Category: Proceedings

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 26^th 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 20^th, 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!

© 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!

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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!

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!

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4 of 8 – BiTopia: Contexts for Biphobia and Bi-Negativity. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010’s Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

Cluster 2. Contexts for Biphobia and Bi-Negativity

Freedom of sexual expression is often considered a fundamental human right. In this context , we observe that when research projects are designed with the intent to respect this right, results for bisexuality are encouraging. Even so, when we open up wider horizons, when we delve more deeply into human relatedness and its dynamics, we find that biphobia and bi-negativity are far from disappearing. This is the focus of the second cluster. Where does the fear of bisexuality make its appearance? What are the contexts, dynamics, situations that trigger biphobia? What deeper levels of disunity, denial, mistrust, does this fear manifest? How are organizations, communities, families, relationships traversed by it? How do biphobia and bi-negativity get symbolized? What political, cultural, economic forces power its perpetuation and reproduction? What are the costs to humanity in terms of personal and social life? These and many related questions are addressed in the two articles in this section: “Deconstructing Biphobia,” by Miguel Obradors-Campos, and “Shady Characters,” by Christian Klesse.

People at BiCon

In “Deconstructing Biphobia,” Miguel Obradors-Campos presents a non-essentialist theory of biphobia as a form of oppression that manifests within and without LGBT communities and is a direct result of the overarching binary that organizes knowledge about love in western cultures. Obradors’ perspective is steeped in epistemology, ontology, and other significant aspects of the Western philosophical tradition, from the classics to Kant and beyond. He brings his background in the Romance languages to bear on the complexity of the topic, showing how biphobia is a state of mind. It is an honor to bring such complexity of Latinate lexicon and sentence structure into the multivoiced discourse of this volume. Klesse shifts to the even more personal and unstable terrain of amorous relationships. His reference point is heteronormativity, or the ‘normalization’ of heterosexuality that typifies essentialist discourses. Can bisexuals really organize our amorous lives around a divide that denies us? Both authors provide evidence of how prejudice, fear, ignorance, and confusion about bisexuality affect the lives of openly bisexual people very deeply, and keep bisexual cultures and communities from expanding as naturally and organically as they should in a healthy society.

To be be continued: 5 of 8 – Cluster 3: Bisexuality Through the Lifespan. Includes comments about contributions by Rebecca Jones and Jenny Kangasvuo. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

3 of 8 – BiTopia: Is Bisexuality Entering the Third Millenium? Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010’s Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: An Introduction to BiTopia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

Cluster 1. Bi Re(Con)Naissance: When Bisexuality Enters the Third Millennium

The first of five clusters in which this volume’s contributions have been organized includes introductory articles that also reflect and elaborate on the contents of plenary sessions. “BiReCon: An International Academic Conference on Bisexuality” is a multivoiced narrative based on observation and a micro-historicist perspective that nimbly documents and captures the energy and movement of the event. The team of authors, including Meg Barker, Christina Richards, Rebecca Jones, and Surya Monro, were also key agents for the convergence of three Bi events that made BiReCon momentous. They warmly welcomed BiReCon research into the BiCon, ICB, BiTopian space. Their contribution clearly outlines the background and social actors that made the convergence possible, and briefly highlights presentations and their significance. The appended copy of the Conference Program orients readers as to the variety of topics and contributions, with a complete list that includes presentations not available in article form.

Subsequent contributions in this section memorialize the three keynotes of the day. In “Why We Need to ‘Get Bi’,” long-time bi educator and activist Robyn Ochs explains why the binary that organizes current thinking about sexuality needs to be overcome, along with the oppositional logic that affects human thinking in all areas of life. Ochs’ pragmatic voice powerfully outlines strategies for global action.

In “Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving” yours truly takes this line of reasoning one step further to introduce the global ecology of bisexuality. In a cosmos where matter and energy, mind and body, nature and humanity are aligned, bisexuality functions as a portal to a world beyond the hetero/homo divide, where the symbiotic energy of love is revered, the practice of love considered an art. In this BiTopian world, Eros, the energy of love is recognized as the force that makes Gaia, the third planet Earth, alive.

In a similar vein, the last contribution in this section comes from a perspective that honors erotophilia, or the love of love, rather than erotophobia, or the fear of love. Its applied research is auspicated by AIB, the American Institute of Bisexuality. Eric Anderson and his collaborators present significant in-progress findings on men and bisexuality, with a focus on secular cultures in today’s major metropolitan areas of the West. The team includes Matthew Ripley, Adrian Adams, and Robin Pitts. In “The Decreasing Significance of Stigma in the Lives of Bisexual Men” the authors document a cultural shift that empowers young men of our time to be more fluid about their sexuality and more relaxed about connecting physically and emotionally with one another, when compared to men who came of age on or before the AIDS era.

The attention paid to gay cultures in the context of this epidemic has made gayness more acceptable to people who love love and respect erotophilia, or the human drive to make that love expressed.

To be be continued: 4 of 8 – Cluster 2: Contexts for Biphobia and Bi-Negativity. Includes comments on contributions by Christian Klesse and Miguel Obradors-Campos. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

2 of 8 – BiTopia: Bisexuality’s Meanings and Contexts. Read Intro to BiReCon, Cont’d

Bi ReConNaissance:

An Introduction to BiTopia, Selected Proceedings from BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

Bisexuality: Meanings and Contexts

As public discourse manifests around bisexuality, the meanings of bisexuality gradually weave together into a multivoiced discourse where they become symbiotic with one another, as in a permaculture garden. At the same time, the contexts, disciplinary and otherwise, where bisexuality manifests, become more diverse and widespread.

In assessing the work of this volume, my wish is to interpret BiReCon as the portal to a BiTopia, a brave new world where loving love is fine and binaries do not apply. When the meanings of bisexuality are memorialized, one finds how they defeat oppositional logic on many counts. Is bisexuality about sex or love? Is it about the potential or the act? Does it divide or unite? Is it about the body or the psyche? When we introduce the trope of bisexuality in cultural discourse, we find that we cannot ask these simple questions innocently any more. The questions bisexuality brings up simply correspond to the binary logic that binds modern thought to an old cultural paradigm. It takes the work of many teams of interdisciplinary scholars and researchers to generate the energetic field of interconnected minds capable of debunking that binary. A significant amount of that work is being accomplished in this volume and the convergence of events it refers to.

@ BiReCon w/ Regina Reinhard & Robyn Ochs

Bisexuality is a modern word for expressions of the erotic among humans, expressions that are as old as human life in general. The word is modern in the sense that it is based on the notion of sexuality. This notion organizes what was known in antiquity as the arts of loving under a scientific aegis. However, the practice of love among humans, and other species with a digametal, male/female system of reproduction, precedes the modern era, and transcends gender boundaries. Love itself starts with unicellular life, where gender does not apply.[1] As long as there is no evidence of the superiority of monosexuality, there is no reason to accept cultural constructions of “nature” that marginalize bisexuality. In other words, bisexuality is “natural,” no matter what semiotic perspective applies.

This semiotic function of bisexuality as a hinge between eras and cultural paradigms, is what produces variance in the meaning of the word across space and time, and what grants its complexity a significant function. For example, when referred to antiquity retroactively, the word indicates the fluctuations of erotic desire that were considered integral parts of a person’s development into adulthood.[2] In classical Athens, one learned about the arts of love from older mentors of one’s gender, one practiced with other-gender partners. When referred to early modernity, bisexuality indicated the performative aspects of gender that were typical of that era. On the Elizabethan stage, for example, young men played women who played men, in a triple entendre that allowed to eschew the constraints of Christianity that labeled same-sex love unnatural. This allowed Shakespearean actors, all men, to “play” with other men, on the stage, and–sometimes at least–behind the wings.[3] In modernity, the b-word became associated with androgyny, a 19^th century style of gender performance that enhanced the intertwined character of feminine and masculine traits in humanity. Orlando, in Virginia Woolf’s novel by the same title, is a woman who is a man who is a woman–a transgender person as androgynous and bi as the author ever was.[4]

It’s only in the 20^th century that the current emphasis on desire became emphasized.[5] Yet, when we see bisexuality as a portal to BiTopia–the brave new world where the energy of love circulates beyond gender binaries–we understand that the force of bisexuality in discourse is the complexity of all these meanings combined. When we think of BiTopia as the energy of a global paradigm shift from binary to inclusive, from linear to complex, from erotophobic to erotophilic, we see that bisexuality functions as a portal, not a divide. When we imagine the world beyond this portal, we appreciate this complexity as an asset. Love, beyond that portal, is not a need or an instinct, but an art. In this context, bisexuality is the subtext of a bouquet of imaginative styles of erotic expression that virtually live beyond the divide, including bi, trans, poly, swing, pan, omni, gay, lesbian, goth, BDSM, metro, eco, and many others.

The venue that hosted the three combined events, UEL Dockland Campus, is a public university that serves many of the new populations of London’s extended metropolitan area. The venue itself is significant in this context. In England and the world today, the forces of democracy are defending public education as a foundation for the practice of democracy. Yet basic human rights are continuously being violated precisely because not enough reliable knowledge is publicly accessible. Sexual freedom is one of these basic rights. In a world still dominated by the homo/hetero divide, bisexuality is an expression of sexual freedom whose significance is enhanced by the divide. In hosting three Bi events combined, UEL accomplished its mission of auspicating democracy via public education. The practice of bisexuality is a way that sexual freedom becomes expressed. The study of bisexuality is a way to understand what this practice is in its multiple aspects. When we memorialize BiReCon in this volume, we produce reliable knowledge about bisexuality and practice democracy in the form of making knowledge that is both academic and transformative accessible to the public.

The combined events were a unique opportunity to get a sense of what bisexuality is today, of its transformative potential as the third millennium comes into full swing. Nobody knows what the future brings, and yet, we do know that the future of bisexuality is in the hands of those with the ability to think together about a third millennium where oppositional reason gives way to symbiotic reason. Symbiotic reason integrates both elements in a binary and honors the infinite diversity of the in-between, the infinite complexity of life that loves itself and sustains itself.[6] This future will be ushered by those with the ability to respect the experience of bisexuality as a source of knowledge. They/we have affirmed this identity and transformed it into an epistemic portal to a future without binaries.

To be continued: 3 of 8 – Cluster 1: When Bisexuality Enters the Third Millennium. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days! Includes comments on keynotes by Robyn Ochs, Serena Anderlini, Eric Anderson, and on event’s genesis by Meg Barker and other organizers.

[1] My sources are Margulis and Sagan (1991 and 1997), passim.

[2] My source is Cantarella (1992), passim.

[3] Significant sources include Chedgzoy (1997), and Garber (2000), passim.

[4] For bisexual paths to an interpretation of Woolf’s fiction, I refer to Marshall (2010).

[5] For more on the history of the word bisexuality, I refer to Storr (1999).

[6] I discuss this at length in Gaia and the New Politics of Love (2009) often also seen as a manifesto for ecosexuality.

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

1 of 8 – BiTopia: Is Bi ReConNaissance Happening Now? Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010’s Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance:

An Introduction to BiTopia, Selected Proceedings from BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

Preamble

We decided to call BiTopia this volume of the Journal of Bisexuality. What is BiTopia? It’s the utopian space where bisexuality is real and present, and also where it is the vanishing point for all the imaginative forms of amorous, erotic, and sexual expression that make life healthy, creative, and fun. BiTopia is also an appropriate way to memorialize the bi utopian space created by the convergence of three Bi university events in the East Dockland area, site of London’s traditional harbor. The historic wharfs of the world capital of modern coloniality are being redeveloped as financial districts.[1] Public universities serve the children of new migrants. Bisexuality produces knowledge that is transformative and academic at the same time. This introduction is meant as a recognizance tour of that BiTopian space, with Bi Renaissance as its wish and double entendre.

Bisexual communities in the UK and nearby regions have come together annually for almost three decades in a stream of conferences known as BiCon. 2010 saw the 28^th edition of this event, simultaneously with 10 ICB, the international bi conference. They took place on August 27-30 at the University of East London, Dockland Campus. BiReCon 2010, an international day bisexuality research, inaugurated the convergence of bi energies and minds, on the 26^th. This momentous combination, with the added bonus of travel and research funding from the American Institute of Bisexuality, the welcome of BiCon’s well-tuned organizational team, the proactive work of a cluster of UK-based bi researchers (including Meg Barker, Christina Richards, and others), and the congenial public university venue, made BiReCon 2010 a really unique and historic event.

@ BiReCon w/ Regina Reinhardt & Robyn Ochs

It is an honor to be introducing one more special-topics issue of the Journal of Bisexuality. This issue is dedicated to providing access to the knowledge production generated by BiReCon 2010 and making the spectrum of research projects, areas, and finding related to bisexuality accessible to the public. As a speaker at the event, a contributor to the volume, and guest editor who originated the idea for this project, I am proud to introduce its contents. There is always a major difference between flesh-and-bones events and their memorialization on paper. Regardless of one’s efforts, there is no hope for a proceedings volume to offer anything anywhere nearly the intensity, momentum, and excitement of the conference itself, or even the memory in one’s mind. However, the intent of this volume is to offer what is possible in that way, with the added bonus of the cognitive and epistemic reflections that turned presentations into contributed articles. I am indebted to Brian Zamboni, Editor-in-Chef of the Journal of Bisexuality, for his valuable collaborator as a peer-reviewer in this project. His offer to share the effort is really appreciated.

To be be continued: 2 of 8 – Bisexuality: Meanings and Contexts. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

[1] For more on the history of the Docklands, I refer to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Docklands

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

9 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving – Preview

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”

BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, Keynote Speaker

Conclusion: “Getting Bi” in a Very Gaian Way

If bisexuality is an unfinished project, BiReCon and this volume could be the sparkle that reignites. My contribution gestures toward a way of being bi that is more natural and more artistic too. As a social construct, “sexuality” seems to dominate whenever love is seen as a need or instinct. In an erotic context, those same needs register as talents, the raw materials upon which a good education in the arts of love can build. That’s why in common parlance “bi” is often used, with the suffix “sexual” omitted, as in Robyn Ochs’s Getting Bi. Bisexuality has secured a place in the LGBTQ acronym, it is even poised to become an equally protected category in the marriage equality disputes at some point in the future. But its complexity is far from being understood. More education in the arts of loving is needed, with the special talents bisexuals offer featured prominently in the curriculum. Only education and access to knowledge can dispel myths, and the good news is that education in the arts of loving is good for the third planet Earth too.

In the ways of a report on the “war” we humans wage on this gracious hostess, it would appear that Gaia is at the moment not very happy with us. At the very least, we are a mixed blessing for the “gay” planet. She must have the impression that we humans are an abusive species that takes the lion’s share and does not respect the environment well enough. Can we get Gaia to change her mind? As a portal to a world without the homo/hetero divide, bisexuality allows us to imagine a planet where the erotic energy that makes Gaia alive is not blocked by socially constructed binaries. This world puts the politics of love center stage because it loves Eros: it is erotophile. Dominating is a lot of work. To simply “get bi” is a lot more fun. Wouldn’t this be a shift in paradigms? It would open up a future where Gaia is recognized as a “gay” planet. As a way to bode well for this future, let me anticipate two possible transformative constructs: Organic bisexuality and holistic sexual health.

Sex educators Kamala Devi and Reid Mihalko advise against judging relationships from longevity (2010). Quality is what counts. Organicity. Relationships, says progressive counselor Daphne Kingma, have a natural way of coming apart, or transmuting, when their developmental task is complete (2000). In this context, “organic bisexuality” seems a highly sustainable orientation that bodes well for the future. It can sustain the fluidity of a person’s lifetime as an erotic being. It can enhance the erotic virtues of bisexual versatility while our species transitions to a culture beyond “sexuality,” where the arts of loving are revered.

As a form of sexual fluidity, organic bisexuality is also part of a more natural way to be amorous and erotically inclusive. It’s a Gaian way of getting bi, as bisexual advocate and author Robyn Ochs would most likely put it. This way honors the origins of our species in our four-billion years old ancestors, bacteria, whose orgiastic sex lives allowed life to begin. The origin of sex is in the symbiosis of bacteria. Allowing the energy of love to circulate is what infuses matter with life today too. As we transition to a Gaian paradigm, we learn to honor the gayness of our species. We choose to love the only planet willing to have us over. And we become more aware of our bodies as ecosystems. As a web of life, Gaia is made of symbiotic ecosystems. Each and every one of us is also one such smaller combination of symbiotic beings. For example, the friendly bacteria in our digestive tracts are symbionts without which we could not be alive.

Our orgiastic yet completely innocent ancestors have been welcome on our hostess planet for four billion years. We have been so abusive in our short shrift of about one million years (and the past three millennia in particular), that human-made climate change and other cataclysms could soon turn most of us in homeless climate refugees. Could this be because we need to be more in tune with sexual fluidity? Perhaps we should consider learning something from bacteria. That’s where a holistic notion of sexual health comes in. As a way to develop the arts of loving that sustain our ecosystems, we need to manifest ecological styles of love that sustain the vitality of the amorous networks where these arts are taught and practiced profusely.

So my recommendation for the project of bisexuality to sparkle anew is that we would do well to learn from our older progenitors and celebrate their orgiastic fluidity, their bisexual equal opportunism as the cure that will heal our species and end its unwinnable war against our
hostess planet. Identity seems to be a condition for inclusion, and yet, as a basis for coalition it is tricky. Women have had the vote for almost a century now in countries that lead the industrial revolution. And what does the scene of politics look like? Has love come to a center stage position? Where identity fails, vision often succeeds.

In a famous article of 2000, legal scholar Kenji Yoshino lamented the “epistemic contract of bisexual erasure” by which both straights and gays tacitly agree to suppress bisexuality from legal and cultural discourse. His point is well taken, and unfortunately, he found abundant evidence to prove it. Yet to be proven wrong is all he wished. Can we do it? Ultimately, who stands to gain from constructing bisexuals as the new bête noire of the sexual liberation movement? And why does such a movement need scapegoats to begin with? Associating bisexuals with predators, the hypersexed, the unredeemable only helps to fuel the flames of fundamentalist erotophobic leaders and the crowds who follow them, partly out of new forms of ignorance that have arisen from the privatization of knowledge and widespread corruption in the seats of power and the media. When public education becomes a priority over the war machine, the arts of loving that bis specialize in will be redeemed. They will be taught in schools!

When bisexuality breaks the sound wall and opens up that portal to a world without the hetero/homo divide, a scene of world politics without binaries will emerge. Forces will coalesce to share resources of love more generously and efficiently, and to break down the fears that separate individuals from one another and make them sick and miserable. As an educator, I’ve had the privilege of doing research and scholarship about bisexuality in the past thirteen years under the aegis of a public institution of higher education, the University of Puerto Rico, with the added bonus of integrating this research into my undergraduate teaching. The complete academic freedom, or libertad de cátedra, I have experienced is also significant. I send my wish into the future. May more knowledge about bisexuality manifest and more research into its complexities, possibilities, and virtues come to fruition.

Bi portals open vistas on a future where the arts of love redeem our species. We’re at war against Gaia and cannot win! Why don’t we try to make peace? With Robyn Ochs and others a BiReCon I cast my vision for a way of “getting bi” around the globe that is very Gaian indeed.

May BiReCon be just the beginning!

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.

______ . “What’s The New Politics of Love that People Wonder About?” In Poly Planet GAIA. Post of July 5, 2010. http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-this-new-politics-of-love-that.html.

Barash, David, and Judith Eve Lipton. The Myth of Monogamy. New York: Holt 2001.

Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron. Love Online: Emotions on the Internet. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Consiglio, Carlo. L’amore con più partner. Rome: Pioda, 2009.

Corrigan, Annie. “Dan Savage Interview, Part 3: It’s Not Easy Being Non-Monogamous.” Kinsey Confidential, Dec 24, 2010. http://kinseyconfidential.org/dan-savage-3-non-monogamous/

Devi, Kamala and Reid Mihalko. Ethics for Non-Monogamous Ninjas. N.P.: Createspace, 2010.

Diamond, Lisa. Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. Harvard University Press, 2008.

Druckerman, Pamela. Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Dworkin, Sari. “Biracial, Bicultural, Bisexual: Bisexuality and Multiple Identities.” Journal of Bisexuality: 2: 4 (2002): 93-108.

Fahs, Brianna. “Compulsory Bisexuality?: The Challenges of Modern Sexual Fluidity.” Journal of Bisexuality: 9: 3-4 (July-December 2009): 431-450.

Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. Marion Hausner Pauck tr. New York: Harper, 2006. (First published in 1956.)

Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization. San Francisco: Thames and Hudson, 1989.

______ . The Living Goddesses. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.

Kingma, Daphne. Coming Apart. Newburyport, MA: Conari Press, 2000.

Klein, Marty. America’s War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust, and Liberty. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2006.

Hutchins, Loraine, and Lani Kaahumanu eds. Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out. Boston: Alyson, 1991.

Ince, John. The Politics of Lust. New York: Prometheus, 2003.

Lever, Janet, David Kanouse et al. “Behavioral Patterns and Sexual Identity of Bisexual Males.” The Journal of Sex Research: 29: 2 (May 1922): 151-167.

Levine, Judith. Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2003.

Ley, David J. Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.

Lichtenstein, Bronwen. “Secret Encounter: Black Men, Bisexuality, and AIDS in Alabama.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly: 14: 3 (September 2000): 374-393.

Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1988.

______ . Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press, 1979.

______ . Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist. Oxford University Press, 2001.

______ . The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. New York: Basic Books/Allen Lane, 2006.

Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution. University of Califronia Press, 1997.

______ . Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

McLelland, Kaye. “Towards a Bisexual Shakespeare.” (In this volume.)

Miller, Marshall. “’Ethically Questionable?’: Popular Media Reports on Bisexual Men and AIDS.” Journal of Bisexuality: 2: 2 (2002): 93-112.

Ochs, Robyn and Sarah Rowley. Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World. Boston: Bisexual Resource Center, 2009.

Ovid. The Art of Love. Rolfe Humphries tr. Indiana University Press, 1957.

Partridge, Burgo. A History of Orgies. London: Prion Books, 2002. (First published in 1958.)

Perry vs. Schwarzenegger. Finding of Facts and Conclusions of Law. Filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of California. https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/09cv2292/

Queen, Carol. Bend Over Boyfriend. San Francisco: Good Vibrations, N.D.

Ripley, Matthew, Eric Anderson et al. “The Decreasing Significance of Stigma in the Lives of Bisexual Men.” (In this volume.)

Ryan, Christopher and Cacilda Jetha. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. New York: Harper, 2010.

Scott, Raymond. “Addressing Social Invalidation to Promote Well-Being for Multiracial Bisexuals of African Descent” (207-228). In Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan, Beth Firestein ed. Columbia University Press, 2007.

Sharp, Mister. “The Bizarre World of the Bisexual.” Posted by Dan Savage on YouTube, Dec. 27, 2010. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/12/27/the-bizarre-world-of-the-bisexual

Spurlock, Morgan. Super Size Me. USA: Heavylight Digital Sony, 2004.

Stokes, Joseph, David McKirnan et al. “Sexual Behavior, Condom Use, Disclosure of Sexuality, and Stability of Sexual Orientation in Bisexual Men. The Journal of Sex Research: 30: 3 (August 1993): 203-213.

Winston, Sheri. Women’s Anatomy of Sexual Arousal. Kingston, NY: Mango Garden Press, 2010.

Worth, Heather. “The Myth of the Bisexual Infector? HIV Risk and Men Who Have Sex with Men and Women.” Journal of Bisexuality: 3: 2 (2003): 69-88.

Yoshino, Kenji. “The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure.” Stanford Law Review: 52: 2 (Jan 2000): 353-461.

Read the article as it continues to continues to appear in Poly Planet GAIA. Section will be posted every three or four days. Become a follower of the blog and be notified every time a new posting appears.

Acknowledgment: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.

BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010

BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

8 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving – Preview

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”

BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Contribution by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Keynote Speaker

Part 2 – Addressing the Audience: Bisexuality and Ecology Today

On the public-sex area of the beach, a group of bisexuals forms and we decide to meet later at the Club Le Look. It’s a “gay” club we hear. We feel we’d be more welcome than in other libertine clubs because we’re “gay” too. It turns out customers are 90 percent gay men. There is a lot of sexual play in the scene. In our area, it includes fellatio between males under the table and light play between two bi women above. The ever inclusive, I observe a young guy at a nearby table, alone. He seems lonely and I weave him to join. We all move close to the music and form a bawdy dancing circle. The public seems quite excited. The show is interesting. Someone asks us to stop and we do.

The following evening I go back to Le Look to meet the group again. The henchman of the club meets me at the entrance. He won’t let me in. He is very upset with me. He says, in a very angry, Parisian accented French:

“I’ve sent the guy away!”

I ask to get in.

“You can’t” he says, “unless you give up you ‘het’ ways.”

I ask for some explanation?

“This is a GAY club!” he yells. “Gays don’t’ wiggle their butts in het clubs,” he claims. “So we don’t want you ‘hets’ to wiggle your butts on ‘our’ terrain!”

“But we’re bisexuals,” I dare say, “the whole group was having fun together. We came here because it’s ‘gay’.”

It’s beside the point, I soon realize. The guy is simply ignorant of bisexuality. There’s no awareness of it as a community, an orientation, a style of erotic expression. The henchman claims gay male customers protested yesterday.

I move on, passing a straight club next door with female pole dancers. The atmosphere is very gender binary, commercialized, hyper-sexualized in a consumerist way.

My friend is just a few steps away. I wave at him. We sit at a nearby café, exhausted. Over a glass of wine, I ask him the million dollar question, “why do you go to Le Look? Are you gay?”

“I’m bisexual” he replies. “And single. At straight clubs there’s an extra charge for single men. Sixty Euros, versus 10 for a het couple.”

I look at him in the face. I date bi men, so I’m aware. “But don’t you get picked up at gay clubs, I mean, by men?” I ask.

“Sometimes I do,” is the reply I get. “I’m bi but prefer women.”
Later on I notice the very pronounced sensibility of the back of his body I tend to like in bi men, as it reminds me of myself. I think of Carol Queen, another bisexual pioneer, and her historic video, Bend Over Boyfriend.

The young man is French. He speaks no English. “What does ‘bi’ mean to him?” I wonder. “No bi pride, acceptance, visibility?” I reflect. “We’re in France! We’re in the summer capital of French libertine culture. The bi movement has been co-opted in the LGBT movement and has lost its agenda.” I conclude to myself. “Where is the vision?” I tell my French friend about my keynote. He has no awareness of conferences on bisexuality. He seems almost surprised. “There’s a reason why this happened.” “Right.” “This will be a great story to tell!” we laugh away. And, yes, that’s of course why it happened–turning my vacation into experimental research!

Acknowledgment: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.

BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010

BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

7 of 9: Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving – Preview

“Bisexuality, Gaia, Eros: Portals to the Arts of Loving”

BiReCon: Selected Proceedings from the 2010 Int’l Bisexual Research Conference

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, Keynote Speaker

Part 2 – Addressing the Audience: Bisexuality and Ecology Today, Cont’d

“So, if the project of bisexuality in the late 20^th century was to make bisexuality disappear because sex would be reorganized as the art of allowing the circulation of the energy of Eros in Gaia, why does bisexuality often register as a micro-identity today? The movement formed itself in the shadow of AIDS, when intense new fears of infection and contamination came up. Eventually those were partly assuaged by safer sex practices. However, changes in global ecology, including climate instability and the toxic soup that engulfs much of our lives, became more apparent and their effects could be observed in a variety of human health crises. Why do we perceive bisexuality as a niche within the wider LGBTQ spectrum, and one that is often made invisible, assimilated, collapsed within the wider community where it supposedly belongs? Defensiveness and fear of contamination still affect the way we approach intimacy. Has bisexuality imploded upon itself?”

To elaborate on these questions, I proceeded to use some anecdote, for which I offer some context here. As an experimentalist of the arts of loving, I tend to form constellations of amorous partners who are aware of each other, compatible, complementary, interdependent, and mutually respectful. Sometimes they also genuinely love each other. I structure my personal time and vacations around these experiments. Through books and other forms of study and intellectual expression I put out in the world, I tend to acquire new members in my amorous circles. In 2009 one new such member appeared, Dr. Carlo Consiglio, a zoologist and retired university professor from my birth city of Rome, who read Gaia and sent me one of his books on inclusive forms of love (2009). Carlo is a naturist, another passion we share. He got in action to form a group of like-minded friends to visit the naturist village of Cap d’Agde, in Southwest France, land of the mythical troubadours whose poems spread the virus of courtly love in early modern Europe; land of the Cathars and other free-love heretics.

Today, Cap d’Agde is a major gathering point for those who love nature, nudity, and sex, with a capacity of 31,000 visitors. We arrive in mid August, a merry fellowship of four, all from Italy with me the only one fluent in French. The campground where we stay is for family nudism, like the nearby beach. It’s populated with pur et dur, Birkenstock style nudists. One can observe entire multigenerational families in perfect suntans whose skins have never been marked by a bathing-suit line. No frills or sexy negligés here. It’s a completely desexualized style of nudism. Next is the plage des rencontres, a beach famous for its tradition of public sex, including male-female couples, scenes with multiple partners, some BDSM, and clusters of mildly aroused viewers forming around the most interesting action. Remember, this is France. All of this is not just tolerated: it’s legitimate, we learn. In addition, the “family” area of the nude beach, with children and all, and the public-sex area seem to have found a regime of perfect compatibility. Mutual tolerance and relaxed discretion rule. To continue the analogy with nutrition, in French families kids are known to learn about wine, be around it, smell it, get a taste of it for initiation at some point. The idea is that as adults they’ll drink moderately and make tasteful choices. So it is with sex, it seems. Naturists gather at Cap d’Agde from many world regions. Yet people seem to quickly assimilate French wisdom. Not too far from the non-sexualized nudism of the family campground where we are staying are large apartment complexes that host commercial centers. This is a much more sexualized area, with people wearing provocative costumes, mild BDSM apparel, full drag, and other imaginative outfits. It’s studded with Clubs Libertins. Inside, one finds separés for sexual activity in open view of other customers.

Acknowledgment: This piece is pre-published here with permission of Routledge, New York, a division of Taylor and Francis.

BiReCon | 28 BiCon | 10 ICB

Bisexuality Research Conference, 28th Bisexuality Conference, 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, London, UK, August 26-30, 2010

BiReCon Proceedings: A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Bisexuality

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com