Here's Why I Claim Bisexuality

When I was 14, I found the word bisexual through a Google search. I did not know you could have crushes on both girls and boys. I thought at a certain age there would be a sorting hat a la Harry Potter to tell me if I landed in the “straight” house or the “gay” house. So, when I found the world bisexual, a word that encompassed my feelings, I was ecstatic.

Ten years later, I still identify as bisexual. And I’m just as ecstatic to proudly claim bisexuality. I write and speak about bisexuality while being an advocate for our community. In my advocacy, I frequently am asked why I identify as bisexual rather than pansexual, queer, or many of the other fluid identities. While I am a queer man, in the sense that I am not cis heteronormative, I most closely identify with the label bisexual.

While claiming bisexuality, I frequently encounter the misnomer that bisexuality is innately binary. Since “b”i in bisexual means two, the two is assumed to mean cisgender male and female. (It’s only because we think in such binary terms that we would attach a binary gender attraction to the bisexual label.) Yet that is not how many bisexuals define our bisexuality.

The most commonly accepted definition of bisexual comes from renowned bisexual activist Robyn Ochs. She says, “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

In simpler terms, I call myself bisexual because I’m attracted to genders like mine and gender that aren’t like mine. My bisexuality isn’t binary. It never was and it will never be.

In the bisexual community, bisexual organizations have begun to use a Bi+ label to encompass all the various identities that land on the bisexual spectrum. Identities like pansexual, queer, omnisexual, and fluid are important parts of the Bi+ community.

There are diverse options for labeling my sexuality. Yet I claim bisexuality.

There are many reasons I call myself bisexual. First, bisexuality makes the most sense to me. Bisexual is the label I’m most comfortable with in describing how I see myself.

I call myself bisexual because it honors our history. Too often, bisexual elders are erased from the forefront of the LGBT rights movement. When I call myself bisexual, I honor the legacy of bisexual activists like Brenda Howard. Known as the Mother of Pride, Howard co-organized the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, which gave birth to Pride parades.

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were trans women of color are Stonewall. Yet they were also bisexual. Their bisexual identities are often forgotten. Others who have been at the forefront of the marriage equality movement, HIV activism, and who have marched for equality have too claimed bisexuality for themselves. It is because of their contributions to our equality that I have the space to freely claim my bisexuality today.

I call myself bisexual to be counted. Still, the majority of individuals who are attracted to more than one gender identify as bisexual. Regardless of our labels — queer, pansexual, omnisexual, or no label at all — our disparities are the same. We, as a Bi+ community, are facing a health crisis. In order for our disparities to be addressed, we must be counted in data collection.

I claim bisexuality for visibility. In calling myself bisexual, I am visible for other bisexual youth who could be Googling in search of answers about their sexuality. I want the 14-year-olds of tomorrow to know they don’t have to deny themselves.

I am out and proud as a bisexual man so that others know they too can claim bisexuality as their own.

ELIEL CRUZ is a contributor to The Advocate on bisexuality. His work has also been found in The Huffington Post, Religion News Service, Mic, Sojourners, The Washington Post, Patheos, Everyday Feminism, Details, Rolling Stone, Vice, and Slate. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Eliel Cruz

www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/10/08/heres-why-i-claim-bisexuality

Transgender Indians appointed judges in Hindu religious festival in Kolkata

Transgender people will be among the judges of Kolkata’s Durga Puja religious festival for the first time this year as Hindus compete to build the best offering displays to the goddess Durga.

The festival’s date is set by the traditional Hindu calendar and so changes from year to year, but in 2015 Durga Puja occurs from 19 October to 23 October.

The Durga Puja festival marks the victory of the goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura and celebrates the victory of good over evil.

During the festival ritual structures with statues and ceremonial gates celebrating Durga are set up in the city and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation holds an annual competition to select the best of these.

