, racism heavily
influenced these participants’experiences within these com-
munities. However, findings suggest that these groups engage
numerous strategies in response to the oppressions they
experience, exhibiting positive intersectionality, and largely mit-
igating the negative impacts of these forms of discrimination.
KEYWORDS
LGBTQ; queer theory; sexual
minorities; biphobia; racism;
intersectionality; bisexuality;
discrimination; bisex-
ual erasure
Introduction
Recent bisexual research has established that the experiences of bisexual
and nonmonosexual individuals (i.e., persons who experience sexual/
romantic attraction to multiple genders) often sit at the nexus of homopho-
bia and biphobia (i.e., Wandrey, Mosack, & Moore, 2015). Although this
field of research is growing, the role of ethnoracial identities is often left
unarticulated in the theorizations of bisexuals’lived experiences. Indeed,
the bulk of reviewed literature employed White-majority or White-only
participant pools and samples. Consequently, discussions pertaining to
ethnoracial identity and/or racism are largely absent. This is problematic
CONTACT Gene Lim Gene.Lim@monash.edu Monash University, Scenic Blvd & Wellington Road, Clayton
VIC 3800, Australia.
ß2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY
2018, VOL. 18, NO. 3, 318–352
https://doi.org/10.1080/15299716.2018.1518182
because research concerning racial minority groups has presented convinc-
ing evidence suggesting that racism intersects with the other oppressions to
shape the lived experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer
(LGBTQ) people of Color (Bowleg, 2013,2008; Logie & Rwigema, 2014),
making them particularly vulnerable to—for instance—racist and homo-
phobic violence (Hutchinson, 1999).
This constitutes a critical gap in the literature, and race is seldom con-
ceptualized as an important element of bisexual identity. Researchers have
variously attributed these to social constructions of ‘queerness’which pre-
sume that ‘Whiteness’is a normative and central condition of ‘being’queer,
or ‘doing’queerness (Riggs, 2006; Barnard, 2003). Because ‘Whiteness’is
often constructed as a default and unarticulated racial position of queerness
and queer identities, these categories ironically become ‘un-raced’(Wilkins,
2008, p. 11). Hence, people of Color are vanished from sociocultural con-
structions and imaginings of ‘queerness’(Caluya, 2006; Logie & Rwigema,
2014; Riggs, 2007; Teunis, 2007) and rendered invisible within this field of
research, as well as popular representations of LGBTQ communities.
Whiteness is not only privileged and reified within these contexts, but also
within LGBTQ communities themselves—manifesting in the lived experien-
ces of queer persons of Color as varying degrees of racial discrimination
(Riggs, 2018). Scholars have argued that this constitutes a significant obs-
tacle that prevents queer persons of Color from engaging with LGBTQ
communities and ultimately corrals them into ethnoracial communities
(Greene, 2000), where they may often experience heightened levels of het-
erosexism (Moradi et al., 2010)—sometimes even being labeled as “traitors”
to their culture and heritage (Hunter, 2010).
Demonstrably, some research has been undertaken in attempting to
understand and theorize the lived experiences of LGBTQ persons of Color.
However, perhaps owing to the pressing issue of racism in LGBTQ com-
munities, which constitutes a major and widespread source of stress for
persons of color (Ayala, Bingham, Kim, Wheeler, & Millett, 2012; Choi
et al., 2011; Dion, 2002; Giwa & Greensmith, 2012; Han et al., 2015;
Thompson, 2002), the literature tends not to distinguish between monosex-
ual and nonmonosexual individuals and group, oftentimes relegating the
latter to the footnotes. Virtually no research has been conducted to exam-
ine how nonmonosexual identities intersect with race and ethnicity, despite
the fact that recent bisexual research has suggested that these persons
experience unique and significant forms of discrimination from their gay
and lesbian counterparts (Roberts, Horne, & Hoyt, 2015). The present
study therefore aims to advance current understandings of nonmonosexual
persons’lived experiences by exploring the intersections between ethnora-
cial identity, queer identities, and other salient social factors.
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 319
The LGBTQ community’s white picket fence
Queer theorists typically purport that queer theory (and, more broadly,
queer and LGBTQ-centered research) is oriented toward the deconstruction
of claustrophobic categories like binary gender (Callis, 2009). However, this
has been criticized as a prioritization of sexual identity over ethnoracial or
other marginalized identities as the main source of oppression for LGBTQ
individuals and groups (Goldman, 1996; Greene, 2006; Yip, 2008). The neg-
lect of issues that do not pertain directly to sexuality-based oppression
stems at least in part from the perceptions of dominant racial groups that
highlighting these LGBTQ community will detract from the “real”issue of
anti-LGBTQ discriminations (Dryden & Lenon, 2015). However, scholars
argue that by ignoring the inextricably racialized dimensions (Barnard,
2004, p. 13; O’Rourke, 2011) of queer identities, sexual orientations, and
the lived experiences of queer persons, queer theory and research are impli-
citly fixated with a hegemonic queer subjectivity that is quintessentially
White and monosexual (Bassi, 2006; Halberstam, 2005; King, 2009).
Consequently, the criticism that queer theory is largely centered upon a
fundamentally White perspective is often leveled against it (see, for a prom-
inent example, David, Halberstam, & Mu~
noz, 2005).
Therefore, scholars have also argued that the majority of queer research
simultaneously corroborates and reflects the discursive and material domin-
ance which White groups hold over their ethnoracial counterparts within
LGBTQ communities (Hicks & Jeyasingham, 2016). This dominance is
maintained through the delimitation of the physical and imagined bounda-
ries of LGBTQ communities—which in turn engenders new forms of exclu-
sion and marginalization (Cover, 2015; Farmer & Byrd, 2015) that are
centered on racial and queer identities. As has been noted, these can pre-
cipitate in many ways; not least of which as the literal, physical exclusion
of queer people of Color from queer spaces (Kojima, 2014; Ruez, 2017),
and the propagation of ‘color-blind’discursive strategies that ignore the
heterogeneity inherent within LGBTQ communities (Riggs, 2017).
Although groups and individuals who are so excluded are not be barred
from these communities per se, they are invariably denied the benefits of
membership in these communities (das Nair & Thomas, 2012; Haile,
Rowell-Cunsolo, Parker, Padilla, & Hansen, 2014). Evidently, LGBTQ per-
sons of Color experience discrimination and disadvantage on a multitude
of fronts (Bowleg, 2012; Nadal et al., 2015); which researchers have else-
where argued cumulates in a ‘matrix of oppression’(Chae, Lincoln, Adler,
& Syme, 2010) comprising intersections of various forms of discrimination.
Previous research on monosexual groups has explored these ‘matrices,’
identifying intersections between ethnoracial identity and sexual minority
(Bowleg, 2008; Ghabrial, 2017; Logie, James, Tharao, & Loutfy, 2011), as
320 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
well as gender and sexual minority (Bith-Melander et al., 2010; Singh &
McKleroy, 2011) as sources of oppression. In addition to the above, non-
monosexual people of Color further contend with unique forms discrimin-
ation—such as biphobia and compulsory monosexuality—which, to our
knowledge, has yet to be explored in conjunction with other marginal-
ized identities.
However, as the reviewed literature suggests, these ‘matrices of
oppression’are profoundly consequential; in the context of group of inter-
est, it is clear that nonmonosexual racial minority persons deviate doubly
from mainstream LGBTQ subjectivities (i.e., on the basis of sexual, as well
as racial identity)—however, the ways that these minority statuses interface
with one another is still largely unexamined and poorly understood.
Regardless, given that racism and biphobia have been individually associ-
ated with poorer mental and physiological health outcomes in the groups
affected by them (Bailey et al., 2017; Hequembourg & Brallier, 2009;
Tummala-Narra, Houston-Kolnik, Sathasivam-Rueckert, & Greeson, 2017),
the disadvantages that these groups experience may be attributable to the
material deprivation identified above by Cover (2015). This is particularly
evident in the area of sexual health services targeted toward LGBTQ per-
sons; scholars have argued that racism within mainstream LGBTQ com-
munities unfairly deprives these groups of much-needed resources that are
so often disseminated through community channels. More specifically,
racial discrimination has been identified as an important factor that pre-
vents people of Color from engaging with these communities—and hence
precludes them from accessing important resources like information about
HIV/STI prevention, and sexual healthcare. This may in part explain the
higher HIV/STI burdens shouldered by queer people of Color—and in par-
ticular, Black gay and bisexual men (Haile et al., 2014; Han et al., 2015, Ro,
Ayala, Paul, & Choi, 2013; Jaspal & Williamson, 2017; Raymond &
McFarland, 2009).
