Category: Articles

Participando en la Universidad – Assessing the Assessment

Dear Earthlings:

Here’s what yours truly made for her community at UPR Mayaguez. A Facebook group to assess the assessment the government made without consulting the communities. A space to speak up and participate in the creation of the university WE want!

Listen to the description, and sign up for the group if you are a member of the UPR Mayaguez community and have a Facebook profile in your name.

“The group Participando en la Universidad – Assessing the Assessment is a forum to assess the assessment of the UPR system presented in the document “Cambio de Rumbo para la Pertinencia de la Educacion Superior en el Siglo 21,” published on December 12, 2012, and its recommendations.

The group is open to faculty, administrators, employees, and students of the UPR community at Mayaguez with a Facebook profile in their own name.

The document to be assessed, often known as “Golpe de Timon,” is the result of a study of the system commissioned by the Governor of Puerto Rico, Mr. Fortuno, to assess the state of the system and offer recommendations. The group of “experts” who did the study was entirely appointed by the Governor and his administration.

The study is multifaceted and intelligent. However, it does not include contributions from members, participants, constituencies and sectors in the university community, nor the associations that represent them. This is a major flaw.

The present group is intended as a forum, an open discussion space for those contributions to be heard. It is a bilingual space of participation in creating the university we really want. It is a digital space for the assessment of the document that claims to assess the UPR system without the contributions the university community can make. The idea of this open participation in the assessment of the system and design of its future is part of CUNAPU’s directive to generate the free participation we want in both digital and presential ways.This group is a forum to assess the assessment of the UPR system presented in the document “Cambio de Rumbo para la Pertinencia de la Educacion Superior en el Siglo 21,” published on December 12, 2012, and its recommendations.

The group is open to faculty, administrators, employees, and students of the UPR community at Mayaguez with a Facebook profile in their own name.

If you are a member of the UPRM community with a Facebook profile of your own, please ask to join and one of our admins will let you in quickly. Please contribute to the debate by posting questions, adding comments, documents, and links.

If you simply would like to download a pdf file for the document, click on this link, and then click on Golpe de Timon for the download.

Please consider that the document is not difficult to read at all. Of the 144 pages, only some 40 are analysis and recommendations, the rest is appendices, notes, and work cites list.

The same link above leads to some of the most important digest and comment articles about the document in the PR press.

Welcome to Participando en la Universidad: Assessing the Assessment!”

Did you enjoy the post? Let us know! Yours truly appreciates your attention. The comments box is open.

Come back! And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

for Junta Aprum and Conapu

Author of Gaia, Eros, and The “Weak” Subject (1998) Award Winner with Nautilus and Finalist with Lambda
Editor of BiTopia (2011), Bisexualtity and Queer Theory (2012), Plural Loves (2005), Women and Bisexuality (2003)

Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Poly Planet GAIA Blog:
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Escepticismo Saludable: Yours Truly’s Assessment of “Cambio de Timon” to Conapu and Press

28 de enero de 2012

Saludos companer@s, colaborador@s, y colegas!

El 21 de enero de 2012, en la reunion regional de Conapu, se prioritizo la discusion del documento en cuestion, que yo habia leido detenidamente el dia antes. Se pidio a l@s representantes de los recintos de aportar sus contribuciones a la Conferencia de Prensa que Conapu iba a tener la semana subsiguiente. Como miembro de Aprum, yo participe en esta reunion, y alli mismo asesore el documento. Escribi en seguida un email a la Portavoz, la colega Annelisse Sanchez de UPR Arecibo, en que inclui los punto que siguen. Asi que, en cuanto al documento conocido come “Cambio de Rumbo,” aqui van mis aportaciones.

“1. Es importante estar concientes de que el documento reconoce muchos asuntos queridos a la comunidad universitaria en todo y las asociaciones que la representan. Por ejemplo el documento recommienda que: a) el porcetage del 9.6 del Fondo General del estado a la UPR sigua siendo lo mismo; b) la estrategia de quitar ingresos al fondo general para desminuir el total a la UPR se quite; c) se aprecie la plantilla de profesor@s con permanencia como recurso valioso y vital para la Upr; d) no se suba repentinamente la matricula o despidan emplead@s debido al fuerte riesgo de inestabilidad con efectos en la acreditacion.

2. Es significativo que el documento plantea integrar los dos modelos que teoriza en una propuesta de “win/win,” pero en realidad se equivoca seriamente acerca de uno, y no considera otros modelos mas comprobados y antiguos. De este error sale el mayor equivoco: que la ciencia autentica rechaza el eskepticismo. Quien conoce la larga historia de la ciencia y cultura no puede equivocarse en eso. La ciencia autentica esta basada en el eskepticismo, que hoy se conoce tambien como “pensamiento critico,” o, a veces, como “postmodernismo.” De la ciencia no ser basada en un sano eskepticismo, como podria la misma cuestionar las creenecias comunes? Cabe recordar la oracion de Galileo observando el planeta que segun la ciencia del tiempo estaba fijo. El cientifico renacentista lo dudo y eskepticamente exclamo: “y con todo eso, se mueve!”

