The obligatory murmurs begin as the beefy guy in the tight-fitting shirt and designer jeans walks up University Avenue toward the café, hand in hand with his female companion. Nothing is known about them or their possible relationship status.

(Or the lesbian version, when the woman in the Pittsburgh Steelers jersey stomps by with her adoring male date: “Could she be any more butch?”)

As the man and woman come within earshot of the patio, hushed conversation gives way to a collective gay and lesbian dissembling, furtive glances masked behind raised menus. Soon, the cocktail-inspired prattle shifts gears and the couple is forgotten.

However lighthearted in intent, such unsubstantiated conjecture is symptomatic of the attitudes people with professed attractions toward both genders say they are routinely confronted with – from flippant dismissal to overt hostility.

One never hears the equally presumptuous, though less condemnatory, “They make an attractive bisexual couple.”

San Francisco-based sex educator, writer and filmmaker Amy Andre makes a similar observation in regard to the film Brokeback Mountain. Writing in American Sexuality Magazine, Andre takes issue not with the screenplay or director but with critics who praised the movie as a story of two closeted gay men stuck in heterosexual marriages. The fact that few, if any, critics considered that the characters might be bisexuals who happened to fall in love with each other is telling of an invisibility that routinely enshrouds bisexuals and bisexuality, Andre said.

“Even though that gay potentiality exists, I felt that nobody was talking about the bi potentiality,” said Andre, speaking with the Gay & Lesbian Times about the film. “The only time I think anyone in the movie [used] a sexual identity label to describe themselves was when the Ennis character says, ‘I’m not a queer,’ right [after] he has sex with Jack….

“If we’re going to ascribe identity to fictional characters,” Andre said, “I have as much right to do that as anybody else, and they seemed as bi to me as they might be gay.”

When bisexuals reveal their attraction to both genders, particularly in social settings, the news is oftentimes received with a discernible sense of wariness. Many people often view bisexuals as gay men or lesbians that have yet to come to terms with and claim their homosexual orientation.

Amidst a hornet’s nest of controversy, that viewpoint got big play this past year, first appearing last summer in a New York Times’ article titled, “Gay, Straight or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited.”

In the article, reporter Benedict Carey cited a study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Under the auspices of Professor J. Michael Bailey, lead author Gerulf Rieger studied 101 men, 38 of which identified themselves as gay, 33 as bisexual and 30 as straight.

Rieger used a device called a plethysmograph, a mercury-filled band attached to the shaft of the penis that measures changes in blood flow. The device can be hooked to a computer to measure any potential increase in the circumference of the penis while the subject views pornographic images (known as phallometrics, the study of penis measurements was first developed in the 1950s to deter Czechoslovakian men from falsely claiming to be gay to avoid military service).

Rieger compared the bisexually-identified men’s physical response to both gay and lesbian erotica with their professed attractions toward both genders. Any expansion in circumference of two millimeters or more qualified as arousal. Among the men who identified as bisexual, the study showed that they got a rise only from the gay male erotica.

Speaking with The New York Times, Bailey said, “I am saying that in men, there’s no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men, arousal is orientation.”

Bailey was quoted more recently by “60 Minutes,” during a March 12 broadcast titled, “The Science of Sexual Orientation.” Neither The New York Times nor CBS News mentioned Bailey’s resignation as chair of Northwestern’s psychology department in 2004 after transgender research subjects filed complaints against him and his methods and ethics. The complaints were in response to Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen, in which he asserts, among other things, that all males are inherently feminine (though some more than others) and that transgender women are more prone to engage in criminal behavior.

In a written defense of his book, posted on his Web site, Bailey discusses an effeminate young man named Edwin who works at the cosmetics counter of a local department store:

“Knowing his occupation and observing him briefly and superficially were sufficient, together, for me to guess confidently about aspects of Edwin’s life that he never mentioned. I know what he was like as a boy. I know what kind of person he is sexually attracted to. I know what kinds of activities interest him and what kinds do not.”

Bailey decries what he sees as the academic world’s tendency to label such “intuition,” which he said often turns out to be true, as stereotyping. His interest in eugenics, the study of hereditary improvement of the human race through selective breeding, also alarmed some members of the community. Bailey has said he believes that aborting fetuses thought to be gay is a “morally acceptable” parental right.