On an epistemic level, these modes of discrimination closely mirror the
discursive and spatial alienation that LGBTQ persons of Color experience
in ethnoracial communities (Logie & Rwigema, 2014; McQueeney, 2009),
possibly reflecting the role of similar processes that engender the above
forms of exclusion. Few researchers have attempted to contextualize non-
monosexuality in relief of ethnoracial identity, though the structural forces
that result in the alienation of nonmonosexual persons of Color (i.e., com-
pulsory monosexuality, homophobia, and racialized hierarchies, etc.) are
well established. Regardless, as researchers have postulated, the net result of
these forms of discrimination is relatively uncomplicated. Rejection by
one’s ethnoracial community of origin, and/or by other LGBTQ persons on
the basis of these identities, is highly detrimental to and traumatic for these
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 321
individuals, probably because these groups function as important buffers
against racism and homophobia, respectively (Hequembourg & Brailler,
2009; McQueeny, 2009).
Making sense of identities through intersectionality
Cogently theorizing multiple social identities, –which are of variable sali-
ence depending on context (Greene, 1995), is an understandably daunting
endeavor. To this end, intersectional theory offers a framework (Choo &
Ferree, 2010) and analytic viewpoint (Valentine, 2018) premised on the
idea that the structural oppressions are inter-locking and that multiple
social identities interact with one another to produce unique social realities.
Intersectional theory arose out of similar circumstances to those described
above, and as an analysis of the inseparability of race and gender for Black
women, who simultaneously experienced misogyny within antiracist move-
ments, and racism within primarily White feminist circles (Crenshaw,
1991). The intersectional theorist’s goal is therefore to illuminate the ways
in which multiple institutional forces shape an individual’s agency and lived
experiences (Bowleg, 2013).
Where this approach diverges from ‘additive’theories of marginalization
like multiple jeopardy theory (Buchanan, Settles, Wu, & Hayashino, 2018)
that typically conceptualizes marginalization as a relatively linear and uni-
directional summation of the disadvantage a social actor accrues from
inhabiting multiple, disadvantaged identities (Collins, 2015). One primary
difference is in the possibility for positive outcomes in the form of “positive
intersectionality,”a term coined by Ghabrial (2017) that describes the
counterintuitive way in which embracing one’s multiple, marginalized iden-
tities can facilitate resilience among LGBTQ people of Color.
In the context of the present discussion, an intersectional perspective
suggests that the lived experiences of nonmonosexual racial minorities are
substantially different—though not entirely dissimilar—to those of previ-
ously researched groups. Hypothetically, compared to either nonmonosex-
ual White persons or gay/lesbian people of Color, nonmonosexual people
of Color also experience racism and monosexism, respectively. Indeed, pre-
vious research indicates that the intersectionality of marginalized identities
such as ethnicity, nonmonosexuality, and gender is such that the lived
experiences of nonmonosexual persons of Color affect these groups in
highly specific ways (Wandrey, Mosack & Moore, 2015), therefore warrant-
ing first-hand investigation.
This does however represent a challenge to our attempts to highlight the
racialized dimensions inherent to the lived experiences of nonmonosexual
people of Color. As has been demonstrated in previous research (i.e.,
322 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
Bowleg, 2008; Bowleg, 2003), participant narratives may not necessarily
reflect the intersectional nature of their lived experiences prima facie. In
such instances, however, it is still possible for a researcher to determine
how individuals’intersectionality informs their lived experience, because
the fact of a nonintersectional response is simply just another field note or
data point. Furthermore, that individuals make sense of their lived experi-
ences by differentiating between these experiences and identities can pro-
vide valuable clues as to how these individuals inhabit the various aspects
of their intersectional identities (Bowleg, 2008).
Experiences of discrimination: a name by any other …
Prior research further suggests that the alienation from LGBTQ commun-
ities experienced by persons of Color and nonmonosexual individuals are
primarily manifested through subtle and/or covert forms of discrimination
(Bostwick et al., 2014; Herek, 2009; Sue, 2010), which result in the spatial
and discursive erasure of non-White and nonmonosexual groups (Logie &
Rwigema, 2014). Contextualized in the realm of lived experiences, these
covert forms of interpersonal discrimination have been conceptualized as
microaggressions. These are frequently encountered as verbal and/or behav-
ioral indignities that minority individuals experience as denigrating and
distressing (Nadal et al., 2010; Sue et al., 2007). Microaggressive behaviors
are further informed by deeply held beliefs about a certain group. For
instance, the belief that all gay men are effeminate—and that effeminacy is
undesirable in men–may motivate a ‘compliment’to a gay man that he is
“not a typical gay guy”because his mannerisms do not conform to these
stereotypes. Although not ill intentioned, this comment unintentionally
defers to these heterosexist beliefs as a frame of reference for the
above comment.
In Western contexts, it has been argued that minority individuals
increasingly experience discrimination as insidious and indirect, as opposed
to more direct and overt forms of discrimination (i.e., verbal/physical vio-
lence). Researchers have variously conceptualized these forms of discrimin-
ation as microaggressions and have mobilized microaggression theory
successfully to study the impacts of subtle discrimination on psychosocial
well-being (McCabe, Dragowski, & Rubinson, 2013; Nadal et al., 2015).
Although microaggressions have been mooted as ‘exaggerations’and
‘falsifications’by a small number of individuals (e.g., Campbell & Manning,
2014; MacDonald, 2014 ). The overwhelming majority of psychological and
sociological research has provided compelling arguments and credible evi-
dence pointing to negative associations between experiencing microaggres-
sive actions and individuals’psychosocial well-being (i.e., Nadal et al., 2015;
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 323
Nadal et al., 2010; Pascoe & Smart-Richman, 2009), strongly corroborating
its veracity and validity as a construct and social phenomenon.
There is much less research and evidence on individual experiences of
microaggressions that target multiple marginalized identities simultan-
eously. Scholars have recently argued, however, that multiple forms of mar-
ginalization interact and intersect, coalescing into intersectional
microaggressions (Nadal et al., 2015). Specifically relevant to our group of
interest, Balsam, Molina, Beadnell, Simoni, and Walters (2011) convincingly
argued that LGBTQ racial minority persons experience a wider variety, and
greater incidence of microaggressive actions. Furthermore, these researchers
described the presence of highly-specific microaggressions, which share
many similarities with the aforementioned intersectional microaggressions,
that seemed uniquely associated with markers of poor mental health.
Echoing our critique of queer theory above, the bulk of microaggression
research and theory we reviewed typically examined microaggressions in
the context of a singular variable (i.e., ethnoracial or queer identity). This
could be partially attributable to the highly context-specific nature of
microaggressions that target multiply marginalized persons per se. For
instance, using nonmonosexual persons of Color might experience discrim-
ination and exclusion on the basis of their nonmonosexual identity within
LGBTQ communities. Comparatively, in mainstream contexts, the distinc-
tion between nonmonosexual and monosexual LGBTQ identities oftentimes
eludes the persons and groups perpetuating homophobic or heterosexist
microaggressions. In this instance, a nonmonosexual person may simply
experience discrimination on the basis of their status as a sexual minority.
Regardless, insofar as individual researchers have successfully co-opted
microaggression theory to study multiple variables, and the intersections
between said variables, microaggression theory presents a valuable avenue
for understanding the extent to which discrimination is present in a minor-
ity group’s lived experiences.
Current project
Research questions
In light of the reviewed literature, we arrived at the following
research questions:
1. How do intersections of ethnoracial identity and nonmonosexuality
inform the lived experiences of nonmonosexual people of Color?
a. What other forms of intersectionality mediate these
social processes?
324 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
2. What social processes underlie the reification of Whiteness within
LGBTQ spaces?
a. How do these undermine LGBTQ people of Color’s sense of
belonging to these communities?
3. How do LGBTQ people of Color experience, understand, and respond
to racism within LGBTQ spaces?
a. How do the intersections of participants’identities facilitate positive
intersectionality?
The problem of ‘imperceptible’of racism
Prior to undertaking field work, we expected that participants of Color
would experience racism in ways which were “subtle”and “imperceptible”
(Riggs, 2017), and that participant responses would not necessarily reflect
their racialized experiences in ways which would be immediately evident.
