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Black bisexual women are often misunderstood, excluded or fetishized. Black bisexual men, on the other hand, are routinely vilified. Who expresses love and support for our black bisexual brothers? Bisexuals comprise over half of LGB-identified people in the United States, yet we are routinely rendered invisible and marginalized. The erasure of bisexual people is particularly problematic for African-Americans, who already face the strain of racism. Bi black people exist at the intersections of many forms of oppression, and this difficult positionality makes it complicated for us to find love. We not only have to deal with homophobia in our families — we also have to navigate biphobia among black gays and lesbians — while dealing with racism in the broader LGBT “community.” There is also the reality that most “LGBT” spaces are actually not for us. Very often, they are implicitly white centered and/or mostly geared toward gays and lesbians.

#ThisIsLuv: A Black Bisexual Manifesto

| Crystal Fleming, the Huffington Post  (via

gaywrites

)

#bi #racism #biphobia #quotes #crystal fleming

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Shout to all of my bi ladies in same-gender relationships. I know how hard it is having to deal with biphobia, homophobia, and society’s complete disrespect of f/f relationships simultaneously but you are wonderful, your struggles are valid, and I am sure your girlfriends/partners/wives are incredibly lucky to have you in their life ❤

#positivity

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Catwoman is officially bisexual. Like, for real.

#selina kyle #bi characters #multi characters #comics

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More from the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender History Museum in San Francisco: the front sign, buttons, protest chants, wedding dresses, wedding photo, and explanatory plaque, and a bi pride shirt

#history #advocacy #san francisco

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I went to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender History Museum in San Francisco, and they actually have pretty good bi material. The bi section takes up a whole wall of the small two-room building, and there’s some other bi stuff throughout.

#history #san francisco

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"This one time I was Milan and I’m literally around multi-millionaires and billionaires at this dinner and Dita Von Teese gets on stage and she gets buck naked and she spins around in a big martini glass and everyone clapped for her. And it’s bullshit. It’s not fair that it’s OK for her to do it because she doing it for rich white people but you know I was in like, the hood, and I did what I had to do to survive… and I constantly get ridiculed."

- Amber Rose 

Curve Magazine Interview “The Real Amber Rose” (2011)

#amber rose #quotes #racism #whorephobia

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Black Bisexual Media Collection

_______________________________________________________________________

Music

Bi: Living Colour

Channel Orange: Frank Ocean

Billie Holiday’s Greatest Hits: Billie Holiday

J’ai Deux Amours: Josephine Baker

The Gospel of the Blues: Sister Rosetta Tharpe

The Definitive Collection Sammy Davis Jr.: Sammy Davis Jr.

20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection Grace Jones: Grace Jones

Broke with Expensive Taste: Azealia Banks

Wonderlustre: Skunk Anansie

_______________________________________________________________________

Books

Some of Us Did Not Die by June Jordan

Freedom To Love For All: Homosexuality Is Not Un-African! by Yemisi Ilesanmi

Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men by Robyn Ochs & H. Sharif Williams

Meaty: Essays by Samantha Irby

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir by Charles M. Blow

Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction by Don Weise

_______________________________________________________________________

Film

A Black Girl In Paris (2013)

Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Fine) (1998)

#books #music #films

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A lot of yall need to learn about the difference between oppression and horizontal aggression.

Lesbians cannot oppress bisexual women because they do not have the structural power necessary to benefit from the subjugation of bisexual women

Bisexual women cannot oppress lesbians because they do not have the structural power necessary to benefit from the subjugation of lesbians

This doesn’t mean that lesbians can’t be biphobic/bisexuals can’t be lesbophobic. It does mean that neither has privilege over the other—the are both oppressed on the same axis.

Horizontal aggression.

#intra lbpq #and the explanation for why neither holds structural power over the other is something for another post #or possibly a book

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A LGBTQ/Queer Jewish Reading List (in no particular order)

Nice Jewish Girls, a lesbian anthology edited by Evelyn Torton Beck

Twice Blessed, edited by Christie Balka and Andy Rose

Queer Jews, edited by David Shneer and Caryn Aviv

Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer, edited by Angela Brown

Found Tribe, edited by Lawrence Schimel

Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in the Jewish Community, edited by Noach Dzmura

Between Sodom and Eden, by Lee Walzer

God vs. Gay?: The Religious Case for Equality, by Jay Michaelson

Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, by Joy Ladin

Blood, Marriage, Wine, and Glitter, by S. Bear Bergman

Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires, edited by  Miryam Kabakov

Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, edited by  Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser and David Shneer

Kulanu (All of Us): A Program & Resource Guide for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Inclusion, by Richard F. Address, Joel L. Kushner, and Geoffrey Mitelman

Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View, by Rabbi Chaim Rapoport

Queer Theory and the Jewish Question, edited by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini

Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories, by Andrew Ramer

The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture, by Warren Hoffman

Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, by Rabbi Steven Greeberg

Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition, by Rebecca Alpert

This list doesn’t include all the memoirs, all the fiction short story collections. They’re mostly books I’ve read— some of them, like “Like Bread on a Seder Plate” and “Queer Jews” I grew up with, others, like “Torah Queeries” and “Keep Your Wives Away From Them” I read on my own time. They range from Orthodox to Reconstructionist to Reform, and encompass a variety of ways of tangling with Jewish tradition.

If you are curious about LGBTQ people in the Jewish tradition, I urge you read at least one if not more of these.

#books #faith #q slur cw

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A guest post on how to find a bi competent therapist! I know lots of people are looking for advice on this!

