 
Robyn Ochs at Summit Ron Suresha, Robyn Ochs & Renata Moreira
Photos by Barbara Fortune
Transcript of Robyn Ochs Keynote Speech
National Summit on Putting the "B" in LGBT
Robyn wowed the Summit with her Keynote speech and we're very pleased to have a transcript to share with you! You can also listen to it on Robyn's website http://www.robynochs.com/Files/BiMediaSummitKeynote.mp3
I’m Robyn Ochs, and I identify as bisexual, and I most certainly exist. (laughter and applause) A big thanks to the conference organizers and volunteers and to the sponsoring organizations. And thanks to everyone here for choosing to take time out of your busy, overbooked lives to be inside on this beautiful, sunny day to listen, learn and to share your own thoughts. The theme of this conference is putting the B into LGBT. L..G..B..T. I went to a trans conference a few years back, and one of the speakers made reference to the “LGB-fake T community.” I thought, “Um, hum.” I sat there in the audience thinking that our community could also be called the “LG-fake B-fake T community.” And sometimes even the “G-fake L-fake-B-fake-T community.” On our inclusion report cards, the box for “needs improvement” will certainly be checked. So the B is not the only letter we have trouble with. But in fact, that is what we are here today to focus on. Keep in mind though, that almost everything I say about inclusion could be applied to other groups as well. But we are here today to focus on this particular letter. So in this keynote, I’ll talk about why I think people have so much difficulty seeing and understanding bisexuality. The panels that follow will provide us with greater specificity and focus. I’ll start by laying out a few of my own assumptions so that you know where I’m coming from, and then I’ll address some obstacles to fair and accurate representation of bisexuals. Here are my assumptions: Fact: Human sexuality exists on a continuum. Some people are exclusively homosexual, some are exclusively heterosexual, and some of us fall somewhere along the continuum. The sexuality continuum is a big one. It doesn’t just have three points. There is a whole lot of variety between the poles. Fact: We don’t all have the same ideas about what these identities mean. There is no universally accepted definition of what it means to call yourself gay, or lesbian, or straight, or bi, or queer. In fact, this is something that is constantly being negotiated. There are many people with same-sex attraction and or behavior who nonetheless identify as “straight.”. Fact: There isn’t a tidy line that can be drawn between people in one identity group and people in another. Some self-identified bisexuals are gayer than some self-identified gay people. And some self-identified lesbians and gay men are more bisexual than some self-identified bisexuals. And to further complicate an already complicated reality, our identities can change over time as we discover more about ourselves. Fact: some people define their identities by their current behavior. If you’re doing… (laughter, and Robyn blushes); others by their historical behavior or attractions. Others define their identities by their attractions, regardless of their behavior, seeing bisexuality as an embracing of one’s potential. Fact: you don’t have to be “50/50” to identify as bisexual. The idea that you have to be 50/50 is really common. I have heard so many people say “I don’t know if I qualify, you see, I have had some attractions toward people of one sex, but most of my attractions have been toward women but I haven’t actually acted on … so I don’t’ know if it qualifies. One of my favorite jokes is the following: we’d make up an official bisexual identity card, which would be a card that the Bisexual Authority would issue to you when you come out as bisexual. It would have two lines: one for a male lover, one for a female lover, and you’d have to get it signed and dated (laughter) by a male and a female lover. Once you got both of those lines signed and dated, you would qualify. You would be an official, card-carrying bisexual. But of course, like most memberships, there’d be an expiration date. Now we can argue about how long that would be: 10 years, 5 years, 6 months, two weeks, one day, whatever. Everytime you have a new lover you would get the appropriate line of your card re-signed and re-dated, and if you didn’t get both of those lined re-signed and re-dated before the expiration date you would no longer have the right to call yourself bisexual. Simple. But needless to say, that’s not really the way it works. In fact, by any of these expiration standards, I would no longer “count” as bisexual. In fact, most researchers wouldn’t count me as bisexual because I haven’t had sex with a man in one year, two years, five years, or even ten years. But I still identify as bisexual. But I’ve had people say “No you’re not, because a bisexual is defined as someone who blah blah blah. But I’d say “You’re not the Biseuxal Authority. I am!” (laughter and applause) So, now to my next to last fact: Fact: all of the above facts make a lot of people uncomfortable because they require people to embrace complexity. Ick. And that’s part of the “ick factor thing – you’ve heard that expression. Part of it is sex-phobia, and part of it is complexity-phobia. The ick factor is about a resistance to sex AND a resistance to complexity." Final fact: Bisexuality is – for some people – a long-term and stable identity. I know this to be true. I know it from experience, as I have identified as bisexual for 33 years – my entire adult life. So if in fact bisexuality is just a phase, then for me it has been one hell of a long phase, that I look forward to continuing.