Pettigrew (1989) argues that “modern racism”is primarily characterized by
its outward denouncement of blatant prejudice, and that this has trans-
formed racism into something more nebulous and considerably more diffi-
cult to identify. Moreover, persons of Color may also avoid attributing
negative treatment to racism because these claims can incur a high social
cost for them (Kaiser & Miller, 2001,2003).
Existing Australian research supports this argument; Callander, Holt, and
Newman (2015) found that their participants, the majority of whom experi-
enced racism while looking for sexual and/or romantic partners, oftentimes
reframed their experiences of racism in ‘race-blind’language to avoid the
negative impacts of racism. The nature of these experiences of racism was
sufficiently distressing that these participants chose to alter their own prac-
tices and perceptions, rather than challenge the racism they experienced
(Callander, Holt, & Newman, 2017). On a broader level, scholars have
noted that race, and racial difference are often constructed as benign social
categories by the White majority (Riggs, 2007); these claims further from
the rational basis for beliefs that racism is ‘over,’and no longer an issue
within Australian society (Callander, Holt & Newman, 2017). Ironically, as
Riggs (2013) argues, it is through this notion of liberal equality that the
White majority is able to sustain its dominance over people of Color and
negate any challenge to these structural inequalities.
As such, we anticipated that participants might construct their experien-
ces using the lexicon of ‘race-blind’talk and were concerned that if this
were the case, any attempt at theorizing the racialized dimensions of their
lived experiences would be largely conjectural. We therefore opted for a
sample comprising people of Color, as well as White individuals, such that
in case of the above contingency, it would at least be possible to produce a
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 325
deductive analysis by contrasting within and across both subgroups to be
able to highlight the intersections between gender, sexuality and ethnicity
in the accounts of our participants of Color. An additional benefit of
including White participants was that it would allow us to explore the ways
in which Whiteness is constructed as a ‘default’racial subjectivity with
LGBTQ spaces and imaginings, without simultaneously constructing our
participants of Color from a deficit position.
Methods
Recruitment
We advertised for participants on online LGBTQ communities and net-
works, with permission from a community gatekeeper (e.g. forum adminis-
trators and/or moderators). Subsequently, we also relied on snowballing to
obtain our full sample. The study was positioned as an investigation on non-
monosexual persons’experiences of community. Our primary concern was
that mentioning racial discrimination in our advertising material would
result in complaints from community users. As Callander, Holt, and
Newman (2016) note in their quantitative exploration of racist beliefs and sex-
ual racism, a substantial portion of LGBTQ individuals may not view racism as
a widespread issue in the LGBTQ community; much less a ‘real’one. Given the
strong connotations of moral condemnation that racism has in Australian soci-
ety (Callander, Holt, and Newman, 2016), responses to perceived accusations
of racism (which our study might have been seen as) tend to be quite vitriolic
(Augoustinos & Every, 2010). On the other hand, participants (particularly
White participants) who do recognize racism as a legitimate issue might
attempt to affect a favorable, but ultimately idealized perception of themselves
through their response, compromising the validity of the derived data.
10 participants from a large Australian city volunteered for our study.
Individuals of diverse gender, sexual and ethnoracial identifications were
purposefully recruited. This first 5 informants recruited were all cisgender
women. In order to more wholly explore intersections between gender and
other identity categories, we then used snowball sampling to exclusively
recruit 4 transgender individuals and 1 cisgender men. Prior to participa-
tion, prospective informants’ethnoracial backgrounds were screened to
ensure equal proportions of participants of Color and White participants.
The key demographic characteristics of our sample are detailed in Table 1.
Data collection
All interviews were conducted by the first author, who identifies as queer,
and is of East Asian ancestry. The second author is a White, heterosexual
326 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
cisgender woman, and we anticipated the possibility that having research
who was an ‘outsider’interact directly with participant could skew their
responses significantly (Greene, 2014), and even induce a significant
amount of discomfort in participants who may be reluctant to divulge
highly intimate details to an ‘outsider.’By having the first author conduct
the interviews, we were able to reap the benefits of insider research—pri-
marily: prior knowledge about the research environment and participants
and ease of interaction with participants (Greene, 2014). Simultaneously,
the involvement of an ‘outsider’in data analysis enabled us to somewhat
ameliorate the drawbacks of insider research like insider bias and overly-
narrow perceptions of the data (Greene, 2014).
The study was conducted with ethics approval obtained from the
University of Melbourne Human Ethics Sub-Committee (HESC). The
majority of interviews (n¼8) were conducted face-to-face at locations
determined by the participant. One was conducted using voice over IP soft-
ware, and another one interview using instant messaging software. The
interviews took an average of 1 hour, and participants’experiences across
online and offline environments were explored. Although online interac-
tions are unambiguously imbued with unique characteristics, they nonethe-
less represent a reflexive extrapolation of the dynamics prevailing in offline
environments (Wilson & Peterson, 2002), and also offer unique advantages
to gaining insight into these dynamics—most notably, disinhibition in par-
ticipants who are engaged via these settings (Suler, 2004). Interview ques-
tions were specifically designed to indirectly probe participants’personal,
and secondhand experiences of discrimination and antisocial actions in
their daily lives, given that posing leading questions to our participants
could mislead them into exaggerating or sensationalizing their experiences.
Bowleg’s(2008) exploration of the methodological tribulations unique to
intersectional research was a valuable resource—particularly as a guideline
for which questions not to ask, as an intersectional researcher. For instance,
instead of posing an interview question like ‘can you tell me how you
experience the LGBTQ community as a person of Color,’—which would
Table 1. Participant demographics.
Name Age Gender identity Sexual orientation Ethnicity/Nationality
Abby 21 Cisgender-Woman Bisexual Burmese Australian
Isabel 25 Cisgender-Woman Bisexual Indigenous Brazilian & African Brazilian
Lili 19 Cisgender-Woman Bisexual/Queer Indigenous Australian & White Australian
Shannon 25 Transgender-Gender Neutral Bisexual White Australian
Zach 18 Transgender-Male Bisexual Lebanese Australian
Jess 26 Cisgender-Woman Bisexual White Australian
Pamela 20 Cisgender-Woman Bisexual Malaysian Australian
Taylor 26 Transgender-Gender Neutral Pansexual White Australian
Jeremy 21 Cisgender-Men Pansexual White Australian
Lars 20 Transgender-Gender Neutral Pansexual White New Zealander
Total (N¼10)
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 327
likely prime participants to prioritize and segregate their ethnoracial iden-
tity from other equally salient identities in their response, we might ask:
‘can you tell me how who you are comes into play when you’re around
group of other LGBTQ people?’Here, the question of identity is presented
as much more open-ended, and the possibility for a response exploring
multiple identities is not closed off, as it is with the former question. This
distinction seems trifling at first—however, as Bowleg argues, research and
interview questions must tap into the mutuality of identity categories;
otherwise, the theoretical fidelity to an intersectionality perspective becomes
substantially compromised.
Data analysis
Each interview was transcribed, deidentified, and notated for clarity where
appropriate. Pseudonyms were further assigned to each participant to
ensure their confidentiality. Particulars such as race, sexual orientation, and
gender identity were left intact because these were indispensable for theo-
rizing and contextualizing participants’lived experiences. We employed a
number of methodological precepts from grounded theory, particularly in
data analysis; specifically coding procedure and the use of constant com-
parison (Walsh et al., 2015) but did not move toward the formulation of a
new theory. Additionally, we also adopted grounded theory’s prioritization
of contextual understandings of social phenomena over using preexisting
theory to understand our findings. This was especially appropriate given
that, as argued above, the majority of queer theory and research has histor-
ically neglected the racialized experiences of people of Color, and con-
structs sexuality as the chief, though by no means sole, source of
oppression for LGBTQ persons.
After reviewing these transcripts multiple times, both authors coded the
transcripts manually and independently, before discussing and refining the
codes we had assigned. We employed a constant comparison approach
(Dye, Schatz, Rosenberg, & Coleman, 2000) during this process and eval-
uated each new piece of data vis-
a-vis existing data, ultimately organizing
our data set into several topic codes. Strauss and Corbin (1998) state that
there is no one, definitive approach to constant comparison—however,
many of the comparisons were made in accordance to the typologies iden-
tified by Boejie (2002). Namely, these were comparison within a single
interview, comparison between interviews within the same group, and com-
parison of interviews from different groups. These topic codes were typic-
ally assigned labels like ‘heterosexism’or ‘racism’—which reflected their
general thematic content.
