Charlotte Wolff’s Contribution to Bisexual History and to (Sexuality) Theory and Research: A Reappraisal for Queer Times

A t t h e D e c e m b e r 2006 c o n f e r e n c e of the Lesbian and gay Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, bisexual activist and academic Ron Fox (who is currently compiling an archive of Bisexuality Resources in Amsterdam) reported that in the late seventies, as an enthusiastic graduate student who wanted to research bisexuality, he found very few resources. “There was Charlotte Wolff and little else,” he reflected, reiterating the importance he had ascribed elsewhere to her work. in fact, already in the midseventies there was a heightened interest in bisexuality both in the general press and in academia. Time and Newsweek published articles on so-called bisexual chic in May 1974. Margaret Mead, having long witnessed and described (as an anthropologist) “bisexual” behavior in non-Western cultures, lamented in Redbook magazine that Western culture imposed a “straight jacket” on bisexuality. At around the same time, sociologists Philip