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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.

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

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

“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

As I opened my remarks, my first concern was getting a sense of what people heard when the two main concepts of my talk were mentioned: bisexuality and Gaia. “Have bi people thought of bisexuality in relation to ecology?” I wondered. “Do bi people think of sexual expression in relation to global health?” If I was ever going to find out, this was the right place. “What does ‘bi’ mean to you?” I asked, inviting responses related to bi icons in the media, history, community, LGBTQ landscapes, movements, activism, in the past, in relation to physiology, eroticism, and health. “What does Gaia mean to you?” was my next question, with emphasis on popular culture, science, spirituality, mythology, paganism, art, ecology, and health. A variety of responses came my way, with a sense that enough people had thought of the two concepts together to make this a valuable occasion for my talk. I proceeded with caution . . .

“Can we imagine bisexuality as a portal to a future that’s more sustainable in the way we use resources of love? This is a future without the hetero/homo divide. Can we see it in our mind’s eye for a minute? Bisexuality, as a transformative force of society, opens up this portal, and, what do we find on the other side? We find a world where the energy of love circulates regardless of gender. Perhaps this is a world where bisexuality is unnecessary, because both homosexuality and heterosexuality have become unnecessary too! Perhaps this is a world where the whole notion of “sexuality” that organizes love as a need or an instinct has become obsolete, because humanity finally realizes that love is an art. Love: the art that makes Gaia gay: that makes her alive.” On this occasion, I shared the insight I get from the Italian language that Gaia actually means “gay.” “Gaia,” I continued, “is used as both a female first name and the feminine form of the adjective gaio.” It translates as “she who is cheerful, joyful, allegra, gaia, or ‘gay’ in the original sense of the word. The Earth is green, and blue, and white, even though we humans have been at war with her for several centuries, with our warfare becoming ever so violent and destructive in recent decades. If Gaia has not turned into a brownish rock like her neighbors Mars and Venus yet, she must be really ‘gay’! In this case, bisexuality is a path to the actualization of this joyful, playful, shared, pleasurable mode of existence that enables our species to make peace with our hostess planet.”

In the ways of establishing historical memory in relation to bisexuality and nature, I went back to the beginning stages of the bisexual movement, when bisexuals coalesced to affirm our distinctiveness from, and contributions to, the gay and lesbian liberation movement. “At that time,” I reminded my audience, “this connection between bisexuality and nature seemed self-evident.” As a contribution to a bi classic from that age, Bi Any Other Name, Annie Sprinkle, herself a pioneer and an iconic figure of bisexuality, wrote a piece called “Beyond Bisexual.” There she explains this connection in very broad strokes. I read from the book:

“I started out as a regular heterosexual woman. Then I became bisexual. Now I am beyond bisexual—meaning I am sexual with more than just human beings. I literally make love with things like waterfalls, winds, rivers, trees, plants, mud, buildings, sidewalks, invisible things, spirits, beings from other planets, the earth, and yes, even animals” (103).

“Today this feminine/feminist leader of bisexuality has morphed into a pioneer of ecosexuality,” I continued. “Annie and her partner Beth cannot legally marry each other, but they organize a series of performance art ceremonies where they marry a force of nature. The next three-way wedding is to Gaia’s satellite, the Moon, to be performed in LA on October 23^rd. It will be followed by a HoneyMoon the brides will share with a bunch of ecosexuals in the world’s first symposium on ecosexuality. ‘Ecosexual’ comes from the personals, Annie and Beth explained at an event Deborah Anapol and I invited them to in San Rafael, California, last July,” I continue.[1] “‘Heteroflexible,’ ‘homoflexible,’ ‘graysexual,’ ‘pansexual,’ ‘metrosexual,’ ‘genderqueer,’ ‘ecosexual,’ ‘Sapphist’ are some of the buzz-words I hear. If these are the new adjectives people use to describe how they practice love, the shared subtext is that in the new millennium there is fluidity to sexuality, flexibility around the homo/hetero divide, the desire for a spontaneity that feels natural. The ‘sexuality’ of the new millennium seems to be ‘beyond’ bisexuality and not quite there yet at the same time. ‘Beyond’ because all these descriptors have the ‘bi’ word as a subtext; not quite there yet because we humans are still trapped in the notion of sexuality that organizes love as a need or an instinct rather than an art.”