328 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
Lastly, these labels were streamlined and refined into finalized codes;
these formed the basis of our discussion of the results (see Table 2 for an
exhaustive list of these codes, definitions, and examples derived from
responses from participants of Color). In identifying the role of
Table 2. Summary of code labels.
Code item Description Examples within the data
Biphobia Prejudice toward bisexual persons,
bisexuality, and more rarely,
nonmonosexuality.
Stereotypes that bisexual persons are
unable to remain faithful to a
single partner in the context of a
committed relationship.
Heterosexism Implicit discrimination against nonhe-
terosexual orientations in favor of
heterosexual ones, and/or which
assumptions that heterosexuality
is the default sexual orientation.
Typically comprised microaggres-
sions which were less nakedly
antagonistic toward LGBTQ identi-
ties than homophobia.
Assumptions that nonheterosexual
persons have a choice in their
sexual and romantic attractions,
and/or that they are fundamen-
tally heterosexual.
Homophobia Attitudes and biases explicitly dis-
criminating against non-heterosex-
ual orientations and persons.
These attitudes could also be
expressed as a deeply held, inter-
nalized belief by nonheterosex-
ual persons.
Religious dogma which claim that
nonheterosexual orientations and
persons are sinful, and/or violate
religious teachings.
Subtle racism Oftentimes well-intentioned com-
ments toward persons of Color,
which are nonetheless denigrating
towards non-Western cultures,
countries, or nationalities.
A compliment that one speaks
English unexpectedly well; with
the unspoken implication being
that people of Color typically pos-
sess a poor command of the
English language.
Overt racism Behaviors expressly targeting people
of Color. These are explicitly
meant to denigrate their racial
identity, culture or heritage.
Experiencing racial abuse while using
public transport.
Alienation from ethnoracial
community or culture
Participant responses pertaining to
perceptions and/or experiences of
disjuncture/incongruity between
ethnoracial/-cultural and queer
identity, as well as the coping
strategies elicited (if observed).
Having one’s same-sex attraction dis-
missed as simply an attempt at
emulating ‘Western’culture, and/
or trying to “be White.”
Alienation/ exclusion from
LGBTQ community
Participants’racial identities, and/or
nonmonosexuality were typically
emphasized as social facts which
were not well received by main-
stream LGBTQ communities
Expectations that LGBTQ persons
should unilaterally be ‘out and
proud’; for LGBTQ people of Color,
this expectation was often a tall
order—particularly in light of the
homophobia rampant in their eth-
noracial communities. Participants
who chose to remain ‘closeted’
were assumed to be ‘ashamed’of
their sexuality.
Intersectionality Denotes either: responses wherein
the interactions between two or
more identity categories are either
evident, or plausible—or;
responses where a multiplicity of
structural forces are evident.
Perceptions that the narratives and
imaginings of mainstream LGBTQ
communities were monopolized
by gay, White men. In this
instance, the intersection of struc-
tural privileges coalesce into the
hegemony of these subgroups
within these contexts.
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 329
intersectionality in participants’lived responses, and throughout the inter-
view processes per se, Bowleg’s(2008) advice to resist understanding par-
ticipant narratives “from an individualistic or idiosyncratic framework,”but
rather, to theorize them in relief of sociohistorical context. Understanding
that participants were, without exception, situated within interlocking
structures of oppression was crucial to interpreting what appeared to be
‘nonintersectional’data. One interesting example relates to how White par-
ticipants seldom reflected on the ‘raced’nature of their experiences—and
often talked exclusively of the oppression attributed to sexual and/or gen-
der identity. However, this must be contextualized against normative
notions queer identity which position Whiteness as a default subjective
position–invisible to all but the White subject (Ahmed, 2004). Thusly,
though White participants might provide a ‘nonintersectional’response
that solely emphasizes sexual/gender identity, the fact of the response is an
artifact that reflects the privileged position these individuals occupy within
extant racial hierarchies.
Our analyses demonstrated criterion indicating trustworthiness of ana-
lysis, namely, credibility, transferability, and confirmability (Lincoln &
Guba, 1985; Merrick, 1999). Credibility was met by prolonged and in-depth
engagement with the data across a 14-month period. Transcripts were read
and reread over the course of coding, writing, and revising. Furthermore,
participants were recontacted over email to clarify any ambiguity surround-
ing the interviews’proceedings, so as to avoid misconstruing their com-
ments. Lastly, peers uninvolved in this study offered feedback affirming the
validity of our analyses and our interpretations of the data. Transferability
was met inasmuch as our findings and interpretations are thematically and
qualitatively comparable to those of other studies conducted with similar
groups of individuals (Balsam et al., 2011; Logie & Rwigema, 2014; Ruez,
2017; see: Riggs, 2017), and so were presumably at least applicable to said
groups. Finally, we demonstrated confirmability by detailing our method-
ology, recruitment procedure, as well as the processes and strategies under-
lining our data collection and analyses.
Results
Throughout, participants referenced notions of a “gay community,”
“LGBTQ community,”or some variation thereof. These common discursive
constructions can, however, oftentimes be overly reductive, in addition to
being nebulous and difficult to pin down. Regardless, Callander et al.
(2017) argue that the notion of a ‘gay community’is an enduring social
construct that is nevertheless a valuable way to investigate institutional
racism within these contexts, especially given the currency and symbolic
330 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
significance that these perceptions of LGBTQ individuals has within the
Western cultural conscience.
Moreover, as Ruez (2017) demonstrates, these notions of community can
further be expanded into a conceptualization of these notions of commu-
nity as a contested, but nonetheless shared discursive and spatial common
that is characterized by a plurality of social actors and projects. While par-
ticipants’understandably do not reference a singular “community”per se,
the notion of “community”remains central to understanding these
responses and theorizing our discussions, given that all forms of commu-
nity are fundamentally underpinned by overarching hierarchies of race,
gender, sexuality and other social categories (Butler, 1997; Callander
et al., 2017).
Tensions between queer and racial identities
Most participants of Color experienced significant tensions between their
ethnoracial and queer identities, to the extent that participants sometimes
even perceived these categories as mutually irreconcilable. Underpinning
these tensions were normative constructions of queerness and ethnoracial
minority, which were seen as incommensurable with a non-White racial
identity and non-heterosexual orientations, respectively. As noted by our
participants:
“White Gay boys …have their own idea of what being ‘Gay’means, and [act like it’s]
their community. It’s super weird to them that someone can be queer and a Woman
of Color at the same time”
(Pamela, 20, cisgender-woman, Malaysian Australian). “I am very weary of the queer
community because I think there is a lot of racism there that doesn’t get addressed
…my needs are not necessarily met by that community …I’m not always
comfortable in that community”(Isabel, 25, cisgender-woman, Indigenous Brazilian/
African Brazilian)
As Pamela’s account suggests, participants’experiences of exclusion
could be predicated on their intersectional identities. Specifically, monosex-
ism was rarely experienced in isolation by participants of Color, and inter-
sected with racism, and sexism/genderism for women/transgender
individuals. Participant narratives showed a keen recognition of the specific
configurations of identities which constitute a ‘normative’subjectivity
within queer and ethnoracial communities. As per Ahmed’s(2004) conten-
tions that Whiteness is only ever really invisible to holders of said
Whiteness suggests, participants of Color were acutely aware that
Whiteness comprised an integral dimension of normative queer identity—
and, more broadly, of the specific assemblage of racial and gender identities
which coalesce into a normative queer subjectivity.
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 331
Heterosexism in ethnoracial communities
Notably, however, the racialized quality of normative queer identities was a
peculiarity of this discursive construct which was observably purveyed
beyond the boundaries of queer communities and imaginings. The miscon-
ception that Whiteness was somehow a prerequisite of queerness appeared
to substantially inform how participants were perceived by social others
within their racial and ethnic communities. Within ethnoracial commun-
ities, nonheterosexual identities were typically othered, and positioned vari-
ously as: an artifact and consequence of European colonization; a lapse in a
parent’s obligation to better their child’s life; as well as a sign of disrespect
and disregard for cultural mores:
[Our] parents would feel like they’re failing you [if you come out as LGBTQ], which
is not necessarily how White parents see it. If you have migrant parents, being queer
…is a big obstacle in the migrant narrative of moving somewhere to make a better
life for your kids. (Isabel, 25, cisgender-woman, Indigenous Brazilian/
African Brazilian)
“Just by going against the norm, we’re disrespecting them.
