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  alking About
Bisexuality, Gender
and Sexual Diversity

Vermonters Attend
Canadian Conference

BY SADELLE WILTSHIRE AND ANN COAKLEY

' TORONTO - What drives some folks to attend a

conference on bisexuality and gender? We were
drawn by topical interests, academics, network-
ing, or perhaps a place for like-minded people to
openly discuss our bisexuality in a safe, affirming
place, without having to explain ourselves to the
curious. And so, we packed up and headed off to
Toronto, Ontario to attend the 9th International
Conference on Bisexuality, Gender and Sexual Di-
versity (9icb). '

Held June 15-18, 2006 at Ryerson University
in downtown Toronto, the 9icb conference of-
fered a chance to meet with an international
bi community, just a few blocks south of the
city’s gay village. With Toronto Pride week on
its heels, it was a great opportunity for some to
stay and play for the week. By the Way, did you
know that in Toronto’s gay village, the street
signs even have permanent rainbows on them?

There were about 180 people attending this
conference, including folks from Australia, Eng-
land and the Netherlands, as well as many from
the U.S. and Canada. It was difficult choosing
workshops and activities to attend. There were
workshops for activists, for community orga.niz-
ers, for the geek-inclined, for the polyamorous,
for the kink-identified, for professional counsel-
ors, for the spiritually inclined, and more that
were hard to categorize. We were impressed by
the amount of hard work and planning the Toron-
to Bi community took on to realize this successful
conference. 9icb was organized as a project of the
Toronto Bisexuality Education Project. The orga-
nizing committee drew most of its members from
local-area and national groups including BiNet-,
Canada, the Toronto Bisexual Network, Bisexual
Women of Toronto and Bisexual Men of Toronto.

Notably missing at this conference was I
its founder and the “father” of the bisexual
movement, Fritz Klein, who passed away un-
expectedly just three weeks before. Among
Klein's many accomplishments was the Widely
read The Bisexual Option, which includes his .

“Klein Sexual Orientation Grid," encompass-

ing the complexity of human sexual identity.

The torch was carried by keynote speakers
including Loraine Hutchins, co-author of Bi
Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out.
She spoke on the vision of expanding spiritual-
ity, including honoring the sacred erotic and
deeper respect for our one a.nd only earth. Her
central discussion on spirituality, a topic of ris-
ing interest in Wider LGBT circles, flowed into
the implications and understanding of erotic
and alternative relationships and communities.

One workshop attended was on bisexuals
and their families, which evolved into a success-
ful group-driven discussion. In describing our
families, one could see the broad variety of our
lives: opposite and same-gender partnerships,

polyamorous partnerships, babies, school age
children, teenagers, near-empty nesters, and
even the opposite-gender married couple that
had run into glitches in adoption because of their
past queer activism. In this room it was hard to
pigeonhole what a bisexual life looks like. What
was consistent for this group was their strong,
clear vision for their lives and what they wanted,
as well as a potent concern for their children.
Bisexual visibility, “or how do you know a bi

There are obvious and
powerful commonalities in
how we, the B's and T’ , are
seen and misunderstood in
the wider world: as people
who are seen as "confused,"
or worse," "dishonest"

about our true identities.

 

9icb Committee PHOTO PROVIDED BY 9lCB .

person when you see one?” was another theme
that threaded throughout the conference. This
question was posed by Robyn Ochs, a longtime bi-
sexual activist and editor of both the Bisexual Re-
source Guide and Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals
Around the World, in her workshop on “Teaching
Bisexuality." To answer the question, we realized
that we can’t know from our own assumptions,
and that bisexuality is a self-selected identity. Ac-
cording to Dana Shaw, 9icb conference chair, one
way to describe bisexuality is as “‘element[s] of

, behavior, attraction or affiliation” and “attraction

doesn't necessarily determine how you live it out."
The links and overlaps of the trans and bi ex-
perience were a powerful thread for us, in work-
shops such as “Empowering Ourselves Through
Community - Building: Bi and Trans People
Working Together,” as well as in spontaneous
conversations we encountered. There are obvious
and powerful commonalities in how we, the B's
and T’s, are seen and misunderstood inthe Wider
world: as people who are seen as “confused” or

CONTlNUED ON P.14 -)