fore the meeting, the gay elected
officials will conduct a co-
ordinated seiies of Congressional
visits to meet with key legislators.

Elected by popular vote, openly
gay and- lesbian officials epit-
omize the strides that the gay and
lesbian community has made to-
wards dispelling anti-gay stereo-
types and achieving political
equality. "We have spent the past
two years laying the groundwork
for this unprecedented event,"
says Lea], "and now, to par-
aphrase Harvey Milk, we will
give the American people the
chance to judge us by our own
leaders, and by our own leg-
islators." Among the officials in-
vited to the meeting are Vermont
State Representative Bill Lippert,
and U.S. Congressmen Barney
Franks, Gerry Studds, and Steven
Gunderson. .

Boy appears to
recover from HIV
infection

LOS ANGELES -— A Los An-
geles boy who tested HIV-
positive at birth apparently fought
off the infection and is virus—free
at age 5, astonishing his doctors.
Dr. Yvonne J. Bryson, a pc-
diatrician and AIDS specialist at
the UCLA School of Medicine in
Los Angeles, said she believes it
is the first carefully documented
case of someone casting off all
signs of infection. Tests proved
conclusively that the boy was in-
fected for at least a month during
the first two months of his life.
Later examinations found no
sign of the virus, Bryson said.
Doctors have no explanation. "It's
like a miracle to me and a miracle
to his mother," Bryson said.

Bryson said she and her col-
leagues are studying the boy's im-
mune system for clues that could
be used to stop HIV in others. "It
just opens up a lot of things to
look at. Before now, there was
such skepticism about the pos-
sibility that this could occur," said
Bryson, whose findings appeared
in the New England Journal of
Medicine. The boy's mother re-
mains infected but does not yet
have symptoms of AIDS, Bryson
said. Bryson has since identified
another child who appears to
have accomplished the same im-
probable feat. Studies are now
underway to confirm the second
case, she said. Bryson wamed
AIDS patients, however, not to
cling to the remote hope that their
infections could disappear.
(Frontiers) V

LOOKING BOTH WAYS:
Bi Identity & the Personal Ads

Mike Rothbaxt

CUTTINGSVILLE -— Life for me in Vermont is no longer com—_
plete. I just returned from a trip to Philadelphia, where I dis-
covered a new life in the personal ads. Last Friday night found me
sitting in Suburban station, reading the Philadelphia City Paper,
waiting for the R2 train to take me home. The station was dull, as
was the newspaper -- until I got to the personals section. There I
found hundreds of men and women looking for a partner. I scoped
through the pages, reading individualized blurbs, utterly fascinated.
All these lonely people, wandering the pages, searching for that
perfect man, woman or both. I wondered about how these people
chose to label themselves. What sexual identity did they take on?
And what sort of partners were they ISO? Most important, which
of them would I take home on a Saturday night?

Since I'd just been reading an article about lesbians by Carol
Queen, I decided to do a quick survey of the women in the per-
sonal ads. In this admittedly unscientific sample, there were 314
personal ads -- 36 listed under Women seeking Men, 180 by M
seeking W (I won't comment on what this suggests to me about
straight men), 58 M seeking M and 50 W seeking W. Out of the .50
W ISO W, only 26% identified as gay or bisexual (7 gay, 6 bi).
Seventeen listed themselves as "bi-curious," and 15 didn't identify
themselves in terms of orientation. [Note: the remaining five ads
in the W seeking W section were couples searching for bisexual
white females (two of which specified blondes).] Does this imply
a reluctance of the general population to identify as bisexual or
gay? Or does it suggest that the folks placing personal ads aren't as
concerned about this issue of identity politics as I am?

I admit I've never heard of the label "bi—curious" before. Are these
women questioning their‘ sexuality, are they self-identified as bi
but reluctant to come out, or are they, as my‘ lesbian theater pro-
fessor once suggested, "heterosexual interlopers, arriving on the
scene_to steal away good women from more deserving, out les-
bians?"

