Monthly Archives: May 2014

LGBTIQ

The bisexual linkspam of Autumn (May 2014)

1 Comment

I have so much linkspam, as I haven’t done a linkspam round up for ages (I’ve been busy), so I thought I’d do one just on all the bisexuality related news and posts I’ve found.  Sit back, and enjoy the ride.

Will Dean at the Desert Sun writes, “Awareness and acceptance of bisexuality on the rise“:

And this disbelief in bisexuality often leads to its general lack of acceptance. The doubts are especially and, perhaps unexpectedly, pronounced among gay people, many of whom have struggled with having their sexual orientation acknowledged and respected.

“There’s a misconception that bisexuals can’t be trusted in relationships,” says A.J. Walkley, a bisexual woman and activist who lives in Arizona. “If a lesbian is dating a bisexual woman, there’s an underlying fear that she’s going to miss penis at some point and go back to a man. There’s this thought that we can choose, we have the choice of being in a heterosexual relationship or homosexual relationship, that we have straight privilege.”

An academic article, “From Bias to Bisexual Health Disparities: Attitudes Toward Bisexual Men and Women in the United States” by Friedman M. Reuel, Dodge Brian, Schick Vanessa, Herbenick Debby, Hubach Randolph D., Bowling Jessamyn, Goncalves Gabriel, Krier Sarah, and Reece Michael.

Eric Sasson at New Republic writes, “Why Are Americans More Accepting of Gays and Lesbians Than Bisexuals and Cross-Dressers?“:

Cross-dressers aren’t the only members of the LGBT spectrum who trail gays and lesbians in social acceptance: As a recent piece in The New York Times Magazine showed, bisexuals face constant biphobia and even struggle to scientifically prove that bisexuality exists. Despite a greater number of Americans claiming to be bisexual than either gay or lesbian, far more bisexuals are in the closet than their LG counterparts. Straight people have more negative attitudes towards bisexuals than gays and lesbians. These factors have led theorists to coin the phrase “bisexual erasure”: The idea that our society systematically ignores and dismisses bisexual identity.

The Bi Writers Association writes, “Bisexual Book Awards announces finalists“:

Sixty books were nominated to our second Bisexual Book Awards. “We are thrilled that an unprecedented number of bisexual books were nominated this year. No book awards has ever seen 60 bisexual book submissions,” says Sheela Lambert, Director of the Bi Writers Association. The previous record was held by the Lammy Awards, who received 33 nominations to their bisexual book categories in 2011.

Jac at Queereka writes, “Bisexual but not Binary“:

Last year I moved to San Francisco. I spent many hours in queer spaces, and I met many queers, some of whom identified as “bisexual”, despite having lived for years as nonbinary. They explained to me that “bisexual” does not necessarily imply a gender binary any more than hetersexual or homosexual. Take a look at the etymology.

  • “Homosexual” comes from the Greek homos, meaning “same.”
  • “Heterosexual” comes from the Greek heteros, meaning “different,” or “other.”
  • “Bisexual” comes from the Latin bi, meaning “two.”

Two of what? If “homo” is same, and “hetero” is different, we can read “bisexual” as referring to attraction to both same and different. It’s true that during part of its past, “bisexual” was meant as attraction to both sexes. During part of its past, “computer” was used to refer to a mathematician. Language changes.

Nathaniel Frank at Slate writes, “Bisexuality Is Really Not That Complicated“:

On the surface, there’s something perfectly reasonable about defining bisexuality as acts-based. That’s what we do with other identities. Bakers are bakers because they bake. Firemen fight fires. Criminals commit crimes. So bisexuals sleep with both genders, right? But from this simplistic understanding, sloppy stereotypes too easily emerge: Bisexuals must desire both genders equally or they’re not really bi; and if they desire both genders equally, they’ll never be satisfied with monogamy, because they must sleep with someone of each gender consistently to be identifying as bi. Openness to both genders gets redefined as needing both genders. And having a range of desires—which, as Freud pointed out, is the most obvious way to characterize all humans—is reconverted back into the binary our culture just can’t shake: You can like one sex or you can like two equally, but none of this weird spectrum crap.

This is silly. Some feelings and beliefs, as opposed to acts, are considered so profound and enduring that people identify around them regardless of how they behave. Romantic desire may be one of these things. You’re straight or gay even if you’re a virgin. So why not bisexual? Faith is another source of enduring identity, and many religions have their own internal debate about this. Some people don’t consider you a Christian if you don’t, as an act of will, believe in Jesus. Yet I’m a Jew no matter what I do.

Dr. Herukhuti writes at The Bilerico Project, “Bi Erasure Is Psychic Murder: The Quest for Bi Culture“:

That splitting and policing of sexual desire, relationship narrative, and life experience is at the heart of what makes bi erasure a psychic murder. By selecting which loved ones and sexual partners in someone’s life are worthy of being recognized, bi erasure is a violent amputation of a person’s chosen family and community.

The destructive impact of such psychic violence contributes to an environment hostile to bisexuality and bisexuals, evidenced by the existing disparities in poverty, suicide, domestic violence and health among bisexuals. Many bisexuals feel an intense betrayal when gays and lesbians, our brothers and sisters in sexual oppression, participate in bi erasure.

