Everyone wants safe space.  For some feminists and LGBTQ, establishing safe spaces against sexist and homophobic discrimination is still a lifelong pursuit.     

 The LGBTQ have their own community.  It's a community that, presumably, provides all the queers within it with a safe space to be themselves.  That's the theory, anyway, at least as I was informed by the young lesbians and gay men I came out to at Oberlin College.  It was from these same young gays and lesbians that I got my first taste of biphobia.  What they dished out in their politicized, ivory tower way was nothing compared to what I met up with in Chicago's urban gay and lesbian spaces when I arrived in the summer of 1986.

 From that summer onward, I have found myself wondering, "When am I going to get my safe space?  When is this community going to be a safe space for me?" 

 I recently joined a small group of women in a study conducted by Wendy Bostwick, a public health researcher and assistant professor at Northern Illinois University.  She's engaged in examining bisexual women's mental health.  I had met Wendy last summer during the Bi Health Summit in Chicago.  You can find my report on her preliminary findings in this old post.  

 Basically, this was a safe space.  Wendy, conducting the study, emphasized the need for confidentiality to me and to four other women participants.  It was a study for the purpose of determining how having a fluid sexuality informed our choice of identity and how identifying as bisexual had impacted our attitudes and mental health.  

 One of Wendy's questions dealt with how we thought about the LGBTQ community.  My response was that I had a tendency to think of it as a place filled with hidden land mines.  In the past I would go into a queer space presuming that it would be safe--or at least safe enough--for an out bisexual like me.  Sooner or later, though, I would step on a land mine; some form of biphobia would blow up in my face, maybe a little explosion, maybe something big.  I just couldn't tell when or where it might happen.  Or how much it could hurt.

 Most of my bi activism in the LGBTQ community has been driven by this need for safe space, if not for me, then for a younger generation of bisexuals, pansexuals, or queers.  I've set up bisexual support groups and activist groups for the purpose of creating a safe space for myself.  I've engaged in dialogues--sometimes all-out confrontations--to create, or at least demand, an end to biphobia and safe space for bisexuals or anyone with a fluid sexuality.  It's a good thing I could do this in tandem with what bisexual and queer activists were doing nationally, or I think I would have gone crazy.  

 I'm not going to say that nothing has changed.  True, I still rant against biphobia in all its forms--my readers get a full snoot some days.  

 But these are definitely not the bad old days.  In the bad old days bisexuals were thrown out of lesbian and gay organizations, told not to come back until we were "all the way out," told that we were traitors to the cause, that we couldn't be trusted, either as allies in their political groups or as partners in intimate relationships . . . we were told that we didn't exist . . . told that we were just going through a phase . . . told that we had to relinquish our heteroprivilege by identifying as gay or lesbian . . . told that we had to crap or get off the pot . . . told that we were delusional or confused about our sexuality . . . told that our bisexual identity was politically irrelevant . . . told and told and told in so many ways that we just weren't good enough, stable enough, committed enough, or queer enough to belong.  

 We were told in so many ways that we were inferior to lesbians and gay men.  We were made the butt of jokes that depicted us as retarded queer children who somehow just couldn't get it.  We were told that our attempts to tell our truth about our sexuality--our freaky, weird, changeable, fluid sexuality--were a fake, a front, an act of cowardice.  We were afraid of the G word, afraid of the L word; we were cowards hanging on to heteroprivilege.  We were told in so many ways that we didn't deserve to belong  in the lesbian and gay community.

 Happily, the most virulent bits of biphobia have not continued, at least in major LGBTQ organizations.  Years of dialogue and education with lesbian, gay and trans allies have made the difference.  Significant gains have been achieved for bisexuals, especially with leading organizations like NGLTF, GLAAD, and NCLR.  Even stodgy, overprivileged HRC now has an outspoken bisexual spokesperson in Mike Manning, who first came out on MTV's The Real World. 

From this quote from the Gay & Lesbian Times, I think that Mike shows more confidence than I had at his age:  

 I receive a lot of emails saying that I’m just riding my gay training wheels and that I’ll be gay soon. And straight people just don’t understand it. It’s hard; I came out on national television so I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m not going to bend to social pressures, so if they don’t like me for identifying as bi, then they should move on. Sexual orientation is raw attraction and it just pisses me off when people challenge me on my own identity.

 So, I found myself wondering in the middle of the study whether I had become overly sensitive to every bit of biphobia I have witnessed and continue to witness, both in the LGBTQ community and in America at large.  It's possible that over the years I have acquired a kind of bisexual PTSD.  I would never stop participating in the queer community but I also go into its organizations, finding myself waiting for the next land mine to blow.  I don't ever dare think of it as a safe space for me.  If nothing blows, then that's a good meeting or a good group for bisexuals.  

 For me personally, certain lesbian and gay male friends provide safe space, transpeople usually do, some straight friends also accept me and form part of an invisible network of support for my sexuality and identity.  Then there is my tiny bi/pan/queer and poly communities, who are a fun, cool bunch.  You can check out our showing in this June's Pride Parade here.  We're planning a big celebration at the Center On Halsted for September 23, Celebrate Bisexuality Day.

So do I feel safer now than I did 27 years ago?  I do.  I'm an older, more confident, more self-accepting bi woman--and that really is the key.  I also know I can't think about fighting for LGBTQ rights and equality in the same idealized way I conceived of it right out of college.  

I  have to pick my battles.  I can dialogue with anyone, but after that, it's up to them.  I can't waste my time proving to some queers that I am real, that my fluid sexuality is real, and that I am reliable, sane and trustworthy.  If they choose not to listen to me, I'm not responsible for their choices.  Others will listen and they are the queer peeps I can really build alliances with.  

This principle goes double for dating lesbian-identified women.  Really, if they don't believe that I am who I say I am or that I am faithful, then we really should part.  I can't twist myself into a pretzel anymore, like I did in the old days, if they're dating me but don't believe me and consistently, passive-aggressively berate me for my bi identity.  In the old days, I talked myself blue in the face to my lesbian partners that I was really, truly bi, monogamous and that they had nothing to worry about.  But they never believed me, and since they didn't respect my sexuality or identity, ultimately all communication broke down.  Maybe I ruined it by trying too hard. 

Now that I may be exploring polyamory and other aspects of my sexuality, I wonder why I bothered to go on about it.  I guess I just didn't want to be seen by them as that bisexual--the one that couldn't be faithful, the one that couldn't be true, the one that wasn't telling the truth, the bisexual who didn't deserve a chance at love or the safety of community.