3. El documento informa de como el sistema de escuelas publicas no siempre logra preparar bien l@s estudiantes para el sistema universitario mas selectivo, la UPR. Tanto que en muchos recinots altos porcentages de los admitid@s provienen de escuelas privadas. El efecto es que a veces familias de pocos recursos deben adeudarse para educar sus hij@s. Asi que como representantes de educadores, entendemos que sea necesario fomentar una mayor inversion en el sistema K-12 publico.

4. Las recomendaciones se prestan a interpretaciones que en la actuacion podrian resultar positivas, incluso el enfasi en la excelencia academica, en la independencia de la alta adminstracion de los partidos politicos locales, en el fomento a la educacion a distancia, continua, y por diversas edades y fines, y por fin en la autonomias de decisiones por pares basadas en el merito academico. Se espera entonces que l@s legisladores que utilicen el estudio lo hagan intelligentemente y segun su mejor espiritu. Tambien, se anima a las comunidades y los sectores de todos los recintos a que se reunan para debatir el contenido del documento y asesorar el asesoramiento alli producido.”

Lo presentado es una respuesta incompleta y de “prima facie” que ni siquera toca en muchos punto especificos de UPR Mayaguez, como por ejemplo la recomendacion que el RUM sea uno de los tres recinto de estudios graduados y investigacion, con UPRRP y Ciencia medicas. Estas pocas notas solamente desean animar a la discusion.

Espero esto ayude. Quedaremos en espera de sus preguntas, comentarios, y participacion.

La discusion continua en Facebook! Solicite entrar al grupo Participando en la Universidad – Assessing the Assessment!

“Que viva la excelencia de la universidad libre y participativa!”

Videos of Yours Truly’s Humanities Course at UPRM, Part 1- Theme is Love
Videos of Yours Truly’s Activism for Public Education on PR

Did you enjoy the post? Let us know! Yours truly appreciates your attention. The comments box is open.

Come back! And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and The “Weak” Subject (1998)
Award Winner with Nautilus and Finalist with Lambda
Editor of BiTopia (2011), Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2012), Plural Loves (2005), Women and Bisexuality (2003)

Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Poly Planet GAIA Blog:
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

2 of 8 – Snippets of Eros – When a “No” Becomes a “Yes”

Dear Earthlings:

The year of wonders is what 2012 is supposed to be. Yours truly offers snippets of her favorite books. All on yesterday’s forbidden themes. Let’s see if their mysteries are revealed.

Eros is a story that staved off the loneliness of her first years in the Caribbean, when she was missing her former Matrias, California and Italy.

Can a “no” become a “yes”? That’s one of the main themes. Many a “no” has turned into a “yes” since time immemorial. Yet the very question became taboo. Why? If we respect a “no” that becomes a “yes,” we will respect a “yes” that becomes a “no.” Isn’t that a win-win? A world where love can change our minds is a world where love abounds.

Here are yours truly’s reflections back in 2007. Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, has the full story.

“Campus culture was increasingly aware of rape, and Stephane and i could not help but notice that the rapist was always male, the raped female. . . . “There must be a way in which a woman can rape a man” I commented. And that’s how we came to see our erotic performances, especially those in which I was the initiator, as examples of male rape. . . .
But when a man’s voice says no, his body might be saying yes with a flamboyant erection. In this case, the man’s voice and his genitals make two opposite statements. “Which one is more correct?” we wondered. In the past, rape had been a crime against the woman’s family, often repaired with the rapist marrying the girl” (17).

The narrative continues as Stephane and Gaia bask in their amorous erotic play. Oh blessed be!

Dear Earthlings:

Education is the heart of democracy. And that includes education to love. It comes in many forms. Including learning about Eros and journeys of multiple loves.

Did you enjoy the post? Let us know! Yours truly appreciates your attention. The comments box is open.

Come back! And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Poly Planet GAIA Blog:
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

1 of 8 – Snippetts of Eros – What’s Erotic about Learning?

Dear Earthlings:

The year of wonders is what 2012 is supposed to be. Yours truly offers snippets of her favorite books. All on yesterday’s forbidden themes. Let’s see if their mysteries are revealed.

Eros is a story that staved the loneliness of her first years in the Caribbean, when she was missing her former Matrias, California and Italy.

Is learning erotic? That’s one of the main themes. Students and teachers have fallen in love with each other since time immemorial. Yet the very question has become a taboo. Why? Love produces desire to know. Knowledge produces desire to love. Isn’t that a win-win? A world where knowledge is loved is a world that knows love and reveres it.

Here are yours truly’s reflections back in 2007. Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, has the full story.

“As a teacher and student of many years, I know that, no matter what sexual-harassment policies say, learning is erotic since it activates the pleasure of discovery by putting brain cells in motion, and stimulates the body-mind by opening up vistas and possibilities to the imagination. The erotic energy emanating from this process is what keeps people in schools–it is what keeps us engaged in the learning process, be it as students and teachers. . . . I was not fully aware of this when . . . I was going to become my student’s teacher of language as well as love” (4).

The narrative continues as Stephane and Gaia fall in love. Oh blessed be!

