(for a lot of things)
By Amanda Morgan
I had the pleasure of attending (and participating in) this year’s BECAUSE conference, a two-day long experience “for bi, pan, fluid, queer, trans, non-monosexual, questioning and all others, regardless of sexual or gender identity” held April 16-18, 2010 on the campus of Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. The conference featured keynote speeches by Amy André and Beth Zemsky, 20 workshops, a cabaret show, a plenary panel, and more.
My experience of the conference began on Saturday morning with “Queering Our Identities.” This workshop, led by Kim Jorgensen, Monica Saralampi and Steph Wilencheck, resulted in an intense and engaging dialogue about what queerness is – not just in terms of our sexual orientations, but what it means to queer our spaces, politics, relationships, art and jobs. Folks raised challenging questions concerning who gets to be queer and why, issues relevant to my work with youth with various and different types of literacies. Those of us in the academy have worked hard to see ourselves validated through queer and cultural studies and while these disciplines are important, at what point do they isolate the majority of the people about whom and for whom these studies were created? Simply put, someone shouldn’t have to go to college in order to be queer or understand what that means. To quote recording artist Erykah Badu: “What good do your words do if they can’t understand you?” Inasmuch as being queer is also about subverting established sexual power hierarchies and recognizing and confronting privilege, we have a responsibility to not recreate hierarchies of privilege based on levels or types of education.
The second workshop I attended was “Sexual Health and Prevention: Working with healthcare providers as your own patient advocate,” led by Maureen Murphy-Ryan, a bisexual woman and a medical student at the Mayo Clinic of Medicine. (Murphy-Ryan, an LGBT activist since her undergraduate studies at Duke University, was awarded the Bisexual Organizing Project’s 2010 Community Recognition Award for her work promoting bisexual and non-monosexual inclusion by writing a bisexual-inclusive LGBT section for the Mayo Medical School Handbook and for continuously challenging her professors as well as fellow students when issues of biphobia arise.) During the workshop, she showed us an exercise given to students at Mayo which was written in such a way as to infer that the patient had contracted HIV because her husband was bisexual. Murphy-Ryan addressed this and the exercise was re-written. Unfortunately, as many of us are painfully aware, there are still few healthcare providers who understand the difference between identity and behavior. There were plenty of biphobic and transphobic anecdotes to go around. We explored different methods of interacting with and interrupting health care providers when they make assumptions and Murphy-Ryan left us with a packet of resources for bisexual and transgender folks, many of which are available online. If you have a question or would like links to these resources, she can be reached at murphyryan.maureen@mayo.edu.
The last workshop I attended, “Exploring Intersections Between Bi and Trans Identities and Organizing” was very exciting for me as a genderqueer bi person who spends the majority of my time in trans spaces. It was co-facilitated by Lauren Beach, chairperson of the Bisexual Organizing Project and member of the BECAUSE organizing committee, and Alex Iantaffi, a psychotherapist and editor-in-chief for the Journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy. I was especially interested to hear what Alex had to say as a bi-identified transmasculine queer person. An issue that arose throughout the conference – and that often comes up in conversation in my own life – is whether the label ‘bisexual” is harmful or invalidating to trans identity. Iantaffi’s experience mirrored my own in that ze has had a very positive experience in the bi community and felt that the label bisexual was important to hir. Beach passionately addressed what she calls “passing privilege” versus “passing oppression.” Bi people are often accused of accessing or having greater access to privilege based upon the supposed ease we have of passing for straight. Beach asserts that a passing oppression is a better term and way of thinking around having identities erased in this manner. To begin this discussion, Beach had us complete a selfassessment, wherein we had to fill in our identifications versus how we believe we are seen according to North American binaries in four locations (classroom/workplace, where we live, with friends, in volunteer activities/communities of worship) This exercise was emotional for me as a genderqueer mixed-race person with multiple-gender attractions – it really brought home the fact that I feel that I am rarely seen by others the way I see myself. While I acknowledge that when I am walking home late with my transmale partner and we are misread as straight we might be more “safe” if no one looks at us too closely – in most instances this hardly feels like a privilege and is definitely more aptly described as a passing oppression.
Saturday’s conference programming wrapped up with a plenary panel on which I spoke with other activists: Amy Andre, leading expert on bisexual identity and LGBT health and Executive Director of San Francisco Pride; Scott Bartell, longtime bi activist, psychotherapist and founder of the Twin Cities Sex Positive Society; Ryan Li Dahlstrom, a mixed-race Asian American genderqueer-identified community organizer and activist who works as the Director of the Trans Youth Support Network; and our very own Robyn Ochs. The panel was moderated by Claire Chang of the Minnesota Community Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation and a leader in addressing racism in Minnesota in a variety of ways including as supervisor of the Facing Race Initiative at The Saint Paul Foundation.
This panel, “It’s Time: Perspectives on Bisexuality: Past, Present and Future” was the best one I have had the privilege of participating in. Each panelist brought a richness of experience in terms of identity and activist communities that continued to fuel this discussion of intersectionality and what exactly our issues are as nonmonosexual people. Dalhstrom and I were both most interested in working within people of color, trans and youth communities while working towards sexual and gender liberation. Bartell pointed out that while he started a men’s group in 1975, he wouldn’t do the same thing today in 2010. We addressed different issues we could organize around as members of multiple communities, but even this can be problematic in instances where goals may be similar (keeping our communities safe) and methods may differ (engaging police/increased legislation vs. finding ways to be safe outside the system as communities of color and trans communities are frequently re-victimized by law enforcement). Another question that was raised: whether bisexuality shows sexual orientation is a choice and therefore interrupts the L/G movement for equality – is further proof that we should be moving towards a politics of sexual and gender liberation. The notion that our rights as human beings are only merited if “we just can’t help ourselves, we’re born this way, who would choose this?” etc., is predicated on a sex-negative belief that we are only queer because we have no other options. I don’t know exactly how I came to be blessed with feeling attracted to so many people of varying bodies and genders but whenever anyone asks “Who would choose this?” I just want to shout, “I would! And I do!” So rather than seeing non-monosexual people as a liability to the LGBT movement, I see us as an asset in the direction I hope we’re moving towards.
If you’re able, I hope you’ll consider attending BECAUSE 2011. Because it’s nourishing. Because it’s good.
Amanda Morgan lives in New York City.