‘There will be two bodies of judges for two tiers of screening — primary and final — and transgenders will be members of both,’ awards panel organizer Debasis Kumar told the Hindustan Times.

‘While people like Anindya Dutta and Ranjita Sinha would represent the transgender community in the primary panel of judges, Manabi Bandopadhyay, the country’s first third gender principal of a government college, would be our celebrity judge.’

Another proposal by West Bengal state Women and Child Development Minister Sashi Panja would see transgender people recruited as traffic police during the festival but it is yet to be decided.

The post Transgender Indians appointed judges in Hindu religious festival in Kolkata appeared first on Gay Star News.

Andrew Potts

www.gaystarnews.com/article/transgender-indians-appointed-judges-in-hindu-religious-festival-in-kolkata/

For Tyler: How One Man Is Taking on Cyberbullies

Tyler Clementi, who died by suicide September 22, 2010, brought national attention to an epidemic of cyberharassment that hurts women and LGBTQ youth most of all. In his honor, I have launched the Tyler Clementi Institute for Internet Safety at New York Law School, which will include, among other things, the first pro bono law school clinic that will represent victims of cyberharassment for free.

Nearly half of all LGBT youth experience incidents of cyberabuse each year. LGBT teens are three times more likely than heterosexual teens to be harassed online and twice as likely to receive threatening or harassing text messages. Adolescent girls are significantly more likely to experience cyberharassment than boys. And over a seven-year period, women accounted for nearly 73 percent of all reported incidents of cyberabuse. Nonconsensual pornography overwhelmingly affects women as well.

Although powerful, numbers alone miss the devastating and discriminatory impact of cyberharassment. Consider, for example, Katie M. (not her real name), who broke up with her then boyfriend when she came out as a lesbian in 2013. Spiteful, her ex posted an intimate picture of her on Craigslist along with her name, address, and a request for a rough role-play “rape” fantasy. Several men tried to break into her home. She approached the police, but they said they couldn’t help her and advised that she stay off the Internet. She approached lawyers, but none of them knew what to do. For her protection, Katie’s family sent her to live with her aunt in New Hampshire.

After Steven (also not his real name) came out as gay when he was 13 years old, most of his friends offered support. But soon demeaning antigay comments started appearing on several social network profiles. It was clear that most of the comments were coming from two 15-year-old students at his school. After three months, Steven and his parents approached the school, where administrators refused to help because “the conduct happened online, not on campus.” The harassment came to a head when the students uploaded a video to YouTube making fun of Steven’s gender nonconformity and posted it to Facebook, tagging 175 of their friends from school. Still, the school did nothing.

Neither Katie nor Steven committed suicide, but they did experience anxiety, depression, and other devastating psychological harm. Katie was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She not only had to disappear from the Internet to protect herself; she had to move nearly 1,000 miles away. Steven missed weeks of school and his grades suffered. He was diagnosed with depression and stopped painting, making music, and playing with his dog, the three things he loved most in the world. Both reported that they felt alone, that they had nowhere to turn.

That sense of hopelessness is amplified by a legal system that, five years after Tyler’s death, still fails to take cyberharassment seriously. There is no federal law banning nonconsensual pornography, yet there is one that prevents victims from suing websites that provide a platform for it.

Too many school administrators erroneously believe that the First Amendment prevents them from punishing cyberbullies, yet too few have LGBTQ-inclusive digital citizenship and anti-cyberharassment curricula in their schools. The barriers to court-ordered unmasking of anonymous online harassers are too high. The walls of online privacy are too low.

Too few lawyers have the tools to represent victims of cyberharassment. Too many victims do not have the money to pay for the counsel they need. The status quo needs to change. That is why I have created the Tyler Clementi Institute for Internet Safety at New York Law School.

The institute is an unprecedented multipronged approach to a multi-faceted problem, with three overlapping approaches: educate, advocate, and litigate.

