3 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 10th 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 the Introduction with The Journey, and will have five 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.
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

3. The Journey
Solitude, community.  Separation, intimacy.  Nausea, freedom.  Nausea, a manifesto of 20th century existentialism in Europe, is the first novel by Jean Paul Sartre, the French philosopher who was offered the Nobel Prize in Literature and had the gall to refuse it!  The novel was published in France in 1938, the fatal year when all bets were off for peace in that region.  The protagonist, Roquetin, felt nauseous from inaction in a world where love for love was disappearing, and was being replaced by fear of love, or erotophobia.  In trying to respond to the invitation to contribute, my mind went to this book.  What did Sartre’s nausea have to do with me?  Was I trapped in an existentialist dilemma like Roquetin? 
While in the throes of this, through the research networks that serve me I came across the latest report on bisexuality by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission: Bisexual Invisibility.  The Report identifies the bisexual contingent as the largest segment in the population that constitutes the LGBT community.  In this contingent, the majority are women to a much higher degree than in the general population.  The Report also establishes that biphobia, or the fear of bisexuality, runs rampant in LGBT institutions and the population they serve.  Last but not least, the Report also quantifies this invisibility in terms of US public funding earmarked for knowledge production and dissemination related to bisexuality.  Of the several millions in public funding received by the LGBT community, not one round cent was earmarked as bi in recent years. 
Of this I can give personal witness.  My period of collaboration with The Journal of Bisexuality  largely coincides with the probationary and tenured period of my academic career at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez.  Its internally funded research programs have been quite generous until last year.  The Journal has benefitted from UPR’s internally funded research programs a great deal.  How else would I have edited four issues?  What is more, by choosing to fund and tenure me based on my guest-edited issues, the UPR Mayaguez campus has perhaps inadvertently produced the only known full professor based at an institution of the Western Hemisphere whose tenure is significantly based on bisexuality research.  The other two academics, also women, are quite well known and respected in the US, but they are from other hemispheres.  Public US grant institutions classify Puerto Rico as UMI (United States Minor Outlaying Island), which suggests scarce awareness of the island’s population of about four million.  US-based public and private funders have turned down my recent grant proposals, predictably.  In addition, the assault on the public sector the Republican governor Fortuño has been perpetrating in the past two years has wiped out any vestige of human rights at my institution.  It is causing all international colleagues to flee, with the likely effect to plunge the university in the throes of parochialism and fear.[1]  As a scholar activist, I have publicly embraced the project of educating the Federal Government grant institutions that have invited me to resubmit.  “Biphobia is not in the public’s best interest,” I’ve claimed, “let’s use public funding more efficiently.”  The mentioned report Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations, has been the reference document for this.  Here, I am offering my reflection as a way to educate private funders too, on the difficulties and life-threatening risks of doing the bisexuality research we do.  Thanks Human Rights Commission!  You are saving my life too.
Fritz Klein
Feb 8, 2004, Dawn at Auroville
Anniversaries are occasions to celebrate.  And the rhetoric I needed to get started on this piece was just not channeling in.  What should I do?  With this context in mind, dear reader, perhaps it won’t be too difficult for you to empathize with my predicament.  What sustainable course of action could I choose that would correspond to authenticity?  Five years have passed from the “In Absentia” semi-trance piece.  Where was Fritz Klein?  What about his legacy?  My mind went to my extended research visit to Auroville, in Tamil Nadu, India, also funded by the UPR system in its golden years.  Auroville is an oasis of international creativity and a “city of dawn” founded in 1968 and named after its spiritual leader, decolonization activist and eclectic avatar Sri Aurobindo.  There, in 2004, I studied patterns of organization, expansion, and sustenance in intentional communities.  I noticed a certain staleness and indecisiveness.  Some would call it lack of vision.  I listened to local informants in the best cultural anthropology, cultural studies tradition.  “What’s the problem?” I asked the ones with most acumen.  “Dead guru syndrome,” they chimed, “we’re stuck between interpreting his word and allowing the vision to evolve as the world does and as he would if here.”  Ouch! 
“Perhaps this applies to my case too,” I reflected, “where is my copy of Fritz’s book?” Maybe that’s where I’ll find inspiration for the right rhetorical mode for this.  I own a copy of the second edition.  And yes, it was all there, the eclecticism, the dialogic ambiguity, the irony and sometime irreverent humor, the admixture of registers from colloquial to erudite, and the searing fearlessness.  The dead often visit me.  And when they do, a magnetic force gets me to open their books and listen to the voice that’s alive still beyond the page and is witness to a life spent in the endeavor to write what has the makings of a classic, something that speaks across time and space to new generations of readers.

