Celebrating Bi Visibility Week/Day
Sep. 23rd, 2014 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfHappy Bi Visibility Day or Week, depending on which one you happen to be acknowledging or aware of! I'm going with the week, myself. I have been out as bi for 28 years, as of this summer, which is a reasonably exciting anniversary. Have things gotten better? In many respects, yes.
Here are a recent event that gives me hope:
A few weeks back, someone, plus a supporting cast, went on a rant about "real lesbians" and lesbian fiction (lesfic, for short) in a Facebook communities. The gist of it was that this person and her supporters had decreed that they would only read and buy books by "real lesbians," not some of those unworthy authorial types who might be bi, straight or possessed of other kinds of sexual identities. Now, given that, to the best of my knowledge, the use of the term "lesfic" to define all lesbian romance (and other fiction with lesbian protagonists/plotlines, though only with great resistance) grew out of online fandom, it's pretty hard to "know" definitively what sexuality/gender/orientation box to put an author in. Which doesn't stop these folks from trying.
Granted, this is a subset of readers, reviewers, etc. who regard community membership and identification as paramount; insisting on an agreed-upon standard for who belongs to this subgroup and who does not, makes sense on this level. Lesbian fiction is a small genre and is often shut out of review sites and the larger awards which weight writing about gay men and queer male masculinity higher than writing about lesbians and femininity so this becomes a "community survival" argument. If "we" don't preserve "our" writers, who will?
The "right kind of queer" stuff happens in a variety of LGBTQ groups and goes something like this: someone takes it into their heads to define "the right kind of queer" that the rest of us should be and people battle it out and some of them end up leaving and there are lots of hard feelings and fractured communities. The people who get pushed out are usually those who identify as bi, genderqueer and anyone else who feels disenfranchised by the group's dominant voices. At various points, I've been a member of a predominantly lesbian bookstore collective, on a steering committee for a women's music festival, a volunteer at several women's centers, in a number of support and activist groups and an attendee at a lot of predominantly lesbian events. I've been out as bi in all of these environments and some of these experiences have been awesome, some not so much. I joked for years that Jana made a respectable woman out of me, but it hasn't been that much of a joke until fairly recently. I have been trashed, ignored, made to feel invisible and, on the other end of the scale, been fully embraced and welcomed.
Given that range of experiences, I wasn't sure what to expect as a response to those posts. So I was thrilled to see the following:
Karin Kallmaker, acquisitions editor for Bella Books and prominent lesfic author - "Keeping it "Real" and Buying into the Big Lie"
Rachel Spangler, author - "The Big Tent or F*ck Biphobia"
Nikki Smalls, podcaster and reviewer - "Oh I am Riled"
Plus dozens more Facebook posts, Tweets and blog comments in solidarity. :-)
Does my heart good.
So Happy Bi Visibility for however long you wish to celebrate. To end on a fun note, a quote from my Twitter feed:
"If you say 'bisexual' in a mirror five times, Alan Cumming will appear and steal your soul." #bisexualfacts :-)
Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.
Here are a recent event that gives me hope:
A few weeks back, someone, plus a supporting cast, went on a rant about "real lesbians" and lesbian fiction (lesfic, for short) in a Facebook communities. The gist of it was that this person and her supporters had decreed that they would only read and buy books by "real lesbians," not some of those unworthy authorial types who might be bi, straight or possessed of other kinds of sexual identities. Now, given that, to the best of my knowledge, the use of the term "lesfic" to define all lesbian romance (and other fiction with lesbian protagonists/plotlines, though only with great resistance) grew out of online fandom, it's pretty hard to "know" definitively what sexuality/gender/orientation box to put an author in. Which doesn't stop these folks from trying.
Granted, this is a subset of readers, reviewers, etc. who regard community membership and identification as paramount; insisting on an agreed-upon standard for who belongs to this subgroup and who does not, makes sense on this level. Lesbian fiction is a small genre and is often shut out of review sites and the larger awards which weight writing about gay men and queer male masculinity higher than writing about lesbians and femininity so this becomes a "community survival" argument. If "we" don't preserve "our" writers, who will?
The "right kind of queer" stuff happens in a variety of LGBTQ groups and goes something like this: someone takes it into their heads to define "the right kind of queer" that the rest of us should be and people battle it out and some of them end up leaving and there are lots of hard feelings and fractured communities. The people who get pushed out are usually those who identify as bi, genderqueer and anyone else who feels disenfranchised by the group's dominant voices. At various points, I've been a member of a predominantly lesbian bookstore collective, on a steering committee for a women's music festival, a volunteer at several women's centers, in a number of support and activist groups and an attendee at a lot of predominantly lesbian events. I've been out as bi in all of these environments and some of these experiences have been awesome, some not so much. I joked for years that Jana made a respectable woman out of me, but it hasn't been that much of a joke until fairly recently. I have been trashed, ignored, made to feel invisible and, on the other end of the scale, been fully embraced and welcomed.
Given that range of experiences, I wasn't sure what to expect as a response to those posts. So I was thrilled to see the following:
Karin Kallmaker, acquisitions editor for Bella Books and prominent lesfic author - "Keeping it "Real" and Buying into the Big Lie"
Rachel Spangler, author - "The Big Tent or F*ck Biphobia"
Nikki Smalls, podcaster and reviewer - "Oh I am Riled"
Plus dozens more Facebook posts, Tweets and blog comments in solidarity. :-)
Does my heart good.
So Happy Bi Visibility for however long you wish to celebrate. To end on a fun note, a quote from my Twitter feed:
"If you say 'bisexual' in a mirror five times, Alan Cumming will appear and steal your soul." #bisexualfacts :-)
Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.