Who decides what bisexuality is, who is bisexual, and on what occasions? Why are bisexual voices heard in so few debates, although it seems to be the underlying determination of all human beings?
At the beginning of the 20th century, Magnus Hirschfeld developed his central idea of sexual intermediaries, the fundamental insight that all human beings are intersexual variants.
So if humans are fundamentally bisexual beings, why do we so rarely encounter the subject? On the one hand, bisexual people are hardly visible as such in everyday life and community debates; on the other, celebrities seem quite willing to acknowledge their bisexuality. Where does this strange contradiction between invisibility and chic originate? And: where does the B stand in relation to LGTTIQ? The 13th Hirschfeld lecture searches for answers to these questions.
In this volume we encounter the theme of bisexuality from two angles: Heinz-Jürgen Voß presents theoretical approaches to questions of gender and sexual development and deals with human sexuality from the perspective of cultural and sexual science. From a sociological perspective, on the basis of biographical interviews, Kim Ritter talks about the everyday life plans and experiences of bisexual people, which vary between recognition and contempt.