[1] The issue of human rights in Puerto Rico has been addressed by the ACLU and Rep Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, among others: http://derechoalderecho.org/2011/02/14/human-rights-crisis-in-puerto-rico-aclu/
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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

Join Our Mailing List
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2 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 10th 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 the abstract with the Introduction, and will have five 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.
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

 

2. Introduction
It is an acknowledgement to be invited to contribute to this anniversary issue.[1]  Ten Years of Bisexuality is how fellow-traveler eclectic and queer-theory pioneer David Halperin would probably call this–not to mention Nobel Laureate in Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who might have preferred Ten Years of Solitude.[2]  Let this occasional piece be an opportunity to analyze the miracle of planetary consciousness and political circumstances that has been at cause of my being part of it, and reflect on what we might learn from the results.
 In 2003 I was invited to guest edit the issue that became Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective.  Regina Reinhardt, the journal’s associate editor, was a close collaborator of Fritz Klein, founder of the journal.  She offered the opportunity and the issue ended up collecting articles from four different continents.  In 2005 I invited myself to guest-edit an issue on the intersections of polyamory and bisexuality.  Fritz Klein initially resisted the idea.  As a seasoned good listener who would allow eloquence and a good argument to convince him, he eventually agreed.  It became Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living, now an appreciated book in poly communities for research and practice.  Fritz Klein passed in 2006, and I remember writing, in a post-traumatic state of semi-trance from the death of a respected friend and intimate leader, “In Absentia,” a short introductory piece for the issue about to go to print.  When Jonathan Alexander came in as editor-in-chief anointed by the Fritz Klein legacy that funds this initiative, I proposed Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010).[3]  This issue is now in production as a book that promises to bridge the discursive gap between practice and theory, communities and ivy leagues, or the body and the mind, to use shorthand from new age speak.  There were no conferences in North America in years subsequent to Klein’s passing that would offer spaces for continuance of the integration of discourses auspicated by the activist scholarship to which I devote my energies.  When the energies for one such conference jelled in England, in 2010, I was invited to keynote and sparkled the idea of the proceedings volume that became BiTopia, now in print as a journal issue.[4]
Every issue has been a labor of love devoted to the overarching commitment to the scientific invention of a world where love for love, or erotophilia, is revered.  As an activist scholar, I don’t follow trends that promise prestige.  I chart new fields that offer the opportunity to make the world a better place for those who love love as I do and are willing to stand for an inclusive amorous vision beyond binaries and divisive dualisms.  This requires a public profile that involves risk.  It also involves the effort of being beyond the lateral hostilities that often make coordination among activists, communities, advocates, and academics difficult, as well as a vision whose horizon is wider than the sum of often conflicting academic sectors and disciplines.  I hope to have kept faith to my overarching intent at all times, even though I am aware that in some cases this is just wishful thinking.
Over this period I have considered myself a participant observer and research activist of bisexuality, as an in-flux identity, a diverse community, a subculture interspersed with tropes from other, contiguous groups, and a practice of love rich with many variations.  Bisexuality is just as healthy as any other sexual orientation, Fritz Klein established with his seminal work in the mid 1980s, The Bisexual Option.  If fact, when social and cultural causes for neuroses that can accrue from it are removed, it is even healthier since it corresponds to the potential for “100 Percent Intimacy,” as indicated in the subtitle he chose for that book.[5]  Klein focused on how this applies to the individual, as in the kind of therapeutic approach that can help a bisexual person feel comfortable with her/his orientation and related practices of love. 
Today cultural discourse about the interconnection between sexuality and consciousness has developed much further.  Many of us believe that active sexual education and amorous expression, not the stillness of a couch with the “talking cure,” is where the healing begins.  We are also more aware of planetary consciousness, or the noosphere–which has been further activated by cyberspace interactivity.  In this evolving cultural context, Klein’s claim about the health of a bisexual person can be projected on the wider horizon of global ecological health, which can thrive on the expansion of human sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness.  In a homeopathic rhetorical turn, one might theorize bisexuality, and/or the fear thereof, as the “problem” which is the solution, the “disease” which is the cure, the “lie” which is the truth, in an algorithm with the potential to heal personal, relational, cultural, social, ecological, emotional, and economic wounds all the way back to Plato’s dualisms. 
When we look forwards we can envision bisexuality as an engine in the paradigmatic shift toward a future of sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness where the energies of love and life are revered.  In other words, bisexuality is the foundation of a new epistemology based on love for our hostess, third planet Gaia, and the mantle teeming with life that she has enshrined herself in to welcome the life journeys of an amazing range of interdependent beings, from humans to bacteria and everything in between.[6] 
If bisexuality is an epistemology–or at least a significant element in the new episteme toward which planetary consciousness is shifting–then we may want to go back to literature, the art of wordsmiths, to sort out what this means.

