I just read Resist the Gay Marriage Agenda!, the first (and so far, only) post on the new blog Queer Kids of Queer Parents Against Gay Marriage! (I think I saw it linked on Kate Bornstein’s Twitter feed). It’s a great read. Two quotes that really jumped out at me:

What if, rather than donating to the HRC campaign, we pooled our wealth to create a community emergency fund for members of our community who face foreclosure, need expensive medical care or find themselves in any other economic emergency? As queers, we need to take our anger, our fear, and our hope and recognize the wealth of resources that we already have, in order to build alternative structures. We don’t need to assimilate when we have each other.

And, the one that really grabbed me (in both quotes, emphasis mine):

Equality California keeps on sending us videos of big, happy, gay families, and they’re making us sick: gay parents pushing kids on swings, gay parents making their kids’ lunches, the whole gay family safe inside the walls of their own homes. Wait a second, is it true?  It’s as if they’ve found some sort of magical formula: once you have children, your life instantly transforms into a scene of domestic bliss, straight out of a 1950’s movie. The message is clear. Instead of dancing, instead of having casual sex, instead of rioting, all of the “responsible” gays have gone and had children. And now that they’ve had children, they won’t be bothering you at all anymore. There’s an implicit promise that once gays get their rights, they’ll disappear again. Once they can be at home with the kids, there’s no reason for them to be political, after all!

I think this is one of my biggest problems with the push for same sex marriage, though I’ve had trouble articulating it. Because what they’ve said here feels exactly right. The same sex marriage agenda seems to be to let us get married so we can be just like you — and, by extension, again become completely invisible to you. And I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in keeping our radical ways of building family and community, of loving and supporting each other, of seeing injustice and fighting it. I’m not interested in a movement that thinks equality means assimilation, losing everything about myself and my beloveds that I prize most. Oppression has shaped us this way, and I’m certainly interested in ending oppression, but I think our shapes are beautiful. I hope we  keep them, keep what we’ve learned and take it with us even if we end up in some oppression-free utopia. If it’s free of oppression because everyone finally does things the same way, it’s not my utopia. And this movement isn’t trying to do end oppression, anyway. Just to help a few middle-class whites wiggle out from under it without realizing they’re then perpetuating it.

Sometime in the past few days, I saw someone say — again, I think, on Twitter (the problem with Twitter is that it’s hard to find things later in order to attribute them correctly) — that the LGBT rights movement seems to be fighting to get queers into America’s two most conservative institutions. I agree, and that’s just not my goal here. I have trouble allying myself with those for whom it’s the be-all and end-all.

I wanted to point you to an excellent post on Queer Subversion (a blog I will definitely be keeping an eye on!) about “Fake” bisexuality and slut shaming. Jackson makes some great points about how it doesn’t help anyone for us to draw lines in the sand between “real” bisexuals and people (usually women) who we think are “faking it” — for publicity, to arouse men, to look cool, whatever. As he writes, “it just leads to more of the same culture of bisexual doubt that makes it hard for all of us.” And I needed that pointed out to me, I think, because these are behaviors that I criticize myself. I try to criticize the way our culture presents a very particular view of bisexuals behaving in these ways and doesn’t tell any of our other stories, but the line is fine and I probably cross it sometimes.  I’m against every other way that communities try to disavow some of their own in order to “put their best foot forward.” My thanks to Jackson for pointing out to me this counts.

It also got me thinking again about the trope that most bisexuals will eventually “choose one” by settling down in a monogamous relationship with a person who, presumably, has a gender. And while this is not necessarily true –most of the bisexuals I know are polyamorous, because I move in very specific circles and most of the people I know are polyamorous; nor do all people (and therefore, all partners of bisexuals) identify with one of the two genders society recognizes — I’m frustrated by the way people react to it when it is true. Bisexuals who settle down with either a man or a woman are not finally choosing a side, admitting to being either straight or gay. This seems so obvious to me, yet seems to escape most people. Choosing monogamy is just that — choosing monogamy. That’s all.

