Bob (Veg-o-matic):
Yay! Congratulations and best luck!
Keven (Panthera):
BIL usually means brother-in-law, it's just an abbreviation people use online, not gay jargon.
I would however, like to address the comment you made about politically correctness and bisexuals.
I know many bisexual people who are monogamous. I also know plenty of people who sleep around.
I guess what I'm trying to say goes more or less like this: sexuality has nothing to do with monogamy/polyamory/polygamy/being a jerk. People come in all kinds of forms.
Around here in Boston, the Poly community (polyamorists) is really large and well established. The way many people see it, monogamists have only one partner; polyamorists have more than one partner but they tend to be long term relationships; polygamous people may or may not have long term relationships with their non-primary partners; then there are the people with "open marriages/relationships" where you can't really tell much about the duration of their relationships outside of their primary relationship; and then the single people. Even with the single people, there are people who have only one, a few, or many relationships going on at once; there are the people who are looking for long term relationships and there are people who are looking for one-night stands.
So, why am I talking about it again? I'm not offended by what you said. But I'm bummed about it. The best explanation I have is that this is beyond "political correctness" (which I don't like), but please consider that you could have said "Erik, be careful with people who only want to use you and won't give up their primary relationship even though they are promising you that they will" and leave any sexual orientation unsaid. Why? Because I lost count of how many jerks who are straight, bisexual or gay who just strung someone along, sometimes for years. Empty words, like "my partner doesn't understand me and I can't leave them right now". Can you honestly say only bisexual people do that? Because serious researchers say it does not depend on orientation. Lesbians do it. Gays do it. Straight people do it. And yes, bisexual people do it. But you singled out the bisexual people here. And from my perspective, I thought that if you know the discrimination that gay people are put through, you might consider not doing the same thing to people who are very similar to you and also suffer not only discrimination from the community at large, but also from queer people -- queer people who should know better about discrimination, queer people who should hang together and give each other support. There is no reason to cast that stone on the bi people. Not with the many jerks we all know about who happen to be gay stabbing their partners in the back and sleeping around. What you want to say is beware of jerks. Because really, does it matter if they are bisexual and their wives know (and even don't care) if the jerk is promising you that they'll leave their wives for you? It's not a case of "being in the closet", it's not a case of "hiding their lovers from their wives" -- the real case is if they are lying to you and if they are jerks. There are plenty of poly people happily having sex with other lovers, but no one is getting hurt. There are plenty of bi people who are monogamous. Please just say "beware of jerks" and spare the entire community of the bickering and hurt which are totally unnecessary.
My other half says we could all (no matter what orientation) save ourselves an awful lot of grief by failing to ask "are you gay?" and instead asking "would you like to sleep with me?" -- because in the end, self-labeling doesn't tell you much if they want to sleep with you or not. Consider for example all the people here in this very forum who slept with women before and now tell everyone they are gay. Technically, no, they are failing to see the truth too: they are bisexual. There are true straight people who can't have sex with the same sex they are and there are true gay people who can't have sex with the opposite sex -- and I'm not being glib here, I truly mean they can't have sex with the wrong gender for them, they have no attraction to that gender, people of that gender smell wrong to them and they actually can't even have an erection (if they are men) when in the presence of the wrong gender. If you see people who actually got as far as being attracted/having sex with both genders, even once, they are bisexual. They may not want to have sex with both genders all the time, they may have a strong preference for one gender over the other, but they are still bisexual. This is not my saying it, it's from serious people who study the subject -- they don't collate results by the self-label the subjects report, they collate the results by the actual sexual act people report. Hence all the "straight" men who have sex with men, all the "gay" men who used to or sometimes have sex with women (but are afraid of admitting being bi in America and face people saying "it's just a phase" or "they are in the closet") and all the "lesbians" who still sleep with men. What could me and my partner, who have been monogamous and together for longer than most couples in America possibly have to lose by saying we're a gay couple? The truth. We are both bi. We have everything to lose by telling people we are bi. It's not a case of being in the closet. Or sleeping with other people. It's the truth. If we want people to accept that the world is not all straight, that there are queers, we need to face the truth.
Another thing I'm tired of in the queer community is the automatic assumption that if one is queer then one is available for sex. Not so. We are not all non-monogamous. There's nothing wrong with being monogamous or non-monogamous. But please, don't ask "are you queer?" and assume we'll all sleep with you. The correct question is "would you sleep with me?" and don't follow that up with "why not?' if the answer is no, because you never ask "why yes?" if the answer is yes, do you? There is nothing stranger, to my mind, than the fact that if a straight person complains about there being gay people in the world and how gay people make them uncomfortable, if we say "you don't have anything to worry about with me, you are not my type" and they get all huffy with "why not?!?" -- does it matter? Weren't they complaining ten seconds ago how uncomfortable they were? Not everyone is everyone else's type. It's not that there's something wrong with them, it's just they are not my type. Altho it is also true that more often than not, intolerant/prejudiced people are not my type. ;-)
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
PS: here's a file that has been floating around the internet for a while to cheer y'all up.
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Reprinted from The Lavender Network newspaper, February 1994.
"Remove my name from your rooster!"
The best of homophobic mail
by Kathleen DeBold and George Neighbors, Jr. (contributing writers)
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One of the joys of working for a gay organization is the singular pleasure we get from reading the daily dose of hate mail. We've arranged our favorite snippets in a letter form so we could share with you the best of Beavises and Buttheads of the biblically impaired:
"Dear Faggots, Dikes, Soddomites, Lissbians, and Queer Bates:
I recently came across your address in a magazine I was reading and a plea for donations to support your perversions caught my eye. Their is no excuse for you. Your all sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick. Gays are barf-inducing because you know what they do in private. Sex organs are not very sanitarilly clean. Regardless of a man's ability as an artist, dress designer, or choreographer (three favorite professions, I'm sure) the bottom line is that he enjoys [a long, explicit and obliviously well-researched description of gay male sex]. I'm sure that lesbians engage in similar disgusting acts [no description: they still can't figure out what we do in bed!]. Who is Barry Goldwater compared to God? Check the following versus of scripture: Genises, Romens, Leviticals, and Profits. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. The Bible makes it clear that Jesus preferred straight men. That is why God sent you Aides. In our day Aids were helpers in the principals office.
The homophiles are nothing short of a hatred spreading group that has joined forces with the KKK, and the brown shirters and the anti- semetics. Homos have no right to teach in our public schools. You just want to pray on our children and lead them in a stray. There isn't a homosexual alive who fought and died for his country like we did.
My wife is not a lesbian and neither is my son. I've never had sex with a man and neither has my wife. I hope that your campaigning for homosexuals is due to your being unknoweable rather than you thinking the things they do are just `sexual preferance.' Keep your sexual perversions to yourself and I'll keep my sexual perversions to myself.
I also challenge the word "homophobic" as fear of hobosexuals. I'm not homophobic--I have no fear of your type, only contempt. And now you have homophobia to wave around just like the jews have anti-semenic. So lets get rid of the word homophobia: How about "Homo-Blyiccch" (gag, choke, vomit)? Sure, you can call me homophonic if you like but I know what's right and what's wrong. When all you perverts are in hell it will be a much better place.
I am curious about how you got our name. I suppose that's a secret you'll keep buried in your bosom. I do not encourage anyone likely to place me on your mailing list to get more such weird offers. I demand that you remove me from your rooster!
[Signed]
Satan
Hell Fire Lane
Hell, Inc."
As you can see, we have met the enemy, and they are illiterate.
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