As I read through the paper, I recalled the last time I placed a per-
sonal ad:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

I'm lookin ' for love,

or a used '57 Camaro.
(bi activist seeks same).

I was dismayed to realize that there was nowhere for me to put my
ad. I didn't fit the categories. What happens to the bisexual who is
"ISO male or female?" In my case, I got stuck in the GENERAL
section, just after "Men! Women! Call 1-900-CONNECT and
meet your match!" and just before _"Two Rastafarians from the
Bronx seek housemate with same beliefs."

Bisexuals can't be sexually pigeonholed, and thus, society doesn't
know what to do with us. Bisexuals are no more oppressed than
gays and lesbians, but there's an additional dynamic at work: gays
and lesbians fit into a monosexual system of desire, while bis and
transgendered folk confuse this binary system. Author Carol Queen
comments that "nothing in either our homophobic culture or our
homosexual counterculture helps us with the shock that our desires
and affections are not always labeled ‘either/or'." Biphobia oper-
ates ihrough similar modes as does homophobia, except there is
this added problem (or liberation?) of not fitting within society's
standard conceptional model. This failure to comprehend bis,
which leads to the "fence-sitter"/"indecisive" stereotype of hi-
sexuals, is one of two roots of biphobia. Bisexuals are different,
misunderstood and feared because we threaten an underlying cul-
tural belief of the rigidity of desire. It is this belief system which
pushed thelesbian author Jan Clausen to wonder, when she got in-
volved with a man, "about the astonishing malleability of my sex-
ual inclinations: am I some sort of weirdo, or is it just that most
people are a lot more complicated than the common wisdom of ei-
ther gay or straight society encourages us to think?"

  

32 N. Champlain St. Burlington VT. 05401
802/864 0 7198 0 FAX 802/658 ° 1556

 

June 1995

The second root of biphobia is the misbelief that we queers are bat-
tling for limited resources, and that any gain in one group will lead
to the loss of another. A butch friend of mine thinks that "if bi-
sexuals are ‘successful’ in claiming a greater share of gay, lesbian
and queer spaces and resources, it is lesbians who have the most to
lose." It seems obvious to me that the more people who come out
and are activist under any label -— as bisexual, lesbian, queer or
Men In Raincoats -- the more total resources we will gain, the more

‘we will succeed against homophobia.

I sincerely hope that, as the idea of a ‘Bisexual Community‘ grows,
there will be fewer and fewer times when bisexuals will have to
pass as lesbians and gays. In answer to the question, ‘why are there
so few self-identified bisexuals?', I would suggest that part of the
reason is the continuing of biphobia by some gays and lesbians. Not
being a lesbian (or a) separatist, I can't appreciate all the reasons for
internal divisions between lesbians and bisexuals. I do understand
separatism as a personal choice, for those women who have no de-
sire to work with men, or even with women who sleep with men.
However, as a political choice, separatism and biphobia seem to me
untenable; refusing to work together on common projects seems to
me a poor external strategy. I fail to see how battling homophobia
could be a zero-sum game, where lesbians lose if bisexuals win. I
agree with Carol Queen, who says that, "much as we need to honor
our differences, we must understand that the strategic risks we run
as fractionalized people are far greater than any risks to individuals‘
identities." Like Queen, I too am angry, because I expected more of
others who have faced homophobia.

Excuse me, I'm going back to the Personals. Bisexual activist seeks
same, a nice, understanding BiM or W. V

(802) 878-5600, (800) 488-5609 BUS.
(802) 878-0096 FAX, B62-1375 RES.

JACQUELINE L. MARINO
REALTOR‘

couauieu. 
amxenu A ’

COLDWELL BANKER
REALTY MART

22 MAIN sr.

ESSEX JUNCTION. VT 05452

 

 

OUT!! And serving our community since 1989
Healing the

whole person 

POLARITY THERAPY

Geralyn Roscoe, RN, RPP
North Wolcott,‘Vermont
802-888-3087

  

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If you don’t think you .
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863-3808 "We
Ellen Heatherington

130 Prim Road 0 Colchester, VT 05446

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