By George GrattanHere’s what I expected: Hard folding chairs. Bad instant coffee. Binders full of “how to” materials. Nervous strangers. A chilly church basement. Assorted bagels. A long day with an early start. Sincere interest alternating with jaded boredom.Yup: I was heading into a training session.In this case, the one-day Fall 2014 Speaker Training for SpeakOUT Boston, the nation’s oldest LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual) speakers bureau. And I was heading into a room with 21 fellow trainees, 6 trainers, and a few other volunteers.At first, I got what I expected, for the most part, with some key differences and some critical improvements. For one thing: the instant coffee was really good. No, really.More importantly, I got a surprise almost from the start in the group’s diversity. Every identity along the LGBTQIA acronym seemed to be represented, and by more than one person, which is rare in circles that tend to be disproportionately full of cisgender gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women.
As a bisexual cisgender man, I was floored to discover myself just one of at least four in the room—that rarely happens, even at meetings of bisexual organizations. The transgender and intersex communities were well represented as well, with at least 5 people present identifying their sex and/or gender identities in these ways. Allies were in the circle in the form of two PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of LGBTQ People) members, one a retired dad with a lesbian daughter, the other a grandmother with a gender non-conforming granddaughter.We hailed not only from around Boston and Massachusetts, as I had expected would be the case, but also from New Hampshire, Colorado, Illinois, and even California, with representatives of the American Institute of Bisexuality in attendance from Chicago and Los Angeles. All in all, it was, to me, a pleasantly and surprisingly eclectic and engaged group of would-be speakers, veteran speakers and trainers, and other volunteers.
And the food? The food was actually amazing. All day. Loads of fresh fruit. Greek yogurt. Peanut butter. Good bagels. Tacos for lunch. Homemade cookies, fresh-baked in the afternoon. Go figure.But we weren’t there, officially, to nosh. Rather, we were drawn by the promise of becoming ready to “tell the truths” of our lives to a wide range of audiences—from high school health classes to college and university clubs to church-affiliated social justice groups to corporate diversity training gatherings—in order “to create a world free of homo-bi-trans-phobia and other forms of prejudice.” Simple, right?Far from it. Even for those of us with a background in theater, teaching, presenting, or others forms of performance (many of us in the room), the prospect of getting up in front of groups of people and telling some of our most emotionally intimate, significant, and transformative life moments in order to foster greater understanding was daunting. I confess to having had more than one bout of butterflies during the day, and this was only training.Still, as one veteran trainer told us in a session on dealing with fear, “You can’t stop the butterflies from coming, but you can teach them to fly in formation.” Marshaling the nervous energy that comes with public speaking—which ranks tops in surveys of what people fear most, along with death, snakes, and spiders—is a key part of being able to put oneself “out there” to the audience in an authentic way, and we picked up a number of tips and tricks and time-tested techniques for doing so. From breath control, to articulation, enunciation, and projection, to providing story hooks and sensory details, we learned how to craft stories a few minutes long and deliver them with some sense of calm and authenticity.
As is nearly always the case with such trainings, by far the best moments of the day occurred during small group sessions, where we got a chance to drill down into our stories and work on story-shaping with smaller teams. I found myself moved to tears at hearing the expression of a father’s anguish over the fear his lesbian daughter had felt at coming out in the wake of Matthew Shepard’s death. I shared in the rueful, painful laughs offered by a bisexual woman as she recounted two instances in which those in the LGBTQIA community who should have known better had called her very identity into question. I marveled at the story of a transgender child having found near-instant acceptance and support of his transition from his grandmother. I enjoyed hearing the journey one young woman made from being a combative outsider because of her “big gay family” (she has a lesbian mother and grandmother) to being proud of her own queer identity. I went cold and clammy with recognition at the story told by a fellow bisexual man about the moment he felt “found out” by his high school classmates in a publically humiliating way. Hearing the truths of these lives transformed me, and inspired me to try to tell my story in better, more powerful, more honest and transparent ways.
In a morning session I worked on a tale about first realizing I was “different” when, in the fourth grade, I was told I couldn’t give Valentine’s Day cards to both a little girl and a little boy I had crushes on, and about my sense of disappointment in not getting any recognition of my affections from either of them. It’ll make a cute story, and will probably work well for younger audiences and high schools, especially if I remember to include the sensory details of the construction paper and the paste on one’s hands alongside the emotional roller-coaster of waning childhood and its first crushes. By the afternoon session, I felt moved and supported enough to tell a story that plunges a bit deeper into my heart, that of coming out as bisexual only “partially” in my twenties, and of “completing” that process with my family just this past year, including coming out to my mother on Mother’s Day. (Yeah, I’m working on a pitch to Hallmark…)The helpful critiques and support I got from the small groups and the larger groups throughout the day were immeasurably valuable. I’m not quite ready to tell my stories in front of a “real” audience, but I’m close. A few “shadowing” opportunities to see how it’s done will allay my lingering hesitancy, which is great because SpeakOUT requires exactly that kind of observation before sending new speakers out to be paired with veterans to give their first talks.
I’ll be honest: I’m as much of a cynic about these types of trainings (having been to a number of them over the years on various topics) as I am an idealist about the value of the work they’re training people for. I came into this training prepared to endure, and to check several requirements off a list, expecting I’d pick up a few tips and techniques and maybe gain some confidence, but not much more. Mostly, I expected my butt would be killing me from sitting on a folding chair all day.(Okay, that last one did happen.)I didn’t expect I’d be crying at more than one story during the day. I didn’t expect I’d get to engage with such a diverse group of people. I didn’t expect the lead trainer and all his assistants would be knowledgeable, funny, kind, tough, supportive, and capable of sticking to a schedule. (Wow.) I didn’t know I’d meet so many fellow bisexuals, along with so many transgender people, and parents, and grandparents, and young activists. I didn’t know I’d conquer my own fears enough to speak in front of the whole group at the end of the day, which I would have told you I absolutely wouldn’t do if you’d asked me a day or two before. And I really didn’t know I’d find myself in a group-hug at the end of a long day, in a chilly church meeting room, not squirming, but enjoying these people, and wishing I had more time to spend with them. I don’t “do” group hugs.But we’d all earned this one.So, I guess I’ll be getting out there on some SpeakOUT engagements as soon as possible, because if I learned one thing in training it’s this: everyone gets a lot more from a SpeakOUT experience than they’re expecting. Even cynical idealists like me.
Stories from the B-Side: Bisexual Voices
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.