Interviewer: So, the ‘norm’here means being straight?
Yeah.”(Abby, 21, cisgender-woman, Burmese Australian)
As such, hostility toward sexual and gender minority groups were per-
haps resultantly widespread enough that for some participants homophobia
and heterosexism were even perceived to be the status quo within ethnora-
cial communities, “In Malaysia …culturally ….It’s quite …not really
that it’s okay to be homophobic, but it’s kind of the norm”(Pamela, 20,
cisgender-woman, Malaysian Australian).
Unsurprisingly, participants of Color reported frequent experiences of
heterosexism—particularly from individuals within their families and com-
munities. These were noticeably absent from the narratives of our White
participants, whose queer identities were almost unilaterally regarded with
comparatively sanguine attitudes by both family and community—at least
such that all of them were ‘out’to their family member. As one participant
related to us, “My mother knew the term ‘pansexual’and had told people
that she knew I was pansexual before I was even aware of it”(Jeremy, 21,
cisgender-man, White Australian).
In stark contrast, non-White participants largely concealed their sexual
and gender identities within family and community settings, for fear of
provoking hostility from their family or community members. This finding
is consistent with the growing body of literature that suggests the presence
of elevated levels of heterosexism in some ethnoracial communities (Balsam
et al., 2011; Malebranche, Fields, Bryant, & Harper, 2009). Additionally,
332 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
participant narratives suggest that perceptions of nonheterosexuality within
these communities coalesced into a culturally-specific form of compulsory
monosexuality:
[Some people in my community] …see [homosexuality] as something that came
with White settling, and so …they call me a coconut …coconut means black on
the outside, White on the inside …because I’m bi, they would probably …see it
as a phase …because I am attracted to men, they’d try to tell me I am just
attracted to men …[and it is] colonization that’s making it normal for women to
like women, and I’m caught up in that. (Lili, 19, cisgender-woman,
Indigenous Australian)
Lili’s quotation above indicates that within her Indigenous community
and family heterosexist cultural narratives demonize her bisexuality by
associating it with a traumatic event in Indigenous history (e.g., coloniza-
tion and colonialism), implicitly demarcating it as foreign and abnormal—
and, as well, by constructing it as transitory sexual orientation that is belied
by a naturally heterosexual orientation.
As was further evident, this type of rhetoric further reflected the intersec-
tions between heterosexism and ethnoracial identity—and typically con-
structed heterosexisms in a way which naturalized it as a key, inherent
element of these cultures. As well, other participants’accounts of heterosex-
ism and monosexism within their ethnoracial communities were unani-
mously underpinned by associations between heterosexuality with
ethnoracial identity, as well as the simultaneous reification of above the
White, non-heterosexual identities—which were oftentimes perceived of as
inextricable from one another. Consequently, as the above quote from Lili
implies, within certain cultural contexts, simply inhabiting a queer identity
could be perceived an indication that one was attempting to approximate
or emulate Whiteness, which in turn was seen as an attempt at distancing
oneself from one’s heritage. As demonstrated in Lili’s account however,
these intersections of participants’identities could open them up to unique
forms of oppression. In Lili’s case, she explains to us that her queerness
and mixed heritage were sometimes misperceived as social facts that were
in contradiction with, and invalidated her indigenous identity.
Internalized oppression and community belonging
Participant narratives also encapsulated the variety of ways in which ten-
sions between ethnoracial and queer identities played out in the self-per-
ceptions of queer persons of Color. To the extent that heterosexism and
cissexism figured prominently in the lived experiences of participants of
Color, discrimination from social others simply represented one facet of
compulsory heterosexuality within these communities. More insidious was
what appeared to be some participants’internalization of these perceptions.
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 333
These were seen to have concrete effects on participants’lives; for example
in the following quotation from Zach:
Being both transgender and Muslim isn’t personally an option for me …I know there
are Muslims that have learned to live as both transgender and Muslim and are
content in the belief that it isn‘t‘ha’ram’, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them.
(Zach, 18, transgender-man, Lebanese Australian)
As seen above, the disjuncture between his ethnoreligious and queer
identities is internalized by Zach who regards these identities as diametric-
ally opposed. This notion is so powerfully entrenched that despite knowing
of other practicing, transgender Muslims who have successfully reconciled
their faith to their gender identities, he cannot see being transgender as
anything but haram—a designation in the Islamic lexicon that means that
an act is sacrilegious (Shah, 2017, pp. 243–298; Adamec, 2009). Zach subse-
quently shared with us that this tension between these identities was detri-
mental to his mental and physical well-being:
I know for a fact that I want to transition and that I would feel better. I was—and
still am—holding onto the hope that I’ll have some …divine intervention …and
just suddenly be alright with my body without transitioning. (Zach, 18, transgender-
man, Lebanese Australian)
Here, Zach’s internalization of transphobia arguably rises from frequent
exposure to antitrans sentiment and rhetoric, which are promulgated within
conservative Islamic circles. As he later shared with us, these notions were
additionally also corroborated by the implied Whiteness of transgender
subjectivities within popular depictions of transgender persons, such that
Zach perceived his gender identity as fundamentally at odds with his reli-
gious affiliations. Zach’s dilemma perfectly illustrates how seemingly unre-
lated structural forces can collude within the context of an individuals’
lived experiences to engender the sort of internal oppression
observed above.
As well, responses from other participants of Color offered an elabor-
ation on how these feelings of alienation from both their ethnoracial and
ethnoreligious communities impacted their sense of belonging to such. In
the following excerpt, Abby describes to us her experiences in this regard:
I’m comfortable with my friends enough to be [out to] them—even my Muslim
friends, I can be [out] to them. Except for my …except for people in the Burmese-
Muslim community, I just—I don’t open up to them. I’m not out to them …[I feel
like] I’m distancing myself from my culture because of my sexuality. (Abby, 21,
cisgender-woman, Burmese Australian)
These responses from Abby, and other participants of Color commonly
exhibited the tell-tale signs of minority stress (Han et al., 2015).
Participants of Color were oftentimes seen to anxiously anticipate the
334 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
rejection from their heterocentric, ethnoracial and/or ethnoreligious cul-
tures and communities on the basis of their sexual identities. For Abby,
these tensions seemed to be of specific salience in the context of intersec-
tions between her ethnoracial, religious, and queer identities, but were
otherwise absent from intersections between her religious and
queer identities.
Abby therefore expressed to us her feelings of alienation from her ethno-
racial community and heritage. As she elsewhere elaborated, the cultural
expectation of heterosexuality is compounded upon by the reification of
heterosexuality within religious doctrine, such that they precipitate—within
the context of Abby’s interactions with the Burmese Muslim community—
as a particularly suffocating form of heterosexism. Although these inter-
locking structures of culturally and religiously mandated heterosexism
might elsewise be individually tolerable, when they intersect in this manner,
multiply marginalized individuals like Abby often had little recourse but to
remove themselves from these contexts.
More generally, participants of Color related similar instances where
multiple forms of oppression apparently compounded upon one another in
largely indirect ways. One commonly articulated example of this relates to
the intersectionality of ethnoracial identity and nonmonosexuality. As these
participants shared, the intersection of racism, heterosexism, and monosex-
ism manifested in their lived experiences a unique and multilayered form
of exclusion. This was characterized not only by their alienation from
White LGBTQ communities and their ethnoracial communities, on the
basis of their racial and sexual identities, respectively—but also from gay
and lesbian persons of Color for their nonmonosexuality—such that they
felt like minorities, regardless of the context in question.
