"We've gone way beyond what I ever thought was possible. We're not anywhere near where I think we should be, but we've gone way beyond what I imagined was possible. When I started doing activism around bisexuality, we were fighting to be acknowledged... we were fighting to have our existence recognized, to have our names spoken out loud..." Robyn Ochs
Bi Politic: The Boston Bisexual Resource Center
film transcript
Interviews with
Robyn Ochs, Marcia Deihl, and Wayne Bryant
a film by Bill Burleson Copyright BiCities! Productions, 2003
The film Bi Politic: The Boston Bisexual Resource Center can be made able for broadcast, classrooms, and group showings. Also, this transcript may be made available for reprinting.
For more information, or to obtain a copy of the video, email me at bill_tcbop.org
Robyn Ochs: I didn't know anyone who was bisexual...or I didn't know I knew anyone who was bisexual. I was absolutely convinced that if I told anyone, I would loose all my friends, that I would be an outcast from society. I really had this feeling of impending doom. And so I basically---I was in college so---I was in college in the second half of the nineteen seventies. So, there I was, in college, writing in my journal, and not ever telling another human being. It wasn't until a couple of years after college that I started to---I came out to one person. Who was in fact a friend of mine, a co-worker of mine who told me she identified as bisexual, and I said, "Really?" I didn't say it that way, butoh my godfor me it was so big. "Wow, someone who identifies as bisexual." I latched onto this and I told her I was too. That was after [unintelligible] and I started telling more people here and there and no one responded as badly as I expected. My mother of course said, "I knew that," as mothers do. "If you knew that, why didn't you say something! Why didn't you say something? You were the adult. You were supposed to have it together, not me. I'm just a kid!" So I finally came out to her when I was twenty-three.
Marcia Deihl: I came out of feminism, going to lesbian feminism, to a search for integrity in every area of my life. Which you don't find [laugh]. But there was this other bunch of people who understood me, regardless of my partner, and I have to say, my friends who knew me from coming out as bi, they really honestly support me, regardless if my other person is a woman or a man, and that's all I ever wanted.
1981, 1981, I was twenty-one. I had written in my diary since 1970 quote, "Maybe I'm bisexual." And apparently nobody was supposed to be.
No one would support loving a woman in 1965, but no one would support, in my crowd, loving a man in 1975.
I liked pretty men, and I liked handsome women. And this woman was very, very handsome. So I thought it would work, but it didn't. I got out and I said, I'm supposed to be straight now. So I went to a therapist to get permission to be straight. Only in Cambridge! And I had permission to be straight, and I was so board by so many of the men I, quote, tried to date [unintelligible] straight. So I thought, maybe I'm bisexual. There has got to be some other women somewhere.
RO: So anyway, I moved here, I was here for less than two weeks, and I was painting my apartment. I so remember this. I was in my paint cloths, and I took a paint break. I opened up a magazine, a newspaper called Equal Time, It was a women's newspaper, it was one of two in Boston, The other one is still here, but that one is gone. And I opened up Equal Time. I was reading their calendar, blah blah blah, and there's a thing that says, bisexual discussion, women's rap, no, women's rap: discussion for September, or whatever date it was, bisexuality. And I was there. I was there. I was out of my paint cloths, into the shower, to the women's center in no time, I was there. I felt like I had discovered gold or something. Better than gold.
MD: And I saw an ad in 1981 in the, some paper in Boston, a Women's Center discussion on bisexuality. And I said, whoa, I am there. And I went. There was a group of about six of us, and we tried to keep meeting but it petered out. The second year, there was another ad. A discussion about bisexuality, and I have no idea who did it and why. And at that one, Robyn was also there. Robyn and I were the only two that stayed, and kept, everyone else left and we met one more time and a core of six other women came. And I'm pretty sure we are the one's that became the Bi Vocals, a six or seven women discussion group that clicked, and we just became a consciousness-raising group about being bisexual. So there were all different versions of it: there were women deciding they might try it with other women, there was me who just got out of a lesbian relationship and didn't quite know what I would do next.
Anyway, so that's how it started, my personal search for, I didn't fit in as a lesbian, I didn't fit in as a straight woman, and I wanted something in the middle., and these six other women did that.
