This isn't the original post I was going to have for everyone. I was working on a piece of how Wonder Woman can save masculinity (next time) but then I had to write about this. OK, I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning. A week and change ago I was on my way to the Mid-Manhattan Library. I had my freshly charged iPod ready to drop off some books and start my work day. Then I stumbled upon this sticker on a newspaper stand.
Yeah....I said the same thing. WTF indeed. So as I picked up my cellphone and took a picture. I took a few just to make sure it was in focus and centered. Yes, I was and still am extremely angry. What angered me most wasn't just the fact that it attacked my race & my sexual identity. Not even that it also looked like it they did studies (not really but when someone sees a mathematical figure such as "14 times as likely..." they are inclined to believe it) It was the fact that I can not dispute these facts. Because I am that which is attacked. It wouldn't be credible. I mean the same would go for you as a bisexual woman. But I have to tell you fine readers, the target audience was that of the self identifying hetero cisgender female. In other words people, not us. We are the people they are warning about.
First thing first, the site & organization is ran by some white supremacist publisher. No surprise there but if a person didn't look it up for themselves they might be inclined to believe it. user really? Yeah I am gonna go off on a tangent a lot. Because as I write this I am ...stumped.. to quote LeBron James "What should I do?"
I personally cannot do anything.
No man can do anything
No woman can do anything either.
What should I do? What should we do?
How do we fight for ourselves?
Short answer: We can't. We need to fight for one another.
Ladies & gentlemen, we need to work together. For us to say anything would fall upon ears of disbelief. We are your brothers & your sisters, the pain may be different from mine from his , from hers but if we do not put away petty differences of who suffers more and who has it worse we are gonna gonna have our asses fed to us on a silver platter with Old Bay Seasoning and the Lawry's seasoning salt. That's right all over it.
We don't do anything together. Have you noticed that? There are thing for gays and lesbians. Things for lesbians and bisexual women. Things for gay and bisexual men but there is nothing out there for bisexuals in comparison. There is a new bar called Bi-Bar that is opening over in California which is so needed. There has been some bisexual speed dating here and there.
There is also celebrate bisexuality day which oddly enough I never found anything to do on that day with other bisexuals. Other than some sort of support group and to tell you the truth kids, they depress me. They depressed me so much that I had to get away from the hole scene for about a year. Seriously, there were other reasons too but nothing wanted me to come back and get together. Ok, there are a lot of groups that are needed. I'd say all of them are actually. But after that, What do we do?
We have been fighting the fight for ourselves and not each other. We fight and we fight hard. We are capable of some really awesome stuff. But once we are out what do we do? we cheer when someone comes out but after that we go back to what? To sit around, eating punch and pie wandering what to do so that others can accept us for the millionth time?
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| The Punch is Jonesboro delight |
Don't get me wrong I love my straight sisters too..in fact..all of my brothers and sisters across the spectrum of sexuality and gender identification. But one thing we have to do is show people that we are not spin-off. We don't need their attention. You know what..we shouldn't even be concerned with it. How many bisexual do you know that you just chill with. No marching, no picketing, someone else who is not gay or straight hell asexual, genderqueer, and chill. Maybe party a little bit at the club. Doing something that doesn't have an agenda for a seat at the big queers table ask asking Aunt Mary for a slice of that rainbow pie.
If you are bi friendly supporter, ask your bi fiends what are they gonna do for bisexuality day.
Doesn't matter what spectrum of sexuality. Gay, lesbian, straight, asexual, etc. Make them think about it. Join them. There should be some grand party in every city. We should burn and bury all the old ways of "dealing with" our sexuality and freaking own our sexuality Take the our fears and burn it and celebrate everywhere. Our gender identity, our sexual identity, genderqueer, asexual, and celebrate. Get together with people who will join us, join you in celebrating ourselves and who we are. We should let the ghosts of desiring acceptance be free.
Doesn't matter what spectrum of sexuality. Gay, lesbian, straight, asexual, etc. Make them think about it. Join them. There should be some grand party in every city. We should burn and bury all the old ways of "dealing with" our sexuality and freaking own our sexuality Take the our fears and burn it and celebrate everywhere. Our gender identity, our sexual identity, genderqueer, asexual, and celebrate. Get together with people who will join us, join you in celebrating ourselves and who we are. We should let the ghosts of desiring acceptance be free.
"and I'm Hayden Christensen!" oddest moment in a movie.
When I first started writing this I had this "let us come to arms thing...I had this totally different angle ...but it got tiring.. it is tiring. Always fighting for acceptance. It's one of the reasons I took a hiatus from all the activism stuff. I saw so many older bisexual activist single and tired. Not all tired and not all single. And after a while it just got to me. I just saw myself being alone and let me tell you something folks. Alone is not what I saw in my future. So I bailed. I hurt people in the process. Damn fine people. People that were counting on me. Some were mentors and others were people that could have been something really special. (If you are one of the people and think you know who I am, I'm sorry but a better apology shall soon come.( I was scared of their life and I got selfish. I forgot all of the tenants I spoke and did everything I stood against. I was gonna run off to a country on the opposite side of the equator be with some chick (she was a nice girl who in all honesty should have and hopefully is with someone that was a better fit) and (didn't see it like that at the time but,) luckily my S.A.D. or Seasonal Affected Disorder kicked in.