We will educate young people and their parents by creating LGBTQ-inclusive digital safety curricula that can be integrated into schools. We will educate teachers and administrators by providing model cyberharassment policies that are specific and administrable, and run seminars on the proper scope of the First Amendment. We will educate lawyers on how to represent victims of online harassment by providing in-house legal education programs. We will educate victims by providing user-friendly step-by-step guides on how to respond to cyberharassment. And we will educate the public about the epidemic of cyberharassment through data-based research and a groundbreaking narrative project that will allow victims to tell their stories on various media.

We will advocate for comprehensive antiharassment policies and work with Internet companies to enhance privacy and harassment protections on their platforms. And we will support the passage of reasonable legal reform by providing research, model statutes, and policy white papers.

And we will litigate cyberharassment cases for free. We will represent victims of cyberharassment at all stages of the process, from working to remove or unlink harassing content from the Internet to negotiating with schools to address hostile educational environments. We will represent victims at school disciplinary hearings and file tort, copyright, and other civil claims to help victims obtain justice.

We are sending a message to victims that they are not alone, that many people are looking out for them. Our ultimate goal is to take the incidents of cyberharassment down to zero. To do that, every arm of society, from schools to industry, from parents to those practicing bar, must pay attention to the victims of the Internet’s dark alleys. Only then can we be truly safe, productive, and free online.

ARI EZRA WALDMAN is associate professor of law and director of the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School. He is the founder and director of the Tyler Clementi Institute for Internet Safety. He blogs regularly at Towleroad. He can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow him on Twitter at @ariezrawaldman.

Ari Waldman

www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/10/08/tyler-how-one-man-taking-cyberbullies

How To Handle Bigots Without Saying A Word

Sometimes, the best way to handle bigots is to do it without saying a single word.

Dean Paton joined a group protesting at a gay pride parade in Chester, England, on Saturday with a sign of his own. But instead of threatening fire and brimstone, his sign pointed out that homophobes are statistically more likely to be gay themselves.

And while the bigots’ signs referenced Bible passages, Paton’s including a scientific citation, referring to a 1996 study that found homophobes are more likely to be aroused by gay porn.  

Check it out in the clip above. 

When he’s not shutting down bigots, Paton serves as the founder of Big Heritage, where he works to help make “archaeology accessible to people from deprived socio-economic areas.”

(h/t Towleroad)

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Florida Republican pushing bill to stop churches being made to marry gay couples nobody needs

A Republican state lawmaker in Florida is pushing a bill to protect churches from having to marry gay couples – something he freely admits they are already protected from having to do.

But Representative Scott Plakon says nobody can predict the future so is pressing ahead with the bill anyway, saying it will act as another layer of protection for churches – kind of like putting on a second condom.

‘This extra layer of protection can do no harm, and it might do some good,’ Plakon told the Orlando Sentinel.

However LGBTI rights group Equality Florida say the bill is pointless and unneeded and has offered to pay the legal bills of any church sued for not performing gay marriages.

‘We know that’s not going to happen,’ Equality Florida’s Carlos Guillermo-Smith said.

‘This is an imagined problem.’

Florida’s state House Civil Justice Committee approved the bill on Wednesday in a vote of 9-4, split along party lines, meaning the bill will actually come up for a full vote in the house.

A group of pastors attended the committee meeting, some to support it and some to speak against it, though most appeared to know they were already protected from having to marry gay couples against their will by the US Constitution.

The post Florida Republican pushing bill to stop churches being made to marry gay couples nobody needs appeared first on Gay Star News.

Andrew Potts

www.gaystarnews.com/article/florida-republican-pushing-bill-to-stop-churches-being-made-to-marry-gay-couples-nobody-needs/

Florida Advances Unnecessary Pastor Protection Act

The U.S. Constitution assures that clergy members won’t be forced to perform any marriage they don’t endorse, but that’s not good enough for some Florida lawmakers, who today advanced a piece of state legislation that does the same thing.

