On Thursday, October 16, approximately 60 attendees were blissfully exposed to diverse voices and stories from the Bi-side of the Boston LGBTQ community. The event was co-sponsored by SpeakOUT Boston, the City of Cambridge GLBT Commission, the Bisexual Resource Center, and the Cambridge Public Library. Caitlin Drechsler, a member of Cambridge’s GLBT Commission, welcomed the audience and introduced the moderator Ellyn Ruthstrom, the executive director of SpeakOUT and board president of the Bisexual Resource Center. Ellyn delivered an empowering and intellectually digestible presentation about bisexuality. Presented in a fashion that was similar to an undergraduate 101 course, her short presentation was concise and gave context for the panelists and audience members to refer to during the duration of the panel discussion that followed her introductory information.
Ellyn noted the word bisexual can have many meanings depending on who is asked, and short definitions don’t always grasp the complexity of the orientation. There’s also a difference between community and personal identity labels. Using “bisexual” as a community label unites all who have multi-gender attractions and aides in linking politically. Whereas personal identity labels such as “fluid” and “queer,” speak to an individual's labeling preference. Ellyn also spoke of the Kinsey Scale, a measuring system designed by Dr. Alfred Kinsey to describe the spectrum of sexuality. In addition to reviewing the statistics on the percentage of bisexuals within the queer community (about 50%), Ellyn explained that according to Dr. Mimi Hoang, the stages of coming out as bi are different from gay and lesbians. Bi people often come out later in life due to having a longer coming out process, and the journey is not always a confidence builder due to misperceptions from monosexual individuals about bisexual identities.
To begin the panel discussion, Ellyn asked the four panelists: What does bisexual mean to you?Panelist Priscilla Lee is a mother and educator with the Department of Human Services Community Learning Center and she shared the intersections of her Chinese heritage, dating diverse genders, and navigating her identities while engaging with her parents, students, and colleagues. Being with a long-term same-sex partner often has others identifying her as a lesbian, but she asserted that the bisexual label “feels authentic to me.”Tangela Roberts is a second year Ph.D student at UMass Boston in Counseling Psychology who is also a facilitator of Bisexual Women of Color's monthly Bi People of Color Coffee & Chat.Originally from Alabama, she spoke of the rigid gender roles and limited gender expression imposed on African-American women in her community. When she first thought of coming out as bi, she stated, “I didn’t think it would be hard for me, but it would be hard for my family.”Charles Strauss is a psychotherapist who also facilitates the Bisexual and Bi-curious Men’s Group at Fenway Health. He spoke about the Klein Scale, created by Dr. Fritz Klein, which accounts for various types of attractions and change over a person’s life and how that scale often helps give legitimacy to the experiences of his bi male clients. He highlighted gender expression, masculinity, and societal gender roles and commented that “coming into your bisexuality and the beauty of it” is how people become their authentic selves.Alyssa Marino Medina is a Latina bisexual tryke who pushes gender roles while working as an engineer. She spoke of why it is important to explain her different identities, “Whom I am attracted to has nothing to do with my gender identity. The fact that someone is bi is not a neat category. The fact that someone is trans is not a neat category. Everyone wants nice neat categories. Bisexual and trans are separate.” It is her experience that being in “the middle” is what others find uncomfortable.After the panel discussion, the audience had an opportunity to engage with the panelists with a Q&A session. A social worker asked Charles Strauss how local organizations can be more bi-inclusive and he suggested that when providing services to LGBTQ clients to meet them where they are, let clients speak of their own experience, and not assume how they identify. A high school student of African descent asked Tangela Roberts if she felt it would be more challenging to come out as a bisexual black male than as a gay black male and if the black community is less accepting of bisexuals compared to white communities. She responded that in some black communities bisexuality is less affirmed and accepted due to a stronger intellectual understanding of monosexual identities and a strong religious tradition. The last question for the evening was directed to all the panelists regarding coming out in the workplace. Priscilla Lee suggested to do it in gradual steps and not to feel you have to come out to everyone in a work setting. Charles chimed in and advised displaying one LGBTQ item in your workspace, than maybe another, and then build up to talking to trusted colleagues.The evening concluded with a reception, providing an opportunity for audience members and panelists to network with each other, local bi and LGBT activists and community members. To stay connected with the bisexual community of Boston visit the Bisexual Resource Center’s Meetup page , Boston Bisexual Women’s Network, Bisexual Women of Color (BIWOC), and Fenway Health’s Bisexual and Bi-curious Men’s support group.Gwendolyn Henry, EdM, MSLIS is a writer, librarian, archivist, mental health advocate, and vegan personal chef. She is the founder of Bisexual Women of Color (BIWOC), an online and in-person support and discussion group based in Boston, MA. She was recently awarded the 2014 Unsung Hero Award by the Bisexual Resource Center for her work in the Boston bi community and for founding Bi Women of Color (BIWOC) and Bi People of Color social and support groups.