Read the article as it 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

[1] Recorded in the blogosphere, see “What’s The New Politics of Love that People Wonder About?” Posted by Serena Anderlini on July 5, 2010. http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-this-new-politics-of-love-that.html

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

4 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 1 – Preamble: Manifesting Bisexuality, Cont’d

Attending BiReCon put me in touch with research projects funded by the American Institute of Bisexuality. AIB has been in action on this count. Its current emphasis on bi men is a way to put the accent where it’s needed. I tend to date bisexual men because their potential for love is expanded. They are more likely to enjoy their own erotic receptivity in the arts of loving and to be more adept in feeling the pleasure of the other. For me that’s the mark of an artist. I was overjoyed to see my hunch confirmed by research on bi men’s brain function. Apparently, when given a chance to feel comfortable with their amorous practices, bi men are every bit as healthy, happy, and sound as anybody else. The only difference is a plus: When it comes to bi men, we find erotophilia in abundance![1]

I also know of course how difficult it is for bi men to be out in their professional lives and as public figures. Most men tend to rely on their own income for social status and self-definition. More erotophobic stigma accrues on men based on the myth that women’s sexual capacity is inferior.[2] Poverty and the economic crisis round up the picture, with special effects on bi men in poor countries and minority groups.[3] I would have liked to see more of the work of Lisa Diamond on female sexual fluidity and the combination of heritable and circumstantial factors that result in one’s sexual behavior and amorous practices. Yet, by Diamond’s own admission, that of some of the women she surveyed in the longitudinal study, and from other research accounts, in our time, bisexuality in women is not as publicly stigmatized as it is in men (2008 passim, and Fahs, 2009). The need to design separate research projects for men and women seemed a result of the different situations faced by the two groups. Hopefully, AIB will soon develop a parallel research focus on bi women. Given the high incidence of transgender people in bi communities, it might be wise at some point to design research projects also for this group. Meanwhile, of course, research in the arts that extol the virtues of bisexual Eros is good too. At BiReCon 2010, the emphasis on bi men helped to focus on the most deeply seated fears in the way of imagining a world beyond the homo/hetero divide. Proactive research presented therein shows that, where secular values prevail, young men are less affected by the bi stigma (Ripley and Anderson, in this volume). Once we wade through these fears, the magic and fun of being bi begins to appear. Could sexuality be nothing but the sum total of the arts of loving in all their imaginative creativity?

The conference connected me with multiple new aspects of bisexuality in relation to activism, community, and research; aspects I could not have considered so well outside of the context the conference offered. I refer to the combination of social, local, political, theoretical, global, and intergenerational energies and dynamics brought together by the location, the combination of national, international, and research-focused events, the venue, and the teams of organizers, participants, and presenters. As that connection became more articulate, I became aware of how utopian, perhaps dystopian, and in any event unrealistic, my original intention was, at least in an immediate range and on a planetary horizon. As a participant, I was privileged to brush against a whole new generation of bisexuals who grew up while people in my age group were struggling with the early impact of AIDS on sex-positive cultures. Delegates came from many different countries and world regions. Bisexuality coexists with homosexuality in all these areas. However, in some cultures, homosexuality is illegal as in India; or worse, it is relentlessly persecuted, as in Uganda. In other cultures, a fast forward movement has made strides toward equality for gays and lesbians, as in Spain and the cluster of Latin American countries affiliated with the Iberian peninsula by language and colonial legacy. Obviously, regimes of coexistence vary with different versions of the homo/hetero divide. Picking up the aural energies in the context of these discussions opened up my ears. I became present to the malaise, obstacles, difficulties in the way of reaching out for that portal.

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

[1] This point was made in the presentation by John Sylla, from work in progress that did not make it in this volume.

[2] Sources on women’s sexual capacity and its expanded multiplicity include Winston 2010, Ley 2009, and Ryan and Jetha 2010.