Dear Earthlings:

Education is the heart of democracy. And that includes education to love. It comes in many forms. Including learning about Eros and journeys of multiple loves.

Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves was a Lambda Finalist in 2007. It is now being considered for translation in to Spanish by a press in Madrid. Access to this memoir would be a great gift to Spanish speakers across the globe. If you agree, leave a comment and we will let the publisher know. Gracias!
Did you enjoy the post? Let us know! Yours truly appreciates your attention. The comments box is open.

Come back! And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Poly Planet GAIA Blog:
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

10 of 12 | Monday is for Religion: “Exploring Our Afro American Heritage,” by Alice E. Van Pelt

Hi lovely Earthlings!

This week we get into another aspect of Alice’s life. She was a leader and a public speaker in educational events about the Afro American cultural heritage. Her scrapbook reports some of the talks she prepared. Here’s one where an introduction is followed by poetry and music. Who should be ashamed of slavery? Alice’s presentation begs the question. Again, we are present to an inclusive voice that embraces all of the Afro American heritage, that looks at history as a flow. Not a tale of winners and losers, but rather a sense of creativity, of music, dance, ritual, song, of feeling life pulsating together as we overcome odds. Perhaps this is the art of living after all.

Two voices are present: Alice and her husband Harold. He is the musician who accompanies the song. The pictures refer to the African American music scene in New Jersey in the early 20th Century of which he was part.

Theme

Exploring Our Afro American Heritage

From the mountains of West Virginia to the farmlands of Pennsylvania

From the West Coast to the East Coast

From the South to the North

They came and they kept coming

And they kept signing, playing music.

Beating the drums to freedom.

African Americans–survivors of a spiritual people–people who made it out of the trials and tribulations of Slavery.

We are here today to explore that history through music.

It is a rich heritage that will not be denied

That must be fortified, restored, built up in our young people for future generations.

Black folks have a strength that has survived racism, depression, recession, and genocide–all designed to steal, kill, and destroy them. The term of “we shall overcome” aptly describes their perseverance.

Our Program today depicts thought “music” pictures from whence we have come and will point out a direction for others to follow.

To show where we are going.

I would like to take you back to the period when slavery existed–a regression for black people–a time when the only thing that kept them going was faith in God. Music became an integral part of their day to day existence–the Negro Spirituals became a coded message used to signal that the master was coming–notify them of a meeting tonight–to “steal away”–meet secretly in old barns, people’s home, anywhere they could pray and ask God to deliver them from the bondage of slavery–strong faith sustained them.

Recent study of Newark’s black music scene

During the 19h Century Gospel songs were sung in the Black churches–Gospel meaning “Good News.” Webster’s Dictionary defines Gospel music as African American music–combining spirituals, Blues and Jazz–isn’t it strange that each type of music is distinct in its own right? Spirituals are sacred songs also called jubilees, folk songs, shout songs, sorrow songs, slave songs, slave melodies. Gospel music added another facet, they became religious songs used in church to lift the spirit. Even though Blues and Jazz were performed in the clubs and honky top bars–this music also came out of the souls of black folks and contributes to the Black Heritage.

Alice: “I want to first show you a picture of role models who motivated me–my mother was the one who pointed me in the right direction–even though she died when I was nine years old. Those formative years have stayed with me throughout my life. I have always felt her presence guided me, teaching me–at the time I didn’t know it but God was with me and through his guidance my mother was there–I wasn’t a ‘motherless child'”–play the song.

Harold: “What and who motivated Him.” Talks about beginnings of boycott in Montgomery.

After he finishes, Alice to continue with poem “Troubled Water”–do spiritual “Wade in the Water.”

Today we all face a new type of slavery, a modern type of bondage–destruction of the family–no matter what the color or race of people. Drug addiction has taken its toll. Again, we must all work together in unity to break the bonds of slavery and be free.

Friday, February 26, 1999

Notes from the scrapbook of Alice E. Van Pelt, published here with permission from her descendants, gratefully acknowledged.

Dear Earthlings:

Did you notice the wisdom of these words? Yours truly remembers when she first moved to the United States. She lived with emigres in California. African Americans were definitely her first American friends. So warm, so welcoming, so magical in their ways of being together. She felt privileged to be accepted by them. Never treated like a “foreigner.” What moves me in these notes is Alice’s mention of her late mother, the model she offered, the spirit who lingered on to protect the little girl. And her final note: whose “family” is she talking about? Is it the normative, nuclear family, the family of all African Americans, or perhaps the human family? And drugs? What drugs is she talking about? The drugs that medicalize the lives of seniors and other people with chronic illnesses to the point of making conscious death a more sustainable choice? The drugs that infest the streets of the poor and replace the hope for an education that only money and privilege can access? The drugs that kill one’s creativity rather than enhance it? When I read Alice’s poems without the prejuduce against monotheism, all kinds of meanings and interpretations are open.

More poems from Alice coming. Stay tuned for next. We will post every Monday at noon.

Did you enjoy the post? Let us know! Yours truly appreciates your attention. The comments box is open.