Tensions, not Schisms: Coping with Intersectional Discrimination
Nevertheless, regardless of the hostility that they had experienced within
their ethnoracial communities and contexts, virtually all participants of
Color recounted their efforts at engaging with these communities, primarily
through attempts at reconciling and carving out a ‘space’for their intersec-
tional identities in their ethnoreligious cultural narratives. Participants’
efforts at making sense of these identities in the contexts of these narratives
were oftentimes simultaneously a way of coping with heterosexism within
their communities origin and the racial discrimination from the
LGBTQ community:
In our dreamtimes, in our stories …like, the stories that I’ve been taught, you never
hear of, sort of a non-heterosexual coup–e—it’s kind of missing, and that’s not to say
necessarily that it wasn’t there, but that’s just to say it hasn’t been documented or
passed down. (Lili, 19, cisgender-woman, Indigenous Australian)
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 335
I’m quite distant from my- Burmese culture too. But it’s a very small network of
people, so sometimes when I’m homesick; I like to be around them. I don’t want to
lose what little [connection] I have [to my culture]. (Abby, 21, cisgender-woman,
Burmese Australian)
The above quotations encapsulates the strategies participants of Color
most often utilized in order to reconcile themselves—and their queer iden-
tities—to the cultures and communities which they had been raised to
understand as fundamentally oriented toward heterosexuality, and hostile
toward queerness and queer identities. However, the apparent absence of
cultural narratives that affirmed nonheterosexual orientations further
seemed to complicate participants’self-alignment with these communities,
motivating them to seek out other avenues of engaging with their racial
identities, and navigating their status as racial minorities.
Positive intersectionality: managing multiple exclusions
Participants of Color were also virtually all engaged in and embedded
within communities and networks comprising of other queer persons of
Color. These communities were either oriented around members’shared
experiences as minorities (e.g., LGBTQ people, womn of Color, etc.), or
specifically targeted to a certain permutation of ethnoracial and/or sexual
and gender identities (e.g., bisexuals of Color, LGBTQ Asian Australians,
etc.). A large portion of our participants were recruited from the former
kind of community where membership was simply limited to individuals
who identified as queer and as a person of Color. Whereas participants like
Lili, who shared that she was part of a ‘mob’of queer Indigenous
Australian persons, were members of the former.
These communities were largely formed on basis of shared experiences
of oppression, and participants’narratives suggested that their participation
within these contexts were observed to be a crucial strategy for coping with
the intersectional discriminations that dominated participants’experiences
within other contexts. As such, participants’experiences within these net-
works and communities were largely positive. Furthermore, participants
recounted these experiences in juxtaposition to mainstream LGBTQ com-
munities—which participants experienced as substantially less accepting,
“Indigenous culture is very much ‘one mob’.We’re family; I’ll watch your
back, you watch mine …because of that, I then notice …when I’m [out-
side] of the queer mob, and in the wider queer community, that people are
quite unaccepting”(Lili, 19, cisgender-woman, Indigenous Australian).
These configurations of subcommunity were a response that seemed to
be unique to Persons of Color. As participant narratives suggest, these were
constructed in parallel to mainstream LGBTQ communities. Participants’
participation in these subcommunities were one notable instance where
336 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
intersecting, marginalized identities did not simply compound upon and
exacerbate one another. Instead, the intersection of these marginalized
identities came to predicate participants’adaptive responses to intersec-
tional discriminations.
However, a few participants further point to the presence of biphobia
and compulsory monosexuality within these subcommunities—voicing their
concerns that these could potentially poison even these peer networks
against them. As Isabel relates, nonmonosexual persons were either seen as
either heterosexual pretenders, or closeted homosexuals:
My [Lesbian] sister for example, doesn’t take my queerness seriously. She thinks that
I’m a straight girl who’s experimenting. And then there will be my …very queer
friends, who think I’m a gay girl in denial. So, there is that erasure of …like
bisexuality isn’t real, like you’re either one or the other, and you …are just hiding
from one of those identities. (Isabel, 25, cisgender-woman, Indigenous Brazilian/
African Brazilian)
Lastly, certain participants were also able to draw on their ethnoreligious
backgrounds as a means of challenging their own, internalized preconcep-
tions of how to ‘do’queerness. Zach describes to us that despite only ever
being exposed to White transgender role models through mainstream
LGBTQ media, progressive elements within his faith helped him to reach
an understanding of his religion that did not preclude the possibility of a
nuanced conceptualization of gender and gender identity:
I feel like …I put White androgyny on a pedestal …I was watching a few short
videos by a Muslim-Palestinian guy, and stumbled across his introduction to some
clothes that he designed which were labelled ‘unisex modest wear’—or something
along those lines. Modesty in Islam is a big thing but what really hit me like a train
was that there could be unisex Islamic wear. (Zach, 18, transgender-man,
Lebanese Australian)
Racial hierarchies: comparisons between marginalization and privilege
Instances of homophobic discrimination within racial communities often
lead participants to search for support in White LGBTQ networks and
communities. However, these participants were quickly confronted with the
racism embedded within the spatial and discursive fabric of these commun-
ities. Individuals within the LGBTQ community—as well as the popular
imaginings of the community—were seen to communicate the reification of
a quintessential queer subjectivity that was palpably White and monosexual.
Participants of Color as well as White participants’narratives overwhelm-
ingly corroborated these claims. Moreover, participants were able to elabor-
ate upon this ‘quintessential queer subjectivity,’which was identified as
comprising an intersection of several, privileged identities—oftentimes
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 337
articulated through specific esthetic hierarchies that were palp-
ably racialized:
“I don’t want to generalize about the whole gay community …[but] the scene that I
was involved in …was very appearance based, and very superficial. Like, if you
didn’t fit the aesthetic, then you weren’t one of the ‘cool gays’, and you weren’t
valued, and you weren’t important. (Taylor, 25, transgender-gender-neutral,
White Australian)
“I realize I sound very angry with the queer community! [But it is mostly] populated
by cisgender, gay white men …‘Do you look like Adonis?’Great! ‘Do you not?’
Leave. Are you queer? Leave”(Lars, 20, transgender-gender-neutral, White
New Zealander).
These participants’narratives, here, and elsewhere, spoke to their under-
standing that within White LGBTQ communities, the intersectionality of
privileged social identities and stigmatized identities, appeared to inform a
hierarchy of queer subjectivities that were ranked in accordance to how
closely they resembled a hegemonic queer subjectivity that, as both partici-
pants and previous research has identified, is Gay, White and male. The
dominance of this hegemonic queer subjectivity clearly derived its favorable
situation within wider societal racial hierarchies. As suggested in the
responses of one White participant—who, when asked his thoughts about
whether his sexuality put him at a disadvantage, simply stated:
I’ve got just about every other level of privilege [besides being straight] …I feel way
more privileged than [other minorities] …being a man …just being white puts
me way above …in terms of how vulnerable I am—I’m not hard done by my
sexuality. (Jeremy, 21, cisgender-man, White Australian)
As Jeremy’s response indicates, the same privileges he derives from struc-
tural hierarchies of race and gender insulate him against the heterosexism
inherent within both institutions. The net result of this being that even
though Jeremy occupies a stigmatized identity category, he can feel com-
fortable openly discussing his sexuality and his male partner, even with
others in his highly conservative community—as he later described to us.
Correspondingly, as further suggested by the above quotation from Lars—
the more a group or individual differed from this hegemonic queer subject-
ivity (i.e., on the basis of ethnoracial identity or sexual desirability), the
more alienated they were from White LGBTQ communities. As Riggs
(2013) succinctly surmises, racial privilege and racial marginalization are
intrinsically linked; with the valorization of a specific racial category imply-
ing a concordant devaluation of other racial categories.
The presence of these hierarchies was central to understanding and theo-
rizing participants’experiences of discrimination and alienation.
Individuals and groups within these settings were not polarized into a rigid
338 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
dichotomy of accepted and unaccepted subjectivities. Rather, a substantial
amount of variance existed in the relative levels of acceptance—or alien-
ation—that individuals experience on the basis of their social identities and
subjectivity, within any given context. For instance, a recurring theme
throughout some responses from participants of Color was that being misi-
dentified as White shielded them from more direct forms of racism:
Given that I’m‘White-passing’, and generally try to put myself in spaces that are
‘safe’for Persons of Color …I definitely haven’t experienced [too many instances of
explicit racism]. But even just [experiencing it second-hand], even if it wasn’t
directed at me …I find that quite difficult [to deal with]. (Lili, 19, cisgender-
woman, Indigenous Australian)
As Lar’s account suggest and Ahmed (2006) argues, there are many ways
that persons of Color can “pass,”or approximate Whiteness in LGBTQ
spaces, apart from the possession of specific physiognomic traits (e.g., blue
eyes and blond hair). These include sexual attractiveness, wealth, and, with
specific regards to men of Color, the successful enactment of normative
masculinity. Participants shared that on occasions where they were misi-
dentified as White, they did not experience the same forms of social exclu-
sion they did when they were identified as persons of Color. However, they
were instead subjected to a greater degree of casual racism; moreover, par-
ticipants oftentimes expressed frustration that their ethnoracial identities
were ‘erased.’Ultimately, this misidentification was seen as a byproduct of
structural hierarchies of race that assume that Whiteness is the ‘default.’