Jackson ends with a note on how this dismissal of some ways that women express bisexuality basically comes down to slut shaming. All I’ll say about that is that I agree completely and you should go read it.

Happy Bi Visibility Day!

Today is Bi Visibility Day, which serves to remind me that I’ve been terribly invisible around here lately.

I’ve been thinking about something Robyn Ochs said during her keynote at the Putting The “B” in LGBT Summit. She articulated something that’s been bothering me for a while — that the ways for bisexuality to be visible at all mirror the most common stereotypes about bisexuals.

Most people seem to assess sexual orientation based on the behavior they personally observe. So if they see a girl with a boy, she must be straight. If they see her with a girl, she must be a lesbian. If they see her with both, either concurrently or in quick succession, she must be bi. And fickle. And a slut. And not to be trusted. (It doesn’t count if there’s a long enough gap between the two, because she’s clearly “switched” “sides.”) Most people won’t even entertain the notion that someone might be bisexual unless they see hir making out with people of different genders in quick succession, or breaking up with someone of one gender to have a relationship with someone of  another, or whatnot.  So our choices are either to reinforce tired, inaccurate stereotypes, or to be told that we’re not really bi because if we were, we’d do those things. This is not my favorite set of options ever.

I also have trouble with this entire way of framing things, with its implicit assumptions that it’s wrong to be greedy and slutty, and the way it values monogamous, long-term relationships over other romantic or sexual interactions. I often find myself torn about this when blogging. On the one hand, it’s true that not all bisexuals need partners of “both” genders, that bisexuals are probably about as likely to be both monogamous and faithful as anyone else. It’s certainly true that bisexuals are inherently no more likely to lie, sneak around, fail to care about their partners’ well-being, jump from partner to partner in an unethical way, etc. But I also don’t think it’s wrong to want or have multiple concurrent partners, or to have and value and enjoy brief involvements and/or involvements only for the sake of sex, or to generally get around. I have trouble framing my arguments against views of bisexuals as shallow and uncaring in ways that don’t feel sex-negative and anti-poly, that don’t seem to implicitly buy into the same framework I’m trying to critique.

Still, I think it’s problematic that there’s only one way for bisexuals to be visible in our culture, and that it plays into common stereotypes that have such a negative load attached to them. All of the pieces of this are problematic — the invisibility of bisexuals who don’t act in particular ways, the assumptions about those who do, and the idea that behaving in those certain ways is bad.

And I think the fever from my con flu is coming back, so I’m going to wrap this up while it’s still semi-coherent. Happy Bi Visibility day! I hope the ways you choose to be visible, today and always, are successful and joyous for you.

Weekly Round-Up

This week in my life: was four days long, sandwiched between two weekends out of town. Maintenance finally got around to fixing the leak over my window, and I finally got around to doing some more settling into my new apartment, once the dripping water stopped destroying my sleep and it no longer felt futile. I thought about blogging a lot, but never quite managed it. Slowly, slowly life is coming back under control and I’m finding the time and energy to do the things that are important to me.

This week on the internet:

Two bi magazines folded. Joining a general trend of print magazines that don’t want to tell you how to lose weight or decorate your home or which celebrities are smooching each other folding. I should really find out if there are any bi magazines left at this point, so I can subscibe before I lose my chance entirely.

This piece in the Washington Post charmingly blames DC’s high HIV infection rates on male bisexuality and black folks’ promiscuity. Joshua Lynsen  ably counters the former {ed: link fixed…I really was careless this week}, though I’d like to see someone take on the latter in more depth, as well.

Britain’s Office of National Statistics is going to start asking people about sexual orientation. This might actually give us the first accurate picture of what percentage of the population — that population, at least — identifies as straight, gay, bisexual, or other. Information that could easily be used for good or evil, but it should be interesting.

Binghamton, NY’s City Council has proposed a law to extend freedom from discrimination from the basics (and not so basics) of “age, race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, sex, and sexual orientation” to “sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender presentation, gender identity {ed: oops!} weight and height.” Awesome! Does anyone know if this is the first potential protection from size discrimination, nationally or internationally? {ed: Apparently  not.  See TGStoneButch’s comment below for more information.)

I’m a little bit confused by this keynote speech about LGBT research. The speaker is suggesting that the same studies are being done over and over, and it’s time to actually learn something. Which sounds good to me. I also think it’s important to point out how often “LGBT” research is actually research on (usually white) gay men except when it’s being used to blame usually black bisexual men for spreading STIs). But I wonder about this quote: “He also questioned whether the LGBT research community was too inclusive. ‘It may be the case that in trying to be inclusive we have failed to recognise the exclusivity that some of our research requires,’ he said. Services labelled LGBT often serve ‘G’ and hopefully ‘L’, occasionally ‘B’ and rarely ‘T, he said. “How can we justify the fact that LGBT sexual health usually means gay men’s health? We accept a need to fund gay men’s health projects, but what about lesbian health, transgender health, bisexual health? In trying to be inclusive have we ‘played’ to the lowest common denominator?‘” “Lowest common denominator?” Does he mean what I think he means? ‘Cause if so, that’s fucked up.

And this piece on Bilerico about whether sexual orientation needs to be an immutable characteristic to deserve equal protection under the law is insightful and interesting, and also reminds me of a piece Girlfriend, Esq.. wrote on her brilliant legal blog about sex and sexuality back in March about whether political powerlessness is a good criterion for same. Both pieces are somewhat lengthy, but well worth reading. (And speaking of Girlfriend, Esq’s blog, she also expanded on the EHarmony settlement I mentioned in last week’s roundup.)

Have a lovely weekend! My bus is just pulling into Philadelphia, and I know I will.

Food and Self-Fashioning

I’m back! I’m now nicely settled in my new home and my life has been completely taken over by grad school (in a good way!), but I am determined to find some time to blog.
I kind of feel like writing about something that isn’t really all that connected to bisexuality. I suppose the only tenuous connection you can draw is that it has a lot to do with the body and the question of identity, which are issues that are also very tied to queerness, but that’s kind of the best I can do. Oh well! I promise there’s more queer stuff in the works after I blather for a while about vegetarianism.

No replacements allowed! (on gender bans in polyamory)

I asked my dear friend (and frequent commenter here) TGStoneButch if he’d mind turning his brilliant comment on “What’s so great about cock, anyway?” into our first guest post, since I loved what he had to say and wanted to see discussion about it happening here on the front page where it belonged, instead of hidden away in the comments. I think this is important stuff, and that his analysis of it is probably dead-on, and it’s not something I have enough personal experience with in this sort of queer context to feel comfortable writing about myself. Here’s what he sent me:

(This is a patchwork of several comments I made in this blog recently, which I have lovingly stitched together into a fairly cohesive whole, for your reading pleasure.)

I’m poly, have been for quite some time. When I have spoken to My last few partners (as well as other folks) about poly agreements, one of the common things that has come up is a ban on dating someone else of a similar gender. In My case, it has often gotten really specific to type of femme, and not larger categories like “women” or “men”, but I have heard about (and been the other gendered secondary/date in question of) partners being totally ok with a masculinely gendered partner dating/having a boy, if ze is primary partnered with a girl, or vice versa, and it not feeling nearly as scary as potentially being “replaced” by someone of “the same” gender. Which is how many describe it. A very bisexual phenomenon within hierarchical polyamory. (For monosexual polyamorous folks, a gender ban of similarly gendered folks would result in nobody to play with. We get the lucky extra set of rules. For non-hierarchical polyamorous folks, the whole primary/secondary thing is unlikely to apply.)

