My usual strategy with the words cisgender/cissexual/cis is simply to use them, maybe with a link to the Wikipedia entry, and not explain further. I think this is a useful approach, as it allows people to educate themselves if they’ve never seen it before, but takes for granted that it’s a sensible word to choose and doesn’t seek to validate its place in the language — sometimes, I think, acting as if something is perfectly normal has more power than arguing for its place.

But I was having dinner with Kate Bornstein (!!!) a few weeks ago and discussing why the word is useful enough and enough of an improvement to justify trying to convince people to use a new, made-up word, and I wanted to get some of those thoughts down here. Particularly with all of the discussion that’s been happening lately in blogs and on Twitter about the topic. (links so not in chronological order, even when responding to each other. Sorry. Some older posts I think are terribly important, and which have definitely shaped my thinking on the subject: Julia Serano — whose book “Whipping Girl introduced me to the term and has influenced me hugely in general, Questioning Transphobia, eminism. I could swear there was something on Taking up Too Much Space, too, but I can’t seem to find it right now. [EDIT: this one. Thanks, Cedar.)

I have the usual reasons, which I've read and talked about ad nauseum. Mostly that I think the alternatives are so bad. "Non-trans" is best, and even has some appeal for the way it centers trans experience and makes it cis folks who are "not" something. I sometimes use it as well. But all of the "bio" and "genetic" is really problematic. I like to say "We're all made of biology, thanks." We all have genes. To use "bio" and "genetic" to draw a distinction between cis and trans people implies that trans people are biologically, genetically (really) something other than their authentic genders; describing someone as a man who is genetically female undermines his maleness. (And besides, how did you know? Have you looked at his genes?) And, as Cedar points out at Taking Up Too Much Space, describing bodies as male or female based on biology also requires picking and choosing among the facts to support one's conclusion. Ditto "female-" and "male-" bodied, which give the sense that this person is really, underneath everything, the gender they were assigned at birth -- and is equally choosy about its facts. And I hope the problems in describing cis people as "natural" men or women are obvious -- describing trans people as "unnatural" is one of transphobia's favorite moves. The subtext of all of these pairs of words: "bio" and "trans," "genetic" and "trans," "physical" and "trans," is "real" and "less real." Using "cis" and "trans" describes different experiences and leaves them free to be of equal value.

What I found myself articulating about "cis" to Kate is not only that I feel it isn't othering like the above examples, but that I think it really puts trans and cis people on meaningfully equal ground by describing gender not in terms of naturalness but as a journey, a way of getting from one place to another. After all, no one is born a man or a woman. We all start out babies, we all grow from that starting point to whatever shape adulthood takes for us (if we get that far). Trans means "across" and "cis" means "on the same side." I got to be a cis woman by pretty much staying where I started. It worked for me, so I stayed put. I had to grow up into it, to figure out what "woman" meant to me and how I wanted to embody it, but I didn't have to cross the same major boundaries to get here. Trans women got to be women by journeying here, crossing more borders than I had to. It seems to me that framing it that way, as the story of how we got where we are, does more to put trans and cis people on equal ground than any other way of describing it. I think that's worth asking people to learn a new word and integrate it into their vocabularies.

As for the question of whether it's okay to call non-trans people "cisgender" -- I'm going to go with an unqualified "yes" here, regardless of what Helen Boyd may say. It is important for oppressed groups to be able to name their oppression and their oppressors. Which does not mean that all cis people are oppressive -- if it's not about you, don't make it about you. But we all live, and participate to some extent or another, in an oppressive system. There have to be ways to talk about that, and the ways oppressed people choose to name it in order to talk about it are likely to be way less fucked up and play into the system way less than the way the dominant group would feel comfortable having things named. (If I see one more suggestion that cis doesn't need to be named because there's nothing to talk about, one is either trans or unremarkable...and that's often at the root of these objections, the implication that we and trans people might be equals. No term is going to make many of these people happy.) And "cis" is a descriptive term, not an insult -- or an identity. Because of course the counter-argument is often "You can't call me cis if I don't identify as cis!" But of course you don't identify as cis. You've never had to think about it. You identify as normal. Being white, able-bodied and cis are not nearly as much part of my conscious identity as being queer, Jewish, and a woman; they're not axes of oppression for me. But that doesn't mean they should go unnamed, that no one should get to call me able-bodied because I don't have to think about my ability level on a day-to-day basis, don't feel able-bodied on the inside. (I do, actually. Now. But I had to learn to.) I also disagree with Helen's assertion that "Telling me, & other partners whose lives are profoundly impacted by the legal rights / cultural perceptions of trans people, that we are 'not trans' implies that we are also not part of the trans community;" or at least that that isn't as it should be. You know what? Being an ally, caring passionately about this stuff and pouring tons of my time and energy into it, having trans people among my closest and most intimate friends, even having partnered with trans people, doesn't make me trans. Part of the community maybe, but I'll leave that up to the community. "Allies" doesn't mean "not invested in what happens to trans people," and really, we shouldn't be picking our terminology to make allies who are part of the dominant group feel better. If they can't understand that not everything said about cis people is about them, can't let the people in the oppressed group talk about their experiences in a way that's meaningful to them and helps them see what they need to do about it, what kind of allies are they?

I do agree with Helen that it's important to recognize the difference between cissexual and cisgender, which I would put as the difference between feeling that your body feels right to you and feeling that your gender identity aligns with the sex you were assigned at birth. Cissexual folks don't feel the need to transition, because their bodies are appropriately sexed for them, but may not have gender identities society considers congruent with that -- for example, I would say that butch dykes, in general, are cissexual but not necessarily cisgender. My understanding is that this is a recognized difference between the words rather than simply my own interpretation, but I could be wrong about that. And using "cis" as shorthand for both can get a little bit tricky and confusing; perhaps we should be using the long form more of the time to be clear on exactly what we mean. But I still think that "cisgender, ""cissexual," and "cis" are not only the best we have but a really positive addition to the language, and I intend to do as much as I can to get them into  common usage. [EDIT: OK, I came back to try and rephrase this one and decided, after much tangling myself up, that it's not something I have a firm enough handle on to be explaining. Really important work is being done on defining these terms relative to each other and to "transgender" and "transsexual"  -- you can see some of it in the comments -- but I'm not the right person to be doing it. So until I have something more clear to say, I'm just going to skip it.]

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…

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