Cover Image: Go the Way Your Blood Beats

Go the Way Your Blood Beats

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Member Reviews

An essay (with autobiographical elements) on bisexuality, in which I don't think I disagreed with a single thing, but which also didn't really tell me anything new. Still, it could profitably be read by all the gatekeepers - activist or journalist, gay or straight - who persist in erasing what Amherst reminds us is by far the most common queer identity. I liked the way in which the various intellectually incoherent, not to mention bloody rude, attempts to claim bisexuals as 'really' gay or straight are expanded into a wider point about critics assuming bad faith more generally; Amherst also notes how even supposed radicals, by assuming that bi men are gays in denial and bi women are pandering, support profoundly reactionary norms. So yeah, maybe it didn't offer quite so many new avenues as Marjorie Garber's Vice Versa - which on the one hand is considerably longer, but on the other is 20 years old. But I do - terrifyingly - qualify as a 'bisexual elder' these days, so I'm not really the audience that needs this. As a small contribution to erasing binaries instead of bisexuals in the wider culture, it is to be welcomed.

(Netgalley ARC)

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