If I am not free and if I am not entitled equal to heterosexuals and homosexuals then homosexual men and women have joined with the dominant heterosexual culture in the tyrannical pursuit of E Pluribus Unum and I a bisexual woman committed to cultural pluralism and, therefore to sexual pluralism, can only say, you better watch your back!
Tracks
“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall” ~USA President Barack Hussein Obama, 2nd Inaugural Address, 21 January 2013
Unlike some *ahem* other parts of the Queer Nation the Bisexual Community doesn't ditch people when convenient . . .
Then President of BiNet USA Wendy Curry said it best when the Bisexual Community refused to go along with too many in the the mainstream Gay/Lesbian establishment and ditch Trans*/GenderQueer people to try and get Equal Rights for just Cisgender Heteronormative/Homonormative people back in 2007 —
The trans community is part of the bi “net.” Unlike other national groups, we will not discard “inconvenient” parts of our community in order to win a political victory. Likewise, we would never consider tossing out the polyamourous, the monogamous, the pagan, or the christians; our diversity makes us strong …
The people who wish to “shave off” gender identity and the same people who, when necessary, will remove bisexuals from marriage, military, or any other civil rights actions. We’re too complicated. We distract from the “core” issue …
Sure, I’d love to live in a country where I couldn’t be fired for being out. But not if I had to look a transgender friend in the eye and tell them they weren’t convenient.. that it’s not their time.
It’s not about “those people” making things difficult (unless by those people, you mean the ones willing to ditch gender identity and divide the BLTG community). This is an attack on the bi community directly. Whether it’s about your gender identity, (one of) your partner’s, or your future partner - it all comes down to the right to be employed should not be given based on any one’s gender.
A wise person once said “United we stand, divided we fall”. There was no mention of when it’s “convenient.”
October is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) History Month. Reblog this if you think there will be gadzillions of Gay Men & Lesbian Women, some token Trans* People and like one Bisexual Person (and that will be some celebrity) and probably will be labeled "Queer" or "LGBT" anyway
WHAT DOES BIPHOBIA LOOK LIKE?
Copied from here because I wanted it to be in a text post, so people would read it.
I’ve bolded statements that bear extra truth. The experiences I’ve had today after letting slip in an office full of straight (or straight acting) people that I’m bisexual has worn me out.
Biphobia, funnily enough, seems to be OK. I imagine if I’d come out as gay, things might have been a little less embarrassing for all involved.
- Assuming that everyone you meet is either heterosexual or homosexual.
- Supporting and understanding a bisexual identity for young people because you identified “that way” before you came to your “real” lesbian/gay/heterosexual identity.
- Expecting a bisexual to identify as heterosexual when coupled with the so called different gender/sex.
- Believing bisexual men spread AIDS/HIV to heterosexuals.
- Thinking bisexual people haven’t made up their minds.
- Assuming a bisexual person would want to fulfill your sexual fantasies or curiosities.
- Assuming bisexuals would be willing to “pass” as anything other than bisexual.
- Feeling that bisexual people are too outspoken and pushy about their visibility and rights.
- Automatically assuming romantic couplings of two women are lesbian, or two men are gay, or a man and a woman are heterosexual.
- Expecting bisexual people to get services, information, and education from heterosexual service agencies for their “heterosexual side” (sic) and then go to gay and/or lesbian service agencies for their “homosexual side” (sic).
- Feeling bisexuals just want to have their cake and eat it too.
- Believing that bisexual women spread AIDS/HIV to lesbians.
- Using the terms “phase” or “stage” or “confused” or “fence-sitter” or “bisexual” or “AC/DC” or “switch-hitter” as slurs or in an accusatory way.
- Thinking bisexuals only have committed relationships with so called different sex/gender partners.
- Looking at a bisexual person and automatically thinking of their sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, complete person.
- Assuming that bisexuals, if given the choice, would prefer to be in an different gender/sex coupling to reap the social benefits of a so-called “heterosexual” pairing [sic].
- Not confronting a biphobic remark or joke for fear of being identified as bisexual.
- Assuming bisexual means “available.” - THIS THIS THIS!!!
- Thinking that bisexual people will have their rights when lesbian and gay people win theirs.
- Being gay or lesbian and asking your bisexual friend about their lover or whom they are dating only when that person is the “same” sex/gender.
- Believing bisexuals are confused about their sexuality.
- Feeling that you can’t trust a bisexual because they aren’t really gay or lesbian, or aren’t really heterosexual.
- Expecting a bisexual to identify as gay or lesbian when coupled with the “same” sex/gender.
- Expecting bisexual activists and organizers to minimize bisexual issues (i.e. HIV/AIDS, violence, basic civil rights, fighting the Right, military, same-sex marriage, child custody, adoption, etc.) and to prioritize the visibility of so called “lesbian and/or gay” issues.