Despite the visceral backlash from gay and straight media and scientific refutation of Bailey’s research methods, speaking with the Gay & Lesbian Times, Rieger said he and Bailey stand behind the conclusions drawn from last year’s study of bisexual males, which he said is based on sound, empirical data.

“Within the bisexual men, we had two groups,” Rieger said. “Most behaved like gay men, which is they got aroused to other guys, and a few of them behaved like straight men, which means that they got aroused to women, but wouldn’t get aroused to guys.

“It’s not only their penises that we were interested in,” Rieger said. “We were interested in what they told us. Most bisexual men said, ‘Yeah, we like videos of women.’ So, subjectively they confirmed their identity. It was just not confirmed by their penises.”

Rieger said he believes the provocative headline chosen by The New York Times prevented many people from considering their research with a sense of objectivity.

“I think that many of the guys that came into our study who said they were bisexual, like, they were not purposely lying about that they identify as a bisexual, but I can also see that a lot of them were probably not ready to see that they’re actually gay.”

Rieger also defended Bailey’s assertion that, for men, an erection is indicative of orientation.

“If you look at gay and straight guys, there’s no question that their arousal reflects their orientation,” Rieger said. “That correlation is extremely strong.”

Pioneering sex researcher and psychiatrist Fritz Klein argued that sexual orientation is more multifaceted in its makeup than Rieger’s research accounts for. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, which expanded upon Alfred Kinsey’s nuanced, 0 to 6 scale of human sexuality, made room for further variables that Klein believed help shape sexual orientation, such as emotional and social preferences, sexual fantasies and self-identification. A longtime San Diego resident and bisexual activist, Klein founded San Diego’s Bisexual Forum in 1982, which still meets monthly at The Center. Klein died May 24 of cardiac arrest.

For 34-year-old, self-identified bisexual Shaun Travers, Klein’s passing was an immense loss.

“His original work around the grid and around understanding sexual orientation in that complex way captures for me what I think a lot of people – especially bisexuals – inherently understand, that there’s fluidness to sexuality,” Travers said.

Still, Rieger maintained that social or emotional variables do not factor into sexual orientation for men.

“From what I’ve seen in my research and related research on arousal in guys, I don’t think it’s possible that bisexual men are different because of their emotional response in general,” Rieger said. “I can’t prove it, of course, but I don’t believe it…. I would encourage that people research that if they have [a different opinion].”

Paradoxically, a similar study conducted by Bailey and Rieger the previous year found that women show a bisexual arousal pattern across the board, no matter how they self-identify.

Though no plans for a follow-up study are in the works at present, Rieger said he and Bailey have discussed administering a polygraph test to bisexually-identified men when asking them questions about their attractions.

“A lie detector might be one thing,” Rieger said. “We’re thinking of something like that.”

He also suggested further studies might measure the time it takes for bisexual men to press a button, confirming whether they like or dislike a pornographic video they are viewing.

“In social psychology, it was studied that it makes a big difference,” Rieger said. “If people give an answer that really goes together with what they feel, it doesn’t take them as long as if they give an answer that doesn’t quite go together with what they really feel.”

This past weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a small article announcing that retired police sergeant Elliot Blackstone had been named San Francisco Pride’s Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal for his outreach to the city’s fledgling “homophile” community during the 1960s. Though there was plenty of space, the headline only noted his outreach to gay, lesbian and transgender citizens. Though likely an unintentional oversight (the full article did mention his outreach to all GLBT people), bisexuals say this type of oversight is indicative of the repeated, systematic invisibility and marginalization they live with.

In his article “The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure,” Yale Law School Professor Kenji Yoshino states why he believes bisexuality has been removed from contemporary American political and legal discussions by both straight and gay segments of society. Yoshino found that both groups have an interest in downplaying the incidence of bisexuality. Chief among them, Yoshino said, is the preservation of social mores regarding monogamy. Conflicted by divergent sexual attractions, bisexuals are incapable of sustaining a monogamous relationship, the stereotype holds.

However, Andre argued that polyamorous, or open, relationships are found in both same-sex and heterosexual relationships.

“It’s not a contingency of bisexuality to have to be polyamorous or to have to cheat, but that’s another stereotype that I see out there, that a bisexual can’t be faithful, let alone negotiate a healthy, happy polyamorous relationship with their partner,” Andre said.

As GLBT activists and organizations push for marriage equality, the subject of bisexuality and its implication of non-monogamous relationships may not be fully embraced by all, said Paul Furth, who identifies as both bisexual and transgender.