Lyndon Evans writes at Focus on the Rainbow, “The Continuing Bigotry Against Bisexuals In The LGBT Community“:

The announcer was talking about some of the gay Pride parades which had taken place during the day and said to paraphrase, “members of the LGT community came out today to celebrate their Pride.”

Needless to say the announcer and/or writer of the news story was ignorant of the fact that there is more to LGT and bisexuals make up a big part of the community. Here again and this time by a news announcer we were made to be invisible.

 

Related Posts:

sexism

My new pledge – no more games with only male characters

I was at work, doing worky things and my ex-intern, but still my minion, shares with me a link for the Kickstarter of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.   He knows I am a gamer, as is he.

I scroll through to see if it is something that I’d enjoy playing or not, and find one of the stretch goals – at raising $600K, the developers will add a “Playable female character”.  This, I should add, is the fourth stretch goal, and the character developed is not the main character, but is a character you can play as part of a memory, or prequel who helps the actual main character, a bloke, end up where he is when the story of the game begins.

Wow, I thought to myself, me and people like me are optional extras for game developers, and that’s when I decided – I will no longer play games where there are only dudes present as options, or where the developers think that playable female characters are only worthy of a stretch goal.

The developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance were criticised by players and others for their lack of playable female characters, and they fell back on “this is a period game set in Europe in the 15th century, women weren’t heroes” (not an exact quote).

Anyone who knows anything about history knows that women fought.  Joan d’Arc was alive and well in the 15th century, and she fought.  Saint Geneveive didn’t fight, but she certainly was active in the fields of war, negotiation, and keeping shit real in Paris in the 5th century.  Then you know there is a proud history of women pirates.

There was nothing stopping the developers saying, “right, the main character is either man or a woman (your choice), but the female character will have to disguise herself as a boy/man because of the environment/culture/time period that this game is set, and may have extra levels of difficulty because of that”, because I’m certain that women often did that, as they do today in places where appearing as a girl or woman can be risky.

But back to my pledge.  I will no longer play a game if the only character options are men, or male anthropomorphised creatures.  From now on, I will only play games that allow the selection of men/women/neuter characters, where the main character is a women, or where the player is effectively an ungendered god (ie myself).  This means that there are plenty of new games that will come highly rated and recommended that I will not play.  I was looking forward to Watch Dogs, but as the only protag in the game is yet another dude, I’m not going to play it.

As it turns out, looking at all the games in my play list, and on the shelf, the ones I’m most likely to play are those with options for different gendered characters, so it’s not like my pledge is going to be hard personally – but imagine if lots of people made this pledge.  Imagine if we as consumers forced gaming companies to actually portray women and girls as active story-tellers in their own lives?  Imagine if women and girls were not sexualised objects, or Ms Men, or motivations for male characters to do other things – how much richer stories would be told then?

Related Posts:

thoughts

The legacy we leave

1 Comment

I’m a strong believer that we should leave the world, and the people we touch (as much as possible) in a better state than we found it.  We should not pass our damage down onto our children, but lesssen or remove it as possible.  Every generation should hopefully be better than the last.  And I see that (with the exception of politics) that many of the people I know, love, interact with, and read about seem to at least feel the same way.

Fiona O’Loughlin is one of my favourite comedians.  I love her stories, her honesty and most recently her book, “Me of the Never Never“.  There was one passage in particular that resonated with me:

As you cross the Todd River, Aborigines are in full view always, sometimes drinking, sometimes fighting, but mostly just sitting.  I think it would be fair to say that it is usually in the car when you’re crossing the river that urban Alice Springs kids, black or white, will ask their parents for the first time about the Aborigines in the river.

‘Why do those people sit in the river all the time?’

To my mind it is a crucial question that requires a crucial answer and it can go either way.

‘Because they’re drunks.’

‘Because they’re bludgers.’

‘Because they’re no-hopers.’

I guess, as is often the case, racism comes as much from ignorance as malice, but right at that moment you can either pass on intolerance or not, and it’s such a heavy load to hand onto a little kid.  A kid that may well spend his or her life in Central Australia has been given with authority a very heavy sack of fat, pompous, pious prejudice.

‘Why do those people sit in the river all the time?’

‘I don’t know, maybe they’re waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Waiting for better days, I think.’

Simple.

And I thought after reading that passage, “Yes, that’s exactly it – we shouldn’t pass racism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, queerphobia, or sexism onto children.”  We should shelter them as much as possible from these things, let them know that they exist, because otherwise it’d be a nasty shock when they encounter them, but to not teach our prejudices to our children.

Of course, this is really a hard thing to do.  Easy for me to say as a woman who hasn’t managed to successfully have children, hard for a parent whose children want to know what their parents thoughts are on various issues.  I don’t envy parents in this regard.

But if we could shelter children from the structural sexism, racism, and homo, bi, trans* and queer phobias that exist in society, or at least get them to question themselves and others when these things are presented as facts wouldn’t that make the world a better place?

Related Posts: