Mongoose, Cixous

Bisexual; when I first read this headline I had a completely different notion as to what the word meant than what we actually read about. The only context I had ever heard this word used in was to describe an individual who had both hetero-sexual and homo-sexual relationships. Cixous used the word in a completely different context; she used it to describe an individual with both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ attributes in their personality or lifestyle. She starts out by calling bisexuality “a fantasy of a complete being” (Cixous 159); what I took from this was that she feels that in order to being a complete person, one must posses both feminine and masculine qualities. Although this is her view of how a complete person should be, she believes that there are very few of this type around; she also believes that it is more likely for a woman to be ‘bisexual’ than it is for a man. She gives several reasons that women are more apt to such a lifestyle, one being that men are looked down upon if they have ‘feminine’ qualities. She says that men live a life in which they are constantly sizing up other men and being sized up at the same time, we always have to compare ourselves as to who’s more masculine in the group, while women are more concerned with getting ahead and doing what is best for them. Also men are afraid of ‘being female’ because they do not want to be considered a homosexual, while if a woman posses masculine qualities it can actually help her in the business world. The most relevant theorist that I can relate this to is Barthes and his concept that language gives us meaning; in this case the words ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ have given us meaning for our lives. For men it is a constant struggle to maintain masculinity and never being considered feminine, making it to where these words and our perceptions of them continually shape our lives.