[3] My main source is Scott (2007), another useful source is Dworkin (2002).

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

3 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

Pert 1 – Preamble: Manifesting Bisexuality, Cont’d

The idea of a portal is useful to allude to the socially transformative potential of a certain subcultural group or community. In my view, bisexuality is strong with this potential when it comes in conjunction with other healthy, fun, cheerful styles of erotic expression that enhance imaginativeness and creativity. In many ways the conference confirmed this for me. The Renaissance festive tradition was mentioned in relation to bisexual readings of Shakespeare.[1] Styles of erotic expression one could observe at BiCon included cross-dressing, gothic, naturism, gender-queer, polyamory, mild BDSM, and others. Research presented alluded to the need to define styles of love beyond merely functional sexual activity, especially among young people.[2] In these and many other similar contexts bisexuality is liberating because it makes erotic expression more artistic.

When I claim that love is an art, I don’t mean to deny its other aspects.[3] Of course love is a need and an instinct. In that respect, like sex, it is also an appetite and a drive. The problem is with a culture that considers it primarily as such. What I propose is infusing new value in love’s artistic quality. As a bona-fide Italian, it behooves me to compare appetites. Another well-known human instinct is hunger. Food is what notoriously satisfies it. In relation to this appetite, I’d like to call attention to the fact that most people appreciate the art of satisfying one’s hunger in ways that are healthy, sophisticated, diverse, creative, artistic, and respectful of one’s inclinations. We ask for menus when we eat out. When cooking is good, we consider it an art. We call it cuisine! More to the point, we tend to respect various styles of eating, including gourmet, country, nouvelle cuisine, fusion, ethnic, healthy, macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan, locavore (for locally grown foods), and many others. We value sampling various styles and combining them to meet the pleasure and health needs of those involved. As an advocate of bisexuality, let me offer here the following food for thought. If we only did the same with the arts of loving, the result would be a society where Eros, the force of love, is considered amicable. It would be a society where erotophilia is abundant, erotophobia scarce.[4] It would be, in short, a more loving, fun, and healthier society.

By comparison, one can easily get a measure of the damage incurred when the artistic aspect of love is neglected. Let’s pretend for a moment to apply to hunger the same monosexual, monogamous rules currently in use for sexuality. What if “experts” about that particular appetite prescribed the same food, cooked in the same style, every time one eats, “until death does one part” from life? How healthy, how loving, would that prescription be? And, would anybody even mind “parting”? Yet, when exclusivity is expected of sexual partners in both gender and number, that’s exactly what’s being asked! Take “fast food” for example. The “fast food” industry can be described as a response to hunger notoriously devoid of art. Fast food tends to encourage what may be termed “monovore” behavior because it is purely functional. Its dangers to the health and happiness of anyone have been recently documented in Super Size Me, a testimonial film about how one can gain 25 pounds in a month from an exclusive diet of Big Macs, plus various conditions leading to obesity, depression, and heart attacks. Let me propose for a moment that exclusivity in the practice of love could be just as damaging. If we can entertain that hypothesis, there is a big role to play for bisexuality. As a portal to a world beyond the homo/hetero divide, bisexuality can produce a culture that breaks away from gender binaries and welcomes erotic love again as a positive energy in human life.

The challenge is proving this in the current erotophobic cultural climate. A quick survey of the kind of research on bisexuality that has taken hold in academe in the AIDS era shows that male bisexuality appears mainly in relation to some impending danger, and often in the context of staving off criminalizing attitudes in the medical and other service professions.[5] Despite good intentions, the results are dubious. They seem to perpetuate prevailing myths. One title sounds especially lurid “Secret Encounters: Black Men, Bisexuality, and AIDS in Alabama” (Lichtenstein 1993). The Journal of Bisexuality has countervailed this, but have its voices been heard outside of bi circles?[6] Academe tends to provide a secular counterpoint to illiberal impulses from less culturally aware sectors of society, in a mainstream that can be easily manipulated through the media. A bevy of more current sources on sex-positive cultures is now available from respected scholars who, by their own admission, appreciate these cultures. They concur in indicating that early third-millennium societies are deeply divided about what sex is, what should be known about it, who should have it, where, when, and with whom.[7] The rift seems to be between circles where secular values prevail, and social groups organized around institutionalized styles of religion where fundamentalist fears have had their way.

