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.

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.

This week is International Blog Against Racism Week. I’m not willing to let it pass without notice, but I also don’t know what to write. And really my thoughts on and analyses of racism are not the ones anyone should be reading. They’re not nuanced, developed, or aware enough; I’m working on that. In the meantime…

I cannot recommend the blogs Racialicious and The Angry Black Woman highly enough. And everyone should be reading brownfemipower’s Flip Flopping Joy!

And here are some links to IBARW posts, and just general brilliant, important things on race and racism I’ve read recently:

This post about cultural appropriation and the word “Hapa” was a worthwhile read in its own right and led me to this heart-wrenching account of racist bullying in middle school.

In response to the publishing industry white-washing of book covers (here’s one example), Coffeeandink is starting the Open Source Book Re-Covery Project, for reader-designed book covers that don’t pretend the protagonists are white. [Thanks to commenter and dear friend TGStoneButch, who pointed me toward both of the previous pieces]

K. Tempest Bradford has a series of pieces up at the Carl Brandon Society blog tracking genre fiction published by people of color. And speaking of the Carl Brandon Society blog, they also responded to a recent dust-up with an open letter about lows we don’t resort to even when we’re arguing.

Here’s nojojojo’s response to people’s assumptions that she might enjoy being angry all the time, and why she does it when it’s actually no fun at all.

And this is an absolutely brilliant post about the difference in how white and black female characters are written (when the latter are written at all), why Nyota Uhura being single in the original Star Trek was not empowering, and why her having a love interest is important and not a step down for her. (Mild Enterprise spoilers. And mentioning Enterprise, I feel the need to say both that on first viewing it is a fun, engaging movie — much better than I expected — and that, as my friend Natalie points out, on second viewing it is a cheerful, uplifting movie about genocide. Um.)

Go forth. Read about race and racism. Blog against racism. All year.

I’ve written a lot here about my experiences trying to come out to my father’s side of the family, particularly my paternal grandmother. Short version: she doesn’t hear me, and even if she did, she wouldn’t want to talk about it.

That context makes a conversation I had with my maternal grandmother the other night even more lovely and refreshing. I already know she got it that I’m queer — she’d asked me what my “friend” did for a living, but I figured that was good enough. Then two nights ago we were talking about the small family get-together she’s planning. One of my favorite cousins is going to be in town briefly and has a couple of hours free Sunday morning, so we’re all going to my grandmother’s house so we can see her. Yay. And while we were working out the details, out of the blue, my grandmother says to me “You know, Aviva, I don’t know if your girlfriend is in town this weekend, but of course she’s invited.”

…

!!!

…

Aw.

I can’t tell you how much I lit up. The moment I got off the phone I called Girlfriend, Esquire; I couldn’t wait to tell her. That step from knowing to accepting and welcoming feels warm and fuzzy and wonderful. I wish Girlfriend, Esq. was going to be in town this weekend (thought of course if she was I’d already have called and announced my intention to bring her). I’m almost upset that we’ll be away queer camping when the family gets together for Rush Hashanah, which is finally on a weekend. But I’ll bring her to something and introduce her around eventually. And it’s lovely that she’ll be actively invited, instead of me informing them she’s coming.

And it gets cuter. My grandmother continued on to tell me that she’s joined a mailing list for discount theater tickets, and ask me if there was anything I wanted to see. She made a point of telling me about The Temperamentals, a new play about the two men who founded the Mattachine Society.”It sounded interesting,” she told me, “I thought of you.” It does sound interesting, but I’m sure it was the gay premise that made her think of me. And, um, aw. I’m not the Mattachine Society’s biggest fan, but right now I am my grandmother’s.

I went to that wedding on Saturday. And no one said anything. Just in case any of you were waiting with bated breath to find out how it went, like I was. Yes, that’s right, not a word.

My tweets from the evening amused me, though:

Katy perry is playing and still no one is asking me about my sexuality…awesome!

Every woman has her price, and this evening was worth it for the chocolate covered strawberries.

And that pretty much tells you how it went. Apparently I’m out to my family now, and I never ever have to talk about it? Awesome, I guess? We’ll see how continuing to talk freely about my life goes. I’ll report anything interesting here, but apparently interesting things will not be happening.

On a brighter note, Girlfriend, Esq. and I had a delightful anniversary. Yay us!

*”My wedding” in in quotations because I have no intention at this point of ever getting married. It’s kinda funny to imagine what it might be like if I did, though.

I’m sitting on a bus to DC, on my way to my cousin’s wedding. It promises to be an interesting and exciting experience on the coming out front. I’ve written here before about my attempts to come out to my extended family. Basically, I feel pretty strongly about not sitting everybody down and making a big Announcement About My Sexual Orientation. That’s just not how I live my life. As someone I recently dated observed, my matter-of-factness about being queer is a political stance. The casual mention tells people both that I’m queer, and that I don’t consider it a big deal and don’t expect them to, either. (Obviously, in some ways I do consider it a big deal. I spend hours writing and talking about it, and have a whole politic evolved from it. But I also expect it to be one more fact about me that people will learn by interacting with me, not some big drama-causing deal-breaker; so I treat it that way and expect them to as well.) So about six months ago I started mentioning my girlfriend around them any time the conversation gave me the slightest pretext. I also started talking much more openly about my passion and convictions around and activism for LGBT political issues. My aunts and grandmother are the kind of women who hear “girlfriend” to mean “friend who is a girl,” but very few people talk about one of their platonic friends that much or in that way. Last month at my sister’s graduation, my mother helped me out by following up a comment about Girlfriend, Esq, with “And you two have been seeing each other seriously for a couple of years now.” My grandmother is really good at denial, and tends to just not hear things she doesn’t want to, but come on. A couple of weeks ago I asked my aunt whose daughter is getting married to let me know if she ended up having a brunch or anything on Sunday, since I’d be staying in town anyway to celebrate my second anniversary with my girlfriend [which, um, !!!!!] on Monday. I was being far too subtle to achieve my actual goal, which was finagling Girlfriend, Esq. an invitation to any family gathering that might be happening on Sunday — but I was definitely not being the slightest bit subtle about being in a long-term romantic relationship with another girl. You’d have to be really trying to miss it at this point.

So imagine my surprise when my sister called me a few weeks ago to tell me that there was all kinds of drama going down because I’d been outed to that side of the family.

Yeah. I am not making this up.

It seems one of my aunts noticed on my Facebook page that I’m seeking both men and women (I’ve since started using SGO, which lets me be more specific about both my own gender and who I’m seeking, but that’s what it said at the time. Also, I’d like to point out here that the thing about Facebook is that by friending someone, you’re pretty much saying that you want to know about their life. I’d even go farther and say that you’re agreeing, within reason, to be okay with anything you might learn about their life through an internet portal that you, after all, asked to look through. Just sayin’.) This is, mind you, an aunt to and in front of whom I’ve mentioned my girlfriend multiplle times. But apparently Facebook conveyed to her what I had failed to, and she decided that the only possible thing to do about it was tell my grandmother. (Maybe next she’ll tell her I’m an atheist? That’s also on my profile, and I bet my grandmother would find it just as upsetting.) The same grandmother who recently heard my mother describe me as seriously seeing a girl. And she is terribly, terribly hurt that I never told her.

…

Yeah. Imagine how she’d feel if I’d actually never told her…

I called her just after this happened for unrelated reasons — my mother and sister had to cancel their plans to come to the wedding at the last minute, so I needed to make sure I’d have a place to stay. (My grandmother had asked a cousin where I was staying, and my cousin had said “I don’t know, with H_____?” Wrong, but a reasonable guess. To which my grandmother responded with deep suspicion and demanded to know who H_____ is. Never mind that I have used the phrase “My girlfriend H_____” to her on multiple occasions. I am such a sneaky beasty, I should be ashamed of myself.) I was on tenterhooks when I spoke to her, since all the grapevine had told me for days was how awfully hurt she feels about this, but she said nothing. So I said nothing. And this is why she feels no one ever tells her anything…I’m not sure how I was supposed to win this one.

So it should be an exciting weekend with the family. I’ll be there alone, without my mother and sister to back me up (though I’m somewhat glad now that I didn’t try as hard as I meant to to get Girlfriend, Esq. invited, since now is probably not the best time for her to have to deal with my family.) God alone knows how anyone actually feels or what they’ll think it appropriate to say. I always enjoy the intense heteronomativity of weddings even without all the drama — and this one promises to really deliver on that.

Of course, since no one ever talks about what they really mean, probably instead someone will observe that I’ve gained back a bit of the weight I’d lost the last time they saw me. Maybe I can throw them by agreeing — after all, it’s true, and I don’t think it has the negative load that they do, and refused to take it as a compliment last time when they observed that I was thinner. And perhaps I’ll be asked again when we’re going to be getting together for my wedding, and everyone will pretend there’s no particular reason they’re starting to ask now, other than my arrival at the “wrong” side of 25. But I have every intention of continuing to mention Girlfriend, Esq. both as my girlfriend and by name, and that could make things exciting now that they “know.” Or I suppose they could continue to hear it as me gushing about my BFF. It’ll take more effort, but so far they’ve been willing to expend it, why stop now?

