Bisexual community - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bisexual community is a term used to describe members of the LGBT community

Gay community

The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...

who identify as bisexual, pansexual, "fluid", and queer-identified, as well as their allies

Straight ally

Straight ally is a colloquial term that describes a heterosexual person who supports equal civil rights, gender equality, LGBTQ social movements, and challenges homophobia. A straight ally believes that LGBT people suffer discrimination and thus are socially disadvantaged...

. Alternate terms can include bi/pan/fluid, bisexual/pansexual community, bi/pan/genderqueer community, and queer-identified community.

A common concern among people involved with the bisexual community is discrimination

Discrimination

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...

against bisexual people; two specific forms are biphobia

Biphobia

Biphobia is a term used to describe aversion felt toward bisexuality and bisexuals as a social group or as individuals. People of any sexual orientation can experience such feelings of aversion...

and bisexual erasure

Bisexual erasure

Bisexual erasure is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources...

.

People who identify as bisexual as well some who are genderqueer

Genderqueer

Genderqueer is a catch-all term for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and heteronormativity...

or pansexual are in the peculiar situation of receiving specifically directed hatred, distrust, stereotyping or denial called biphobia and bisexual erasure from both the straight and gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

populations.

There are some elements of general anti-LGBT feelings along with misunderstandings against bisexuals; however, the unique discrimination faced by bisexuals include those who say bisexuals, genderqueers and pansexuals are unsure of their true feelings, that they are experimenting or going through a "phase" and that they eventually will or should "decide" or "discover" which sex

Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...

they are attracted to. While other non-heterosexual orientations may face similar situations these instances are more commonly directed to the bisexual community.

However there is also increasing support, inclusion and visibility in both communities, especially in the LGBT community.

Defining the community

The social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

s of some bisexuals, sometimes called gay- or lesbian-identified bisexuals, are heavily concentrated inside the LGBT communities. But others, sometimes called straight-identified bisexuals, may rarely participate in LGBT culture

LGBT culture

LGBT culture, is the common culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It is sometimes also referred to as Queer culture. The term gay culture, though not synonymous, is sometimes also used though this may also apply specifically to the culture of homosexual men.LGBT...

. And still others choose to maintain their primary social contacts mainly with other bisexual/fluid/pansexual and queer-identified people.

There has been talk of and more of a movement

Social movement

Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....

to have a separate bisexual community.

A series of communities and groups have been working together and focusing on issues that are important to the bisexual community such as biphobia, dating, coming out

Coming out

Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....

, bisexuals in the news and entertainment and bisexual erasure, among several other issues. These are queer-identified and closely allied with the gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

, lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

and transgender

Transgender

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

communities, but their main focus is the bisexual community. There has also been a movement

Political movement

A political movement is a social movement in the area of politics. A political movement may be organized around a single issue or set of issues, or around a set of shared concerns of a social group...

to combat biphobia and myths about bisexuals.

The bisexual community tend to have many of their own events and conferences, publications, websites and organizations, magazines, writer's groups, media, leaders and politicians, and even mental health associations.

These communities come together with the gay, lesbian and transgender communities for bigger LGBT events such as LGBT pride parades, civil rights marches and advocacy, conferences and other nationwide causes where the interests of the communities intersect, such as the National Equality March

National Equality March

The National Equality March was a national political rally that occurred October 11, 2009 in Washington, D.C.. It called for equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states and the District of Columbia...

. There are bisexual groups in several cities.

Many conferences now have separate seminars on bisexual and transgender topics and several LGBT pride parades in many cities now include a bisexual section of the parade as well.

Heterosexual and homosexual people can often be included in the bisexual community and are typically termed as allies, "straight-but-not-narrow", bi-friendly or bi-inclusive as they often support political rights and social dignity for bisexual, pansexual and genderqueer people. Other communities also tend to be welcoming of wide range of different orientations

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...

.

September 23 is known as bisexual pride day

Celebrate Bisexuality Day

Celebrate Bisexuality Day is observed on September 23 by members of the bisexual community and their supporters.This day is a call for the Bisexual community, their friends and supporters to recognize and celebrate bisexuality, bisexual history, bisexual community and culture, and the bi- and...