Come back! And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Biographical Note for Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD – Fall 2011

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

Believes that “a world where it is safe to love is a world where it is safe to
live.” She is a scholar, writer, activist, professor, and cultural theorist. Her book of ecosexual theory, Gaia and the New Politics of Love is a 2010 Nautilus Winner in Cosmology and New Science. She is editor of BiTopia (2011), Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010), Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living (2005), and Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective (2003). Her memoir, Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, was a 2007 Lambda finalist. These are Routledge books. She is a professor of humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. In 2011 she keynoted at Ecosex Symposium II in San Francisco, with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, fellow avatars in the ecosexual movement. She also taught the first multilingual course in Ecosexuality in Italy. Her past keynotes include the World Polyamory Association Conference in California (2007 and 2010), Loving More in New York State (2007), and BiReCon in England (2010). She speaks English, French, Italian, and Spanish. She is the owner of 3WayKiss, a non-profit dedicated to education and research in the arts of love.

Fan Page: facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Blog : polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Webpage: www.serenagaia.com

Email: serena.anderlini@gmail.com

Author’s Page: http://www.amazon.com/Serena-Anderlini-DOnofrio/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

Ecosex Symposium II: www.sexecology.org

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

7 of 7 – Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey form Nausea to Commitment

Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

An occasional piece by

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

For The Journal of Bisexuality’s 10^th Anniversary Issue

Hi dear readers!

This seven-in-one piece will be great fun–yours truly promises. Find out all the ins and outs of 10 years of Bisexuality! What does “epistemology”mean? Big word, right? Well, all it means is that when you’re making love you’re producing knowledge. A good thing!

We follow What Wisdom Accrued to Me? with the Conclusion. If you followed us this far, we hope you found this seven-in-one piece really revealing of all those things about bi you’ve always been curious about. Why is it so good? What can it do for you? For the planet? For the future? For authentic intimacy? It’s all here, spiced with a bit of irony and critique of why we’re so behind on our agenda. What’s keeping us from being more efficient.

Also arcane words you’ve been told have no meaning unless you got a PhD are explained–made very easy! “Nausea,” “existentialism”: it’s all about the chakra system–really. Commitment? It’s not about going to jail (as in, “being committed”). But rather, it’s about “being-in-action” about things. Being the one who makes the difference! No mysteries. Woooooow! Come back for more, will you? We’ll post every week, on Tuesdays.

Namaste,

Serena

7. Conclusion

At the end of my journey, I would like to conclude with a few remarks about the itinerary. I was not sure how I would respond to the call that so acknowledged me as one who had at least tried to do my part. Now I have done it, and I can claim that the very act of doing it is proof of my commitment. Yet it’s not so simple.

In a decade of assault on civil liberties, cuts to education, disparagement of public service, augmented pollution, an expanded military machine, human rights violations, climate instability, and continuing fears of infection and accompanying fears of physical and emotional intimacy, it has not been exactly easy to keep running this Journal. Its central trope–when considered in its holographic multiplicity, in its plural transdisciplinary perspectives–sears through the barriers of blindness and mistrust at the root of the misdirected energies and use of resources we’ve been witnessing.

Fritz Klein, of 100 {a9d64f7890d157e71e6efcce19e215a5f853c7f4151cde0b7bf7aada464173f6} intimacy

The editorial wisdom of rhetorician extraordinaire Jonathan Alexander has been of much help in maintaining the amplitude of the discursive arena while improving the quality of the issues. Yet this is not sufficient. Research is done on a scientific basis, and therefore is neutral–transparent if you wish. However, research has an effect on people. Why do I have to hear that bisexuality is so under-resourced? Do we need the Human Rights Commission to remind us that funding is necessary when it comes to seeding the culture of research in bisexuality the Journal needs to prosper and serve its multiple constituencies–let alone the culture as a whole? Ten years of bisexuality can mean ten years of research production and access to reliable knowledge about this trope that really empowers bisexual people to live better and more authentic lives. It can produce an appreciation and reverence for bisexuality and for the multiple talents it inspires in the arts of loving. It can empower its practitioners’ enhanced capability to produce what Fritz Klein called “100 Percent intimacy.” Have we done this? I wish I could say yes. A new decade of bisexuality is beginning. Let’s keep that vision in mind when we proceed.

Works Cited

Anapol, Deborah. “A Glimpse of Harmony.” In Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio ed. Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living: 109-120. New York: Routledge, 2005.

______ . Polyamory in the 21^st Century. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.

______ . Polyamory: The New Love without Limits. San Rafael: Intinet Resource Center, 1997.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena. “A City in the Forest: Gaia in the Postmodern Contact Zones of

Auroville’s Wider Intentional Community un Tamil Nadu, India.” In Fatima Viera ed, Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal: 1 (Spring 2006): 56-89. <http://ler.letras.up.pt > ISSN 1646-4729.

______ . “In Absentia: Eulogy and Introduction.” The Journal of Bisexuality: 6: 4 (2006): 1-5.

______ . “Bisexual Games and Emotional Sustainability in Ferzan Ozpetek’s Queer Films.” The Journal of Bisexuality: 6: 4 (2006): 121-134.

______ . Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Berkeley: North Atlantic books, 2009.

______ . “The Lie with the Ounce of Truth: Lillian Hellman’s Bisexual Fantasies.” In Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective: 87-116). New York: Routledge, 2003.

______ . “Plural Happiness: Bi and Poly Triangulations in Balasko’s French Twist.” In Bisexuality and Queer Theory. The Journal of Bisexuality 9: 3-4: (July-December 2010): 343-362.

______ . Poly Planet GAIA. http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena ed. Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2003.

______ ed. Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Alexander, Jonathan, and Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio eds. Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections, Diversions, and Connections. The Journal of Bisexuality: 9: 3-4 (July-Dicember 2009).

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena and Brian Zamboni eds. BiTopia: Selected Proceedings from BiReCon, the 2010 Bisexual Research Conference. The Journal of Bisexuality, in production.

Balasko, Josiane. French Twist. France: Claude Berri and Pierre Grunstein, 1995.

Bass, Alison. Side Effects. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008.

Dean, Tim. Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking. University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Dodson, Betty. “We Are All Quite Queer.” In Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, ed. Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living: 155-164. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Edlow, Jonathan. The Deadly Dinner Party. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

Fitzgerald, Randall. The Hundred-Year Lie. New York: Plume, 2007.

Freud, Sigmund. “Lecture XXXIII: On Femininity.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Strachey tr. . Vol XXII: (112-135). London: Hogarth Press, 1964.

Halperin, David. One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Routledge, 1989.

Human Rights in Puerto Rico. http://derechoalderecho.org

Kinsey, Alfred. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders 1953.

______ . Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948.

Klein, Fritz. The Bisexual Option: Second Edition. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1993.

LGBT Advisory Committee. Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations. San Francisco Human Rights Commission, 2011.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper, 2006.

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. New York: Random House 2008.

______ . Things I’ve Been Silent About. New York: Random House, 2010.

Ozpetek, Ferzan. Hamam. Rome: Checchi Gori, 1997.

______ . The Ignorant Fairies (a.k.a. His Secret Life). Rome: Medusa, 2001.

Reich, Wilhelm. Character Analysis. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1980.

______ . The Function of the Orgasm: Discovery of the Orgone. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1986.

Pallotta-Chiarolli, Maria. “Outside Belonging.” Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio ed. Women and Bisexuality: 53-86. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Peterson, Melody. Our Daily Meds. New York: Picador, 2009.

Sartre, Jean Paul. Nausea. New York: New Directions, 2007.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Yours truly appreciates your attention. Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

6 of 7 – Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

An occasional piece by

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

For The Journal of Bisexuality’s 10^th Anniversary Issue

Hi dear readers!

We follow The Issues with What Wisdom Accrued to Me? and will have one more post. Really revealing of all those things about bi you’ve always been curious about. Why is it so good? What can it do for you? For the planet? For the future? For authentic intimacy? It’s all here, spiced with a bit of irony and critique of why we’re so behind on our agenda. What’s keeping us from being more efficient.

Namaste,

Serena

6. What Wisdom Accrued to Me?

As a guest editor with a transcultural, interlinguistic, and transdisciplinary perspective, I have endeavored to unfold the discourse of bisexuality to include voices that introduced ideas capable of expanding one’s thinking about this multifaceted trope well beyond what’s commonly understood. I have enjoyed the privilege of having enough space to publish articles that really make a difference, that present arguments complex enough and articulate enough and profound enough to be likely to have a role in the paradigmatic shift the third planet is going though with all of us in it, toward knowledge based on love.

This blank page, this slate without definition has been empowering to me, both as an editor and as a contributor. There have been no word limits to the length of a piece–just its own organic completion. No indirect censorship based on assumptions of what is and is not appropriate or correct in a given discursive arena. Pure invention guided by insight and intuition with wide ranging knowledge and reading. As an author whose literary initiation took place in Europe, I have a bit of an auteur syndrome. I like to be free. No Hayes Codes applied to my creativity. My inspiration has been honored here. And I have really felt like this is my cup of tea.

My contributions have been hosted with the highest respect for their originality and uniqueness. I tend to respect New Criticism because its practice of direct reading empowers students of literature to respond with their own emotional intelligence, rather than with surrogate constructs preapproved by their teachers. However, I believe that everything is political, including, of course–and perhaps most of all–literature, and other visual arts that have been the object of my analysis on these pages, including cinema. By “political” I mean embedded in a web of cultural and discursive practices related to geography, history, the sex/gender system, the race/class system, and other politically charged dynamics. However, I tend to write about texts that inspire me. As a scholar activist, I would not waste my time on something I don’t have the highest respect for. Therefore, I write against the grain of being “critical,” of attacking a piece. Sometimes people think I’m stupid, because I don’t dissect something I critique. The things is, I am a peace activist even when I practice literary criticism, therefore dissecting is not my cup of tea. I’d call my method of literary and cultural criticism “holistic.” Why? Because it integrates all the different approaches into a whole. My piece on Lillian Hellman in the Women and Bisexuality issue is perhaps the most exemplar of this (87-116). It is extremely political, as it dissects the lie of calling this inspiring author a liar, just because her political allegiances were against the grain of McCarthyism and the bipolar politics of the Cold War period. Yet it also goes very deeply into the textual analysis of two texts by this author, to access the bisexual aspect of the author’s erotic fantasies that inspired them. Obviously, this requires discussion of texts, contexts, biography, history, social, gender, and racial dynamics as an integrated whole. When this piece found hospitality in these pages, it had been rejected a number of times for doing its job too well. “Why does the author focus so much on the texts?” peer-reviewers wondered in cultural studies journals not aware of bisexuality’s existence. “Doesn’t she know we want what’s ‘political’?” In those discursive arenas, it was believed that close reading and cultural criticism could not get along. The Journal of Bisexuality knew better than this. This is the time to acknowledge its respect for my skills.