We publicized a meeting in 1983 and that was the clump that became the Boston Bisexual Women's Network. And I think that was the clump that birthed the first Bi Women, The first issue was mimeographed, remember mimeograph? Smell that ink. And we had partied; it really kind of blossomed. I would have to say that that was, the Bi Vocals, my spiritual core group. We talked about everything. We met together for about eight years. People got married, got divorced, had kids, slept with each other, broke up with each other. But like the men, it was a microcosm of choices. So it was a wonderful little education, plus good friends. So Robyn and I remain friends and I know what some of the others are doing. And that's the story.
RO: At that meeting were twenty women, including Marcia. It was amazing. I just remember sitting in this big circle of women on the first floor, and the thing I remember most was grinning. Just grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. I was just--- and I think that, there were a lot of us that were doing that, there were a lot of us doing that in the room. There was this feeling, "oh my." So we were all floating above sofas and chairs.
We had this meeting. And out of this meeting came, actually, I think it was Marcia who stood up and said, is anyone interested in starting an on-going support group. And I was one of the women who said yes. We met, and we called ourselves the Bi Vocals.
And then we decided, why don't we have a social event together? because we haven't done anything together. And we had this little party, and we expected twenty women to show up, and we ended up with twice that number. Then we thought, maybe we are on to something! We had a summer retreat in Province Town. A bunch of us went to Province town and spent the weekend. That fall, September of '83, we had our first meeting of the Boston Bi Women's Network. And it was at the Women's Center, again in that same room. What was amazing was that we expected thirty, thirty to forty women. I think there was about eighty women who showed up. The room was not capable of handling even half that number. There were women stacked up on the couch, there were women standing outside in the garden beds looking in the window, they were going up the stairs in the hallway, there were other women who were just walking by and saying, oh my god, what's going on. Look at all the cute women; what is this group and how do I join it. There was this amazing feeling of euphoria. So that's how the Boston Bi Women's Network was born. And it's been going now for nineteen years, yeah, since 1983. And what's amazing about it for me is that it's an organization that has never had any kind of formal leadership, there's no president, no vise-president, no board of directors, it's kind of anarchy at its best. The only formal roles are the newsletter editor, the post office box picker-upper whatever that is called, the mailing list maintainer, the treasurer, which has been me for a long time, and that's it. Everything else just happens or it doesn't. What's amazing is that we've actually managed to put out what I say is a high-quality newsletter for nineteen years with no structure, no steady income. We just do it somehow and it just goes. It's really interesting. And for me it's an important model; it goes because people care. And sometimes less people care or they care but they don't want to do anything. And sometimes it's a lot of energy. But, I think it's the oldest bi women's group in the world, and perhaps the second oldest bi group in the world. I think the Netherlands---
Well what happened, what basically happened was that the women did all this stuff, started this group, there were some bi men, like Woody Glenn and Allen Hamilton, I think who were saying, this guy named Scott and Norm, who were, hey, what about us. And that happened in Seattle too interestingly and they formed what they jokingly called the men's auxiliary for a while and then they formed the SBMN, the Seattle Bi Women's, Bi Men's Network. And we, the men in Boston, formed the Boston Bi Men's Network. It was never near the size of BBWN. But it was its own thing and it was successful in its own right. But what started happening in a couple of years was the men started saying, "How come the groups have to be separate, we want to have the groups together, why are the women insisting on being separate." blah blah blah. And I think there were really good reasons why we needed two separate. I think there is a value to groups together and there is a value to separate space, given the history of sexism and all the stuff we were dealing with. And also most of the women in BBWN came from a very feminist background, and most of the men in BBMN were not. The leaders were; the leaders were wonderful feminists. The rank and file, as it were, were sometimes, they just hadn't thought about politics at all. And there were questions about were the men coming just to pick up women and we didn't want that. So we were holding out, we want our own space.
What happened was a group started to form called Biversity, this is down the road, and Biversity is a mixed social group. And BBMN the men's network, I think, got folded into that. At least that's my recollection. And this was in the, I don't even know when this happened, maybe the end of the '80s, sometime around that time period.
In 1983, Hartford Connecticut organized the first regional conference on bisexuality, and Boston went on mass. And we had a very good turn out there. And we were inspired. And I don't know how they came up with the idea or where it came from. It was held at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. I don't know, even to this day I don't know how that happened and who organized it. I'm hugely impressed. We ended up, the following year, organizing the second regional conference in Boston. And it was actually really big. I don't remember exactly how many people, but there were a few hundred. And it was in Cambridge, in old Cambridge Baptist Church. It was a huge successes and it was the first time I [unintelligible] anything. It was scary!
And then, the next year, we basically tried to establish a rotating, not rotating, but a traveling road-show of annual conferences with the idea that whatever city it was in would, number one, have to put out a huge amount of energy, number two, hopefully get back a community base as a result of organizing a conference, because the conference both burns out a community and creates a community. So we had one in Connecticut, Boston, New York next, I think Boston again, then Maine, we did one in Portland, where else where they? here and there, I forget. But that's really historically important. Because out of that we basically we had to have something. If we were having an on-going regional conference we had to have some sort of existence, at least for a checking account, because what happens with the money from one conference would become seed money for the next. So we started this thing we called it the Northeast Regional committee, which was the first name, which then became the East Coast Bisexual Network, which then became the Bisexual Resource Center.
Wayne Bryant: The Bisexual Resource Center started in 1983, under the name East Coast---Northeast Regional Organizing Committee, or something like that. I can't remember the exact name, but something like that. It happens after a bisexual conference, the very first bisexual conference in this country, held at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Connecticut. And there was some money left over from the conference; it turned a profit. A committee was organized to decide what to do with the money. They decided to use the money to help fledgling bisexual groups get off the ground and to organize further conferences. And that group evolved over the next couple of years into the East Coast Bisexual Network, because by that time we had groups as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Washington, D.C., who were all coming together to organize loosely these conferences and later some retreats.
The East Coast Bisexual Network got its first office in 1989 on Newbury Street. In 1990 they incorporated as a nonprofit group. In 93 they--- because Bi Net USA had formed and organized the country in different regions than the East Coast Bisexual Network was set up, we changed our name and mission and became the Bisexual Resource Center. We've published the Bisexual Resource Guide, it's in its forth edition now, published a series of pamphlets about bisexuality, we keep an international archive of bisexual newsletters, articles, pamphlets, video tapes; anything that might be of interest to future researchers. And we've organized a number of regional conferences and one international conference. I was the main organizer for the Fifth International Conference held at Harvard University in 1998.
In addition to the Bisexual Resource Center, the Boston bisexual groups are the Boston Bisexual Women's Network, There used to be a Boston Bisexual Men's Network but it doesn't exist any more. Biversity is the mixed gender social network. There was also a political group called BiCEP, the Bisexual Committee Engaged in Politics. I like to think of it as the political muscle of the bisexual movement [laugh].
Some of the meetings held here are under the auspices of the BRC, some are under BBWM, and some under Biversity. But basically there is a coming-out group that meets twice a month. People who are just coming out or just questioning their sexuality or just want to learn more about bisexuality. There's a bisexual people of color group, a bisexual married women's group, a bisexual and questioning men's group, and then associated with the bisexual Resource Center but a completely different organization is Bi Health, which is a project of the Fenway Community Health Center, but it's run by one of the people who has been a BRC person for a long time, Marshal Miller.
RO: We've gone way beyond what I ever thought was possible. We're not anywhere near where I think we should be, but we've gone way beyond what I imagined was possible. Well, when I started doing activism around bisexuality, we were fighting to be acknowledged as existing. We were fighting to have our existence recognized, to have our names spoken out loud, because a lot of people didn't want to say that word. In the 1987 march on Washington one of the bumper sticker, no not bumper sticker, one of those stickers being distributed said "dot, dot, dot and bisexual, come on, you can say it." That was--- it was gay and lesbian this and gay and lesbian that, so we were almost fighting for our existence, I guess symbolic existence. Because, largely because of student activism the b word did get included with the t word. And it's really pretty, not universal, but common now those words are spoken out loud. There's still crap. I feel, I feel that people know that the word is there. Kids especially know that it's an option. I think as you get into older age groups, there is less and less change, but even those age groups are changing. I have friends who would have completely dismissed "bisexual" ten twenty years ago who say GLBT, who say that regularly without prompting. And who have friends who are out bisexuals. It's a world that, I don't know, I never could have imagined it, we would have been, embraced is not the right word, but acknowledged.
So the story I wanted to tell is Thanksgiving dinner I'm invited over to a friend's house, a woman friend who has a woman partner. My woman friend identifies as bisexual, and was one of the early and long-time members of the Boston Bi women's Network. So she and her partner, me and these two other women, their best friends. So two couples and me, sitting around the table talking and as usual, being me, I started talking something about bisexuality, the work I do, teaching, something. What came out of that conversation was that the two women assumed that my two friends were both lesbians, and my friends assumed their best friends were both lesbian when one of them wasn't. And they had been best friends for years and never had this conversation and I was shocked: 50% of the people in this little four person friendship identify as bisexual, yet they become two lesbian couples to one another. And I thought: this is precisely why we need to come out.
I've been in so many situations. I've went canoeing with eight women and we are sitting around after we've been canoeing and one of them says, oh, we're all lesbians here. And I thought, I didn't say anything at the moment because I know I had another day and a half with these people. That night at dinner I brought up what I've been doing, brought up the bi stuff, and it turned out that two other women in the group of eight, plus me, identified as somewhere between lesbian and bisexual. They didn't actually say I'm bisexual, not lesbian, but they were but they identified as oh yeah, there's definitely bi stuff for me going on. But again, the whole assumption is made women with women as all lesbian and men with men are all gay. It's a real challenge to our visibility. I guess the same thing I said about people who don't label, if you don't say anything then it's not political, and then you get miss identified, but I think the exact same thing of bisexuals: if we don't say anything, people assume things that aren't true. Then we're also not doing anything political, we're not making any difference. Which is---everyone doesn't have to fight the fight, it's not everybody's responsibility every moment of the day to say something, but I sure like it when they do.
One of my workshops is called "choosing to label: what's in a name." I use that workshop; I call it a cost/benefit analysis of identity. Getting people to think about what is it they call themselves, at least today, at this moment in time, in the afternoon, whatever time of day it is. What is it they call themselves, what do they get, what are the benefits using those words to describe themselves, what are the costs of using those words to describe themselves, what do they loose by doing that, and how can they use identity actively in ways that they get the most and loose the least. Because one of the things, a lot of times people come in saying, "I came in here thinking identity is bad, that labels are just cages and I didn't want to put myself in one, and I just thought they were all bad, and now I realize that there are good things about identity." In fact, if you don't claim an identity, if you don't speak out loud the truth about who you are, people are going to misunderstand you, they are going to assume that you are something you are not. Therefore, not claiming an identity is not a neutral thing. It's allowing other people to think what's not true. The power of labeling too: the way that for me meeting another women who identified as bisexual was so important, it made me feel so, so valid. After years of not knowing anyone who identified that way and feeling like a total rare freak. So there is --- every time I come out to someone, it's more often than not I'll get, "Oh my god, we need to talk. I'm bisexual, or my sister's bisexual, or my friend is bisexual, and it's so good to finally talk to someone." Because in our culture, we never assume anyone is bisexual, if you don't already know that. We don't walk around saying, "Oh look, a bisexual couple." We think people are straight or gay.
WB: I don't think in general the gay male community doesn't want bisexuals around.
Why is that?
I don't know, we're not pure enough [laugh] You have to have someone lower than you on the totem pole, I don't know. I don't know what it is. It doesn't bother me that much. Most of my, most of my socializing in the queer community is in the bi community. We have a strong bi community in Boston so. And I have lots of bi friends other places around the country and the world so it doesn't bother me that much. More than half the people in my address book are bi. But I have lots of gay and lesbian friends, a few trans friends, intersex friends, lots of straight friends. Many of the people I hand out with most of the time are gay, but as far as spending time in the gay male community, it doesn't do it for me.
That brings me back around to about the political verses the social. I think it is effective for us to work with gay and lesbian people toward or political goals are common political goals. But I think we socialize differently, and that's fine. I'm ok with that.
What do you mean differently? How do we socialize differently?
Well, besides the obvious that half of our partners are not same sex, there's not much emphasis on bar culture in the bi community, at least not here in Boston. We are much more a caffeine community, caffeine and chocolate than we are alcohol [laugh].
MD: That brings up something. One of the smartest things I've ever heard was from a man named Norm Davis, I met him at a bi conference in '83. He said, "You know what I've decided, if someone is rather"I can think of exceptionsbut he said "If someone really enjoys being a bohemian or and antiestablishment person and they've had bisexual experiences, chances are they call themselves bisexual. If someone is very traditional minded and doesn't like to make waves, chances are they call themselves straight or gay." This is only for someone who is bisexual, I'm not talking about people who really are straight or gay and are sure of it. There's the self-perception and the inner spirit, and only the person knows their inner spirit. But I found I get a charge, not out of ---I'm too old to [unintelligible] bourgeoisie, ha, ha, straight people, na, na, [laugh] because I am one in a way. I mean [unintelligible] life, I couldn't stand the white bread [unintelligible] lifestyle, I have to, I'd go nuts. And I have. I think there's certain thing about---not that you're doing it on purpose, but it comes from within. And you enjoy having a bit of a fringe, rebel fringe a bohemian thing. And that's why I think a lot of artists are bisexual. They have nothing to hide in the art community; they don't have to fit in to a corporation or nothing like that. It's not a moral issue thing you know, but he said that, a lot of people I've met are bi but call themselves straight or gay.
WB: I think there are a lot of differences for bi men and bi women. Bi women tend to be looked on as sex objects by society, and bi men more as outcasts. In some ways, it's cool to be a bisexual woman and it's disgusting to be a bisexual man. Bisexual women are, at least the ones who formed the movement in the early eighties, were grounded in feminism and support groups and knew a lot about organizing. Bisexual men didn't have those skills. There are a lot of, a lot of bisexual activist women came from a feminist background. And so I think that's had a lot of affect on how the movement grew. And back in the early days of the movement, most of the organizations were led by women, and probably the majority are now. I'm glad of that. I'm happy to be part of a movement where the men aren't running everything and dictating how everything should be. Because, god, that's boring. But I think also having a strong feminist presence has had a really good effect on bisexual men. A lot of the bisexual male activists identify as feminist men. When the Boston Bisexual Men's Network was still in existence, it identified itself as a feminist men's organization. And had that as part of its mission statement and printed it in everyone of its newsletter.
MD: Well, I have to go way back in history to the men's movement, which started after the feminist movement. There was always two tracks to it. One was the kind of right-wing men's movement, beat drums in the woods with their brothers, "The women are after us." And then the left-wing men's movement, which was "feminism oppresses women, we are privileged by the patriarchy, and how can we change ourselves and treat women equality." And those are two extremes. You end up guilt-tripping yourself as a man, which doesn't do any good and breeds resentment which comes out consciously or unconsciously. I always appreciated straight men. I mean gay men again went both ways: there are women hating gay men and then there's the AIDS activists that really like women and know they're ok, one way or the other. So I always appreciated the male allies. There seem to parts of the community that seem to be much more politically oriented than they are cruising oriented, that's the word. I'm not, that's something I know the least about. I'm a hopeless romantic and monogamous. So I do, I use--- there are a lot of social events that I don't do. I don't think it's an orgy, but I think there's a huge sexual social component that might be larger in the male community than the women's. Not that some women aren't interested, but there's this whole, what books are you reading, Ya Ya Sisterhood in the women's movement, I mean women's part.
When I was young and fogged up nothing really mattered and I was proud of not being jealous. The older I get, the more vulnerable I am, and when I'm vulnerable, I'm jealous. I'm monogamous, but there's a gender component. The only thing I've changed my mind about since I was a real young feminist of twenty is that I believe much more in hormones than I used to, "Men and women are the same. Women have babies, big deal. Women should still get drafted, just like men. Men should do as much childcare as women. It's all learned behavior." Well, I've spent so much time ease-dropping on the transgender community, and I've heard so many transitionists from male to female and female to male, and when a F to M, female to male person takes a lot of male hormones, they are horny as hell, they want to screw everybody! And they all say that! God, I thought it was all training! Well, this is an interesting piece of information; I think it's mostly training---you're blushing.
I'm sunburned.
So what I'm saying is I think it's humbling responsive to hormones, and people self justify what they feel like doing, and if it works for them, god bless 'em. I mean, being a woman, a fairly high-maintenance emotional woman, meaning I know exactly what turns me on and what turns me off, what I can handle and what I can't. I'm monogamous. I have a belief in investing time with someone one on one. And you get this product. It's a different kind of, it glows a different color that someone who invests in a lot of people. But I know people who invest in a lot of people and they are very happy. It's probably some weird brain hormonal thing that everybody justifies.
WB: In Boston at least and I think other communities I think there is is a big overlap between the bisexual community and the polyamory community. In Boston there are a couple different poly groups. The one that seems to be the most active grew out of the bisexual network. It's been its own separate organization for about five years, probably. It's very active, and a lot of people who are active in that are also active in the bi community. The person who puts the Biversity calendar on the web also runs the email list for the poly community.
Why do you think that is?
I think it's one of the few, the bisexual community is one of the few places that is not only tolerant but gets a long fine with the poly community, they don't see an issue with it. That's not to say there are no monogamous people in the bi community, there are lot of them in the Boston bi community. The monogamous people and the poly people get along fine and nobody has a problem with it.
I think the bisexual movement would like to be a political movement, but it doesn't do a very good job being a political movement. It's a pretty good support movement. It's not clear that it really needs to be a political movement. The reason I say that is that are political goals are very similar to the political goals of the gay, lesbian, and trans people. So for the most part we don't need to do separate political work, we need to work in tandem with those organizations, like NGLTF, because we have a lot more clout working together than working separately. It's only where our needs diverge from the needs of gay, lesbian, and trans people where we really need to do separate work. And I would say that that's less than 10% of the work that needs to be done.
RO: The bi stuff is certainly concentrated in different parts of the country. in the left and right coasts, there's a lot going on. In parts of the Midwest there's a lot going on. Minneapolis is amazing. Minneapolis has taken the lead in a lot of ways. Chicago, I don't know if there's that much going on in Chicago at this time. Ohio has activity, Wisconsin. There are entire parts of the country that there's nothing. In the South there's very little, there's some, but not much. One thing I'm seeing is that--- I expected if you had asked me ten years ago I would have said, oh yes, in ten years there will be a lot more bi groups. And what I am seeing instead, much to my surprise, is there's not as much need for separate bi groups. And if you look at younger people, most of them don't see the need for separate groups. Gay, lesbian, trans, allies; they're working together. And there are a few schools where separate bi groups have formed as well, such as Brandeis, which has as group called Bi Space. Even there, Bi Space is not a separate community, it's a separate meeting space and time and is a huge overlap between Brandeis and TRISKELION which is the main group. Even there, where they have decided there is a need for some separate space, it's not because they feel completely outside of the mainstream, it's not because they feel completely unwelcome, but it's because they want to talk once a week or once a month about being bisexual.
We are definitely working toward an inclusive model where there won't be as much need for separate groups, especially for political organizing. I think there's a big difference between political organizing and support. For example, there are all these specialized groups, for example, Lesbians Considering Insemination, Lesbian and Bisexual Women Who Like to go Bowling. There is a lot of very specialized stuff, softball teams, twelve stepper, two steppers, all the different types of support organizations, but aren't communities in and of themselves, those are spaces within a community. I see that happening more and more. The other thing I see happening more and more, and this I'm not sure what to do with, among young kids, this is mainly who I work with, most of the people I work with are now under 22. I love it. I love it. I learn so much from them. There is a resistance to labels. If you were talking academically, you would call it this post-identity politics phase. There's this--- there's a lot more discussion and acceptance of the idea of sexual fluidity. And a lot more acceptance of the idea of resistance to the mainstream norm of queerness, saying, "I don't have to follow the rules, you can't tell me what to do." But at the same time, often a resistance to saying "well I am this specific label, I am a lesbian, I am bisexual, I am gay." So there's this whole other thing going on that is new. It's new for me. I'm trying to figure out what that means, how that can work politically. Because obviously if you, there are many different ways not to label. There's saying, ok, I'm not going to call myself anything and let other people think what they want. If they happen to read my mind or if they happen to know me personally, then they'll know what's going on. But if not, well, then they'll know nothing. Which in my mind doesn't work politically because it creates an assumption. If we live in a culture where everyone is assumed to be straight unless you declare otherwise, a non-declaration like that can be hiding. No, not intentional hiding, but it doesn't do anything. It doesn't create any change, it doesn't create any visibility; it doesn't challenge the norm, except on a one -on-one personal level. And then there's the choosing not to label in a much more active way. And that's what I'm trying to figure out: how do you do that, how do you choose not to label and let other people know you are choosing not to label. Let people know that you are not straight, or normal, normative and that you don't care to be, and that you are very happy, thank you very much, exactly the way you are. And that's a very political thing to do. For me, that's an extremely political position. With people like that I see a really strong alliance and parallel with bisexual politics because in many other ways it's saying the same things, you can't control me, you're not going to be able to fence me in to some little restrictive label that suits your convenience, and you can just deal with it. So that's part of what bisexual seems to be about, and that's also what this choosing not to label is. One of the challenges for bisexual identified people is how to build coalition and how to really harness that. It's all over now. Kids are not labeling. I don't want them to feel because they choose not to call themselves bisexual for a number of reasons, bisexual is too binary, bisexual is too limiting, what ever they have, what ever their reasons, those people are doing the same thing that I'm doing. I want to work with them, I want to create something that's bigger than a bisexual identity-based movement, that's based around what we are all trying to do anyway: which is open the doors, and acknowledge that there is a huge spectrum out there, and that everybody on the spectrum has a right to exist and to self-define and self-identify and choose what they want to call themselves and what they don't want to call themselves. That's my challenge now: to try to figure out, how can I do that.
