Loraine Hutchins
Biography
Loraine Hutchins, Ph.D., is a founder and leader of the U.S. bisexual rights and liberation movement who has increasingly integrated issues of spiritual beliefs and practices into her sexuality education work. She co-edited Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, the anthology that catalyzed the bi movement decades ago.
Loraine Hutchins was born in 1948 in Washington, DC. She graduated from Shimer College in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, in 1970 with a degree in English and American Literature. Some 30 years later, Lorraine earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Union Institute and University in Cincinnati. Her 2001 doctoral dissertation, "Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary U.S. Sacred Sexuality Traditions and Trends," offers a queer feminist approach to the variety of sex-positive spiritualities being explored and practiced in the U.S. today, and looks at the intersection of roles between sex workers and the helping professions. Hutchins teaches the inter-connecting issues of race, gender and class in her work and sexual liberation's connection to overall issues of social justice and human rights.
Hutchins was raised as a progressive Methodist baptised in the crucible of the civil rights movement and often speaks about how how family's fight for an integrated neighborhood church shaped her early identity. She is now retired from teaching inter-disciplinary sexuality studies at the undergraduate level. She lives in a multi-faith retirement community founded by Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends, in Sandy Spring, Maryland. Her archival papers reside at Smith College women's studies collection and her books collection is at Goddard College. See list below for recent publications.
(This biographical statement provided by Loraine Hutchins.)
Biography Date: January 2004; rev. August 2021
Additional Resources
Books:
Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual, and Polysexual Perspectives; eds. L. Hutchins and H. Sharif Williams, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, NY, 2012.
Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out; eds. L. Hutchins and L. Ka'ahumanu, Alyson Publications and RAP, 1991 and 2015 (25th anniversary edition).
Chapters in Books:
"Let's Not Bijack Another Century," in The Routledge History of Queer America, ed. Don Romesburg, Routledge, 2018.
"Making Bisexuals Visible," Identities and Place: Changing Labels and Intersectional Communities of LGBTQ and Two-Spirit People in the United States, eds. Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate, Berghan Books, NY, 2020.
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
2006 “Bi Youth Becoming Visible.”Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education, Special Issue, Researching Queer Youth,3(2/3): 69-78.
2005 “Sexual Prejudice: The Erasure of Bisexuals in Academia and the Media,” American Sexuality,3(4). http://nsrc.sfsu.edu. Monthly on-line Journal of the National Sexuality Resource Center, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA.
2002 “Taste of Erotic Rites: Building Erotic Communities.” Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality.5 (July 16, 2002). http://www.ejhs.org/volume5/hutchinsabs.html, Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, San Francisco, CA.
2002 “Bisexual Women as Emblematic Sexual Healers and the Problematics of the Embodied Sacred Whore,” The Journal of Bisexuality, guest ed., Dawn Atkins, 2(2/3): 205-226.
1998 “RePresenting Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire: A Review,” Journal of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identity,Vol. 3, #3,July 1998.
“Sexual Prejudice: The Erasure of Bisexuals in Academia and the Media,” pp. 135-139 in 21stCentury Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health, Education and Rights. New York, NY, Routledge, April 2007.
“Playing With Sacred Fire: Building Erotic Communities.” pp. 336-357 in Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan, Beth Firestein, ed., New York, NY, Columbia University Press. 2004.
"Spirituality-Sexuality Movements – United States,” Continuum Complete International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, Robert Francouer, ed. New York, NY, Continuum International Publishing Group. 2004.
“The U.S. Bisexual Movement – A Brief History,” Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, Vol. 4, pp. 1367-1372, Immanuel Ness, ed., Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe. 2004.
“Reading 38, in Part Five, Sexualities, Orientations and Relationships-Bi Any Other Name, pp. 394-400. Sexual Lives: A Reader on the Theories and Realities of Human Sexuality. Robert Heasley & Betsy Crane, eds., New York, NY, McGraw-Hill. 2004.
“Bisexual Women as Emblematic Sexual Healers and the Problematics of the Embodied Sacred Whore,”205-226. Bisexual Women in the Twenty-First Century. Dawn Atkins, ed., Binghamton, NY, Haworth Press. 2002.
“Erotic Spiritualities,” pp. 203-217, Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith, Debra Ruth Kolodny, ed. New York, NY. Continuum International Publishing Group. 2000.
“Bisexuality: Politics and Community,” pp. 240-259, Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority, Beth Firestein, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications. 1996.
“Our Leaders, Our Selves,” pp. 131-142, Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, & Visions, Naomi Tucker, ed. Binghamton, NY, Haworth Press. 1995.
“Sexual Prejudice: The Erasure of Bisexuals in Academia and the Media,” pp. 135-139 in 21stCentury Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health, Education and Rights. New York, NY, Routledge, April 2007. 2007.
Mason Funk conducted this interview with Loraine Hutchins for Outwords:
https://theoutwordsarchive.org/interview/hutchins-loraine/
Oral Histories:
Archival Collections:
Tags
Women's spirituality | Author/editor | Bisexual activism | Hutchins, Loraine | Washington, D.C.
Citation
“Loraine Hutchins | Profile”, LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, accessed April 18, 2024, https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/loraine-hutchins.
Remembrances