[1] Jonathan Alexander, the editor-in-chief whose rhetorical expertise has been so instrumental in keeping the Journal going since Fritz Klein’s death, is the one who helped me see the call to contribute to this issue as a form of recognition for my role in affirming the Klein legacy.  I owe him many of the insights of this piece.  Our conversations were very inspiring.  Another debt is owed Regina Reinhardt for also insisting.  Thank you!
[2] My references are David Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, and its palimpsest, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by now two respected classics in their own discursive ambits.
[5] The Bisexual Option was published in the early 1980s with the subtitle A Concept of One Hundred Percent Intimacy.  It went into its second edition in 1993. 
[6] The reference here is my own work on bisexuality and global ecological theory, in Gaia and the New Politics of Love (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

Join Our Mailing List
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Follow us in the social media
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Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

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1 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 10th Anniversary Issue
Hi dear readers!
This 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 begin w/ the abstract, and will have six 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.
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


Abstract
Fritz Klein
This occasional piece captures the experience of being a guest editor for four issues of Journal of Bisexuality, from 2003 to the present time.  It is also a reflection on that experience. What is there to learn from it?  Is it possible to create a culture of research on bisexuality that empowers people to live authentic lives–and fulfill Fritz Klein’s promise of a healthy bisexuality whose gift to the world is the joy of 100 percent intimacy?  The article is made of an introduction to the four issues, on women and bisexuality in a global perspective, on polyamory and bisexuality, on bisexuality and queer theory, and on community-related research about bisexuality that gives off the effect of a bi utopia, or bitopia.  It discusses the Fritz Klein intellectual legacy and what it means in terms of understanding the role of bisexuality in today’s world and its potential to contribute to a paradigm shift towards an epistemology based on love for love, or erotophilia.  It discusses in depth the circumstances under which the “miracle” of “ten years of bisexuality” has been possible in a decade of planetary disarray and human distress.  And it gives special attention to the circumstances in which the four issues came into being.  The article further samples significant contributions to the issues, including those by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Betty Dodson, and Deborah Anapol, all of whom pioneers and leaders in the sex-positive movement.  Finally, the article also positions the author as a scholar activist whose method of criticism can be termed “holistic” because it integrates correlated approaches synergistically, including close reading and cultural theory. 

Keywords: healthy bisexuality, erotophilia (love for love), erotophobia (fear of love), holistic cultural theory, epistemology (how we get to know things, what we think knowledge is), utopia (ideal world), women, polyamory, Fritz Klein, love, existentialism (what makes existence meaningful), Sigmund Freud

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

Join Our Mailing List
 GaiaCoverFullSize  
Follow us in the social media
Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 
Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

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Assuaging AIDS Fears: The Eco-Sexual Arts of Sharing Love

As an author and cultural analyst, I have touched on the topic of AIDS on several occasions, before Montagnier’s interview and when the issue was really embattled.  I have also been publically attacked.  And certain venues have banned me.  Cultural interpretation is extremely important in all areas of knowledge, including medicine.  Now that more is becoming apparent about the multiple perspectives from which AIDS can be interpreted and why, it is time to pronounce myself in a clear and succinct position statement that will help others orient themselves in relation to what I know and where I stand.
In my observation, when science production is commodified for profit by the private interests of Big Pharma, what often happens is that most virologists become “of the virus party.”  This literary expression implies that they may (inadvertently perhaps) start rooting for the viruses they are researching.  In this case, their commitment to put humans first and protect us from harm might slip to the back of their minds.  After all, if they can prove that the virus they study causes real harm, they may get the Nobel Prize.  This mindset is a betrayal of the Hippocratic oath that all medical scientists are sworn to, namely “first do no harm.”  Why?  Because believing that one is ill can cause one to die.  Medicine CAN “do harm” and that’s why the Hippocratic oath is still practiced.  In Greek, the word “pharmakon” means poison.  Next time you refill your meds, think about it.
(This theory is explained in “Of the Virus Party,” a wide-ranging section of my book Gaia and the New Politics of Love.)
Jumping to conclusions about a putative pathogen can be good to a virologist’s career. However, it is potentially harmful to humankind because human health is multifactorial and related to the emotional and physical ecology that surrounds human life.
HIV testing is the first step on this path.  The reliability of the test has been seriously questioned on all counts.  Furthermore, anonymous testing has been banned in countries where health care is for profit and private.  It is allowed and encouraged in countries with universal heath-care systems that function well and are free of charge, including France, Italy, and many others.  It would appear that as long as science cannot cure a disease, for the protection of individuals against medical error and other abuses of power, anonymous testing should be allowed.  For those without access to anonymous testing in their home countries, self-test kits can be ordered from Switzerland for about $ 40.  They are very easy to use at home and quite reliable.  Confidential testing is only anonymous as long as there is no error or positive result.
Testing anonymously can help one feel better and safer.  It can help assuage fears for oneself, one’s partners, and partners of partners.  As a person who’s been med-free for over 25 years now, I have come to rely on meditation, nutrition, healthy emotional and physical environment, good connectedness with self, a fulfilling and diverse amorous life, and inner balance, rather than testing and chemical drugs.  Attributing excessive significance to testing is not wise since by and large one’s health is proportional to the strength of one’s immune system rather than absence of exposure to pathogens.  Erotic, amorous, sensual, and affectional expression are big factors in the health picture of everyone.
What I bring to this conversation is also my experience as participant observer in erotic communities where resources of love are shared–and therefore abundant–as in those that practice some form of polyamory and/or bisexuality.  People in these communities typically have sex with a limited number of partners, sometimes simultaneously and over an extended period of time.  Typically this happens with full disclosure for all involved, including disclosure of number of partners and their health status.
My wisdom is that in these contexts, some measure of safer sex is highly desirable.  We live in a time when the foundations upon which human knowledge is based are shifting.  Not surprisingly, people’s different understandings of STDs are not aligned enough for everyone to feel safe and comfortable otherwise.  Plus, not all diseases known to the public have a standard cure.
There is a wide range of safer-sex practices, referring, in general, to superficial body fluids, like saliva, and deep body fluids, like sperm, female ejaculate, and blood.  Safer sex practices can vary.  Complete safety typically implies dry kissing, barriers in oral sex, and condoms in penetration.  Deep-fluid only safety is also practiced, involving condoms for penetration.  These two different levels of safety can be practiced by the same person with different partners, with the second one typically for more intimate and long-term partners.  The practice of fluid bonding is reserved for partners with deep emotional bonding and trust.  Changing levels of safety involves acceptance of such change from other involved partners.
(Some of the difficulties in educating oneself and others about these practices over several world regions are narrated in my memoir, Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves.)
These are articulate degrees of protection.  My experience is that they help to preserve the health and safety of a given erotic community, in which different people have different degrees of vulnerability, with–as a general tenet–more medication more vulnerability.
Some members of these erotic communities may be HIV positive, with the knowledge of their partners and respect for appropriate regimens of safety.
Perhaps when more is known about AIDS in a verifiable, scientifically concordant manner, some of these rules may change.  Other STDs participants tend to be wary of are Genital Herpes and Warts.  By and large, my observation is that in these communities health is proportional to good nutrition, exercise, environment, low stress level, freedom, joy, and variety in erotic, sensual, and sexual expression–not to mention meditation, yoga, and other restorative activities.  It really has nothing to do with number of partners, gender of partners, frequency of sexual activity, or HIV status.
(For readers with more curiosity about how my views have been attacked and how I interpret the genesis of AIDS in relation to cultural fears of anal pleasure, I refer to The G Tales, 1: What’s in a Word? and 2: A Gut Feeling.)

My wish in expressing this pronouncement is to create more listening and understanding among all the different groups and agents that participate in cultural discourses of health, sexuality, and the arts of love.  We need interpretations of what constitutes health–including holistic sexual health–that reflect the experiences of those engaged in the practice of love.  My position is that when sexuality is practiced in ecological ways it is healthy.  This approach to AIDS tends to assuage fears and empower people to practice love.  This applies at the local and global level.

Living is and can only be safe in a world where it is safe to love.

For a live conversation with Reappraising AIDS activists, listen to my Interview with David Crowe and Celia Ferber in How Positive Are You?

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

4 of 4 – Oh the Power of Ecosexual Poetry! – It’s Not Called Labour for Nothing – Yemisi Ilesanmi

It’s not called labour for nothing!
Ouch, what is that kick
That makes me sick
Breaking in sweat
Oh mine, I am wet
Is that mucous
Oh just focus!
It’s coming, go get the doctor
Stop looking at the buttocks
Tis no time for old wives tales
For I am in pains and already pale
I am coming, I am coming, you screamed
Keep pushing, keep pushing now you screeched
Oh nurse, this hurts, please do something
It’s not yet time, she keeps snorting
Tis was sweet but now it’s a dilemma
Oh no try a push and a dilation
Those sweet contractions
Are now a contradiction
That leaves me frustrated
No longer besotted
Push, Push, you are all preaching
I am the one that is screeching
The baby must not come breeching
Oh what, I am bleeding!
Maybe I need an epidural
Or is this just procedural
Heavily I breathe
Now I seethe
Not cumming in ecstatic  orgasms
But pushing a human organism
Oh, I see a head
Quick I need a lead
Oh nurses stop laughing
Maybe try fawning
This isn’t funny
 I don’t feel sunny
This is no botox
Where is the doctor
I might need a suture
To give me succour
Oh dear, here comes my baby
All wet, slippery and bubbly
Beautiful as the morning dew
You have come to pay your due
Ha, tis looking for the boobs
Ready to start the smooch
In my arms tis nestled
All ready to suckle
I am ready to nurture
I guess tis in my nature
Tis suckling, You are rustled
Dad is rippling but bristled
Those boobs are mine alone
On my terms I give and loan
I do all the labour
You get all the flavour
Never again will I be pushed
This was agony I am flushed
I need science of equality to share
Our baby together we should bear
Mommy is that my sibling
Oh no, I must be blinking
Can’t afford to miss my periods
Cos things can get too serious
Little bump and grind and the baby pops
Now all I have is a pushing tot that sobs
But then I should know
One, two, three years now
I can see a rounded tommy
Ready again to be a mommy!
BY YEMISI ILESANMI 22 MARCH, 2011
Biographical Note
Yemisi Ilesanmi

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a trade union/human rights activist. She has a Masters of Law (LLM) on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights from Keele University, Stadffordshire, UK and a Law degree(LLB) from Obafemi Awolowo University ile -Ife, Nigeria. She works with the Nigeria Labour Congress . She has served on many national and International labour/ human rights committees including as Vice president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) 2006-2009 and President of the ITUC Youth committee (2004-2009) 

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a passionate human rights activist, bisexual, atheist and an unpublished poet and budding writer. She is interested in and often make public presentations on gender issues, sexuality rights, workers rights, youth representation and environmental protection. She is commited to a world of peace where justice reigns supreme.
Text originally published as a Note on Facebook, republished here with permission.
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

3 of 4 – Oh the Power of Ecosexual Poetry! – I Am a Single Mother – Yemisi Ilesanmi

I am a Single Mother
I am a single mother
Proud like the other
I was a young mummy
Now wise and yummy
Yes I have a son
As bright as the sun
You say he needs a daddy
For him to be dandy
But I need no ring
To make me sing
I am a single mother
Sleek as the otter
I need no rows
To take the vows
I work and toil
But I don’t spoil
I spare the rod
But he is not rot
Sometimes I smack
Never leave a mark
I am a single mother
That is not a murder
So stop the blunders
Enough of your slanders
You need a man
Like your Nan
Soon you will sag
Funny how they nag
I really don’t know for what
Certainly not for my want!
I am a single mother
I am proud to utter
He has a father
Who is just farther
You should know
It takes Two
Not just a procreator
To be his creator
A baby a community can scold
It takes love a human to mould
I am a single mother
Stop your muttering
He is not a bastard
Don’t be a retard
He is not a furnace
For your social menace
He is not a barnacle
But a special miracle
Landing on your moon
To make you swoon
 I am a single mummy
Both sexy and yummy
 I can date, I will get a sitter
Don’t be late, I need no cheater
Just be ready  
To go steady
No drinking late
That leaves you stale
Three is a number
That leaves me somber
I am a single mother
That can go yonder
I am proud to mutter
That I am no nutter
My son praises I sing
For he is a gift I bring
I need no wedding ring
Not even a big bling
Get out of your cove
For it is time to love
BY YEMISI ILESANMI 19 March, 2011
Biographical Note
Yemisi Ilesanmi

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a trade union/human rights activist. She has a Masters of Law (LLM) on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights from Keele University, Stadffordshire, UK and a Law degree(LLB) from Obafemi Awolowo University ile -Ife, Nigeria. She works with the Nigeria Labour Congress . She has served on many national and International labour/ human rights committees including as Vice president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) 2006-2009 and President of the ITUC Youth committee (2004-2009) 

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a passionate human rights activist, bisexual, atheist and an unpublished poet and budding writer. She is interested in and often make public presentations on gender issues, sexuality rights, workers rights, youth representation and environmental protection. She is commited to a world of peace where justice reigns supreme.
Text originally published as a Note on Facebook, republished here with permission.
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

2 of 4 – Oh the Power of Ecosexual Poetry! – My Genderless Love – Yemisi Ilesanmi

MY GENDERLESS LOVE!
I don’t walk straight
Not even for the bait
 I am merry yet not gay
 I am bi and I can bay
 But saying goodbye
Is not my hallmark
Yet you all smack
Like I always play
Our goal is acceptance
Where is the tolerance
I am not gay enough
To be enfolded
Not sufficiently lesbian
To be embraced
Do I even talk Trans
Can’t brace the rants
You preach diversity
As community necessity
Yet you sneer
While I leer
When in the mall
Yes I want it all
With the dick
I play and lick
And the boobs
Makes me smooch
The big breasted
Leaves me besotted
With the hermaphrodite
I am a smitten Aphrodite
With the pussy
I get all fussy
The shaven sight
To suckle all night
The pert bums
Makes me bowl
The bouncy balls
I love to maul
With the Pecs
I need no specs
I am bisexual, not a player
So don’t make me a slayer
Like you I choose my partner
It is a natural attraction
And not just a selection
A sex you choose
My love I embrace
It matters not the gender
All I want is tenderness
For my love is genderless.
By Yemisi Ilesanmi 17 March, 2011
Biographical Note
Yemisi Ilesanmi
Yemisi Ilesanmi is a trade union/human rights activist. She has a Masters of Law (LLM) on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights from Keele University, Stadffordshire, UK and a Law degree(LLB) from Obafemi Awolowo University ile -Ife, Nigeria. She works with the Nigeria Labour Congress . She has served on many national and International labour/ human rights committees including as Vice president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) 2006-2009 and President of the ITUC Youth committee (2004-2009) 

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a passionate human rights activist, bisexual, atheist and an unpublished poet and budding writer. She is interested in and often make public presentations on gender issues, sexuality rights, workers rights, youth representation and environmental protection. She is commited to a world of peace where justice reigns supreme.

Text originally published as a Note on Facebook, republished here with permission.

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

8 of 8 – BiTopia: Conclusion and Works Cited. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010’s Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
Conclusion

Last August at UEL a sense of hope and joy of coming together emanated from the mere simultaneous presence of so many bis with different interests, backgrounds and motivations for participating.  When BiCon 28, 10 ICB, and BiReCon converged, BiTopia came alive.  The sober walls of academe were made more spirited and effervescent by the concrete presence of such an imaginative congregation of folks from many countries, genders, queer subcultures, age groups, venues, and walks in life. 

The 26th was research day and at BiReCon one would find work that breaks new ground.  The research presented was informed and reliable yet wide-ranging enough to trade in paradigmatic issues.  It was free of media friendly sensationalism and ivory tower abstractions.  The very concept of bisexuality, with its multiple meanings and implications, offers a prism through which the semiotics that organize cultural constructions of love can be sorted out. The contents of that day have been elaborated into articles and organized in five clusters.  We are grateful to the authors who submitted to us and revised.  We hope to have orchestrated a volume that honors BiReCon’s momentous quality. 

In subsequent days, one would get a sense of the lore of bisexuality, how bi people like to dress, how they relate, what they talk about, the urban legends they trade.  Imaginativeness, creativity, playfulness, a certain taste for the odd, the eccentric, an inclination for the carnivalesque, the topsy-turvy, for the giggly excess, the performative, the subversive.  Different age groups met, who have experienced biphobia at different times and in different contexts, yet with the same sense that integration of perceived opposites is what dissipates the fears.  The festive atmosphere was traversed with a vibration that energized the intention to respond to the challenges that make bisexuality necessary as a transformative force for the new millennium.

Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, February 20th, 2011
Works Cited and Consulted
Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena.  Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet.  Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.
Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena, ed.  Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living.  New York: Routledge, 2005. 
Cantarella, Eva.  Bisexuality in the Ancient World.  Yale University Press, 1992.  (Original title: Secondo natura, “according to nature”.)
Chedgzoy, Kate.  “Two Loves I Have: Shakespeare and Bisexuality.”  In Bi Academic Intervention Eds, The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire.  London: Cassell, 1997.
Garber, Marjorie.  Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life.  New York: Routledge, 2000.
Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan.  Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution.  University of California Press, 1997.
______  .  Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
Marshall, Nowell.  “Refusing Butler’s Binary: Bisexuality and Performative Melancolia in Mrs. Dalloway.”  In Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Jonathan Alexander Eds, Bisexuality and Queer Theory.  New York: Routledge, 2010. 
Storr, Merl. Bisexuality: A Critical Reader.  London: Routledge, 1999.
Wikipedia: Docklands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Docklands

Thanks for reading us.  We hope you have enjoyed.  Please leave a comment.  More exciting posts to follow on diverse topics in the near future!

Copyright and Prepublication Notice:
© Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, transferred to Taylor & Francis for upcoming publication in BiReCon, a selected proceedings issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.  Prepublished here courtesy of T & F.  Stay tuned for volume and buy it online!
Read the Journal of Bisexuality online, the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of all aspects on bisexuality.   Check out our latest: a provocative special-topics issue on Bisexuality and Queer Theory!
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

7 of 8 – BiTopia: Bisexual Cultural Productions, Interpretations, Reflections. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010’s Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
Cluster 5.  Bisexual Cultural Productions, Interpretations, Reflections
The imagination is the realm of human life out of which new visions emanate, with their powerful reverberations across space and time.  The fifth cluster includes contributions that discuss cultural constructions and interpretations of bisexuality in the social media, film, drama, and future life.  These articles, and the sources they discuss, help us imagine how the world beyond the homo/hetero divide—this wide open world without binaries–would feel, look, read, and perform like. 
“Blogging Bisexuals” is a social-media article that registers the experiences of two bloggers and their respondents to examine the role of blogging in the bloggers’ coming out process.  Sue George is known to the public for her work on bisexuality.  She also draws on her own experience as a blogger in this article.  The blogosphere is a new realm of the imagination where love is signified.  Its virtual character makes it more open to unconventional expressions and impulses.  Its accessibility makes it a natural resource for “coming out” of one’s asphyxiating monosexual lifestyle.  The two cases discussed show how the blogosphere served the purpose in different circumstances.
In “Bisexuality in the Cinema,” B.C. Roberts analyzes Anglophone film criticism discourse about bisexuality as mapped by critics who identify as bisexual.  Robert reviews a vast array of secondary sources ranging over a fairly inclusive body of films with prominent bisexual tropes.  Her claim is that this discourse has been shaped by dominant strategies for representing bisexuality.  Roberts suggests a focus on the medium itself as a way to eschew this dominant bias. 
Plays By Shakespare, Painting by Sir John Gilbert
On a more hopeful note, Kaye McLelland proposes bisexual readings for a significant range of Shakespeare’s works, including plays and poems, in her multivoiced article, “Toward a Bisexual Shakespeare.”  This is the kind of article any formally trained drama critic who honestly studies bisexuality would like to publish.  Since my early days as an English major in my undergraduate career at the University of Sassari, Italy, I thought English literature was fabulous because its centerpiece, its cultural icon, was bi.  That’s what really got me to continue in that field and specialize in drama!  “Two loves I have” (# 144) is the sonnet I typically use to start off my workshops on bisexuality.  The Bard declares he loves a “man right fair” and a “woman coloured ill,” I reason–who in the wide world could doubt he’s bi? 
The “Bard”
But obviously, my reasoning does not take into account the dynamics involved in the construction of national literary canons.  What if English children found out at a tender age that a whole literary tradition is built on someone so “unpromotable” and “unreliable”?  That’s where McLelland’s article helps out.  The only reason why I can think so freely–I realize–is that I’m not a subject of the British Crown!  McLelland enters the fray of this highly charged discussion with a gentle yet firm touch.  She claims that bisexual readings of Shakespeare are realistic and plausible, with the added bonus of being–to bisexual readers–highly desirable.  From her discussion, one gathers that the complexity and depth of understanding of bisexuality in Shakespeare’s oeuvre is such that it requires one to revisit all the meanings of bisexuality as they evolved in the modern era and became interrelated in culture and language. 
Oberon, Titania, Puck, in Midsummer Night’s Dream
In this article, we observe that as a side effect of the homo/hetero divide, Shakespeare has been monosexualized one way or the other.  McLelland’s discussion levels the playfield to where any actual bisexual interpretations of a specific work or set of works by the Bard will register as as legitimate as one based in any other sexual orientation.  When it comes to a cultural icon around which so much in the ways of maintaining the status quo is invested, that is to say a lot!  Last but not least, Hartmut Friedrichs’ “Politics Strategy: Bisexual or Queer” envisions transformative goals for bisexuality that affect a whole range of areas in human life, and discusses strategies that may be effective in timeframes ranging from the present to a whole century from now.