Accordingly, this did not extenuate the underlying racial inequalities that
persons of Color experience in White LGBTQ communities (Callander
et al., 2017). In the case of our participants, these incidences often drew
these inequalities into even sharper focus, as suggested by Lili’s account.
As such, virtually all participants of Color expressed that while they
inhabited multiple marginalized identity categories, racism constituted the
single commonality among the intersectional oppressions they experienced.
Perhaps as a result of racial identity figuring so prominently within their
lived experiences, participants of Color often oriented their self-descriptions
around their racial identities. The following quote typifies participant nar-
ratives fitting in the above category, and participants’rationale for prioritiz-
ing their racial identities:
“Being a person of Color for me is foremost - and that comes before being queer
and being a woman …my biggest identifier is being a person of Color. We see the
world in very different ways, and even though we (referring to interviewer)
understand that as people of Color, white women don’t, because they don’t have to.
(Isabel, 25, cisgender-woman, Indigenous Brazilian/African Brazilian)
These participants’prioritization of their racial identities did not so
much represent nonintersectional responses so much as they affirmed the
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 339
intersectional nature of participants’lived experiences. In the above
example, the comparison Isabel makes between queerness and ethnoracial
identity, and the oppression associated with each stigmatized identity is
only possible through her experiential reality as a queer person and a per-
son of Color. Moreover, as suggested throughout, ethnoracial identity may
constitute a more important signifier of deviation from accepted and/or
normative queer subjectivities than nonmonosexuality.
As both groups of participants’narratives further affirmed, queerness is
indelibly if sometimes less-than-perceptibly racialized. Although our partici-
pants of Color demonstrably inhabited an explicitly racialized queer sub-
jectivity, oftentimes intentionally (i.e., through self-identifying as persons of
Color), the same was not true for our White participants. Most participants
in the latter group were not unaware that intersections of ethnoracial and
sexual identity produced specific forms of disadvantage for their non-White
counterparts. However, few of these participants exhibited the same acute
awareness of their racial positionality which characterized their counter-
parts’narratives.
Negation and denial: ‘invisible’racism
This observation was veritably not unique to this study, and other research-
ers have suggested that the intersectionality of Whiteness and queerness is
such that the former category is often rendered transparent within aca-
demic discourse and research (P
erez, 2015). The transparency of the queer
White subject—or, more specifically, the transparency of Whiteness as a
privileged category—functions dually to entrench and protect the privileged
status of White LGBTQ individuals within the communities our partici-
pants inhabited. The following quote succinctly demonstrates how the
implications of this transparency can transpire in the context of everyday
interpersonal interactions:
There was this one other lesbian—we were the only two women, and I was having a
conversation [and this person asked me:] ‘The gay male community has really fucked
up racism, is that what it’s like for [Lesbian] women as well?’This white lesbian, she
was like: ‘Oh no, I don’t think so, I don’t think we have the same issues!’Like, she
literally talked over me. (Pamela, 20, cisgender-woman, Malaysian Australian)
Pamela’s account further suggests that the reification of Whiteness is not
invisible to the racial other, as much as it is to the holders of said
Whiteness. The negation exemplified above was observed across all partici-
pant narratives, being primarily experienced in response to any attempts to
draw attention to their experiences of racism. This was also linked to ‘race-
blind’talk, which, in the Australian context, typically involved the avoid-
ance of racial categorizations, in favor of labels like ‘Australia-born’or
‘Overseas-born’as stand-in terminologies for ‘White’and ‘Non-White,’
340 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
respectively (Walton et al., 2018). As seen from Pamela’s quote, both of
these discursive strategies functioned to undermine the perception of
Whiteness as a hegemonic identity and ultimately served to conceal the
fact that this hegemony is maintained through the subordination of other
racial identities.
The privileged position that Whiteness and White individuals enjoyed
were seemingly also maintained within LGBTQ communities through the
superficial - but nevertheless ostentatious adoption of anti-racist politics
and beliefs by racial majority groups:
There’s a difference between making space for someone and kind of …tokenizing
that person …you feel like you’re being used for a purpose - and that purpose is to
say that ‘I’m a good person, because I have a friend of Color’.(Isabel, 25, cisgender-
woman, Indigenous Brazilian/African Brazilian)
I’m actually writing a scene at the moment [about] a woman of Color—in my head
she’s an Asian woman—she’s kind of based off me—who goes home with this white
girl. And the white girl essentially kind of …fetishizes her pain. The white girl is so
enamored with what she assumes this Asian girl’s struggle is, that she kind of wants
to fix the world for the Asian girl …it’s not about fixing racism because it’s the
right thing to do –it’s about being the hero. (Pamela, 20, cisgender-woman,
Malaysian Australian)
In either instance, though participants’White counterparts outwardly
professed to be antiracist, they nevertheless upheld, and thusly perpetuated,
the inequitable power dynamics engendered by the self-same racism that
they claimed to disavow. In Isabel’s quote, her White peers appear to use
their affiliation to a person of Color (her) as a form of social currency. As
Pamela’s response further suggests, this brand of antiracism is not borne
out of genuine moral convictions but is instead the product of a White
savior complex. These observations seemed particularly salient to White
LGBTQ communities, given the abiding perception of these communities
as inclusive and progressive (Callander, Holt & Newman, 2017).
Participants understood that these forms of ‘paternalistic’racism were
largely well intentioned but fundamentally construct persons of Color as
passive and helpless; requiring the benevolence of their White ‘betters’to
overcome the oppressions which they face. Although likely contrary to the
outward intentions of the persons who perpetrated them, participants of
Color mooted that this obliviousness was attributable to the fact that, as
members of the racial majority, their White peers were largely shielded
from the oftentimes distressing nature of racism, and from contemplating
their complicity in the maintenance and reproduction of these structures.
Inevitably, this lack of introspection was tied to the enactment of these spe-
cific forms of racism. As elsewhere cautioned (i.e., Ruez, 2017), the a priori
assumption that LGBTQ communities are an inherently socially progressive
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 341
space detracts from any critical self-reflection by majority groups of how
multiply marginalized subgroups are treated within its confines.
Discussion
Overview
In this article we sought to explore the ways in which nonmonosexual
identities interfaced with sexual and ethnoracial identity, in the context of
individuals’lived experiences. Furthermore, to better understand the inter-
sectionality of these identities, we examined these experiences in juxtapos-
ition those of nonmonosexual White persons, whose racial subjectivities
were visibly vanished on account of being the hegemonic, default position-
ality, an artifact which was enshrined in dominant sociocultural construc-
tions of quintessential queerness. The vast majority of White participants’
responses suggested that biphobia and compulsory monosexuality figure
prominently in their lived experiences. Comparatively, while by no means
absent from the narratives of participants of Color, these were overshad-
owed by: firstly, tensions between their queer and ethnoracial/ethnoreli-
gious identities, and secondly, racial exclusionism from White LGBTQ
communities, a finding elsewhere echoed (see: Bowleg, 2013,2008).
As discussed previously, these were underpinned by conflations of
Whiteness with queerness, which were particularly rife within, but also evi-
dent outside the confines of White LGBTQ communities. This has been
observed by researchers elsewhere (e.g., Logie & Rwigema, 2014; Eguchi,
Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Riggs, 2010; Phillips & Steward, 2008),
and our findings add to a growing body of literature detailing how a
mono-racial sociocultural imagining of LGBTQ groups can negatively affect
the lives of LGBTQ Persons of Color. These imaginings contributed to the
alienation of our group of interest from their racial communities by
informing the perceived conflict between their racial and queer identities
within their own perceptions. We interpreted this disjuncture as the intern-
alization of oppressive structures of racism and homophobia present within
White LGBTQ and ethnoracial communities, respectively. This was fre-
quently referenced by participants like Abby and Zach and underpinned
their estrangement from both communities, ultimately situating these par-
ticipants outside the boundaries of either. Another point of intersection
between these structures seemed to occur as a byproduct of common dis-
cursive conflations of Whiteness and queerness. This was commonly used
as a justification for acts of homophobia and heterosexism within partic-
ipants’ethnoracial communities. Lastly, our findings also shed light on
how the privileged position that White LGBTQ individuals occupy was
derived from broader, racialized hierarchies. Furthermore, these were subtly
342 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
maintained and reproduced within LGBTQ spaces, in spite of the self-pur-
portedly enlightened nature of these communities.