Bisexual visibility

Web TV

Beginning in 2009 a web TV

Web television

Web television, also commonly referred to as web TV, not to be confused with WebTV, Internet television or catch up TV, is an emerging genre of digital entertainment that is distinct from traditional broadcast television...

series Rose by Any Other Name...

Rose by Any Other Name...

Rose By Any Other Name . . . is an American Romantic comedy whose plot and title are loosely based on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Set in America around the turn of the 21st century, it gently pokes fun at life, manners, morals as well as the tensions within the modern LGBT and Liberal...

produced by FenceSitter Films

FenceSitter Films

FenceSitter Films is a film production and television production company founded by Kyle Schickner an American film producer, writer, director, actor and a bisexual rights activist, devoted to creating entertainment for women, and sexual and ethnic minorities....

. began showing on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

. The story follows the main characters Rose a comfortably out woman who identifies as lesbian

Lesbian

and Anthony a straight

Heterosexuality

Heterosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, physical or romantic attractions to persons of the opposite sex";...

man who serendipitously meet and then unexpectedly find themselves falling for each other. Rose has to navigate the reaction of her friends (they aren't thrilled) and her family (they are) while Anthony too has to deal with his friends who are equally nonplussed.

MTV's The Real World

On December 30, 2009, MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

premiered their 23rd season of the show The Real World
The Real World
The Real World is a reality television program on MTV originally produced by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray. First broadcast in 1992, the show, which was inspired by the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family, is the longest-running program in MTV history and one of the...

. The series took place in Washington DC, and features two bisexual characters, Emily Schromm, and Mike Manning. Manning's sexuality appears to have generated some controversy, with both bloggers and many comments on blogs saying that he is really gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

, although he himself identifies as bisexual and has dated both sexes.

Equality issues and campaigns

The National Equality March

National Equality March

was a national political rally

Demonstration (people)

A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...

that occurred October 11, 2009 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. It called for equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all states and districts. The march was called for by LGBT activist Cleve Jones

Cleve Jones

Cleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2009...

and organized by Equality Across America and the Courage Campaign

Courage Campaign

The Courage Campaign is a California-based human rights campaign and progressive advocacy organization with more than 700,000 followers, working on a variety of causes, including the repeal of Proposition 8, California budget reforms,, and ballot procedures...

. Kip Williams and Robin McGehee served as co-directors. This was the first national march in Washington, D.C. for LGBT rights since the 2000 Millennium March.

There was a specific bisexual, pansexual and queer-identified contingent that was organized to be a part of the march. Several bisexual, genderqueer, pansexual and queer-identified groups came together and marched, including BiNet USA

BiNet USA

BiNet USA is a national bisexual/pansexual civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. It was founded to formalize communication between U.S...

, New York Area Bisexual Network

New York Area Bisexual Network

New York Area Bisexual Network is a central communications network for bisexual & bi-friendly groups and resources in the five boroughs of New York City and the surrounding Tri-State area....

, DC Bi Women and BiMA DC. The organizations marched together show bisexual, genderqueer, pansexual and queer solidarity as a valuable part of the greater LGBT community. There were four out bisexual speakers at the National Equality March rally: Michael Huffington

Michael Huffington

Michael Huffington is an American politician, bisexual activist, and film producer. He was a member of the Republican Party, and a member of the United States House of Representatives for one term, 1993–1995, from California...

, Lady GaGa

Lady GaGa

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to...

, Chloe Noble, and Penelope Williams.

In October 2009, LGBT activist

Activism

Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...

Amy Andre , who is bisexual, was appointed as executive director of the San Francisco Pride

San Francisco Pride

The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration, usually known as San Francisco Pride, is a parade and festival held in June each year in San Francisco to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies...

Celebration Committee, further aiding in the long-term goal of bisexual visibility.

Defining the community

Bisexual visibility

Equality issues and campaigns

See also

General

Magazines

Civil rights organizations

Groups