MD: I know it's a clichˇ but, as a feminist and as an early bi activist on the East Coast, I feel like we hacked away the jungle and now the kids are just walking right out of high school on a nice lawn. And I'm just so happy for them! Not that it's easy, it's not easy, but you'll see GLBT in almost every high school group that has a group. I think the U.S. population is something like 60/40 queers ok, 90/10 the other way.
We are a movement that ideally should put ourselves out of business because the gender of your partner, to get real basic about it, shouldn't matter, if it didn't, we wouldn't have to be here. It's kind of like the deaf community. I wouldn't want to not have a bi culture, but if there was no need for it, you would have it for old time's sake.
What do you see for a future of the bi community?
I don't see a future. I don't, I mean, we could be terrorist bombed tomorrow. I don't. Anyone who thinks they know what's going to happen is full of bullshit. I see the United States, I have to admit, as much as I don't approve of a lot of its policies, is one of the best places to be gay, to be an artist, to have free expression. I think no matter what you want to do with gender orientation, you are at the mercy of larger political forces, if we are allowed to keep the freedoms we have today, I think it will grow in the U.S. I think tolerance will grow, I think the laws will be changed. It's very iffy. You know it's 50/50 state by state whether a hate crime law gets in or gets out. The only thing I've seen that is happening for sure, I hope that's happening, is there's more than GL, there's GLBT, sometimes GLBTQ, which gets rid of the binary. Which is the whole point: the binary of anything it's so easy, it's sound bites. Any binary category is sound bites; people have to have them to get news out and get their point across. There's not a binary anything.
WB: The future will be that would be obsolete because everyone will be fine with how everyone else is, and why would we need a bisexual community. That ain't going to happen in my lifetime. So I think there will always be a bisexual community of some sort. I can't--- it's hard to predict what it's going to be like twenty-five years from now.
RO: One of the things I see happening in the future is our success will, our success is what causes us not to grow. I think that our success in adding to the letters, adding to the acronym, getting the B word included in things. Our success in having some real inclusion, especially youth groups upalmost all the change has happened from the bottom up; it hasn't happened from the top down. So our success is really going to limit our size. There's less and less pressing need for us as a separate entity. When I came out as bisexual, there were no space in the lesbian community for me, at least I didn't find it. I always felt like an outsider, like an interloper, like a little kid sister who is tagging along with the big kids, but the big kids don't really want you there, they want you to go away, but you have to be there because mom's going to be mad at you. You know, there by kind of forbearance. I always felt like that. I felt like no matter what I did, I wouldn't get full credit; no matter how long I was in it or what I did I would never, I could never imagine, for example, becoming the head of an organization, a gay organization, because I was only bisexual, I wasn't pure.
And that's how it was then. I really don't think that's true anymore. That it's much more open now. There are still some people who want to hold that feeling, I'm sure there are still a lot of people who hold that feeling, but I think that over all, even people who hold that feeling might know that that's dumb. It's such a different, such a different world now. It's great, but in a way it's frustrating because it's like, I did all this work to make bisexual space and now you're saying you don't need it as much? But that's great, that really mean's that we've succeeded. That we've done a lot, [unintelligible]. That's what I said, what I said at the beginning, that thinks have happened that I could never really imagined, that's what I'm talking about: we've succeeded in way I never thought was possible. And our success has reduced the need for us. So I'm kind of working myself--- if we really succeed, we will no longer have a job doing this, we'll move on the something else. There are lots of other things to do, but the bisexual politics movement less and less urgent, or desperate, or it will be one of many voices, but it won't have the same urgency. I really hope that someday there will be no use for the Bi Resource Guide; we won't feel isolated. I think that it's still really important to keep saying the word bisexual and keep on creating that space and coming out as bisexual. I think it's hugely important; again, if you don't know anyone who says that to you, you might not know that's possible. But that's changing.
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