Secular people today are much more familiar with styles of erotic expression beyond heteronormativity than when I was a kid, in the early 1960s. In many secular communities, erotophilia has expanded to embrace gay, lesbian, bi, trans, poly, pan, omni, gothic, BDSM, metro, eco, and many other labels people use to describe their styles of sexual expression. Free form spirituality, tantra, naturism, paganism, and swinging are also fairly erotophilic. However, erotophobia has also become extreme (Klein 2006). While in secular circles the AIDS crisis has promoted more awareness of sexual diversity, the same crisis has been manipulated by conservative political forces to wage what civil rights activist Marty Klein calls a full-fledged “war on sex” (Klein 2006). Can this war be won? Not as long as “Eros,” the energy of love, is what makes our hostess planet Gaia alive. Yet the rift is serious and bisexuality seems to fall through the cracks. When bisexuality becomes the location of aberrant desire in both mainstream public discourse and LGBT institutions, the artistic quality of love becomes invisible and the homo/hetero divide reigns supreme. If proactive research can undo this positioning, we can get a sense of how practicing love beyond gender can promote health in human communities. With renewed attention to the artistic quality of love, a holistic notion of sexual health can be articulated too.

[1] McLelland, in this volume.

[2] Ripley, and Anderson, in this volume.

[3] The idea that love is an art is not new. My main sources are Ovid (1957), from antiquity, and Fromm (1956), from the Frankfurt School. It’s a subtext in many other works too. The good thing about this idea is that it implies that love can be taught and one’s talents make one a good student.

[4] My main source on erotophobia is Ince, 2003. Erotophilia was discussed at the conference in relation to in-progress AIB research. The word comes from Eros, the name of the Greek god of love.

[5] Examples include Lever and Kanouse 1992, Lichtenstein 2000, Stokes and McKirnan 1993.

[6] My main sources are Worth (2003) and Miller (2002).

[7] My sources on this rift include Druckerman 2007, Ley 2009, Barash and Lipton 2001, Ince 2003, and Levine 2003.

Read the article as it 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

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

“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 1 – Preamble: Manifesting Bisexuality

It was a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to give a keynote address at BiReCon. As a scholar of bisexuality who comes from the arts and humanities, and as an author who, admittedly, lives her life as an experiment in traversing sexual cultures, I had been waiting for this conference to happen. I had been wishing and rooting for it. I had been wondering what was keeping it from happening–was anything wrong in the Bi movement? When the invitation came I was overjoyed. It took me a while to secure travel funds and confirm acceptance. Thanks to Meg Barker, Christina Richards, Regina Reinhardt and others at the American Institute of Bisexuality for making that trip possible. I prepared to speak of bisexuality as a portal to a world where Eros, the energy of love, is recognized as the force that makes Gaia, the third planet, alive.[1] My summer plans got organized around the BiReCon/BiCon appointment in London, UK, beginning August 26^th, 2010.

As I said, my intention in giving the address was that of presenting bisexuality as a portal to a world of amorous sensibilities beyond the homo/hetero divide. I consider sexuality the cultural construct of Western modernity that organizes love as a need or an instinct. I find this to be reductionist. Love is of course a need and an instinct. But it’s also, and perhaps most importantly at this time, an art. The art of loving is what makes all styles of amorous expression fun, playful, and amusing, including hugging, cuddling, spooning, playing with toys, leather and Jacuzzis, gender-bending, sporting sexy outfits, swinging, threesomes, tantric breathing, and a bunch of other activities that are consensual, inventive, spontaneous, romantic, exciting, intimate, and humorous. These activities keep artists of love in balance with the amorous communities in which they participate. The art of loving, in my view, is inspired by the energy of Eros that infuses Gaia with life. Hence my title: “Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a BI Planet,” which almost coincides with the title of my latest book. Gaia, for the web of life that sustains our species on the third planet; the New Politics of Love, that places love, the source of life, at the new center of the political stage; all of which bodes well for a Planet that’s getting BI, with useful Notes provided toward that process.