There is something in it that’s about perception of threat, and who is competition. An ex of Mine who subscribed to the “play with whoever you want as long as that person is not a femme like me,” said to Me once that if I decided to leave her for a (insert specific gender that ain’t hers), then there was nothing she could offer Me to measure up to that, but that it wasn’t cool for Me to play with a femme with a similar gender. Another femme I know objected specifically to her partner playing with a femme with a very similar gender and style, saying something about “it’s like ze wants to replace me!”.

I want particularly to examine the gender ban/allowance dynamic where it occurs most frequently in my own life; in the context of queer women/trans relationships. In my experience of this dynamic, there is often an established cross gender pairing, butch/femme or transmasculine/femme. Within that pairing, the masculinely gendered partner is limited in hir potential secondaries and casual partners, sometimes not allowed to date femmes at all, sometimes not allowed to date a certain kind of femme (this is where the fear of being replaceable idea may come in to play).

So, let’s take the more common one I’ve found, where the masculinely gendered partner is only allowed to date/partner with other masculinely gendered people. (No other femmes allowed, only one femme rules this roost.) Somehow, femmes are out of the realm of possibility (potentially because femmes are a threat? a replacement? competition?)…but other butches/bois/transmasculine folks are not. Why is it that butch/butch or masculine/masculine pairing (which I’m going to call boy/boy from now on for ease of writing only) is not a threat to butch/femme or transmasculine/femme pairing (which I’m going to call cross-gender pairings for ease of writing only)?

In my mind, this is directly linked to heterosexism and sexism. There is a way that this dismisses boy/boy dynamics as being about nothing but work (in the case of a boy servant) or sex/physical (in the case of sex/SM), or just not as “real” or satisfying. There is no romantic threat here–because boys don’t experience intimacy or love with each other? There is no Ds threat–because a boy submissive is so different from a femme one, or boy servants do such different work? There is no threat of this lover becoming primary–because boys can’t be primary with other boys, the “natural” order is cross gender pairing? There is no sexual threat–because boy/boy fucking couldn’t possibly replace cross gender sex?

I have to say that in my heart, as someone who has seen this from all the boy angles possible (the boy who is only allowed to date other boys, the boy who is dating the masculine partner, the boy dating the femme who is allowed to date who she wants regardless of gender but limits the genders of the people her masculine partner dates), I do experience this as dismissive to boy/boy dynamics. One of the reasons I now loudly identify as a fag (which I know is often misread as gay man), is because I want to communicate to potential femme partners of mine and the masculine folks I date that I do see boy/boy relationships as potentially primary, just as important, absolutely a potential threat in the exact same ways (though I also am very ethical as a poly person and don’t actually want to threaten primary relationships, my own or other people’s), all that and a bag of chips. I do not see them as lesser, less important, less meaningful, less vital to my life.

I have talked to other secondary boys (who date masculine partners, either in a het context or a queer women/trans context where there are gender bans like I described above), and I must say that I am not alone in feeling like boy/boy is often being treated as lesser, in a way that encompasses a lot of how secondary partners are mistreated and neglected, but is also particularly unique to that gendered rule. The bulk of them have been transguys and butches; I wonder if cisgender boys experience a similar dynamic. I know that one of the transguys I talked to felt like he was being treated as lesser precisely because he was trans.

I definitely feel like there is some heterosexism involved in that dynamic, where cross gender pairings are held up as the ideal, and boy/boy is dismissed as not even a potential threat. (To be clear, I would love for no poly arrangement to include fear of replacement, and perception of secondary folks and dates as potential threats, but I find that an unrealistic hope. And I think it is vital to not leave our emotional and highly personal perceptions of what is threat and what is not out of our analysis. I know, for example, that when a femme partner said to me in poly negotiations that she perceived someone as a threat because she was thinner than her, that we had some societal stuff going on, for sure.)

It’s not a blatantly sexist dynamic in the same way as a het guy who “lets” his gf get with other girls because girl/girl couldn’t possibly threaten his dick, but it still feels like sexism at work. A dynamic where any femme partner is a potential threat/replacement is one where femmes are in competition with each other, where femmes are seen as wanting to “steal” other femme’s partners, where femmes are seen as interchangeable, and that smacks of sexism to me. Just the idea that your gender is the essence (not one aspect but the core) of your value, your attractiveness, your identity as a partner (I’m not talking gender play here, but real world dynamics) feels inherently sexist to me.