The Journal also hosted two articles on film. There too, my attention was devoted to auteur films in the European tradition that paid special attention to bisexuality as an element of sustainability in relational patterns that involved several participants. These include Hamam and The Ignorant Fairies (a.k.a. His Secret Life), by Ferzan Ozpetek, and French Twist, by Josiane Balasko. It is often said that only negative representations of bisexuality are visible in film. This might apply to Hollywood film production. However, in the films I chose bisexuality is a factor for inclusion in amorous communities and expansion of the ways in which love can be practiced therein. These articles appeared in 2005 issue (now the book Plural Loves) and 2010 (Bisexuality and Queer Theory). I am grateful that they could be included in integrity with their holistic intent.

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Yours truly appreciates your attention. Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

5 of 7 – Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey form Nausea to Commitment

Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

An occasional piece by

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

For The Journal of Bisexuality’s 10^th Anniversary Issue

Hi dear readers!

We follow Klein’s Option and Other Classics with The Issues, and will have two more posts. Really revealing of all those things about bi you’ve always been curious about. Why is it so good? What can it do for you? For the planet? For the future? For authentic intimacy? It’s all here, spiced with a bit of irony and critique of why we’re so behind on our agenda. What’s keeping us from being more efficient.

Namaste,

Serena

5. The Issues

Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

This was on the back of my mind when, as one who practices love as the art that heals on a personal, local, professional, and planetary scale, I set out to devote my time to the four mentioned issues, Women and Bisexuality (2003), Plural Loves (2005), Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010), and BiTopia (2011). The tropes are interrelated and organized around the commitment to bring forth the value of bisexuality as an epistemic portal to a world where the fear of love gives way to the love for love, or erotophilia. The 2003 issue focused on women whose participation in bisexual cultures and communities came in a variety of ways, including appreciating the erotic sensibility of their bisexual male partners. This was the first and has been the only issue on women with a global perspective. In Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli’s article, “Outside Belonging” (53-86) women married to bisexual men were interviewed. As an epistemic portal, bisexuality cannot be reified to a sexual behavior. Pallotta-Chiarolli, an award winning author and a professor of health and social development in Australia, brought out their voices as they declared that the way their spouses practice love between men made them more well-versed and sensitive lovers of women. I agree! Bisexuality is interpreted as a healthy artistic sensibility that enhances the production and fruition of erotic and affectional love. The wider horizon this collection embraced allowed for an expanded view of what bisexuality can bring to people’s existence. This issue is now available as a Routledge book.

Plural Loves, the 2005 issue opened up the conversation of monogamy, as a cultural institution that interferes with Fritz Klein’s auspicated ideal of “100 percent intimacy.” How can people structure amorous lives that are inclusive of partners of different genders when the cultural norm still dictates exclusivity–and does so even more pervasively and insidiously as fears of infection and contamination have increased under the presumed threat of disease? How can non-monogamy be practiced in ways that do not perpetuate double standards of male privilege? Polyamory appeared to me as a subculture whose styles of inclusiveness honored gender equality, disclosure, and integrity in maintaining one’s multiple commitments. It is, indeed, the only known contemporary non-monogamous subculture that includes women as equals. The other two, bare-backing and polyginy (which includes Islamic polygamy), exclude women and subject them to male rule, respectively.[1]

Betty Dodson

This issue brought the voices of two female leaders in the sexual liberation movement to speak into the discourse of bisexuality. In “We Are All Quite Queer” (155-164), Betty Dodson, artist of the erotic and the nude, tells the story of how she became an educator in the arts of loving too, with self-love as her specialty. Her workshops and videos have helped generations of women develop their self-pleasuring skills, to great enjoyment for those who participate in the sacred rituals too. Dodson’s essay brings to bear on the epistemic value of bisexuality. When can all touch our genitals, and feeling no pleasure at all in doing so is quite difficult. So when we practice the art of self-pleasuring we are loving a person of our own gender, and that’s bisexual. We are also activating a modality of knowledge and self-knowledge that’s quite significant to our health and well being, and those we love too. Nature, our teacher extraordinaire explains, makes our species capable of self-pleasuring through our hands and fingers. We can of course add playful toys as much as we please. The only way to keep bisexuality from being so pervasive, natural, and efficient would be to make our arms much shorter by genetic engineering!

Dodson explores the most personal aspects of bisexual energy, while Anapol’s expands to the most inclusive ones. A founder of the polyamory movement, Deborah Anapol is also a respected teacher of sex and consciousness, a coach, and workshop leader. Her books include Polyamory: The New Love without Limits, and Polyamory in the 21^st Century. Her piece, “A Glimpse of Harmony” (109-120), registers her participant observer’s interpretations of today’s Hawaiian culture and its roots in pre-Western languages and traditions. Exclusivity comes from competition. Cultures that interpret abundance as natural can effortlessly practice amorous inclusiveness. Anapol’s narrative extends the concept of erotic pleasure to giving birth and bonding with one’s infant in one of today’s Hawaiian Jacuzzis, to the initiation of children to erotic pleasure in traditional Hawaiian culture, and to reverence and respect for punaluas, the partners of one’s partners, or what today’s polys call metamours. Can you imagine gently massaging your baby girl’s genitals as you clean her, as a cultural norm that favors her development into an amorous, joyful woman? Gently blowing air into your baby boy’s penis to prepare him for future enjoyment of sexual pleasure? Allowing sex play among children as a way to prepare for puberty? These, and other initiation rituals were common among the natives, who called Westerners haole, or people without breath, without spirit. Here we see that Reich’s sense of the subconscious is not so extreme. We may not all literally want to go back to the womb. But babies born in water adapt more gradually to post-natal life as animals born to breathe because water provides continuity with pre-natal life in amniotic liquidity. Girls whose mothers massage their labia will enjoy the arts of loving in adulthood. Peace loving people are aware of these things, because peace is based in love for love, or erotophilia. Today one gets thrown in jail for doing this. As a result, we have lost the knowledge to initiate the young to love amorously and artistically. There is another area where bisexual epistemology could help revive lost knowledge and generate more healthy and loving intimacy.

The subsequent two issues are still very fresh and I’d rather refer you to the source, dear reader. The labor of love of Bisexuality and Queer Theory was shared with Jonathan Alexander, rhetorician extraordinaire and faithful intermediator. That of BiTopia with Brian Zamboni, who had a glimpse of what working on bisexual research means. Regina Reinhardt was always vigilant behind the wings. It is wise to allow time to distill what matters in the experience. In perspective, one’s work acquires a variety of unexpected meanings it would not be cautious to try and anticipate here.

[1] My sources are Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (University of Chicago Press, 2009), Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran (New York: Random House 2008), and her Things I’ve Been Silent About (2010).

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Yours truly appreciates your attention. Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

4 of 7 – Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

An occasional piece by

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

For The Journal of Bisexuality’s 10^th Anniversary Issue

Hi dear readers!

We follow The Journey with Klein’s Option and Other Classics, and will have three more posts. Really revealing of all those things about bi you’ve always been curious about. Why is it so good? What can it do for you? For the planet? For the future? For authentic intimacy? It’s all here, spiced with a bit of irony and critique of why we’re so behind on our agenda. What’s keeping us from being more efficient.

Namaste,

Serena

4. Klein’s Option and Other Classics

Sigmund Freud

Speaking of classics, many were of course in the back of Fritz’s mind when he wrote the book. One is Freud’s “On Femininity,” an essay of 1933 often simplified to a diagnosis of “penis envy” for women.[1] Women, explains Freud, have a more difficult time adjusting to adult normativity in a homophobic social order because it requires giving up the gender of one’s first object of erotic desire, the mother, and the first site of female self-pleasure, the clit. That’s why, I observe with my students when we read it in the class on practices of love in Western cultures and traditions, if you follow the logic of Freud’s argument, in a social order where homophobia has disappeared, you’d have to prescribe bisexuality as a path to healthy development for all women. But Freud of course could not recommend what Fritz wished for all healthy bisexuals, “100 percent intimacy,” or else he would have been fired and accused of the very same “perversion” he was trying to cure. “When one gets into action there comes commitment, and thereby freedom appears, in Fromm’s sense of being free,” recites the existential litany. I am a woman, and when I was younger, in the age of fertility, I used to think that existentialist dilemmas were a peculiarity of masculinity. Women don’t wonder about the meaning of existence. We simply make the effort of existing relationally and in communion with other beings. “That must be why I’m so confused,” I mused. My inner landscape was still not settled enough to begin, especially the solar plexus and heart chakra regions. “The age of wisdom must bring existential dilemmas to women too,” I concluded.

Erich Fromm

I knew Fritz. I was familiar with his playful, carnivalesque, iconic persona at play parties of the bisexual community, with his symbolic presence and significance at the Bisexual Forum meetings. I have anxiety of influence and so it is difficult for me to muster the humility to really surrender to the aural force of iconic figures. Much to my own damage sometimes, I often tend to resist it. But it’s also a self-preservation skill that evaporates when I read them. I had read The Bisexual Option in the early days as part of the San Diego bisexual community. And I remember being struck by its insightfulness, clarity, complexity, simplicity, authenticity, erudition, accessibility, and realism. These qualities are not easily found in one book!

Solitude, community, I said. What did Fritz say about it? Freud believed that the body of the mother is what we all fall in love with since infancy. Eros, the energy of love, is activated as soon as we exit the womb. For Reich, this happens even before we do, and in fact, we all long to go back in to cozy and protected pre-natal existence wrapped into our mom’s placenta and amniotic liquid.[2] Yes, loving the mother is what we really want to do, like Oedipus, who managed to marry her too and re-enter the birth channel with his penis. Further, for Freud taboos exist because otherwise we would all do what’s forbidden. Wooooooow! When I read Klein, in the early 1990s, I was not sure about all this. His theoretical framework did not go back that far, and was actually founded on the Kinsey scale, the result of quantitative studies done in the post World War II period.[3] Klein utilized this scale to estimate the bisexual population in the United States at 25-30 million (1993, 11). He developed the Kinsey scale into the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG) to get past mere sexual behavior and into future, ideal, and fantasy, as ways to assess bisexuality as the potential to be intimate, sexual, and loving with people of all genders (1993, 17- 22). Yes, fantasy counted for Fritz, as a way to assess one’s potential for sexual expression and emotional intimacy. Obviously, with the Klein Grid, almost everyone would qualify as potentially bi. Who hasn’t had a same-sex erotic fantasy at least once? But where could this potential be actualized in a world where the practice of love was organized around the homo/hetero divide? What was missing for bisexuals in Klein’s mind at the time he wrote the book, in early 1980s? Bisexuals, Klein observed, were in a “limbo” (117), and when asking himself what was needed to exit the limbo, his answer was clear: “a valid sense of identity, of community” (117).

So I went back to my own work with The Journal of Bisexuality, the four issues I’ve guest edited over eight years, seeking a connectedness, a link to what had inspired me to embrace this community–and be hugged back profusely–in those early years as a solo female immigrant from the European Union to the United States.

What had moved me? What still resonated with me? Had I been seduced to embrace something that ultimately rejected me–that betrayed me–that ignored and misunderstood the depth and complexity of the inner landscape of my existence? Or was it that the community itself offered an oasis of sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness where love could be practiced without fear?

If we agree with Klein that almost everyone has the potential to be bisexual, and that only some people are fortunate enough to actualize this potential, this applies even more clearly to those infants who are born of the same gender as one’s mother. How can a woman love and find intimacy if the whole gender of her first love object is forbidden? How can she experience pleasure if the first site of pleasure she discovers in her body as an infant is ignored in the staple sexual act she’s supposed to submit to, the famous “missionary position”? Klein’s realism comes when he gets to “adjustment,” which in Freud is another word for repression. In Freud’s discourse, repression of same-gender desire and of clitoral pleasure are the way to become a well-adjusted, psychologically medicated, middle-class wife in Vienna’s well-to-do society, and “penis envy” is the side effect of this adjustment. But for Fritz Klein repression should be minimized to obtain what he calls “healthy bisexuality.” A healthy bisexual is capable of 100 percent intimacy because s/he is not afraid to love, be intimate with, and be aroused around people of any gender (1993, 29-37). This resonates with Jiddu Krisnamurti’s wisdom that “it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

According to Klein, therefore, the task at hand is not “adjusting individuals” but rather changing society to where it can accept them for what they are. That’s why he founded Bisexual Forums in New York and then San Diego, where I joined in under the coordination of Regina Reinhardt, and then under my own with another non-partnered female participant.

Now I realize what Forum means. Not a support group. Not a social meet-up group. Not an advocacy group. But a “forum”: a place to discuss what a culture that values bisexuality as a virtue looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like–what it is like to get one’s life organized around it. In the San Diego years (1991-1997, narrated Eros, my memoir of that period), the experience of that–and what I learned–has guided my efforts and dedication to the guest-edited issues in the subsequent years in Puerto Rico.

What is, in retrospect, the wisdom of those years? That bisexuality needs to be treated as a holographic research trope to be studied in all possible contexts and from all possible perspectives. The Journal of Bisexuality has fulfilled this mission in these past ten years, with many valuable contributions from multiple authors, guest editors, and editors. It has been a blessing to have this Journal around because it has provided a haven from other models of research that are far less visionary. For example, in the AIDS era, the medical model of research has operated on a mode that inevitably pathologizes bisexuality, not because there is anything unhealthy about bisexuality, but because–prevalently in the US but also well beyond its precincts–medical research today is slave to the greed of Big Pharma, with doctors and medical researchers reduced to salesmen of products from the pharmaceutical industry–what the Greeks called pharmakon, a word that in the wisdom of that ancient language also meant poison.[4] This model of research on bisexuality is a complete betrayal of the legacy of Fritz Klein because he claimed that bisexuality is healthier than any monosexuality as it involves “100 percent intimacy.”

[1] The essay appeared in English in the Hogarth Press standard edition of 1964.

[2] My references are Wilhelm Reich: Character Analysis (1980), and The Function of the Orgasm: Discovery of the Orgone (1986).

[3] My references are Alfred Kinsey: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).

[4] My sources are a whole spate of new books on the theme: The Deadly Dinner Party (2011), The Hundred-Year Lie (2007), Side Effects (2008), and Our Daily Meds (2009).

# # # # # # # # #

Yours truly appreciates your attention. Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/

Website: www.serenagaia.com

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings

Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA