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Why I hate the scene - or fencesitting plums runs back into the closet

Goodness Gracious Meme

11:55 / 11.10.02

Grr. Rant imminent.

After much whinging and sitting on my arse complaining that I don't have any queer friends around here, I decide to actually do something. Figure i'll find out about a few social groups and see if the local Gay and Lesbian switchboard needs volunteers as it's the kind of stuff I've done a lot of and I've always met cool people through ... Don't want to get into big discussions, just want to meet people, help out a bit... Get myself over my ridiculous fear of having rocks thrown at me every time I go in a women's pub.

Talk to a very nice woman for quite a while who tuts at my experiences of getting grief on the scene in london, saying how dreadful it is. then when I ask if they need volunteers, informs me that they don't take bisexuals, partly for the reason of not wanting to make a lesbian share an office with a bisexual man. Can see the point. But then says that 'lesbians don't think bisexual women understand them', at which point I query the generalisation.... Make the point there may be a lot things that separate lesbians and bisexual women, but there are also issues they both face. And politely (I don't shout at people I've never spoken to before) ask if I'm the first acknowledged bisexual to ever call in to the switchboard. When she says no, I try to engage her on whether lesbian women are the best people to advice 'us lot'... with not much success.

Grr. I fucking give up. I'm tired of every move I make in any direction involving me having to justfiy my existence to all and sundry. I choose life. I 'choose' hetero privilege.

Thank you for listening.

12:00 / 11.10.02

Ahhh. I suspect you spoke to a representative of the Lesbean People's Front rather than the People's Front of Lesbea. There's your problem.

Splitters.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:02 / 11.10.02

Can't really say (what with being a boring old hetero and all that) I know too much about the gay "scene"- but what I have noticed is that a lot of (not all, by any means- some rock) my gay friends are very down on bisexuals... I've never understood the logic myself. I don't know if this is the over-riding rationale behind such a stance, but I have heard people say stuff along the lines of "not properly gay... he/she's just having a laugh and we get to take the societal shit for it"- which, needless to say, I think is absolute bollocks.

12:04 / 11.10.02

Not bollocks, Stoatie, but often overstated - and tending to fling the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

12:11 / 11.10.02

Sorry, plums... that is incredibly stupid and unfair of them - it's discrimination, there's no other word for it. Paradoxically, they evidently do need bisexual volunteers to help bisexuals deal with the very sort of prejudice they themselves seem to be perpetuating.

It does happen a lot, anti-bi discrimination... But not everyone is so fucking narrow-minded and prejudiced. I know it's easier said than done, but don't give up...

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:14 / 11.10.02

Oh, I'm not going to, just a bit of drama-queening on my part (hey, how about if I present as a gay man trapped inside a biologically fe-- naahh, that won't work either.) And I do, before someone pulls me on this, appreciate that this raises explosive and difficult issues on both sides. I do, really.

Am just really fucked off.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:15 / 11.10.02

Oh, and off my own blog, admittedly, but check this out.

I am *so* there.

12:33 / 11.10.02

Would have thought it should be obvious to them that although there's gonna be overlap, there are issues that arise fairly uniquely for bisexuals, or in a somewhat different way for bisexuals than for gay men and lesbians. I don't know how they can conscience not having bisexual volunteers...

There seems to be to be this tendency to define bisexual people in relation to who they're sleeping with - bisexuals often seem to be automatically considered 'straight' if they happen to be with someone of the opposite sex at the time (unless they're wearing their 'Actually, I'm bisexual' t-shirt at the time, obviously)... whereas for a lot of people they remain 'untrustworthy will shag anything that moves can't possibly have a committed relationship with someone of their own gender (yeah, I know this is all binary gender crap, but you know what I mean) without running off to satisfy their evil bisexual libido with the opposite sex every five minutes'... and yeah, some bisexuals shag around, cheat on their lovers, etc. etc. but so do some gay men, lesbians, heterosexuals and everyone else, and no one automatically treats anyone else with that much distrust...

Unfortunately the queer community is neither as open-minded or as much of a community as it sometimes pretends - witness the anti-bi sentiment, the anti-butch sentiment amongst lesbians, and the rampant transphobia... (and I feel weird posting this on a mixed messageboard, because it does not paint the queer community in a terribly good light, and we've got enough trouble, innit...)

It's a shitty situation, and you've got every right to rant, plums... glad you're not giving up though, because it's not a lost cause...

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:43 / 11.10.02

Yeah, Chol. know what you mean about perpetrating dodgy stereotypes in 'straight' space. But am realising that *this* is about the only space in which I feel at all safe alot of the time as regards my sexuality. And that's a bit bizarre.