Perhaps it may already be obvious already that gender specific bans often put transfolks in challenging situations. I will give two specific examples from My own trans life. I once met up with and was negotiating with a married cisgendered guy who was only allowed by his wife to submit to men. He assured me that he saw me as a man. When I asked whether his wife would also, he said, “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” and was surprised when I said that answer didn’t satisfy me and my poly ethics. (Needless to say, I did not play with him, for many reasons, actually.)

Another experience I had is particular to genderfluid folks. I spent many years identifying as a gender switch. (I frequently morphed between various high femme and masculine genders.) I was a secondary boy in a situation where I was literally “not allowed” to show up as or morph to femme genders, because the ftm I was playing with only had permission from his wife to play with boys. A gender ban could not allow for my gender at all.

That’s my 50c on the subject (definitely more than 2c for sure), and I would love to hear other people’s opinions and ideas.

Can you hear the crickets?

Hey there, blog-and-readers! I assure you, I have not forgotten about you. I’ve just been neglecting you lately because I’m moving on Sunday and holy crap, I always forget just how much work that is!
Once I’m set up in my new place, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about, but right now, there’s just nothing particularly bisexual about the dust bunnies under my dresser or the seeming impossibility of transporting my entire book collection from one city to another.
Another exciting day in the life of a bisexual superhero! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go clean out my closet. Hopefully Aviva has some deep thoughts to tide you over until I’m back…

Bisexual dating site “does not support” trans member, part 2

Speaking of my girlfriend, we had a conversation yesterday morning in which she made some brilliant points and I realized that I was so busy picking the details apart in my last post on this subject that I never zoomed back out and looked at the big picture — I did it in my head, but not on the page. So, to sum up:

I guess what it all comes down to (besides Tangowire being transphobic asshats) is that it’s very telling when a statement intended to convince people someone wasn’t acting in a discriminatory manner can actually reveal the problem to be worse than it first seemed. It shows the way transphobia and trans issues are completely misunderstood by the general public — and even by other letters in the LGBT community — that these beliefs can be so widely stated, and no one even realizes they’re offensive. It’s a more insidious form of prejudice, when people who truly believe they view and treat everyone equally have absorbed all the weird messages about trans people that are out there in our culture, and have never stopped to think about whether believing and acting on them could be discriminatory. After all, they would never say “trans people are gross and wrong,” don’t even believe it (consciously, at least), so how could anything they say be transphobic? (This goes back to a conversation I’ve had several times recently, even before I saw it on Racialicious and Feministing, about how much more useful it is to talk about the fucked-up things people say and do, rather than using those to draw conclusions about who they are. Because it’s awfully easy to respond to “You’re transphobic!” with “Am not! How could I be? I’m queer myself, and I have trans friends!” And it gets us nowhere. There needs to be a way to talk about what has been done or said, and whether it was harmful, without calling people bad and insuring they won’t listen to anything you have to say.)

One of the major problems is that only one trans narrative has really made it into the public consciousness. It’s the chrysalis analogy: you go in one thing, and come out something completely different, and while it’s happening you’re totally isolated. But that’s not everyone’s story, and it reveals a pretty deep misunderstanding of trans folks and the process of transition to assume it is. Granted, many trans people choose not to date during transition. Because they want to wait until they present the way they see themselves before getting into a relationship, because they’ve been told and they believe that no one could possibly want them when they’re in between, because if they choose the wrong person they can be in serious danger, etc. But it’s one thing and totally understandable to choose not to date during transition. It’s another thing and totally fucked up (not to mention untrue) to tell trans folks that no one wants them when they’re in between and they should just keep themselves to themselves until they fit a binary gender norm again. Regardless of how loudly the people saying so insist that they’re not transphobic.