According to Gaia science, the web of life that sustains our species on the third planet is interconnected. Our first ancestors, bacteria, are four billion years old. They have sex with their neighbors to rejuvenate themselves–regardless of gender or reproduction—and to exchange genes. As artists of love, their behavior is—to say the least—orgiastic. Yet it has been evolutionarily rewarded! We humans, the “new kids on the block” among earthly species, have been at war with Gaia now for quite a while–which has resulted in climate change and other assorted environmental disasters. We could be extinct tomorrow while bacteria are still around.[2] Why? There is one simple explanation: Unlike humans, bacteria, our most resilient ancestors, allow the energy of Eros to circulate among them free of needless fears. Gaia is blue, and green, and white. It teems with life. Without our ancestors, it would be as brownish as its neighbors Mars and Venus: A rock where nothing moves. Given this scientific perspective, there is no reason why human bisexuality should not be the most natural, the healthiest thing on the planet.

So the idea of a portal seemed fine. It would open new horizons. It would resonate with the work of Robyn Ochs, another keynote speaker, whose book, Getting Bi, registers voices of bi people across the planet. Yet it felt a bit off and perhaps not quite in tune with what was out there in the melee of early third-millennium bisexual life. After all, I came out in the early 1990s, I’ve organized my personal and professional life largely around bisexuality, and I’ve had plenty of time to select extraneous influxes out of it. Attendance in BiReCon and BiCon combined provided a unique standpoint to get the pulse of where bisexuality is at in a variety of geo-cultural locations and from the multiple perspectives of research, scholarship, theory, creative expression, advocacy, and community building. (For insights on those dynamics I refer readers to “BiReCon,” in this volume, a contribution by the organizers.) The context was perfect for producing knowledge in action. At the time of this writing, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my own keynote remarks, on the experience of participating in the two events combined, and the process of creating the present volume from contributions thereof. I choose this as an opportunity to offer the wisdom of what I learned in the process, along with a written elaboration of my keynote remarks.

[1] Gaia is the ancient Greek name for the Earth/fertility goddess central to the matrifocal civilizations of the Neolithic (Gimbutas 1989, 2001). Thanks to James Lovelock and Gore Vidal, it is now also used in science (1979, 1988).

[2] My sources in Gaia science are Margulis and Sagan, 1991 and 1997. Their work as a team shines a significant light on the connections between sexuality, symbiosis, and the evolution of life from bacteria to humans. It falls within the aegis of Gaia theory, respected yet still controversial in many scientific circles. I also refer to my own work (2009), and to Lovelock’s classics (1979, 1988, 2001, 2006).

Read the article as it 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

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

“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

Abstract

This article presents bisexuality as a portal to the arts of loving where Eros, the energy of love, is recognized as what makes Gaia, the third planet Earth, alive. It is a reflection on the author’s experience as a keynote speaker at BiReCon, and as a participant in both BiReCon and BiCon.[1] The article is organized into three sections. The “Preamble” muses about how bisexuality manifests today, the current status of the bisexual movement, and how bisexuals (bis) are positioned within LGBT communities, their institutions, and in mainstream society. In this first section the author reflects upon her experience at the events. “Addressing the Audience” is a rendition of her actual keynote address. This second section focuses on why it’s key at this time to see bisexuality as a portal to a world that is more eco-friendly and erotophile. By way of Annie Sprinkle’s evolving work, the section establishes continuity between bisexuality and ecosexuality. The author also uses her own experience of bisexual erasure at the French libertine resort of Cap d’Agde in order to encourage more research and education about bisexuality and the multiple contexts where it manifests. The address also invites readers to imagine the world behind this portal, where a paradigm shift has already occurred. Love is considered an art, Gaia is recognized as the “gay” planet, the homo/hetero divide has disappeared, and the energy of Eros circulates beyond socially constructed binaries. The third section or “Conclusion” suggests ways to initiate this shift by considering “organic bisexuality” and “holistic sexual health.”