#health #resources

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hey could you tell me more abt transmisogyny in the bi community? all the bi tags are very one-sided and the criticism of it is never explained.

sure. it’s hard to spot if you don’t know how some bi people frame their politics. but here is, in my view, the big three.

transmisogyny framed as a majority “lesbian-only” problem: this is the one i’ve seen more frequently. after the mainstream bi community in the western world reclaimed a different definition of bi attraction (bi = attraction to genders similar to mine and/or different from mine) than the commonly known (and still more widely used) definition (bi = attraction to men and women), discussions of cissexism became less and less common as an intracommunity problem and began to be deflected onto lesbians in particular because the “(cis) queer community” started to co-opt trans lesbian criticisms of transmisogyny among lesbian spaces. when people who aren’t trans women in the bi community want to discuss transmisogyny among lgbpq people, nowadays it is bi people feeling the need to take it upon themselves to prop lesbianism up as the most transmisogynist void on earth (which drowns out trans lesbians). there’s nothing inherently wrong with addressing the transmisogyny a cis gay person or lesbian may espouse. in the case of bi people ignoring intracommunity transmisogyny to focus on lesbians, though, bi people tend to invade the boundaries that trans lesbians have within the lesbian community in an effort to “defend” trans lesbians, but what happens is that trans lesbians get silenced. trans lesbian experiences and grievances with cis lesbians are co-opted by outsiders in an effort to paint lesbianism as inherently or “more” violent to trans women. bpq people who aren’t trans women may do this to make it seem like bpq people are “more progressive” or something when all they’re doing is antagonizing trans lesbians. trans lesbian oppression, then, is reduced to a weapon to fuel the (trans)lesbophobia present in the bi community. bi people do not fight transmisogyny as vigorously in our own community. the belief that we’re exempt or that we espouse transmisogyny “less” than others is transmisogynist of course. all non trans women are complicit in transmisogyny and tryin to pass the buck is a sign of transmisogyny.

transmisogyny framed as sexual/romantic progressiveness: this is more common in (cis) pansexual community, but it’s a general bpq problem as well. an attitude among some bpq people who aren’t trans women is that, because they may proclaim that they’re open to dating or having sex with trans women that means they’re the most progressive bunch among the “queer community,” therefore they are exempt from espousing or withholding transmisogynist ideals. of course this is false. not only is this false and a copout, but it has been used as a smokescreen for fetishization of trans women. this ugly belief stems from people believing that transmisogyny ends if you don’t view trans women with disgust (literally the bare minimum); as long as you’re attracted to trans women, prollem solved, and if you try to address this you’re met with silence. 

claiming that transmisogyny and biphobia are uniquely similar (while claiming transmisogyny and lesbophobia are uniquely dissimilar): many bpq people who aren’t trans women, especially cis ones, try to use trans women’s oppression as a platform to talk about things that are not transmisogyny. since bpq people who aren’t trans women have an issue with claiming exemption from transmisogyny, it makes sense to us that we’re “just like” trans women in some way, completely rendering the oppression we enact onto trans women invisible. this is usually tied in with (trans)lesbophobia and bpq trans women get used as argumentative pawns here - only existing for bpq non trans women to make a point about something that is not transmisogyny. transmisogyny is just used as a bludgeon; non trans women win, trans women lose.  

these are probably the examples you’ll see the most, and i believe there needs to be more of a dialogue of intracommunity transmisogyny among bpq people who aren’t trans women. as long as i’ve been observant of the western bpq community, the most i’ve ever seen with addressing transmisogyny within bpq communities was with the bi vs pan debate wherein cis pan people erroneously claimed they were not cissexist and that bi people were inherently cissexist (a fukken mess). obviously, it needs to go further than that disaster. transmisogyny is no stranger to anyone who isn’t a trans woman, and pretending that it is…is wack af!!

#transmisogyny #intra community

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i feel like when straight people in general encounter a woman who is clearly attracted to women, e.g. because of her relationship with a woman, it’s like… they assume she’s a lesbian, AND they assume she’s bi, AND they assume she’s straight, all at the same time, in different ways?

when they assume she’s a lesbian they mostly don’t believe it’s really possible for a woman to only be attracted to women, but they assume that a lesbian is what she thinks she is, plus lesbian is an easy thing to reach for to try to insult her with

and then they also assume she’s bi, without using that word or respecting that as an identity in any real way, in that they see her acting on attraction to women but they also think she must be attracted to men, as all women are

and at the same time they believe that deep down she’s straight because in addition to all women being attracted to men, women’s attraction to women is not real, a delusion

and like there’s this interplay among all these assumptions and they all play into how these women are treated

is this making sense at all i may just be overtired but yeah

it’s like pretty confusing and i think it ends up complicating the dialogue among lbpq women

#homophobic misogyny

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Index For Black Queer & Trans Women Businesses/Resources

http://elixher.com/theindex/

#resources #q slur cw

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Yes, I am Iranian, I am bisexual, I was dealing with a breakup from a girlfriend, but none of those things happened [the way they happen in the film]. I wanted to express the themes and feelings of being lost. I went down the rabbit hole of finding out what would make a good adventure for a 90-minute narrative.

Desiree Akhavan about the film Appropriate Behavior, which she wrote, directed, and starred in (source)

#desiree akhavan #directors #films #bi people #multi people #people of color #quotes

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I have not given up on this blog! I am just getting on top of school work and then hopefully I will be back to posting more.

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I made a PowerPoint! Feel free to add any info that I left out that you think is important~

Also, I have an Asexuality PowerPoint if you want to check that out!

#aro #abuse cw #gendered slurs cw

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Hey everyone,

I would just like to quickly mention that there is a fabulous community of people with PTSD over on huddl.org. It’s a welcoming community which is kinda set up like a cross between a facebook feed and a forum, where you can post something, and other people will offer you support/guidance/etc.

So yeah, you should all go check it out because the people there are really friendly and helpful and everything xx

#resources #not bi-specific