The Pastor Protection Act, approved by the Florida House Civil Justice Subcommittee, would provide an “extra layer of protection” for clergy who oppose same-sex marriage, said its sponsor, Republican Rep. Scott Plakon, according to The Palm Beach Post.

The subcommittee approved the measure by a vote of 9-4, Republicans in favor, Democrats against. It now goes to the Judiciary Committee, which will consider whether to move it on to the full House. The Senate has yet to take it up.

The vote came after the subcommittee heard impassioned testimony both for and against the bill. Plakon acknowledged that the Constitution’s First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of religion, already assures that clergy members have discretion over who they’ll marry. But because of “numerous changes in the law and culture,” the state law needs to make clear that they’re free to decline to perform ceremonies that conflict with their beliefs, he said.

Some who testified for the bill pointed out cases of bakers and other providers of wedding-related services who’ve been sued and fined for discrimination for turning away same-sex couples, the Post reports.

“Why could [lawsuits] not come to us?” Rev. Greg Squires of the Freedom Life Church in Kissimmee told the subcommittee. “Even though we say it’s in our Constitution, that just depends upon the person who is ruling at the moment and how they see it. And you know how that goes, you’re in politics.”

Carlos Guillermo Smith of the LGBT group Equality Florida said his organization would defend any clergy member or house of worship that was sued. “But we know that is not going to be necessary,” he said, according to the Post. “We know that the existing and clearly defined constitutional protections mean such an imaginary lawsuit would not have any legal basis.”

It also might be hard to sue even a for-profit business in Florida for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity — there is no statewide law against such discrimination, although some municipalities have inclusive antidiscrimination ordinances, the Post notes.

Some clergy members, from LGBT-friendly denominations such as the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ, said the bill is rooted in homophobia. “It’s that somehow an LGBT person who is looking to get married is a threat to other people of faith,” said Rev. Brant Copeland of the First Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee. “I urge you not to adopt this unnecessary and, I think, basically homophobic bill.”

Texas and Oklahoma have passed similar laws this year, and the idea has been floated in some other states, including Georgia and Tennessee.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/religion/2015/10/07/florida-advances-unnecessary-pastor-protection-act

A family celebration in Bali

It’s over ten years since I was last in Bali.

I flew Qatar Airways from London Heathrow to Denpasar – changing in Doha. A journey that took me just under 24 hours door-to-door.

I felt a bit guilty flying with Qatar Airways – the emirate of Qatar isn’t a great place to be gay – but they were offering the best deal so I compromised my principles a little quicker than I’m proud of.

It was a long but straightforward flight. I happily caught up on movies that I wouldn’t pay to see. Who knew that Kylie Minogue had a cameo in San Andreas?

The last time I was in Bali was for the wedding of my friends Sam and Jen. It was a beautiful wedding at a plush resort in Jimbaran Bay. As I touched down at Denpasar’s impressive airport for this visit, it was a salient reminder that I’ve completely lost touch with Sam and Jen in the intervening years.

My visit to Bali this time was also for a major occasion. My father’s 80th birthday.

I live in London, my parents live in Echuca in Australia, my brother Tim and his family live in Melbourne, my sister Lisa and her family live in Perth, so we decided to all get together in Bali to celebrate the milestone. Even John and Beryl – my Aunt and Uncle who live in Cardiff – flew in for the party. We were a family party of 12.

We were staying in Peppers resort in the Seminyak district. This was ideal for us – Peppers is a resort consisting of private villas. We had a private compound of individual bungalow bedrooms and a large open kitchen and living space, all surrounding a central pool. Not over-the-top luxurious, but very comfortable and liveable, making it easy for us all to enjoy the warm, tropical, humid heat of early October.

The Seminyak district has a lot of restaurants, cafes, and shopping. Everything was pretty much within walking distance of our resort, but we also opted for taxis quite frequently as the weather was hot and taxis inexpensive.