Keywords

Eros, Gaia, bisexuality, ecosexuality, erotophilia, gay planet, art of love, Annie Sprinkle, Cap d’Agde, bisexual men and women, organic bisexuality, holistic sexual health

Read the article as it appears 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.

Acknowledgement: 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

[1] BiReCon: Bisexuality Research Conference, BiCon: Bisexuality Conference: 10 ICB: Tenth International Conference about Bisexuality. These three events took place at the University of East London, Dockland Campus, on August 26-30, 2010, in a coordinated, almost simultaneous way, with BiReCon on opening day, the 26^th.

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Polyamour | Toward a New Sexual Love Ethic – by Tinamarie Bernard

It is so great to hear Tinamarie Bernard, a muse of love in modern times, be moved by Deborah Taj Anapol to think of her own self as polyamorous. Yes, Tinamarie, we all have something to learn from Taj’s wisdom.

“Polyamour | Toward a New Sexual Love Ethic”

A review of Polyamory in the 21st Century by Tinamarie Bernard

“When one is young, the idea of a real and abiding love tends to resemble a fairy tale, and there is little room in the predictable lines of a storybook romance for the messy truths that adults sometimes find themselves in. That is because love, by its very nature, surprises. It thrills and moves us in ways unimaginable, and sometimes that means our heart is tugged in two directions; without any mal-intent, it pulses to the melancholic pop melody, ‘torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool…”

Once upon a time, I might have misjudged a person in this predicament as suffering a lack of moral fortitude (the lothario, the tart…must have fallen out of the cheatin’ tree and hit every branch). But that was before musing over modern love and the provocative words of Deborah Anapol, PhD, author of Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy with Multiple Partners (2010).

Her insights have wrecked my notions of sexual ethics and classifications. If I had to identify myself – and the more I explore sexuality, the more I find them restrictive, problematic and injurious, but for the purposes of this contemplation will offer it up – I’d describe myself as a monogamous and heterosexual woman. I believe in soul mates, long-term committed love and marriage, and practiced serial monogamy my whole adult life.

Thanks to Deborah, I may also be polyamorous.”

Read the complete article on Modern Love Muse, Tinamarie’s blog.

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

3WayKisses from Gaia – Will the Chrisalys Turn into a Butterfly Soon? Reflections & Season’s Greetings

Hi lovely Earthlings!

Gaia sends 3WayKisses and warm wishes to all of you. Happy Solstice, Eclipse, Holidays, and 2011!
We are amazed at the forces acting on the transformation of the third planet. Will the chrysalis turn into a butterfly soon? Many feel that today’s coincidence of solstice and Lunar eclipse begins the paradigm shift. Watch it tonight at 2:40AM EST! The current crisis could be just an opportunity for opposites to meet. Eros and Gaia, matter and energy, the Earth and the sky, water and fire, sex and love, humans and nature, the Sun and the Moon: aren’t these just mental energy fields that come together in a sensual communion the minute we accept the interconnectedness of all being? More at Gemini Astrology, Hawaii

This Means Everything to Me 5 – Toby Mott

The power of knowledge keeps moving yours truly. At this time the very existence of the institution that has sustained her for the past 13 years is in question. The University of Puerto Rico is under siege by a new governor who wants to sell it to those who fund his career. Yet yours truly has never been as excited to be in class as this year. With students’ awareness enhanced by the strike last spring, teaching has become more in-the-moment, more real! Their appetite for knowledge makes up for all difficulties. Now it’s time for professors to be in action about the accreditation of the institution. Rallies, meetings, negotiating solutions, reviving organizations are our daily activities. You can get a peak from our videos. The situation has resonated across regions. Many US-based scholars originally from Puerto Rico have pitched in. Their letter to the Attorney General is moving. It bears seventy-four signatures! Full text here! UPR is not alone. May this be the tip of a tidal wave that honors the desire for knowledge honest people harbor within.
Winter Solstice is a special time for hostess Gaia. She remembers the Saturnalia, a festival of joy and abundance that celebrated the Reign of Saturn in ancient Rome at this time of year. In the age of Titans, when the forces of nature reigned supreme, Gaia, the earth, and her lover Uranus, the sky, conceived Saturn, the state of being sated, abundant He presided over the happiest age in the life of our species. This Golden Age was known as Saturnia Regna in Antiquity. It was a time when pleasure was an ally of nature and sexual abundance was revered. Gaia would like to see us revel as did our pagan ancestors this time of year. Join yous truly in wishing the third planet a joyful holiday season. When you prepare your gifts, make sure they align with your most authentic beliefs. Want a new age of love? We provide the politics–the practice is up to you! This is the best time for 3WayKisses! You can donate here!

At the October ecosexual gathering in LA, yours truly’s latest opus found its true crowd. Ecosexuality is in! On the 23 and 24 of that momentous month, it was amazing to feel the vibration of this new style of love where pleasure and nature marry each other. The occasion was the 3WayWedding of a highly Saturnian couple, ecosexual artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, and Gaia’s favorite satellite, the Moon. Befitting HoneyMoon was the world’s first Symposium on Ecosexuality. The brides shared wisdom with a crowd of imaginative Earthlings gathered for this momentum meeting. Is nature an enemy, a mother, a lover? Imagining the Earth as a lover can bring lots of fun into the global ecology movement. But Gaia is a hostess too! Shall we learn to respect her before we begin to woo her? Yours truly was invited to deliver a Message from Gaia. She gave the Symposium’s Opening Remarks too! Her featured book, Gaia, resonated with authentic meaning in the neighborhood of this inspiring group. The quest for the meaning of ecosexuality is open and many voices are pitching in. The movement swarms with the Saturnian energies of the season.

This Means Everything to Me 5 – Detail

Gaia also attracted a whole bunch of new readers. The big push-up back in September helped a great deal. Thanks to all who pitched in! Around the 26th, sales ranks rose into the 11,000 for general Kindle, 85,000 for paperback list. They stayed there for quite a while. Not stunning yet encouraging. The title rose much higher in specialized lists: Up to top 4th in Feminist Theory, next to Betty Friedan, Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith Butler, and Naomi Wolf. What a delightful City of Ladies. How very exciting to be admitted! Most astounding of all, the title rose to top 1 for the Mind/Body, Diseases, Aids list. It’s still there, top 31st. Yours truly is honored to be part of this group. Good scientists pursue the truth even when they don’t like it. Poor scientists are afraid of controversial issues. Unbiased perspectives should be available to people who are able to make their own responsible choices. When it comes to knowledge, the true enemy is fear. Look at what’s happening with Wikileaks! If you’ve liked the book, you can vote for it in Goodreads. Check the Choice Awards and the Books on Love lists. There’s a whole range of good reads from yours truly. Look up her author’s page here! We wish we could share actual sales figures with you. Unfortunately, the digital giant Amazon.com won’t even disclose them to yours truly!

“What about teaching?” you may ask. Yes, we are doing it, with a Course in Ecosexuality starting at UPR Mayaguez in January. Find out how to enroll here! We also got a sense of how interested people are in what we have to teach from the social media, as in Facebook. Polyamory is big hit! And we see it as part of the arts of conscious loving. So we are looking for a hospitable facility in Italy. If you’re aware of one, please let us know soon! We have a fantastic team: Yours truly, whose talk about polyamory has been a highlight of Italian TV; and Robert Silber, from Hawaii, who specializes in conscious sensuality, communication and community. We are putting together the first bilingual course on the arts of conscious loving, with simultaneous translation on the floor as we teach! We plan to teach it in July and will announce the location as soon as we have one for sure. English, with its scientific specificity; and Italian, with its passion and romance. Stay tuned for specific time and place for this groundbreaking experience!

On this note, we wish a joyful holiday to the entire planet and all of you. The climate change summit in Cancun has not yielded great results. But we at 3WayKiss have solutions. The new politics of love we propose is ecological and sexy too. Vive ecosexuality! Stop third planet abuse! As a new year resolution, can we pledge to practice love and respect for our lovely hostess? Let’s hope Gaia finds more patience within. Meanwhile, thanks to Toby Mott for his inspiring paintings. Check him out here!

