Bisexuality and Schooling: Erasure and Implications for Health

It has long been known that schooling in the United States emphasizes and reproduces heteronormativity. With increasing frequency, gay and lesbian issues are being raised—given the presence of Gay-Straight Alliances in schools, the political discourse about gays and lesbians in the U.S. military, and the deeply contested politics of same-sex marriage. The focus of school culture in general, at best, is on either side of the continuum (i.e., heterosexuality or homosexuality), with bisexuality and sexual fluidity being largely erased. This long-standing institutional erasure has had a negative health impact on bisexual youth. Using a multidimensional model of health, I theorize about how harm is done not only to bisexual youth and school personnel but also to the general population in and out of schools. Besides general health costs due to erasure, I address the negative impacts erasure has on sexual health more specifically as well as how to stem the tide of bi-erasure and explicitly bring bisexuality into schooling.