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Talking About Sexual Diversity
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Talking About Bisexuality, Gender, and Sexual Diversity
by Sadelle Wiltshire and Ann Coakley
TORONTO
- What drives some folks to attend a conference on bisexuality and gender?
We were drawn by topical interests, academics, networking, or perhaps
a place for like-minded people to openly discuss our bisexuality in a
safe, affirming place, without having to explain ourselves to the curious.
And so, we packed up and headed off to Toronto, Ontario to attend the
9th International Conference on Bisexuality, Gender and Sexual Diversity
(9icb).
Held June 15-18, 2006 at Ryerson University
in downtown Toronto, the 9icb conference offered a chance to meet with
an international bi community, just a few blocks south of the city’s
gay village. With Toronto Pride week on its heels, it was a great opportunity
for some to stay and play for the week. By the way, did you know that
in Toronto’s gay village, the street signs even have permanent rainbows
on them?
There were about 180 people attending
this conference, including folks from Australia, England and the Netherlands,
as well as many from the U.S. and Canada. It was difficult choosing workshops
and activities to attend. There were workshops for activists, for community
organizers, for the geek-inclined, for the polyamorous, for the kink-identified,
for professional counselors, for the spiritually inclined, and more that
were hard to categorize. We were impressed by the amount of hard work
and planning the Toronto Bi community took on to realize this successful
conference. 9icb was organized as a project of the Toronto Bisexuality
Education Project. The organizing committee drew most of its members from
local-area and national groups including BiNet-Canada, the Toronto Bisexual
Network, Bisexual Women of Toronto and Bisexual Men of Toronto.
Notably missing at this conference
was its founder and the “father” of the bisexual movement,
Fritz Klein, who passed away unexpectedly just three weeks before. Among
Klein’s many accomplishments was the widely read The Bisexual Option,
which includes his “Klein Sexual Orientation Grid,” encompassing
the complexity of human sexual identity. The torch was carried by keynote
speakers including Loraine Hutchins, co-author of Bi Any Other Name:
Bisexual People Speak Out. She spoke on the vision of expanding spirituality,
including honoring the sacred erotic and deeper respect for our one and
only earth. Her central discussion on spirituality, a topic of rising
interest in wider LGBT circles, flowed into the implications and understanding
of erotic and alternative relationships and communities.
One workshop attended was on bisexuals
and their families, which evolved into a successful group-driven discussion.
In describing our families, one could see the broad variety of our lives:
opposite and same-gender partnerships, polyamorous partnerships, babies,
school age children, teenagers, near-empty nesters, and even the opposite
gender married couple that had run into glitches in adoption because of
their past queer activism. In this room it was hard to pigeonhole what
a bisexual life looks like. What was consistent for this group was their
strong, clear vision for their lives and what they wanted, as well as
a potent concern for their children.
Bisexual visibility, “or how
do you know a bi person when you see one?” was another theme that
threaded throughout the conference. This question was posed by Robyn Ochs,
a longtime bisexual activist and editor of both the Bisexual Resource
Guide and Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World,
in her workshop on “Teaching Bisexuality.” To answer the question,
we realized that we can’t know from our own assumptions, and that
bisexuality is a self-selected identity. According to Dana Shaw, 9icb
conference chair, one way to describe bisexuality is as “‘element[s]
of behavior, attraction or affiliation” and “attraction doesn’t
necessarily determine how you live it out.”
The links and overlaps of the trans
and bi experience were a powerful thread for us, in workshops such as
“Empowering Ourselves Through Community - Building: Bi and Trans
People Working Together,” as well as in spontaneous conversations
we encountered. There are obvious and powerful commonalities in how we,
the B’s and T’s, are seen and misunderstood in the wider world:
as people who are seen as “confused” or worse, “dishonest”
about our true identities. Are we truly men or women? Are we really gay
or straight? A sweeter linking was represented by a woman who identified
herself as a “transensual” queer. (Ann: It has occurred to
me before as a bisexual that if my partner were to transgender, this would
not necessarily create an identity crisis for me.)
There is, of course, a glaring
difference for B and T people. Visibility as a bisexual is a concerted
act of will, whereas we have known a number of transfolks who would happily
prefer to be seen for who they truly are from the inside out, or simply
“pass” invisibly. We have come to understand how privileged
we are - not having the most basic part of our identity constantly questioned.
For us it was easy to see how
bisexuality and transgender issues afford an opportunity to be a natural
bridge of identities and experiences, spanning straight and gay, with
attraction not necessarily restricted by gender. Working together as community
is important for everyone ... and the work continues at conferences such
as the upcoming Transcending Boundaries, in Worcester, Massachusetts this
October: a Bi-Trans conference that in its 5th year is joining forces
with the Northeast PFLAG conference.
Ann and Sadelle live together in Bennington, where they are often
found waving the multi-colored flag for the Bennington Pride Coalition.
For more information about the recent 9icb conference, visit www.9icb.org.
For more information about Transcending Boundaries, visit transcendingboundaries.org