Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics | 
 enlarge | Author: Jennifer Baumgardner
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 186357
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0374190046
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7650820973
EAN: 9780374190040
ASIN: 0374190046
Publication Date: February 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! Has a publisher remainder mark. First Edition. 2007 Hardcover.
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Product Description
For the acclaimed author and activist Jennifer Baumgardner, bisexuality has always been more than the “sexual non-preference of the ’90s.” In Look Both Ways, Baumgardner takes a close look at the growing visibility of gay and bisexual characters, performers, and issues on the national cultural stage. Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out. With intimacy and humor, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she’s undergone to reconcile the privilege she’s garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she’s derived from her relationships with women.
Part memoir, part pop-culture study, Look Both Ways connects the prominent dots of a bisexual community (Alix Kates Shulman, Ani DiFranco, Rebecca Walker, and, of course, Anne Heche) that Baumgardner argues have bridged feminist aims with those of the gay rights movement. Look Both Ways is a compelling and current study in bisexual lives lived secretly and openly, and an exploration of the lessons learned by writers, artists, and activists who have refused the either/or paradigm defended by both gay and straight communities.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 help if needed May 10, 2008
This is a very sincere well-written and thought out personal story, which can give support and affirmation to women who feel bogged down and misrepresented by identity politics. It is insightful and truthful, and lends honest help to women who aren't sure how to evaluate their sexual lives or inclinations. I'm glad I read it--it can't help but make you feel better about yourself.
 It's a sexuality, not a political orientation March 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Other reviewers have praised this book to high heaven. Therefore, I will not go over what the author does well--they have done it for me. I will simply critique what drove me INSANE about this book: The notion that, for men, bisexuality is a sexuality, but for women, it is an "evolved" political statement, a "feminist choice", or a way of experimenting in the college and post-college years. Maybe this is true for some women (and if it's true for many women, it would certainly explain why so many so-called "bi" women from my college years are now monogamously married to men and never even think about women sexually). Yet certain bi women have sexualities very much like bi men: They are sexually aroused by women as hot bodies and faces. They did not need to attend a women's studies class or work at Ms. magazine to find this to be true; they knew it from puberty. I would have preferred if the author had explored this type of bisexual woman a bit more. In addition, I felt that she took the 'sex' out of bisexuality, at least when it came to bi women having sex with other women. Again, there are some bi women who find sex with women to be just as (if not more) physical, libidinous, lustful, and frenzied than sex with men--not the sexual equivalent of a commercial for herbal tea or feminine hygeine products. Female bisexuality is not some kind of fad that grew out of riot grrrl, the 1990s brief moment of third wave feminism, or the shrill warblings of folk singers. For some at least, it is no different than male bisexuality: desiring sexual activities--as distinguished from sappy romantic friendships--with both genders and both genders equally. In the author's view, it seems no more than a brief girl-girl kiss after a stereotypical weepy bonding moment over how much 'boys stink'. Lastly, not all lesbians are or desire masculine women. One does not have to be bisexual to both look feminine and exclusively desire feminine women.
 Stimulating Provocative Arousing August 26, 2007
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
My brain, heart, and groin were all excited by this totally absorbing book, which contains both a personal account of the author's romantic history -- chiefly four main love interests (bi woman, straight guy, 5-star lesbian musician, and straight guy who fathered her child but does not live with her) --and a brilliant inquiry into sexuality and larger issues of personal identity. Jennifer has interviewed many leading writers, artists, and musicians about their choices and we come to see that increasingly, at least for women, the old labels - straight, gay, and bi -- are irrelevant given that so many have jumped back and forth between same-sex and opposite-sex liasons. Whether it's bedroom dymanics, sexual politics, influences from the workplace or campus or evolving gay-tolerant cultural influences -- the reasons underlying who woman are bedding today are incredibly complicated and worthy of profound self-examination, which she has done brilliantly. What makes the book even more arousing is that the author -- as is apparent from the jacket cover and from a live reading I attended -- is a smoking hot beauty, who must have vastly more-than-average sexual-partner options; but once you're but a few pages into this book, you will find -- as the old adage goes about the brain being the primary erotic organ -- that it's the author's penetrating prose more than anything else that has irresistably won you over and charmed you into hanging onto her every word.
Note that the book is almost exclusively focused on female sexuality, but any man will benefit from learning about women and wondering how applicable Jennifer's inquiry is to men of all sexual procliviities. A tour de force.
Human Sexuality May 21, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Feminists, bisexuals, and anyone interested in human sexuality will find a lot to ponder in this examination of sexual identity in our culture.
The best book on bisexuality I've read in a long time March 20, 2007
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
By far the most interesting, most readable and most satisfying exploration of bisexuality I've read, and certainly the most interesting book on the intersection of bisexuality and feminism ever written. Baumgardner is young, and of a different generation, but her thoughts and experiences are completely in line with my own, and so of course I embrace them as brilliantly insightful.
The connections to feminism are fascinating, though she gives short shrift to male bisexuality. That said, her insights are fascinating and her weaving of personal anecdote with a more global and maturing political awareness is well worth reading.
This book belongs on the bookshelf of every one interested in human sexuality, and especially those active in the Queer community.
A remarkable book.
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