  Photo by Amanda Morgan Photo by Barbara Fortune
SO WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES TO BISEXUAL VISIBILITY? There are several powerful and longstanding challenges to bisexual visibility. Here are 5: 1. The first is that WE’RE SIMPLY NOT SEEN. Let me explain what I mean by this: One of the particular challenges that bisexuals face is that for the most part, bisexual people are not recognizable to others as bisexual. We are assumed by other people to be either gay or straight. Think about it: … If I walk into a restaurant with my arm wrapped around a man, other people see a straight couple, 2 heterosexuals. If I walk into a restaurant with my arm wrapped around a woman, what do other people see? (a lesbian couple, 2 lesbians – wow, they look awfully femmy, but they’re two lesbians. Of course, what else could they possibly be?) What kind of behavior would I have to engage in to get other people to see me as bisexual? I could walk into the room with a man and a woman and engage in a little bit of tongue work to make it obvious that we’re sexual partners. “Ooh, look at those bisexuals” Which leads me to #2: 2. TO BE IDENTIFIED BY OTHERS AS BISEXUAL, I’D HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO MAKE ME VISIBLE. I could come into the restaurant with 2 partners (1 on each arm?). Or be known to have 2 or more partners of various sexes; or leave someone for someone of a different sex, or get caught “cheating” on my partner with someone of a different sex, or talk about going to sex parties. Or kiss a girl at a party I’m attending with my boyfriend. Or I could go on a talk show like Jerry Springer. But then, I’ve been turned down by a number of talk shows because they said I wasn’t bisexual enough. (laughter) I know, 33 years of service, but because I don’t have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, that’s the thanks I get. Or I could be 17 years old, go to a party and make out with another girl, and they might see bisexual chicks making out. And if you think about it, these examples mirror the most common stereotypes of bisexuality. And that’s not a coincidence. Because of this, many people equate bisexuals with promiscuity, with polyamory, cheating, deception, and untrustworthiness, with horniness. And by the way, I’m not saying bad about any of those things except dishonesty and cheating. Think about the prevailing stereotypes about bisexuals: that we are hypersexual; that we are bad relationship material and will leave our partners for someone else; that we are not to be trusted; that we are all involved with multiple partners. Is it true that some bisexuals behave in ways that are consistent with some of these stereotypes? Of course it’s true. We run the gamit from asexual to a little bit sexual, to moderately sexual, to mega-multi-very-super-sexual. And that’s not a problem. The fact is that some people in EVERY identity group run the same gamit. We are pretty much like everyone else in that we’re all different. But it’s only for us that our sexuality gets seen as causing supersexuality. Are there any gay men who are very, very sexual? Yes, I’ve met one or two. Any straight men? (laughter) But people don’t say, “Oh he’s straight, that’s why he’s that way.” (laughter) Some of us are monogamous, some of us are polyamorous, and some of us are celibate. Just like everybody else. And I have nothing against monogamy, polyamory, or celibacy or any of the other –ogamies or –amories. In fact I’m totally pro-choice on this. I just don’t want to have my own identity group given full credit for any one particular behavior. But it pisses me off that only for bisexuals is our sexual orientation seen to be causal or predictive of any of these behaviors. Bisexuals are just like everybody else. And I don’t mean that in an “oh, we’re normal kind of way.” I mean that – just like people in every other identity group, we run the gamit from outrageous to boring. #3. EXISTING LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTIONS REINFORCE BINARIES. (How’s that for academese?) This one is really simple. We love our binaries. Gay or straight. Black or white. Democrat or Republican. Man or Woman. These binaries are great for soundbites, if you only have one sentence. But each of these binaries obscures a whole lot of complexity. Interestingly, I was just doing a speaking engagement where I used the political binary as an example. And I was thinking Democrat/ Republican. And I was thinking of the way in which this binary leaves out people who might be registered one way and vote the other. Then someone shouted out “Green Party.” And I thought, “Oh dear, it’s not even just that it’s a continuum, even if we spanned that entire continuum we’d still be leaving people out! And that’s true for a lot of our binary constructions. It’s not just that we things exist on a continuum, but that there are many different continua. So we have to be really careful that we don’t oversimplify everything. #4. This one is “special”: the very mention of bisexuality often generates outright hostility, as though our existence is an annoyance or – even more – a challenge or threat to the social order. We are often perceived as a threat. You say you’re bisexual and people recoil as though you’re attacking them! I have a pin that says, “I act this way to piss you off.” Well, the reality is that I don’t. My identity is about ME. #5. INTERESTINGLY, BISEXUALS FACE THE UNIQUE CHALLENGE OF HAVING TO LISTEN TO PEOPLE SAYING THAT WE DON’T EXIST. Sometimes I feel like a leprachaun, or a tooth fairy or something, popping around corners and surprising people. How many of you have ever heard someone say that bisexuals don’t exist? (all hands go up). I was hoping that none of you would raise your hands, but of course you all did. It’s really weird. And if you don’t believe me, I present you with a short quote from the usually fabulous Dr. Ruth: "Everyone is either straight or gay," Westheimer wrote in a 2005 column. "Some people go through an in-between stage where they are perhaps not sure, but eventually they fall into one category or the other, so that there really is no such thing as being bisexual." And she is someone whom I would like to respect. But I feel very disrespected by that statement. But mostly I feel defensive and irritated. #6. And finally: All of the above factors result in A SERIOUS SHORTAGE OF POSITIVE IMAGES OF BISEXUAL PEOPLE. How many bisexual people can you think of, fictional or real? Not many, I predict. And most of the ones that come immediately to mind are people like Tila Tequila. I don’t know about you, but when I look at her, I don’t see a reflection of myself. And it’s not just that she is shorter than me. For many reasons, she doesn’t represent me.