Gah, I like the way I am, I've even come out to my bloody parents and they were great. Am just noting the irony of two people born six decades ago, on the other side of the world, being my most affirmative space right now.

And thanks for your words, Chol, I do wonder sometimes if all this is in my head sometimes.

12:59 / 11.10.02

You're welcome, plums... it *is* great that it worked out with your parents, and that you're happy with yourself...gives you a solid base. Just sorry that stuff isn't better in the world at large, for everyone, really... which is a fairly pointless thing to say, but true all the same...

13:21 / 11.10.02

Possibility not the best idea, as it may promote more rifts in the community, but if there's a need for bisexual switchboard volunteers to help bisexuals, well, couldn't one be started up?

13:24 / 11.10.02

Gay community slag off? Great!

Really - don't worry about 'betraying' the 'community' by posting here. I've ranted elsewhere about this myself, due to butch dykes being treated as evil incarnate these days, and I think that generally there seems to be a real de-politicisation of the gay community. When I came out I was surrounded by really politically aware and active women that were sussed on diversity of identity, trans issues, etc. Seems to me that a lot of women have been watching too much tv, identify only with the queer characters they see on soap operas and are actually ashamed of queer women who aren't glamourous or deemed acceptable to the mainstream. Butch dykes face serious, serious hatred, bi women are not to be trusted..... there's a lot of utter complacency going on - instead of us appreciating our diversity and respecting one another (even, shock horror, when you don't want to shag that person) a lot of queer women seem to be questioning each other's right to exist. It's not good.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:51 / 11.10.02

It's far from unique to queer women. I think, in the broader use of the term 'queer', it's almost endemic. The only thing a revolutionary hates more than a reactionary is another revolutionary who has a slightly different picture of the world.

14:55 / 11.10.02

Mmmm. An oft-discussed Barbe-topic, this, but perhaps it's time for a retreading of the whole gender theory thing? I've been working with various shades of transpeople these past weeks, and find myself gaining interesting new insights by proxy.

Anyone fancy starting/reviving a Head Shop thread, or shall we hold the show right here in the barn?

Tryphena Absent

14:56 / 11.10.02

yep.

14:56 / 11.10.02

Hmmm, all sounds depressingly familiar to my experience of Gay Switchboard on coming out 26 years ago, Platformous Loveliness. Gay men were pretty well catered for, lesbians less so, bisexuals and transgender people not at all, frankly. I had kind of hoped that in the intervening years with the promulgation of the LGBT banner and the handy concept of "Queer" that things might have moved on.

Surely the point of such a switchboard is to provide information and support to the people who phone up, feeling themselves not (well) served by other services. Unless there's a policy of telling bisexual people to piss off, your point is extremely valid: that some people with experience and knowledge of bisexual life and issues on their roster would be an advantage.

Seems to me the cart's before the horse if the principle they operate is that the needs of the person offering the phone counselling are more important than meeting the needs of the one on the phone. & I'd have thought someone with your counselling training and skills would be a big plus in any such voluntary outfit.

Your aim was a very usual one, person looking to expand local like-minded contacts, and I have to suppose in your town there must be other avenues worthy of exploration which aren't just expensive alcohol-fuelled meat markets. Perhaps, like me, you will have to rely on encountering those like-minds through everyday contact, although I know what you mean about people expecting you continually to justify the label you attach to yourself.

I think they were just suspicious of your footwear, really.

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:21 / 11.10.02

Ha. Cheers all for yr comments And Zocher, given that I'm waering gorgeous adidas golfing shoes, how could that be?

Feeling significantly better, on the 'not giving up' tip, had a lovely chat with a project worker who runs what is apparently the *only* LGBT advocacy/mental health service outside london. jee-sus. Talked abuot my various experiences and shes encouraged me to go to a mental health meeting ni a couple of weeks. She hasn't got time to train volunteers but i was sufficiently pushy in a 'use me for whatever' way to get her interested in talking further. think I may ask her advice/help in setting up a bi-women's group as there isn't one in bton. scary and usually the sort of thing I'd run a mile from, but am feeling sufficiently dungarees to pull it off right now...

16:15 / 11.10.02

SFSI (San Francisco Sex Information folks - http://www.sfsi.org/ ) is one of the granddaddies of switchboards. It might be worthwhile checking with them via e-mail about hints for setting up groups and possibly even educating the folks who turned down your gracious offer to help.

Goodness Gracious Meme

21:34 / 11.10.02

on the other hand, it's seeming alot easier to just bugger off to San Francisco right now... coures, possible jobs, and not having to set up my own groups to avoid the rock=throwing scenario....

Goodness Gracious Meme

23:02 / 11.10.02

Isazabelle: just checked out their 'learn to be a sex educator' course. Sounds exactly the sort of thing i want to do...

01:48 / 12.10.02

[come to san francisco. come to san francisco. the food is wonderful, the sex is great, and the scenery is fantastic. come to san francisco. come to san francisco....]

I'm glad you found the links. I haven't been through their sex-information course yet, but I'm friends with a bunch of SFSI folks (volunteers and graduates of the course) and it's on my short list of things to do...

Jack The Bodiless

02:08 / 12.10.02

As devils' advocate here: but there's a huge amount of anti-bisexual-women feeling amongst gay women that arises from the cool factor, as far as I can tell.

It seems generally accepted that there's a division of bi women who are perceived as not actually being bi - who are seen as being into the 'scene', rather than being the scene. I know a vast quantity of women who flag themselves as bi despite, in all other regards, being wholly straight. Their flag appears to be simply that they've had, or claim to have had, sexual feelings towards a particular celebrity flagging as sexually ambiguous, or who have had a nebulous sexual encounter with a woman as so flag themselves as bi despite having very straight attitudes and histories aside from this...

It seems a lot of politically aware bi women dismiss a lot of bi-identifying women as chancers. Equally, a lot of lesbian-identifying women dismiss a lot of bi-identifying women as chancers. The cache of being a sexually promiscuous bi woman seems more predominant than the actuality of a bisexual woman who is attempting to come to terms with her sexuality... there basically appear to be a great number of women who identify as bi, for whom the public identification as such is the most important thing, rather than the personal 'coming to terms' with an important aspect of their sexuality.

It's cool. And sometimes those for whom it's never been 'cool', but necessary, natural and usual, resent those for whom it appears to be an easy option, or a male-presented aspect of female sexuality. Suspicion from that point of view can be seen to be a very natural thing... "can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?"

Goodness Gracious Meme

10:06 / 12.10.02

"come to san francisco. come to san francisco. the food is wonderful, the sex is great, and the scenery is fantastic"

three of my absolute top things here, Issy... you do know how to sell a place don'tchya?

actually, emailed the SFSI saying that I might well in San F at some and would be raelly into volunteering/training with them.... if i can figure out the finances (and that might take a couple of years, but as long as i get there in the end...) this is taking shape as a real plan... what's the job market like in SF, I have good seccy/PA skills, ace waitressing/bar stuff, drop-in counselling/womeons'mental health experience and a whole load of pointless cultural studies/art history/curating stuff. and am not proud. at all.

22:08 / 12.10.02

The job market in San Francisco sucks right now. The Bay Area was ground zero for the dotcom implosion, and it hasn't recovered. Any job needing computer-skills is being done by someone horribly overqualified who's just happy to be working. The lack of yuppies with too much cash means that a bunch of restaurants and the like have closed. The shitty economy also means that people aren't donating money to good causes the way they were a few years ago, so a lot of organizations that provide services like counseling and clinics are hurting, cutting back on hours and staff (and the same holds true for organizations that assist artists).

Tourism isn't the cash cow it was before last September; I think I read somewhere that hotel revenues are down by a third. (also contributes to the closing of restaurants...)

And, to add insult to injury, Bush's misguided decision about stem cell research will have at least a little chilling effect on the biotech industry (also a Bay Area mainstay). One high-powered researcher has left the country for friendlier climes, and I know more will follow...

It may be better in a few years, but it's going to be a rough haul for a while.

22:12 / 12.10.02

I'm really cranky right now, as you can probably tell. The situation may not be quite as dire as I painted it, but it still ain't good...

15:54 / 14.10.02

www.kungfugrippe.com occasionally has updates on SF life/job/market stuff.

16:36 / 15.10.02

What I hate most is when people ask me for a numerical breakdown of who I've slept with as proof of my bisexuality. And I will confess to having found very annoying the claims to bisexuality of young women of my acquaintance who do not pursue actual relationships with other women, but only sometimes make ou with girls when drunk (and in front of a male audience). But who am I to say what they might be thinking or feeling?

In fact, the antagonism I've experienced at the hands of gay women has come, as it was explained to me, from the fear that a bisexual woman will leave her lover for a man. These accusations are not without bite, as I find it is much easier to meet men than women. After a while, I do start wondering about whether I should not be working harder to meet women, involving myself in the gay community more deeply -- whether I am not inadvertently exploiting heterosexual privilege because I can pass for straight.

I don't have any easy answers for those doubts.

Goodness Gracious Meme

16:57 / 15.10.02

mmm. will think about those points, fred, as I relate to alot of this, and be back...