Intersectional and intersecting discrimination
As expected, participants of Color unique forms of exclusion to previously
studied groups, and they were situated nebulously between their ethnoracial
communities as well as White LGBTQ communities. This was chiefly due
to heterosexism and homophobia rampant within the former, as well as the
racism and biphobia that seemed to permeate the latter. Like we initially
hypothesized, these forms of discrimination were largely (though far from
solely,) experienced as microaggressions; the primarily subtle nature of
these antisocial behaviors precluded any opportunity for redress and could
oftentimes leave our participants unsure as to whether their experiences
could really be qualified racial discrimination. These structural forces often
also intersected in unexpected and unique ways but nevertheless unilat-
erally resulted in our participants’exclusion from these communities.
However, we also observed what previous research has described as
‘positive intersectionality’(Ghabrial, 2017); far from solely experiencing the
compounding effects of multiple forms of marginalization, participants of
Color were able to form their own communities and networks in response
to being discriminated against within the aforesaid communities.
Biphobia and compulsory monosexuality also interacted in unique ways
with participants’experiences of racial oppression—and, as exemplified by
Lili’s experience, interfaces with perceptions of same-sex attraction to con-
struct nonmonosexuality as an ‘unnatural’orientation, or one which is
actively decided upon. As we also observed, though participants did
encounter monosexism in isolation, for persons of Color, this was always
enmeshed with other forms of exclusions, and was oftentimes, disentan-
gling these was difficult or impossible. Beyond this, however, biphobic dis-
crimination posed the possibility to undermine the efficacy of participants’
responses to these intersectional discriminations. Particularly within the
peer networks formed by these participants –biphobia threatened to fur-
ther fragment these groups, potentially isolating nonmonosexual persons of
Color from even these groups.
Although ‘generic’forms of racism were articulated as a common experi-
ence among all participants of Color, a substantial proportion of these
experiences appeared to transpire within White LGBTQ communities or
settings. This squared with previous research which identified racism as a
major factor and stressor for LGBTQ persons of Color (see Han et al.,
2015). Although at first, this might seem at odds with the intersectional
paradigm we adopted, it is crucial to recall that in interpersonal
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 343
interactions, not every facet of an individual’s identity is evident to other
social actors. As one participant astutely surmised, though her sexual orien-
tation is not immediately evident at first glance, her racial identity is a
highly visible marker of difference that singles her out for racial abuse.
Furthermore, participants’experiences of ‘passing’as White imply that
whether an individual’s identities are misperceived changes neither the sub-
jective position occupied by the individual (i.e., that of a ‘racial other’), and
the feelings of alienation that these microaggressions can engender.
Regardless, the greater incidence of racial discrimination within the nar-
ratives from participants of Color—relative to those pertaining to nonmo-
nosexual discrimination—seems to suggest that their ethnoracial identities
constitute a less acceptable departure from hegemonic queer identities (i.e.,
gay, White, and male) than either bisexuality or nonmonosexuality within
White LGBTQ communities. This would explain the fact that certain racial
minority participants report only ever experiencing racism but experience
biphobia comparatively rarely within these settings. Moreover, given that
virtually all participants of Color expressed that racism constituted the pri-
mary source of the oppressions they experienced, persons of Color seemed
to experience their ethnoracial identities as a social reality which completely
saturated the entirety of their lived experience.
Positive intersectionality
Proceeding from this—though an individual might inhabit a unique permu-
tation of intersectional identities, our findings suggest that at any given
time, specific structural forces are likely to be of variable salience to under-
standing and theorizing these lived experiences. In the case of our partici-
pants of Color, oppressions centering on sexual identity seemed to be the
most pressing of these within their ethnoracial communities, whereas
racism was a fixture of how they experienced White LGBTQ communities
as an unwelcoming place. Other researchers of intersectionality (i.e.,
Bowleg, 2008) have problematized participants’‘ranking’of their identities
as attributing sources of discrimination or oppression, we did not see this
as being in contradiction to the intersectional paradigm adopted in our
research. As argued above, participants’ability to differentiate how various
stigmatized identities varyingly contribute to their lived experiences was to
us, an affirmation of those participants’recognition of the intersectional
nature of their subjectivities.
Regardless, the overarching narrative that emerged from our analyses
seemed to suggest that nonmonosexual people of Color are, quite plainly,
stuck between a rock and a hard place. They experience multiple and sim-
ultaneous structural oppressions in such a manner that they are minorities
344 G. LIM AND B. HEWITT
within ethnoracial communities, and White LGBTQ communities, and
made to feel unwelcome in either. Moreover, participants’responses also
alluded to the negative impact of monosexism and compulsory monosex-
uality within the networks in which said participants, and other LGBTQ
persons of Color took refuge in against the aforementioned contexts. The
intersection of compulsory monosexuality with the other structural forces
hitherto described was such that the reification of gay and lesbian identities
within these networks visibly threatened the alienation of nonmonosexual
persons, even from individuals whose experiences of discrimination were
otherwise very similar.
Participants of Color were greatly invested in these communities and,
thusly, they did not seem to think that sequestering themselves into com-
munities predicated around an even more specific configuration of identi-
ties (e.g., bisexual and pansexual people of Color) was a viable response to
discrimination within these networks. Instead, they managed these experi-
ences of monosexism much in the same ways documented in the previously
reviewed research, and by our White participants—that is, through engag-
ing, educating, and informing their peers (Wandrey et al., 2015). In the
absence of other forms of discrimination or exclusion, participants
appeared to be better equipped to engage with, and better able to form
meaningful ties to other community members, in ways that they were not
seen to do in White LGBTQ communities. Notably, what this suggested to
us was that the multitude of oppressions our participants were subjected to
in White LGBTQ communities likely translate into several processes—inter-
personal (i.e., ‘race-blind’ideologies and denials of racism from White
peers) and structural (i.e., racism, compulsory monosexuality). Together,
these engendered the forms alienation and exclusion that these participants
recounted, through both their self-imposed distance, as well as the exclu-
sion from others in these communities.
Conclusions
Our findings serve as an important counterpoint to the prevailing trend
within bisexual and nonmonosexual research—and indeed, queer research,
more generally—which frames monosexism as the chief structural barrier
to nonmonosexual individuals’acceptance within mainstream society and
LGBTQ communities. We contend that for individuals who are multiply
marginalized, conceptualizing their experiences within the parameters of
any one identity category, or even multiple categories in isolation, arrives
at an overly simplistic theorization of their lived experience. Neglecting
sociostructural factors outside of heterosexism, and more crucially the
interactions between these factors, is demonstrably of disservice to groups
JOURNAL OF BISEXUALITY 345
and individuals who bear the brunt of multiple strands of institutional dis-
crimination. Although this can oftentimes be thorny, this complexity
should be grappled with, not sequestered in yet another closet.
Ultimately, insofar as significant parallels between our findings, and
those of studies reported nearly a decade ago (e.g., Ayres, 1999; Caluya,
2006; Yip, 2008) are evident, it can be reasonably surmised that that many
LGBTQ communities are still configured around and upon a specific inter-
section of reified identities. Moreover, this is very likely a chief, attributing
factor to existing observations that multiply marginalized groups are met
with oftentimes insurmountable obstacles to any form of meaningful par-
ticipation within these communities. These exclusions are perhaps most
keenly felt by LGBTQ persons of Color who are additionally alienated from
their ethnoracial communities on the basis of their status as sexual or gen-
der ‘others’. Although the LGBTQ community has oftentimes been likened
to a ‘family of choice,’a substitute for one’s birth family, and a refuge from
the homophobic rejection that one often experiences from the latter, people
of Color often experience it as yet another place where they are shunned
and alienated.
Notes on contributors
Gene Lim is a PhD candidate with the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. Their research
interests can be broadly situated within Queer Theory –specifically, in the Intersectionality
of race and Queerness, and how intersectional marginalization impacts the biopsychosocial
health of LGBTQ people of color.
Belinda Hewitt is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy in the School of
Social and Political Science at the University of Melbourne. She studies Sociology of
the Family, her research has mainly used a longitudinal and life course approach to under-
standing the interplay between gender, family and work.
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