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Gaia Mother, Hostess, Lover – Keynote – World’s First Ecosexuality Symposium

And finally, the HoneyMoon starts. The brides, now wedded to Gaia’s satellite, invited all of us to share their sacred nuptial time.

Listen to yours truly’s keynote opening remarks:

Notes from the Symposium’s Opening Remarks

“Evil nature: the kind of thinking typical of western mentality, where we want control, and that gets us to global warming. We’re so afraid to let go of our anxiety that we end us causing our own doom and Gaia kicks us out!

Nature as Mother: this is nice, typical of environmentalist culture, nature is a good old woman, we must ‘save’ her, oh well . . .

Earth as ‘lover,’ says Annie Sprinkle, makes ecology sound like fun!

I like to come back to the concept of Gaia, which lives as myth, science, and part of vernacular culture.

It refers to the web of life on the third planet: biosphere, atmosphere, and, I would like to add, noosphere, or the sphere of the interconnected mental/emotional energies of all those who are alive.

What I’d like to propose is that we imagine Gaia as hostess, with us humans as guests among others.

Hostess as mother: we live inside, it’s cozy, and at one point we get kicked
out.

Hostess as lover: someone who welcomes us in their lives, who holds the
space of love for us, who acts as a resource of love for us.

Hosts and guests are ecosystems, they are symbiotic with one another, they exchange
energies and rebalance, they respect each other’s balance, they enhance it, they must not deplete each other too much.

Ecosystemic balance is what we want in our practices of ecosexual love.

These are practices of love that respect, enhance the balance, the vitality of our personal ecosystem and our lovers’s, and our lovers’s lovers, and so on and so forth around the planet.

These are practices of holistic sexual health that enhance the tantric force field across the body of Gaia and activate the material with the sacred energy of love, or Eros as the ancients called it.

The biosphere, the atmosphere, the noosphere become resacralized with this erotic energy of love, the chakra system of each person becomes aligned and the whole body of Gaia becomes integrated and balanced.

In ecosex we are resources of love for each other and we multiply the connectedness among all of us so that we become more respectful guests to our hostess, we become more loving and considerate of her.

How does the noosphere enter the picture, one might ask? Cyberspace is an actualization of the sphere of the mind, it is telepathy on wi-fi. Cyberspace is also a space of the imagination where the very concepts of sex, love, faithfulness, romance, eroticism are being redefined, it is a new space where the emotions travel.

When we become more cognizant of how the sacred (eco) and the material (sex) are one, of how matter and energy are aligned, the noosphere becomes more integrated and active, more creative and imaginative, so that solutions to the current ecosystemic crisis are found.”

And on this hopeful note, yours truly ended her remarks. Many subsequent talks, acts, performances, dances followed. What creativeness! What abundance!

At the end, many participants were inspired to get their own copy of Gaia. This book had finally found its public. Woooooow! Yours truly really felt that all the flack, the adverse reaction, the struggles of last year were rewarded. She felt really proud of her effort and appreciated for her gifts to the world and humanity.

Now that you are preparing to choose your Solstice/Holiday Season gifts, don’t forget to pick one that helps humanity make peace with the third planet. Where would we all be without her hospitality? How would we desire, meet, fall in love with each other? She provides the space for us to thrive and deserves to be treated with reverence and awe. Let’s begin now!

For a list of works where you can begin your education in Ecosexuality, go to the author’s page now! You can download Gaia on Kindle and start reading in the next five minutes! Don’t waste more time!

Wishing a joyful Solstice, and Christmas, and New Year to each and everyone!

Namaste ((-:~

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com

Your VOTE for GAIA!

Hi lovely Earthlings!

I’ve discovered GOODREADS, courtesy of ever savvy Reid Mihalko. And I’ve created a profile, an account, and a book shelf. Don’t you want to find out what’s on it?

GOODREADS also invites votes on best books for 2010. Gaia on Kindle qualifies! Time is almost up! To vote for Gaia and the New Politics of Love, click on the link and insert your title in the write-in option.

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice#41646-Nonfiction

Gaia thanks you! It’s nice for your hostess to feel so very deeply appreciated!

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com