So I became the offspring of a one night stand between Morrisey & Robert Smith. I was frozen. I stopped doing things which were not only harmful to myself and others but also helpless to myself and others. It's something I could only wish on the most vile of enemies. It took me about a years and change to get out of this horrific depression. I am still dealing with it day by day. As I deal with this with a day by day approach the goals that I have for the community becomes more refined. I see the goals which were of yesteryear becoming obsolete and stale. It was great for my predecessors and barely for my generation of bisexuals but for the next group it won't work for them. It's as effective as a geocities webpage.
The next generation or Generation Y doesn't have the same problems as we had. We Gen X kids just got our hands on the Internet and we found out that we weren't alone. We found out that the choices given to us in antiquated books were not true. there was such thing as bisexual and that there was a scale. One of many things neglected by our all wise and powerful health teachers in high school. We just got this wonderful thing called America Online and we were connecting,finding allies and fighting for a slice of the pie and fighting against invisibility. It's now 2010 and the strategy is still the same...we still are fighting the same crap when invisibility is now an issue. We need to come together & show the youth that we are more than just fighting we are living. We are loving. We are being what our predecessors wanted. Alive.
The only way to fight is to live. To party and celebrate that the only invisibility we have to worry about is from each other because we are some awesome people.
See you at the club! I'll be drinking a Raspberry Mousse Margarita and a Tranny Chaser! ;)
Take care, ABG
5 comments:
Estoy de acuerdo con todos: I agree with it all. I too am applaud by the fact that people are telling others to not have sex with bisexuals and blacks. period. People shouldn't have unprotected sex with anyone. period.
I am also saddened that bisexuals (along with the rest of the fluidity crew: pansexuals, no labels, heteroflexible...) do not come together to support and celebrate each other enough...not nearly enough. But I'm not shocked. Until Bi and Fluid individuals claim their identities proudly and reach out to others with similar identies than there will be no community or weak ones.
A few years ago, I was all about hanging out with people because I like them, not because I shared an identity with them (i.e. I didn't hang out with blacks, unless we shared another interest). In theory, I believe this thinking is fine. However, I eventually ended up with a weak black community since I didn't interact with enough to make meaningful friendships.
Ironically, I took the opposite approach with the lgbt community and ended up with several cool lesbian and transgendered friends.
*Okay, was doing laundry, so lost my train of thought. I guess basically we need to reach out to as many of our people (whatever you take that to mean)...as well as allies...and support each other.
I know how you feeling with the sharing the identity vs sharing interest. Many people of color pigeon-hole themselves. be it only listening to R&B, rap, & gospel and calling punk and metal "white people's devil music" I never heard Jimi Hendrix on any black owned station that aired over airwaves. or Fishbone, or any black band that wasn't the aforementioned genres.
When a lot of people of color come out they seldom go to queer groups of their ethnicity and go to the big white groups to become unknowing tokens for them most of the time to fill in demographic quotas. (that's not true of all of them) but seldom do we here of big groups go to communities of color?
We all need to band together and not just protest and fight but also love and share our experiences with each other so that we can remember that we aren't alone. That one day a young queer girl will come up to you, to me , to any of us & she will know that it's more than marches and sex.
maybe your anger is misdirected. Who cares what someone like that says? do you really think this creep that puts weird stickers on shit has any meaningful impact?
But what about if we as GLBTQ get mad at ourselves for accepting barebacking and other other unsafe sex practices. AIDS is preventable. No excuses. Condoms every time for man on man sex. We should not accept or excuse! high unsafe sex rates in the gay and/or african american community can be eradicated. we should celebrate condoms and that we CAN have sex safely every time.
I guess I just wish more people were talking about this and fixing our own communities (I'm gay caucasian) instead of being victims to homophobes.
Anon, I wish it was that easy. OH LAWD I WISH IT WAS THAT EASY! But it isnt. I will agree that AIDS is preventable. It should be condoms for everyone not just man on man sex. I wish there was more sex positive talk in our country but there isn't which is unfortunate. However, One of the things that happens so much is that people of color have the hardest time be included and/or getting access to LGBTQ support.
In fact 90% of gay culture, stereotypes, etc is centered around Caucasian sensibilities. The nightlife, the music, the musicals, where there are pride marches, the celebrated role models, etc. It is predominately known that there is gay & then there is people of color gay. Unfortunately the LGBTQ scene is the same as the hetero world but that gay Caucasian men I.E. white men hold a stranglehold. The television show Modern Family depicts that same stereotype. The gay couple wants a baby so they fly overseas for the adoption. I am happy that they can afford to do that meanwhile we have Transgender people not even to secure housing much less jobs just because they are Transgender.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/02/transgender_discrimination_study.html
This is just one of the man MANY articles that talks about how Transgnder women have such a difficult time trying to live their life but how they are being shunned & ignored bi the lesbian, gay & bisexual community. I admit I was one of them. I was worried about marriage equality while they were worried about housing equality & job equality go google ENDA.
I have never seen any of the big LGBTQ organizations hold rallies in any place where the demographic is predominately that of people of color.
So what do I do? Where do we go? Do we go to a place where we have to sacrifice part of our identity to be safe. Because believe it or not, Barabara Streisand to Lady Gaga is what people may consider gay but not black gay. Circuit parties, white parties hell even Crystal K is something you will rarely RARELY see in a black gay club.
SO even as you say this as anon I wish you wouldn't I wish you will sign up & keep talking. I wish you will find out WHY this is happening instead of just "dropping off the proverbial relief effort condoms".
because this is more than just about fucking.
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