Dissertation Survey Help: Coming Out In the Workplace

midwestbiactivist:

Help with a dissertation research on sexual minority persons’ identity disclosure in the workplace! I am seeking survey research participants who are:

* Sexual minority persons (non-hetero)
* Employed 15+ hours per week
* 18+ years old

bisexual-community:

Bisexual and Bi-Friendly Groups in Wales/(Cymru) UK

Bi Cymru/Wales: This group is connected to the Bi Wales network, and is intended as a social place for Welsh Bisexuals and their supporters to come together, and discuss issues that effect their lives. Bi Cymru/Wales is the all-Wales social support network for bisexual people and those who think they may be bi. Membership of this group is open to anyone who supports Bi Cymru/Wales and in no way implies a person’s sexuality.

Rustic Rainbow: A very bisexual & transgender welcoming casual and fun group for ALL LGB&T people who love the natural beauty of North Wales. We are based in the Denbighshire/Flintshire area and just want to provide a relaxing environment so LGBT people can make friends and enjoy activities together such as walking, the cinema and days out!

Bi Swansea: A group for anyone attracted to more than one gender or who thinks they may be and who lives in Swansea or the surrounding areas. This group is for those who are Bi or think they may be Bi, Bi supportive people and their friends and families. Membership of this group is open to anyone bi supportive, regardless of their sexuality. This is a space to discuss issues affecting us and to socialise in safe, bi-friendly surroundings.

Planning spring and summer events now. People are invited to join and asked to please pass this information on to others. Thank you

bimagazine:

[USA]: I am Proud 2 be BISEXUAL and I am WORKING 4 Marriage Equality

Even if marriage is not 4 ME it might be exactly what YOU always wanted. So I’m here to support you being able to have your heart’s desire. Even if it is different from mine.

Bisexual Woman of Color History Moment: June Jordan

the-nonbinary-bisexual:

bidyke:

Reblogged from SheWired (click through above for the original)

A Black History Moment: June Jordan, Boundary Crosser

By:

Wed, 2011-02-16 11:20

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When asked by a friend who I would I write my column for today , I turned to him with my usual grimace of uncertainty and said, “Perhaps, it will be on one of my activist, queer, literary ‘sistah- heroines’ June Jordan who died in June 2002.” When he paused for a moment and then turned to me with a grimace of indignation asking “ Who was she?” I, at that moment, chose my topic.

Who was June Jordan?

She inspired me to write.

June Jordan, an awarding-winning poet, former columnist for The Progressive, author of 28 books of poems, political essays, children’s fiction, was a “boundary crosser” who died at the age of 65 after a decade-long battle with breast cancer.

Jordan was a boundary crosser whose life’s work was her writings. Both the Norton Anthology of African American Literature and The African American Review depicted Jordan as one of the most prolific contemporary African American writers in many genres.

Author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison told the Associated Press that Jordan’s writing life would best be depicted as “Forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art.” And In describing the scope of Jordan’s writings, Adrienne Rich, renowned lesbian feminist poet, essayist and MacArthur awardee wrote in Sojourner a feminist magazine that “[Jordan’s] flexible, swift mind was equaled by her dazzling language, her access to both the most elegant diction and the most frontal kinds of rhetoric, so that a reader is always being surprised by a riff of music here, a trenchant political insight there. Her poems describe a complex arc back and forth between manifestos and tender love lyrics, jazz poetry and sonnets, with mood-shifts and image-juxtapositions to match.”

After her eight-year marriage ended in divorce, Jordan transgressed a sexual boundary that has been scoffed at by both heterosexual and queers people — she came out as a bisexual woman in the 1970’s, an era of lesbian and gay politics that viewed bisexuals as “fence sitters” who did not want to give up their heterosexual privilege, and they were viewed as a weak link in the struggle for sexual equality.

Within lesbian circles, the place of bisexual women within the queer women’s community was often marginal, if not non-existing, and their commitment to feminism was always suspect. Many lesbians believed that any women who had the ability to sexually love another woman had a political obligation to identify as lesbian. Others believed that the compulsory nature of heterosexuality in our culture precluded all possibilities of women freely choosing a heterosexual relationship.

Jordan, however, felt differently on the topic of bisexuality and spoke about it. In Jordan’s keynote address, “ A New Politics of Sexuality,” to the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Student Association at Stanford University on April 29, 1991 she said, “ I believe the Politics of Sexuality is the most ancient and probably the most profound arena of human conflict…deeper and more pervasive than any other oppression …is the oppression of sexuality…Finally, I need to speak on bisexuality. I do believe that the analogy is interracial or multicultural identity. I do believe that the analogy for bisexuality is a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multiracial worldview. Bisexuality follows from such a perspective and leads to it , as well.”

Jordan derived her bisexual and biracial perspectives from having transgressed two more societal boundaries —an interracial marriage with a white man, and having given birth to a biracial child, both scoffed at during her time by blacks and whites in this country. But it is Jordan’s “boundary crossings” that gave her the intellectual breath on an issue, and by extension she gave us a new way to see ourselves and the world.

Adrienne Rich stated that Jordan’s essay “ On Bisexuality and Cultural Pluralism” “is a kind of credo of the inclusivity she strove for.”

Bisexuals are individuals who are blessed with the possibility to love that transcends the artificial socially constructed boundary of gender identity as well as the biologically constructed boundary of sex.