Seeking Community to Strengthen My Bisexual Identity
This week is Bisexual Awareness Week and I am honored to be a contributor to the SpeakOUT blog this month. When first asked to write for the blog I began reflecting on why I made the decision to join the SpeakOUT family in the first place. The simplest answer to this question is that I was in need of a community. Although I have long identified as bisexual, and have other friends who identify within the LGBTQ spectrum, I had never before consciously sought out a community of like-minded individuals within the queer community. The topic of community seems to be the perfect blog topic, especially for a week that is intended to bring our bi (and other non-monosexually identified) community together.It is difficult for me to pinpoint precisely when I realized I needed the support of a community. I have always identified as bisexual. I have never doubted or questioned this identity, and for a long time I thought that this assuredness precluded me from the need for community support. It took a long time for me to realize that I do, in fact, need others who understand my identity, who know how I feel when other people in my life don’t know how to relate. I think I began to capture a glimpse of how validating a support system can be shortly after I moved to Boston. A friend of mine came out to me as bi and began to confide in me about his thoughts and feelings on the matter. The conversations we had were some of the first in a very long time to get me to open up about my own experiences, and I was almost surprised at how relieved I felt to have someone to talk to.Another signifying event on my road to seek out a community was my marriage to my husband. This, of course, was a wonderful event and I have no doubt in my mind that I love him deeply. However, I now unintentionally give the impression of being monosexual, and heterosexual at that. It’s not an unusual experience for bisexuals to be presumed to hold a certain identity based upon the relationship that they are in. I'm not particularly comfortable with being mistaken for either of those identities – not that there's anything wrong with being either of those descriptors, but there's not much comfort being caught in a perpetual state of mistaken identity – and so needed a way to show my involvement with the community in an attempt to validate my own identity.I know that validity is a question that comes up for many bisexual individuals – we talk a lot about bi erasure and invisibility. We are tired of being told that we don't exist, that we're either standing half in the closet or that we're just experimenting with our sexualities. A personal favorite from my own life experience is the time I was accused of trying to be trendy - a moment of bi erasure that I choose to find more humorous than offensive. Due to the mere prevalence of these topics I did not want to make them the focus of this particular post, but it is difficult to ignore them completely when talking about the importance of community. By banding together and discussing these issues we are able to educate, and to hopefully eradicate, the stereotypes held against our community.There are two recent occurrences in recent memory of the bi community banding together. The first of these is the recent Twitter campaign started by @HuffPostGay around the hashtag #WhatBiLooksLike. This launched an immediate virtual community within the Twittersphere of bisexually-identified individuals, providing a lookbook of sorts sampling the variety of people who identify somewhere under the non-monosexual umbrella. A quick search of the hashtag today shows that the community is reappropriating its use for Bi Awareness Week. If you’re not familiar with the campaign I recommend you run a search for it, even if you’re not on Twitter. It’s a great way to find others who are openly celebrating their identities, and if you are on Twitter you may find a handful of new interesting people and organizations to follow.A second occurrence of the bi community coming together is currently happening right here in the Boston area. By extension of my involvement with SpeakOUT, I currently have the pleasure of sitting on a planning committee for a panel discussion called “Stories from the B Side: Bisexual Voices” that intends to raise awareness on bi experiences for anyone kind enough to listen. Yes, this is partially a shameless plug for the event, but that's not why I'm bringing this up (though if you would like more information take a look at the event page here). While sitting in one of our meetings, I found myself for the first time knowingly in a room filled (almost) entirely with bisexually-identified individuals. It was admittedly both humbling and terrifying at the same time. Humbling, I think, because I felt honored to be sitting on a committee of people working toward a common goal for our community. Terrifying, perhaps for the same reason.So why, you ask, did I choose to become involved specifically with SpeakOUT? That is, why did I involve myself with an organization that is geared toward the entire LGBTQ spectrum rather than in a bi-specific group such as Boston’s own Bisexual Resource Center? I definitely believe in the importance of sticking together as a unified bi community and am glad organizations such as the BRC are out there, I also believe in the importance of remaining connected to the diversity of the wider queer community. The more people within the LGBTQ spectrum who understand the perspectives of the non-monosexual community, the more allies we will have and the more visible we will be. We must stand together as a unified bisexual community, and we must also situate ourselves within the wider queer community and our allies in order to truly have a voice.Jennifer Guneratne is a board member of SpeakOUT Boston and assists with event planning and social media for the organization.