Wish me luck! At least once I get through it I have an anniversary to celebrate — best reward ever.

Following the Putting the “B” in LGBT Summit was Bi Lines II, an evening of readings and performances by bi writers, musicians, and one playwrite. It was a pretty well-put-together evening, it was neat to see Edmund White read, and I’ve decided I like bi songwriter Rorie Kelly and would like to check out more of her work. But the highlight of the evening was the excerpt from Erika Kate McDonald’s one-woman show, Fluid. In fact, Erika Kate herself was one of the highlights of the Summit. She’s great company, and I was delighted to learn she lives in Brooklyn.

I first saw Fluid over a year and a half ago on a date with Girlfriend, Esq. In fact, when I started this blog I was disappointed that it had been so long that I didn’t feel I remembered it well enough to write about it. So it was great to get to see a bit of it again — my favorite part, no less! Play-by-play after the cut, with pictures. I apologize for the quality of the pictures; I took them on my phone on the spur of the moment.

She starts off by musing about all of the people who ask if being bisexuals means one’s attractions are 50/50. Who does this question serve? Who is the answer for? Is it for her? She doubts it, and so do I. Still, she decides to figure it out. And then she totally captured my heart by doing math. Behold:

I notice now that she starts off with the givens that people are either male or female, and that pairings are m/f, f/f, or f/m.  I don’t remember having a problem with the way that was said, though, so possibly she got a bit more nuanced with it. I honestly don’t remember.

The next page, which I missed taking a picture of because it went by so quickly and I hadn’t yet decided to get them all, simply said “HOW GAY AM I?” And then we were off and running figuring it out. First we look at the past…

I don’t even remember what all of that stood for. Other than URMRF, which was unconsummated reasonably monogamous romantic friendships. Still, looking at it I always crack up, and hearing her go through explaining it is even better.

Like in the Klein Grid, current behavior and thoughts about the future are both important here.

I love the realization that community matters to this.  I truly believe that the people one spends time with and their values affect one’s behavior — I know spending so much of my time in women&trans spaces and radical lefty queer communities has made a difference in my dating life.  And “Genetic Factors: Data not available” makes me giggle.

Are you ready? Drumroll, please…

And then she went out into the world armed with that self-knowledge, and…promptly fell in love with a boy.

Yeah. I love it. See it if you get a chance.  Or anything else she does; rumor has it she’s working on a new piece.

I’ve spent the past…oh…6 hours of my weekly writing date (it’s not usually that long, but work was canceled today due to lack of work) chatting with my friends, eating two meals, discussing linguistics and how stupid men who believe women aren’t really funny are, reading comics, joining Twitter, and generally doing everything but writing. Maybe I should try to actually get some work done before I give up and go home? No, never mind, it sounds like my friend’s new gentleman friend is coming by and I’ll get to meet him. You all don’t care if I never post again because I have the attention span of a gnat, do you?

Right. Um. Trying again on Thursday. I’m on a train to Philadelphia (Yay Trans Health Conference!) so there’s no internet and really very little to distract me. [Aaaand now the PTHC is in the past, and I failed to give you all a heads up that I'd be there so anyone else who would be could say hello. Oops. Next year.]

I spent Saturday May 30th at the Bi Writers’ Association and NYC’s LGBT Community Center’s Putting the “B” in LGBT Summit. It was an interesting day. The organizers clearly tried to pack a weekend conference into one day, and the experience suffered for it — everything ran over and got increasingly behind schedule, and all of the panels had too many people in too short a time slot to effectively have a conversation. Nevertheless, there was lots of good networking, and some very interesting things were said. And while the opening plenary was made up entirely of people of the same race and within the same age range, that did change somewhat as the day went on — not as much as I’d have liked, but some. It was clear someone was trying.

Robyn Ochs gave the keynote. I’d never seen her speak before, and I was very impressed. She’s smart and engaging and funny and seems to have good queer, gender, etc. politics. I’m happy to have her representing my movement — which is good, because, um, she does. There are very few bigger names in bi activism out there. So I’m delighted she’s so on the ball.

For example, she made me very happy by acknowledging that the LGBT movement has lots of inclusion problems, and that we’d be focusing on the way bisexuals are often marginalized because it was the topic of this particular summit, not because it was the only or most important marginalization happening within the community. Yay.

She talked about how the ways to be visible (to most people) as bisexual at all mirror the most common stereotypes about bisexuals, thus reinforcing them, and how that and the way the existing language supports binaries leads to a lack of positive images of bi folk. She talked about the importance of choosing a wide range of messages and spokespeople, rather than only “easily digestible” ones. And I got a moment of being quite pleased with myself when she suggested that we think about the kind of resources we want to see out there and then go out and make them.

The first panel was “Bisexuality: Exploding the Myths,” and the only thing I really remember about it at this point is that Ignacio Rivera was on it and as brilliant as always. My notes remind me that I’m always amused when people say things like “You can’t have it both ways” in contexts like this. On the “Bi Community Panel: Telling Our Stories,” people talked about the ways DADT, job discrimination, immigration, etc. impacted their lives. We’ve all heard these stories before, and they’re touching and enraging every time.

During “Crafting the Message: Putting the ‘B’ in LGBT,” people talked about news stories about queer issues, and how important it us to quote bisexuals as well as just teh gays about how they’re affected. Particularly of note was Joshua Lynsen of the Washington Blade saying that he makes a point of contacting bisexuals for comments. He gave out his card so anyone present who wanted to could add hirself to his contact list. (Although now that I actually look up what’s he’s written for the Blade, I’m not so sure I want to plug him…”Black Opposition to Gay Marriage Remains Strong?” I’m so over that meme. And what ever happened to not calling it “gay” marriage, anyway?)

The closing plenary discussion was less a panel and more a whole bunch of people each getting to speak once — that’s what you get when you put something like two dozen people on a panel. Someone made the irritating assertion that the trans community is pulling ahead of the bi community in the race to our rights, which is problematic on any number of levels. (Can we just agree never to ever say again that anything is the last acceptable prejudice? Please? And “bi inclusion is the unnoticed stepchild of trans inclusion?” For fuck’s sake. I wish I’d written down who actually said that.) I don’t remember most of what was said but bisexual and New York State Assembly Member Micah Kellner was there, and seemed pretty decent for a politician. And you know, he was open about his bisexuality during the campaign, and that’s pretty awesome.

Things I was less thrilled with: It always strikes me as unfortunate when people say things like “In this movement, bisexual men and woman fall through the cracks.” So many people fall through the cracks of that statement. And a surprising number of people who did talk about gender in non-binary terms and even spoke explicitly about bisexuals and trans folks as allies to each other then turned around and used phrases like “opposite sex.” But all in all, I’m very glad I went. If they have it again next year I’ll go again.

Next up: That night’s Bi Lines II performance! (Or at least my favorite segment of it.) Tomorrow’s writing date day again…

]]> http://bifurious.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/putting-the-b-in-lgbt/feed/ 8 Aviva http://bifurious.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/the-two-in-bisexual/ http://bifurious.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/the-two-in-bisexual/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 18:14:06 +0000 Aviva http://bifurious.wordpress.com/?p=375 ]]>

As Jen pointed out in a comment a few days ago, The Bisexual Index has a great take on which two things the “bi” in “bisexuality” really refers to:

Bisexual isn’t about there being only “two sexes”

Some people get hung up on the ‘bi’ and protest that gender isn’t binary. In traditional dictionaries:

• Homosexual is defined as “attracted to the same sex”
• Heterosexual is defined as “attracted to the opposite sex”

So why then dismiss bisexuality as being about “men and women” when the definitions of hetero- and homo- don’t mention those? In this modern age with a wider understanding of gender some would re-state those as:

• Homosexual means “attracted to people of broadly the same gender”
• Heterosexual means “attracted to people of broadly a different gender”

In fact many people say there’s more than two genders, but if two options are either “the same as me” or “different to me” then we think it’s clear that “both” can refer to those two options rather than two perceived sexes.

I love this. Really love it. I’ve written here before about finding the word “bisexual” problematic but feeling strongly about using it anyway. In the past few days, as this way of thinking sinks into my psyche, I’m feeling less like the word is really all that flawed.

There are a lot of genders different from my own (and each other), and several that are similar to mine as well. But I’m perfectly comfortable describing my sexuality as attraction to both similar and different genders. It’s not always the similarities or differences that I get off on or that draw me to someone (though sometimes it is), but as a way of describing the group of people I might potentially be interested in, it works for me. It’s big enough to not make anyone invisible or deny their existence.

If I continue to have a problem with the word, it’s that it implies one is both hetero- and homosexual in a way that encourages people to refer to a bisexual’s “queer portion” or “straight half”. As far as I’m concerned bisexuality is a complete identity in and of itself, not a mishmash of other things. It doesn’t look like a pie chart unless you want it to. But, while it’s something to keep thinking about, I can deal with that for now. I don’t think any of the other words at my disposal are much better.

My very sincere thanks to The Bisexual Index for pointing this out to me. It’s delightful.