Bi Literary Criticism
Olivia Wood on ‘ki-ki dykes’, bisexual expression, and reexamining literary scholarship.
Olivia Wood is a third year Ph.D. student in English at the CUNY Graduate Center studying rhetoric and composition, with undergraduate training in cultural anthropology. She is also a Digital Pedagogy Fellow for the OpenLab at the New York City College of Technology. Olivia’s research areas include rhetorics of gender and sexuality in pop culture, digital rhetoric, and writing center studies.
Olivia’s current focus is on bisexual and pansexual people as rhetors, rather than as rhetorical objects, and she has written an article on Reexamining bisexuality in Mrs Dalloway in the Journal of Bisexuality.
This article provides a fresh analysis of the desires of the title character in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Hardly any queer scholarship considers the possibility that Clarissa Dalloway is not a lesbian trapped in a heterosexual marriage, leaving a gap in the discourse for other readings of her sexual orientation.
3 things you wish everyone knew about bisexuality?
Bi people suffer from a variety of mental health and socioeconomic difficulties at greater rates than both gay people AND straight people.
Bi people are a real part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Biphobia is real and painful, and homophobia applies to us too (including bi people in straight-seeming relationships).
Why are you interested in research on bisexuality?
My professional interest in bisexuality started when I was a junior in college, taking a modernism course.
We read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and it seemed plainly about a bisexual character to me. However, when I went to write my final paper, I found that almost all of the existing scholarship on the book and on Woolf in general referred to lesbianism.
That's how the article I linked to above got started, and that final paper was the beginning of my research career in many ways. It was the first paper I ever presented at a conference (the National Conference of Undergraduate Research), I used a revised version for my writing sample for my MA application, and I submitted to the Journal of Bisexuality (where it is now published) right before I submitted my PhD applications so I could say I had an article under review-- and they wouldn't have had a chance to reject me yet! I was very excited to get a revision request instead.
What does your research explore?
While I started in literary criticism, I'm currently interested in how bi people manage invisibility and erasure and go about expressing themselves (or not expressing themselves!) in their everyday lives.
I have about another year to go before I really start my dissertation work, but I envision it largely relying on interviews, storytelling by the participants, and sharing personal bi artifacts (stuff they've created, pictures of themselves, memes and other bi internet things they've saved, etc.). I also do some work on bisexual pop culture, and was supposed to be doing an archival project this summer looking for bi women archived as lesbians, but that was before the pandemic.
What are the most interesting facts that you have learned about bisexuality from your research?
In addition to butches and femmes, lesbian bar culture (at least in NYC) had another term that was sometimes used to refer to bisexual women: ki-ki dykes (also spelled ky-ky).
It was definitely used pejoratively, and also referred to lesbians who just didn't fit into butch/femme, upper middle class married women "slumming it" in the downtown bars, women people suspected of being undercover cops, etc. I've only found two references to it so far, so I'm still working on investigating the different meanings and how it was used.
How do you define bisexuality?
Attraction to more than one gender. I like the Robyn Ochs definition, and I also like "bi means two, but the two aren't men and women. They're 1. genders like mine and 2. genders not like mine."
I don't see a clear difference between bisexuality and pansexuality, and I'm very interested in the various reasons some people choose to use one term rather than the other. For example, my sister uses the word pansexual, but the way she describes what it means to her could just as easily apply to me and bisexuality.
Most pressing concerns for the bi community in 2020?
Mental health! I think this is related to both lesbian and gay people, and straight people not taking us seriously and dismissing us, but of course it's also much bigger than that.
What bi research would you like people to know about?
I recommend skimming the titles and abstracts of The Journal of Bisexuality periodically. I always learn a lot.
Also Colleen Kase at the University of Maryland did a cool study I'm really excited about, but she's still trying to find a publication home for it as far as I know.
Getting more personal…
Are you bi? Yes!
Does being bisexual change how you approach your work?
It's certainly a big piece of what led me to this work, and my own personal experiences shape what I'm interested in or know about academically. It's a blessing and a challenge - I need to constantly make sure I'm not taking my own experience as normative, representative of the broader bi community.
Can you tell me a bit about your experience?
When did you know you were bi? When I was 16! It took me a bit longer to be confident using it as a word about myself though.
Do your friends and family know you are bi? My immediate family, most of my friends, a couple cousins. For the rest of my family, I feel like it's really just a matter of time until they bother to Google me.
Do your colleagues know you are bi? Many of them do, and I think the rest assume it based on my research interests.
My partner and several of our friends are teachers, and often their students are super excited to hear about my research - to them, I'm the "bi professor friend"
When did you come out as bi? That's such a hard question. Coming out is an ever-evolving process for most people. I first came out to another person at 16, and was more broadly open about it in college and online.
Was there any particular reason you came out as bi? Originally it was because I wanted advice on my crush/first time dating. Now, I often think about something a friend (who is a man) once said to me: "I usually prefer dating women, but I never, ever want anyone thinking I'm straight." I also view being out as valuable for younger people who are yearning for queer adult role models, and for closeted people my own age and older who might feel encouraged to feel more comfortable with themselves by my example.
Olivia Wood’s website.