To be be continued: 8 of 8 – Conclusion.  Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

Copyright and Prepublication Notice:
© Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, transferred to Taylor & Francis for upcoming publication in BiReCon, a selected proceedings issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.  Prepublished here courtesy of T & F.  Stay tuned for volume and buy it online!
Read the Journal of Bisexuality online, the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of all aspects on bisexuality.   Check out our latest: a provocative special-topics issue on Bisexuality and Queer Theory!
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

5 of 8 – BiTopia: Bisexuality Through the Lifespan. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010’s Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon
Cluster 3. Bisexuality Through the Lifespan
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
While the effects of biphobia rage in many quarters, the discourse of bisexuality has expanded in others, including the meaningfulness of bisexuality through the human lifespan.  This is the focus of the third cluster. 
Jones’s Study: Bis Imaging Future
“Imagining Bisexual Futures” organizes data from past BiCon surveys and a workshop on aging at BiReCon 2010 called “When I Get Old” to explore how bisexual people imagine and wish to organize our late life.  Rebecca Jones, a Lecturer at the Open University in Buckinghamshire, proposes an ethnomethodological perspective to examine normativity as defined within a given subculture in its interfaces with scripts and expectations that evolve in mainstream culture.  In her view, in these subcultures, we observe a forging and re-forging of normativites that are in flux.  Her research implies the trust that imagining non-normative futures in a workshop can help to actualize them.  Being on the verge of designing the next chapter of my own life, I found this workshop very inspiring.  How can bis design chapters in our lives that reflect the way we want to be?  Can ‘normativity’ be redesigned to accommodate bisexual people’s dream late-life?  Or will old bis get to be ‘normalized’ and pushed back into the closet by assisted living and the medicalization of late-life?  Could old-age be the time when we bis get to finally fulfill our inclusive amorous fantasies?  Jones’ research maps these possibilities, since the imagination is where it all begins! 
Jones’s Study” Bis Imagining Future
In “There Has Been No Phase in My Life When I Wasn’t Somehow Bisexual,” Finnish anthropologist Jenny Kangasvuo provides some concrete examples of how the meaning of bisexuality can evolve in one’s life.  In 1999, Kangasvuo’s interviews with 40 bisexual-identified Finnish people opened her career.  Now she revisits a number of her subjects with follow-up questions designed to understand “what kind of meaning does the concept of bisexuality have in their lives” (7).  Informants evolved along different paths: Some had children, some formed a family with a same-gender partner, some with an other-gender partner, some married and divorced under the new Finnish laws for marriage equality.  Bisexuality remained significant in organizing meaning in their lives.

Jones’ s Study: Bis Imagining Future

To be be continued: 6 of 8 – Cluster 4: Bisexuality at Work.  Includes comments about contributions by Heidi Bruins Green, Helena See, and Carola Towle.  Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

Copyright and Prepublication Notice:
© Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, transferred to Taylor & Francis for upcoming publication in BiReCon, a selected proceedings issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.  Prepublished here courtesy of T & F.  Stay tuned for volume and buy it online!
Read the Journal of Bisexuality online, the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of all aspects on bisexuality.   Check out our latest: a provocative special-topics issue on Bisexuality and Queer Theory!
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com