The fixation on trying to find a way to use the word “two” in the definition of bisexual is misguided, especially as the bi activists who paved the way for the community were never fixated on the “two” prefix.
It’s also time to stop fixating on the idea that “regardless” means “I don’t see gender” and realise that it’s just a way of saying “gender doesn’t stop me being attracted to them”.
J:Are we ever going to be able to define what bisexuality is? S:Never completely. That’s just it – the variety of lifestyles that we see between us defies definition.
Boston Bisexual Women’s Network Newsletter, January 1984
I am bisexual because I am drawn to particular people regardless of gender. It doesn’t make me wishy-washy, confused, untrustworthy, or more sexually liberated. It makes me a bisexual.
The bisexual community should be a place where lines are erased. Bisexuality dismisses, disproves, and defies dichotomies. It connotes a loss of rigidity and absolutes. It is an inclusive term.
Martin-Damon, K., “Essay for the Inclusion of Transsexuals”. Bisexual Politics. New York: Harrington Park Press. 1995
Now that we’re approaching 20,000 notes I want to share what I’ve learned since this post first gained traction.
It is increasingly apparent that only a select minority of certain communities are willing to listen to this post and accept that bisexuality’s inclusivity and definition are not up for debate, and that this definition and inclusivity are not new to our community.
It is equally difficult to get through to people who have chosen Latin meanings over history, a hypocritical stance they don’t take up with words like gay or lesbian.
I’ve had more people deny this post’s truth than recognize it as history. I’ve spent hours having to reply to people who do not care about bisexuals than I have talking to people this post helped.
This post is not my opinion, it is a collection of sourced quotes. Despite this being stated over and over again, the content of this post is treated as discourse that is original and unique to my blog.
At that time, NYC’s Bellevue Hospital followed prevailing thought that sexuality and gender identity that did not correspond to a narrow and binary view of normative behaviors was a sign of mental illness. Like many institutions they practiced Electroshock Therapy to “cure”bisexual as well as gay/lesbian people and mistreated LGBTQ patients who were simply there for routine medical complaints.
“the meaning of Stonewall has shifted as the assimilations in favor of a ‘we’re just like them’ gay politics have struggled against the radical activists over the legacy of the riot and the broad, multi issue based activism which accompanied it.” ~“History or Myth? Writing Stonewall” by Benjamin Shepard in Lambda Book Report;Aug/Sep2004, Vol. 13 Issue ½
Bisexual activist and scholar Robin Ochs just announced the successful conclusion of a project she has been working on for 7 ½ years in collaboration with Amy Benson of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library.
Back issues of Bi Women (now the Bi Women Quarterly) (1983-2009) and of North Bi Northwest (a publication of the Seattle Bisexual Women’s Network) are now archived and available via Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library. They have been digitized, and are searchable and available to the public.
Here’s the press release from Harvard’s Schlesinger Library:
Boston is home to the longest-lived bisexual women’s periodical in the world. Bi Women Quarterly, a grassroots publication, began in September 1983 as a project of the newly-formed Boston Bisexual Women’s Network.
Staffed entirely by volunteers, and containing essays, poetry, artwork, and short fiction on a wide range of themes, Bi Women Quarterly provides a voice for women who identify as bisexual, pansexual, and other non-binary sexual identities.
Robyn Ochs, editor of Bi Women Quarterly since 2009, donated the only complete collection of this publication to Schlesinger Library several years ago with the agreement that it would be preserved, and digitized in a searchable format. The digitized collection at Schlesinger covers the years 1983 to 2010.
We are delighted to announce that this project is complete, and this resource is now available to researchers and to the general public through Harvard’s catalog.
Making the voices of bi women accessible will hopefully provide researchers primary material with which to begin to fill this gap.
Issues of Bi Women Quarterly from 2009 to the present can be found online a BiWomenBoston.org. These more recent issues will be added to the Library’s collection in the near future.
Some Twitter Troll:(responding to @BisexualBatman) it’s not the gay communities responsibility to build bisexuals up. Biphobia is a myth. Biscuit Magazine: biphobia is spending 50 years telling bisexuals they should ID as gay in an act of solidarity, then saying there are no bis in the movement.