Given a specific spiritual inheritance, bisexuality in indigenous traditions have long been identified as a role of the highest spiritual order for a person. Called gatekeepers by the Dagara of West Africa and Two Spirit by many Native Americans, bisexuals are born into a very special destiny.

I think June Jordan came here with a special destiny and with a higher calling than many of us. I see the world much fuller because of her, and I give thanks for the many boundaries she dared to cross.

I’m a little iffy about the indigenous cultures bit, but wow, why did I never hear about this person?

With all due respect for “One huge clarification – monosexual privilege, gays and lesbians”, as the article discusses, the reasons you never heard of June Jordan is because she’s a Black, Bisexual Female person. If even one of those had been different she might have had a better chance at having some (relatively) more powerful group take up for her.

Bisexuals are individuals who are blessed with the possibility to love that transcends the artificial socially constructed boundary of gender identity as well as the biologically constructed boundary of sex.

from “A Black History Moment: June Jordan, Boundary Crosser”, SheWired February 2011

bidyke:

[Image: A watercolor painting of a black woman shown from the shoulders up. She’s closing her eyes and smiling lightly. From her head rise spheres in bisexual flag colors.]

OMG, would you look at this beautiful bi WOC artwork! :D

(Source).

bidyke:

[Image: a bisexual flag overlaid with the text: “I AM BISEXUAL. I’m allowed to be confused. I’m allowed to be going through a phase. I’m allowed to be greedy. I’m allowed to want attention. I’m allowed to have sex with as many people as I want, or not at all. Your society builds closets all around me, alienating me, silencing me, trying to push me back into your comfort zone. Do I make you uncomfortable? MY BISEXUALITY WILL NOT BE TONED DOWN. It will slip through the edges, under the cracks, against the current, under the radar, and when you least expect it, it will burst out and shatter your monosexist world.”]

New meme by me :)

bisexual-community:

♥ Be my Bisexual Valentine? ♥

Bi radical: The difference between monosexism and biphobia

bidyke:

Re: monosexism and biphobia. Do you use these words interchangeably? I notice more and more people are treating the two as synonymous and it doesn’t really sit right with me.

bisexualmind

Personally, I don’t.

But before I answer, I have to clarify something first, because a lot of people seem to think I invented the word “monosexism”: So, while this is incredibly flattering, the fact is I didn’t. This word has been in use in bisexual movements from the 1990s or even earlier. I’m willing to take credit for popularizing it on tumblr, though :p

Now to my answer:

I see biphobia as a particular aspect of monosexism, they are definitely not interchangeable. Monosexism, as I see it, refers to the structural privileging of monosexual identities and behaviours. So, monosexism refers, for example, to the belief that one can only be either straight or gay, that it is better to be monosexual than bisexual*, that only monosexual identities are “real”, that monosexual issues are the only ones deserving of attention, etc. Monosexism causes bisexual erasure (from media, literature, art, TV and film, etc.), it causes discrimination when it comes to activist priorities, budgeting, etc. It causes the social isolation that leads many bis* to have poor health and mental health, and prevents proper treatment and support that might help alleviate them. It keeps bi* people “low” on the “pecking order” and creates all sorts of oppression. I see monosexism as the main factor responsible for all the horrible statistics in the Bisexual Invisibility report, for example. So, basically, monosexism is the system, the base structure. It is everything which isn’t directly aimed at bi* people but nonetheless has the effect of eradicating our existence or legitimacy.

I also have to say that monosexism is a structure that first and foremost comes from heterosexism and the patriarchy - 99.99999999% of it comes from heterosexual culture. So for me, monosexism is a term that allows us to look at all the ways that the “broader” culture creates oppression against bisexuals*. In addition, it allows us to consider monosexism as a structure that affects everyone instead of just bi* people - for example, by limiting other people’s options.

Biphobia, on the other hand, is direct negative attitudes and treatment of bi* people. It’s one specific result of monosexism. So here we can think about the many negative attitudes and behaviours specifically aimed against bis*. For example, when people refuse to date bisexuals*, when bis* are represented in stereotypical ways in the media, when bi* women become the target of sexual violence (because they’re perceived as particularly sexy sexual objects), when bi* people are discriminated at their jobs because of their bisexuality (for example, because they’re perceived as unreliable, flaky, unable to handle responsibility or commit to their job), and, yes - when bi* people are treated badly by L, G, and T communities.

I think it’s important to make that distinction, because these are two completely different levels of oppression working against bisexuals* - and of course, I think that the room that biphobia occupies right now in bi* political dialogues is unproportionate, and that we need to pay lots more attention to structural, heterosexual, monosexism.

[For a teeny bit more on that, here’s the snippet from my book where I define the two terms]

And I’m just gonna go ahead and make this rebloggable, because I think people might find that helpful :)

Please keep the porn out of the bisexuality tag

bisexual-community:

letstalkaboutbeingbi:

Please keep the porn out of the bisexuality tag. Tag it with bisexual porn or something but not bisexuality. The bisexuality tag is generally used for discussions about the bisexual movement, coming out, and a support group for bisexuals needing to find a small space to call their own online and learn from each other. Thanks.

We are a pretty much G-Rated & Family Friendly Tumblr. We are using the tags Bisexuality AND Bisexuals as the most “Porn Free” but do also try to slip stuff into Bisexual, Bi Sexual and Bi just to try to reach out to everyone. Also suggest everyone just block and report obvious Porn!Bots.

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