We ate out most evenings and all the restaurants that we tried were impressive. Favorites were Bambu and Mama San.

Our days were fairly relaxed. A long, late breakfast, a swim in the pool, possibly a walk into Seminyak village for a coffee, some shopping, or a massage, and then snoozing and swimming until it was time for dinner.

We did manage to venture out for a day-trip to the Ubud region. We booked a driver for the day (through our resort) – it was about 90 minutes each way. Ubud is up in the highlands of the island – this is where they grow rice and there are also a number of temples that can be visited. Our first stop was to see the production of Luwak or Civet coffee. Luwak’s are a small furry animal that live in the jungle – their natural diet includes coffee berries. Bali’s coffee producers gather the luwak dung and then extract the partly digested coffee beans. This process produces surprisingly good coffee. We also explored the rice fields and the elephant temple. An interesting day.

We had one other day away from the villa, and this was to Potato Head Beach Bar. This is about as high-end as beach bars get. Day-beds surrounding a central pool, overlooking the beach, a perfect view of the spectacular sunset, cocktails and great food. Definitely something worth experiencing while you are in Bali.

It’s been a real treat to be able to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday, it’s been a real treat to be able to enjoy a family vacation, it’s been a real treat to return to the island of Bali.

Read more from Gareth Johnson

Read more travel stories

The post A family celebration in Bali appeared first on Gay Star News.

Gareth Johnson

www.gaystarnews.com/article/a-family-celebration-in-bali/

Chelsea Manning: I Almost Gave Up, Then Got 'Second Wind'

In her first letter from prison for Medium.com, Chelsea Manning discloses that the challenges of transitioning in a military prison recently made her so depressed she wanted to give up — but then she got a “second wind” to carry on.

“Recently, on the evening of September 18, I finally decided that maybe I should quit, to give up on everything and everyone: my family, my friends, my supporters, my court-martial appeal, and my other legal battles,” Manning writes in the post, which went up today.

The catalyst involved the enforcement of a gender-based grooming standard, says Manning, the former Army private and transgender woman who is serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for providing secret military documents to Wikileaks.

“That evening I found out that the military was going to force me to keep my hair cut very short, to the ‘male’ hair standard,” she writes. “I didn’t take the news well. I felt sick. I felt sad. I felt gross  —  like Frankenstein’s monster wandering around the countryside avoiding angry mobs with torches and pitch forks.”

Manning, who is the first imprisoned soldier to receive transition-related hormone therapy (the photos above are from February, the week she began therapy), reports that she spent some time crying, then called her lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union.

 “He did such a wonderful job just listening to me,” she writes. “After feeling devastated, humiliated, hurt, and rejected  —  and after wanting to give up on the world  —  I found my ‘second wind’ of sorts. I can make it just a little longer. I just hope it’s not too much longer.”

 Manning will chronicle her experience of transitioning in the military prison in periodic posts on the site, and she welcomes questions and feedback. Read the full post here.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/10/07/chelsea-manning-i-almost-gave-then-got-second-wind

REVIEW: Grocer & Grind – Seminyak, Bali

There are a lot of great breakfast, brunch and coffee places opening up in the Seminyak neighborhood of Bali, but Grocer & Grind is one of the first and still one of the best.

Friendly service, good coffee, and a selection of simple but tasty food.

The streets of Seminyak are busy with the hustle and bustle of daily life in Bali, but Grocer & Grind is the perfect quiet corner to refuel and refresh before diving back out into your Bali experience.

Read more from Gareth Johnson

Read more restaurant reviews

The post REVIEW: Grocer & Grind – Seminyak, Bali appeared first on Gay Star News.

Gareth Johnson

www.gaystarnews.com/article/review-grocer-grind-seminyak-bali/

Saving for College Tuition with Hayley & Erica

Advocate.com Editors

www.advocate.com/advocate-money-minute/2015/10/07/saving-college-tuition-hayley-erica