Abstract
This chapter examines how bisexuality is represented in contemporary Hungary and what it implies for the local LGBTQ movement specifically. I argue that the images of bisexuality which Hungarian mainstream sexist-heteronormative media, dating sites, and LGBTQ activism create and reproduce, reveal the sexist and classist elements of identity politics pursued by the Hungarian LGBTQ movement. Analysis of these discourses shows how bisexual representations build on women’s sexual objectification and the classed opportunities of coming out. Trapped between homophobic nation states and identity politics driven by Western donors, Hungarian LGBTQ activism lacks both the resources and the necessary critical perspective to address and represent a wide range of people with non-heterosexual practices. This results in a widening, gendered and classed, split between various non-heterosexual lifestyles.
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Notes
- 1.
In this paper, I refer to my interviewees with pseudonyms and their approximate age, and I anonymised all their data. In the translated quotes from the life story interviews I made in Hungarian, I try to preserve the original linguistic formulations.
- 2.
Between 2010 and 2013, I made 26 life story interviews with Hungarian women and men (aged between 18 and 64, belonging to lower to upper middle class) who reported sexual attractions to both men and women over their life course. The narrative, unstructured interviews took place in Hungarian in Budapest, ranging between 60 and 130 minutes (for details see Turai 2018).
- 3.
Leszbikus, Meleg (Gay), Biszexuális, Transznemű és Queer. Because of the official use, I use the same term.
- 4.
“Nemi Identitás Nélküliek Csoportja”; its short, “NINCS” literally means “there isn’t any”.
- 5.
“Be akarom lopni a melegeket a polgári társadalomba” (“I Want to Shuffle Gays into Bourgeois Society”).
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Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to the two volume editors Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova, as well as to Adriana Qubaiova, Amy Soto and Anna Szlávi for helping me edit this chapter. Any mistakes that remain are my own.
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Turai, R.K. (2020). Gender and Class Tensions in Hungarian LGBTQ Activism: The Case of Ambiguous Bisexual Representation. In: Buyantueva, R., Shevtsova, M. (eds) LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_14
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