Alice Walker is a fierce, bisexual, african american poet and author. You’ve almost certainly heard of her most popular works, but read more about what else she has done here:
«At the Internet Archive, this is how we digitize a book. We never destroy a book by cutting off its binding. Instead, we digitize it the hard way—one page at a time. We use the Scribe, a book scanner our engineers invented, along with the software that it runs. Our scanning centers are located in universities and libraries around the world, from Boston Public Library to the University of Toronto to the Wellcome Library and beyond. Eliza is one of our fastest and most accurate scanners. Next she will execute quality control checks and fix any errors. Then she ships the book back to our Physical Archive for long-term preservation. Now imagine this: scanners like Eliza have done this 2,000,000 times. That’s what it takes to provide you with a free digital library.» – Plus Internet Archive’s Modern Book Collection Now Tops 2 Million Volumes, by Chris Freeland, February 3, 2021
♥
Since you read that, the internet archive does so much more than just preserving knowledge, it’s one of those places that has helped me a lot. If you think what they’re doing is neat and are passionate about preserving all human information please donate to the Internet Archive:
They are hosting 70 petabytes of data and counting. All accessible to the public at no cost. Help keep it that way!
[Video ID: A short video of a woman attending to a book, open on a machine, as the top part of the machine repeatedly pressed down and scans the open pages. When the scanner lifts from the book, the woman, Eliza, quickly turns a page so that every page is scanned. The machine is made in a way that the book can be comfortably left open and the scanning portion is bent like a book to accommodate the shape of the pages. End ID]
You know when your (probably) white, male, straight, and cis friend asks you ‘if you could time travel to any time period, where would you go?’ Then proceed to refuse to accept answers such as ‘no where. The present is the best time to be me believe it or not’ or ‘the future’ - if you are a black wlw, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.
Next time this nuisance appears answer: Harlem, 1920s.
Here’s why:
The black lesbian subculture thrived in Harlem and was very influential. For instance, it has been inferred that the “butche/femme” patterns were first found in Harlem and thereafter became an identifiable image in other wlw subcultures.
Harlem was by no means a homophobia-free zone in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the tolerance was sufficient enough for black lesbians to socialize openly in their own communities, which white lesbians generally couldn’t do. This specific time period and place would probably maximise your personal safety AND dating life.
The black lesbians even shared dance floors, bars, and nightclubs with the heterosexuals. If this fact seems familiar to you, it may be because you’ve read of them in novels such as Home to Harlem, Strange Brother, The Big Money,andNigger Heaven - the nightclubs they featured all had counterparts in reality.
You’ll for once get to outnumber the straights! heterosexuals sometimes quit clubs when they perceived that the gays were taking over.
Once you find your vintage girlfriend and decide that you want to spend the rest of your life with her, you can marry her! Don’t feel pressured to keep it a secret - invite all your friends and family. Large butch/femme lesbian weddings were of the ordinary. Just make sure you you masculinize one of your first names to receive your wedding license. These licenses were placed on file in the New York City Marriage Bureau and were often common knowledge among Harlem heterosexuals.
If you are bisexual you may even be treated better by the then ‘LGBTQ community’ than you are today thanks to A’Lelia Walker. Daughter to the first self made female African-American millionaire and a businesswoman, Walker is believed to have been bisexual. Her contemporaries observed that “all the women were crazy about her.” some even believed that the various men she married were merely her beards. Nevertheless, historian Lillian Faderman believes that she had much to do with the “manifest acceptance of bisexuality among the upper classes in Harlem: those who had moral reservations about bisexuality or considered it strange or decadent learnt to pretend a sophistication and suppress their disapproval if they desired Al’Lelia’s goodwill.”
I know that if I can go back I’ll make sure I also get my hair done at one of A’Lelia’s salons. If they are good enough got European princesses, Russian grand dukes, and world-renowned intellectuals, they are certainly good enough for me.
Source:Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman
![bihistorygroup: [Know Your Bisexual History]: Photos from joint Street Transvestite Action Revolutio](https://64.media.tumblr.com/dab9dbb7cc9019c8079ae95eede7e59a/tumblr_mwovuolHcn1t37nr2o2_500.jpg "bihistorygroup: [Know Your Bisexual History]: Photos from joint Street Transvestite Action Revolutio")
![bihistorygroup: [Know Your Bisexual History]: Photos from joint Street Transvestite Action Revolutio](https://64.media.tumblr.com/07d40cac5ff0f0ca87d6db8ee4c94166/tumblr_mwovuolHcn1t37nr2o6_r1_640.jpg "bihistorygroup: [Know Your Bisexual History]: Photos from joint Street Transvestite Action Revolutio")
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