WE HAVE SEVERAL CHALLENGES IN FRONT OF US. One is to respond to the negative statements about bisexuals made by media stars – let me call them out – Michael Musto, Dan Savage, Dr. Ruth, Michael Bailey, Oprah – Oprah, who gets lesbian and gay people so well, but has a real resistance to seeing bisexuals. She’s said many things that are very dismissive. Interestingly, everyone I’ve mentioned has done other work that I really respect, but then they go and say these negative and dismissive things, and I just want to get them in a room for two days and educate them! We face the challenge of challenging negative stereotypes and also of being proactive, of creating positive, affirming images of bisexuals. I want to leave you with a question. When writing press releases, when blogging or reporting LGBT news, when creating sound bites, some activists and journalists often choose to use the simplest language possible, choosing terms that are easy to digest and also choosing to economize by choosing the shortest, simplest message. They do a little bit of polling to see what words are most digestible. But of course the result of this is often erasure. “Terms such as the gay community,” “gay marriage,” are examples this. Writing “gay marriage” is of course so much shorter and simpler than saying “marriage equality for same-sex couples.” And some people don’t like to use words like “same-sex marriage because it has what word in it? (sex!) Yes, sex. But I’m in a marriage that is not a gay marriage. In fact, our marriage doesn’t have its own sexual orientation and neither of us identify as gay. One of us identifies as bisexual, and one as a lesbian. But think about what is being rendered invisible when we simplify. Sometimes one benefit has the unintended outcome of creating harm. I often hear people talk about the value of simplicity in messaging, and of choosing language that resonates best with focus groups. I do understand the importance of doing research to find out what words “read” better. I’m on the board of MassEquality, Massachusetts’ statewide equality group, and we have used focus groups. When you’re in the middle of a battle, you want to get to a legislative victory. But it comes sometimes at great cost. But what to do if, for example, the phrase “the gay and lesbian community” tests slightly better than “the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community”? What to do if we learn that the more people respond positively to white, middle class professional-looking gay men and lesbians than they do to bi or trans people or to people of color or working class or poor people of any orientation? Do we then choose only easy-to-digest spokespeople? What’s the right thing to do? We know the answer. We need not to choose only easy to digest messages and easy to digest people. Here I visualize a circle. When we choose simple language and images to make our reader or listener comfortable, we are maximizing our chances that we’ll get our legislative victory, and that we will be listened to and understood. But on the other hand, we are reinforcing a false simplicity and therefore perpetuating an illusion. The snake is swallowing its own tail. Until we step outside the circle, the frame will never change. In all honesty, I believe that the challenges facing us will never be fully resolved, that we will need to keep on creating images of bisexual people and images of complexity, and challenging the sexual orientation binaries over and over and over again, reminding people that we exist. Binaries are like magnets, we are drawn to simplicity. But I am willing to keep on doing this work, over and over, smashing and challenging binaries for as long as it takes, with as much patience as I can muster. We have to do this work because it matters. I once heard Raven Kaldera say “every time you draw a line it cuts through someone’s flesh.” The flip side of this dynamic is that every time you challenge binaries, every time you insist that people use inclusive language and images, every time you make space for complexity, you are engaging in an act of healing, You are expanding vision, You are putting more oxygen into the room, You are creating for yourself and for other people more space to be complex and complete. So make a commitment to get out there and challenge binaries. Think about what types of resources you wish were out there. Think about what would have made it easier for you. Think about what would have and does make it easier for you. And now get out there and create some more of that! I’ll end by saying that my name is Robyn Ochs. I identify as bisexual, and I’m here to recruit YOU to challenge binaries.
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The Bi Writers Association (BWA) on Saturday, May 30, hosted the inaugural National Summit on Putting the “B” in LGBT at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City.