“The idea of bisexuality, in their minds, seems to weaken their argument that being gay is something that you don’t choose and therefore someone needs to have the civil rights,” Furth said. “These gay activists who use that are in fact fooling themselves because being bisexual is no more of a choice than it is to be gay.”

San Diego resident Vanessa Kranda, who identifies as bisexual, said activists needn’t fear that bisexuality somehow dilutes the message that homosexuality is innate.

“[What] we need to address is the monosexism that’s coming through, the idea that we can’t really include bisexuals and transgendered [people] because that dilutes the message,” Kranda said. “Are we arguing that sexual orientation is genetic and unchangeable? I understand that’s important, but why can’t I be an unchangeable bisexual? My sexual identity as a bisexual is a unified orientation. It’s not the either-or flip-flop [that is] oftentimes stereotyped.”

Despite the increased inclusion of bisexuals in community organizations and titles, such as San Diego LGBT Pride and the San Diego LGBT Community Center, Furth said he believes the recognition is in name only.

“A lot of us pushed Pride and The Center for inclusion,” Furth said. “We were very happy that they did, [but] unfortunately, what The Center has done is to justify their lack of any programs related to the bisexual community because they have their name on the door.”

Kranda believes it is up to the bisexual community to create outlets for itself.

“I don’t have to have a big bisexual community that I relate to all of the time,” said Kranda, who has attended BiForum meetings at The Center. “For me, the identity politics of it, like, ‘I am bisexual and I have to find ways to express that all the time and be included,’ that’s important to me, but now I’m at a place where I’m more like, ‘I’m part of the Queer Nation.’ I don’t demand that that particular label be recognized all of the time. I’m fine going to gay community activities, gay clubs, lesbian clubs, whatever, as long as I feel accepted.

“If there’s not a community out there that’s specifically bisexual, I think it’s up to us to create it,” Kranda said. “I don’t really think it’s up to our gay brothers and sisters to make sure we have a space.”

“She’s got girls, girls all over the world. She’s got men, every now and then. But she can’t make up her mind, just how to fill her time.”

So laments Dinah Shore headliner Joan Jett in her new single, “A.C.D.C.” The single’s video features Carmen Electra as her fickle, bisexual lover.

However cloaked in the playful spirit of rock ’n’ roll, bisexuals say the notion that they are indecisive is just one of the many items on a laundry list of stereotypes they face, most prevalently among gays and lesbians.

Kranda said the subject of her bisexual orientation often evokes a chilly response from women at gay bars.

“I would say that in a gay bar setting my acceptance of being bisexual by [women] has been less accepting than by straight men or gay men, or in another setting, like work or with my friends,” Kranda said. “Really, sometimes you want to explore what that reception is about if it’s not fully embracing…. It does sometimes [put] a chip on your shoulder if you’re reading into it or you’re bringing past baggage with you. There’s that stereotype that supposedly exists out there that lesbians aren’t always as accepting of bisexual women … so you’re kind of defensive already.”

Travers, who for seven years was married to a woman who identified as bisexual, said he thinks attitudes have improved, though he still comes across his share of apprehension from within the GLBT community.

“I think there continues to be a misunderstanding about bisexual people and people that understand their sexuality to be fluid and malleable over time,” Travers said.

Often, when people first learn that he is bisexual, their first question is whether he has a predominant attraction or whether he sleeps with men and women in equal proportion.

“For that to be the first question when I’m just meeting someone that knows I identify myself as bi, that they want to know my degree of bi-ness, it’s always very confusing to me,” Travers said. “It feels like I then need to put myself in a box, that there’s some kind of true definition of bisexual that you must meet…. For me, it’s who I fall in love with and who I happen to be in love with.”

Travers said he also faces the assumption that because he is currently with a male partner, he must now be gay and no longer bisexual.

“That’s very frustrating to me, to have my orientation defined by my relationship status, because if that’s true, then any bisexual person that’s in an opposite-sex relationship, are they suddenly not a part of my community?” Travers questioned. “When I was married, my partner and I struggled with that all the time, people questioning our legitimacy within the broader community because we were an opposite-sex couple, even though we both identified as part of the community.”

Andre said portrayals of bisexuals in film and television continue to perpetuate stereotypes unfavorable to bisexuals.

“A lot of them are predicated on this notion that people have to choose, and if they don’t choose then they’ve done something bad, wrong or morally reprehensible,” Andre said. “How many times do I have to see the same story where the person who’s bisexual is the person who causes the drama? … It doesn’t allow that wiggle room that’s a part of everybody’s sexuality, and I think it’s really sad.”

Travers, who serves as director of the University of California, San Diego’s LGBT Resource Center, facilitates a student discussion group called Fluid Sexuality, which affords students ample wiggle room to discuss their sexual identity. Though Travers’ bisexual identity fits him comfortably and serves him well, he said a lot of younger people on campus are more apt to identify as queer or with a fluid sexuality.

“Being 34, the concept of bisexuality and the label of bisexuality was very important for my identity and continues to be very important to my identity,” Travers said. “That term is very important to me. The folks that I’m working with at UCSD that are younger, that label isn’t nearly as important. The acknowledgement that sexuality is fluid, that it changes over time and that it’s a complex process is much more important…. I think among the youth culture, the use of the term ‘queer’ speaks to that as well.”

Longtime San Diego bisexual activist Richard Woulfe had an epiphany this year and decided to shed the bisexual label he adopted after moving to San Diego in the 1990s, which had, until recently, been a major part of his life and activism. While serving on the board of the LGBT Center, Woulfe fought for the inclusion of the words ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgender’ in the titles of both the LGBT Center and San Diego LGBT Pride.

“I consider myself now, identity-wise, to be an individual, sexually,” Woulfe said. “I’ve separated my orientation and identity, [though] I still consider myself to be bi-oriented.

“When I announced that to the BiForum, it was amazing the reaction I got from the vast majority of people in the bi community, including Fritz [Klein],” Woulfe said. “They laughed…. Fritz and I would have pretty spirited discussions about this because Fritz was very bi-identified and it was a very large part of his life.”

Woulfe said he has come to believe that sexual orientation has more to do with compatibility.

“I believe we’re all born with a very unique, individual mapping that includes physical [and] emotional attraction,” he said. “I have gay-identified male friends who, emotionally, are more prone to and oriented to be with females, but have no physical interest whatsoever in females and no real emotional interest in men….

“You’re not going to be with someone for 20 or 30 years because you’re both bisexual,” Woulfe added. “You’re going to be together because you share compatibilities. You share honesty quotients, common interests and commitment.”

Citing Yoshino’s writings, Woulfe said oppressed communities who establish pride around a chosen identity often cling so tightly to that identity that there is little room for dissent.

“Once you’re a member of that group it’s like being in a gang, in essence. Yoshino says that the reason the gay community is quite uncomfortable at times with the bi community and the trans community is it represents difference…. We’re pretty binary-thinking people. We like to select a label and stick with it. That’s how we tell you apart from the other people,” Woulfe said.

His attractions to men and women, he said, were once on equal footing, though he is now predominantly attracted to men. As he shed the bisexual label, he became more comfortable with people terming his current, same-sex relationship as gay, though not his identity.

“People just laugh at me because I’ve been with predominantly men since the mid-’90s, so it’s like, ‘Dude, you’re gay,’” Woulfe said. “It’s like, well, ‘I’m gay if I want to be gay.’…My preference would be that eventually we wouldn’t have to have these labels to describe it. Of course, if someone forms pride around any label and it works for them individually, I think that’s wonderful.”

Citing the research of professor Paula Rust, Andre said bisexual women tend to consider their relationships throughout their life when forming their identity, while lesbians are more focused on their current relationship status and what’s happening in their lives.

“For example, a bisexual woman will be more likely to say, ‘It doesn’t matter who I’m in a relationship with now, in my lifetime I’ve been with men, I’ve been with women, and that’s what makes me bisexual,” she said. “By comparison, lesbians are more likely to say, I’ve been with men in the past … or maybe I could see myself having sex with a guy sometime in the future, but because I’m dating a woman right now, therefore I’m a lesbian.”

Andre said she sees both ways of interpreting one’s life and sexuality as equally valid.

“I think that the trouble comes in when judgments are made,” she said. “There’s a lot of biphobia, unfortunately, within the lesbian and gay community…. That fluidity and that kind of changing how gender is important or salient can be very threatening to people. For bisexual people, having that mindset can be very liberating.”

For more information or bisexual resources, visit www.amyandre.com or www.bisandiego.org.