- Avoid mentioning to friends that you are involved with a bisexual or working with a bisexual group because you are afraid they will think you are a bisexual.
Adapted by Lani Ka‘ahumanu and Rob Yaeger/BiNet USA, 1996, from Rape Crisis Center of West Contra Costa County, CA, and from Lesbians: A Consciousness Raising Kit, by the Boston Lesbian Task Force, and by Building Bridges, March, 1995.
What will it take for the gayristocracy to realize that bisexual, lesbian, transgender and gay people are in this together we can and will move the agenda forward.
But this will not happen until public recognition of our common issues is made, and a sincere effort to confront biphobia and transphobia is made by the established gay and lesbian leadership in this country.
New York City: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, veterans of the Stonewall Rebellion and founders of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), march in the 1973 Pride Parade.
Aww … once upon a time in NYC … “Ah, but I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now”
Back in the day (that day being 1842 ) the German doctor Richard von Krafft-Ebing wrote this famous book Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (pub 1886)
This book discussed heterosexuality, homosexuality and something else - something the doctor used a term from botany to describe. “Bisexuality”. Bisexual flowers contain androecium and gynoecium and are called androgynous or hermaphroditic. Examples of plants with bisexual flowers include the lily, the rose and most plants with large showy flowers.
Krafft-Ebing held the view that bisexual people were mentally androgynous/intersex, that their brains contained more than one gender. Bisexuals were considered to be androgynous/intersex like Hermaphroditus, their patron demi-god/ess from Greek mythology.
LOL, I just ♥ title The Bisexual Mind uses … Bisexuals: from plants to people
And that we have our own demi-god/ess! Who is genderqueer! Bisexual smash the gender binary and monosexism. Hermaphroditus rules yo!
That’s not my bi history! It needs us to tell it how it is – and how it was
Concerned? We are too! As Jen Yockney wrote in Bi Community News:
In 2010, I went to two events to mark LGBT History Month. Both of them left me thinking, ‘this is not my history’.
One was an event that promised to talk about bisexuality, but the presentation skipped most of the last 25 years worth of bisexual community activism. When I asked a question that referenced Bi Community News – one of the longest running bi projects in the country [ed note Great Brittan], after all – it got blank looks from the speaker.
So many theorists, activists, events, publications, erased from the record presented. And knowing that for other attendees, if I didn’t challenge what was being said, then it was likely they’d go away taking the history presented as fair and true.
In complete bewilderment we have watched the wholesale attempt to rewrite and redefine all of modern bisexual history to make us disappear. A trend that really started picking up steam in late 2005/early 2006 and it seems continues unabated.
One of the latest stunts being buzzed about in the Bisexual Community? A re-editing this past July 2012 of the meaning of the familiar rose lavender and blue gradient (the bisexual pride colours) that has been used since the 1970’s in the familiar “Bi-Angles” symbol and then later was adopted into the Bi Pride Flag. As was calmly noted someone changed the meaning specificially so as to give, “more detail on non-binary erasure in the flag”.
Why? What is the point? What is being gained by this? And by who?
In 1971 Petty Officer Robert A. Martin Jr. became the first US Servicemember to publicly fight his discharge for being a LGBTQ person. Said journalist Randy Shilts in his 1993 book Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military,
In the tens of thousands of hearings since World War II where comparable actions had been taken on the basis of comparable evidence, the matter ended there, with the sailor skulking away in disgrace. Petty Officer Martin, however, went public with what had happened to him and swore to fight for an honorable discharge
Despite the support, he received a general discharge in 1972, but he continued to fight and in 1977 his discharge was upgraded to “honorable”. wrote historian David Eisenbach in his 2006 book Gay Power: An American Revolution,
Martin’s groundbreaking public battle against the Navy kicked off a series of well-publicized challenges to military discharges that harnessed and directed the energy of the gay rights movement in the 1970s.
Despite the words gay, gay , gay being endless thrown about Petty Officer Martin, (who is better known by his nom de guerre Stephen Donaldson and his pen name Donny the Punk) is a famous and important bisexual activist.
Though he did die just short of his 50th birthday (yes from AIDS, in many ways he completely epitomized the “sex and drugs and rock-and-roll” lifestyle of his era with all it’s excesses, pitfalls and it’s joyousness) he had an amazingly full life and quite the wild ride. In 1966 he founded the first LGBTQ Student Group, he was an active member in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) & Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) the groups that sprang to life immediately the day after the Stonewall Riots and most famously in 1972 he helped draft the Quaker Committee of Friends “Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality”, perhaps the earliest public expression of a new bisexual consciousness.
