"How did you enjoy the June Pride festival in Asbury Park?"
"It was fun." I told her. I mean, it's always fun, isn't it? The parade (or is it a march?), the people, the performers, the vendors, the crowds.
"I saw the table you were volunteering at. I like the decorations you used this year."
I thanked her, and held back from pointing out the grammatical error in her statement. I complimented her on the table that her organization put together.
"I think I even enjoyed getting people to volunteer for the table. It can be like pulling teeth, but it's worth it." Then I thought to ask, "Was your table a success?"
"Oh yes!" she said excitedly, "How was yours?"
Caught up in her excitement, I replied, "Oh yes! We were very excited because we were only harassed once. That's a record! We usually get at least a half-dozen."
The conversation paused for each seemed like an eternity.
"You... you... get harassed?"
"Well, we're a support organization for bisexuals."
"What does that matter! It's a gay, lesbian, BISEXUAL and transgendered festival!"
"But we're so proud that after 10 years in Asbury Park that this was the least harassment we've ever gotten! A great improvement, don't you think?"
"That's a shitty way to measure success. We measure our success in different terms. My organization boasts about the number of new members we gained..."
"We do that too!", I interjected
"...or how many flyers we passed out..."
"We do that too!" I was now getting defensive.
"But never the lack of harassment!"
"I guess you take that for granted."
"It's pretty sick that you even have to think about such a thing!" she replied.
This conversation really stunned me. In the week that followed, I called my friends at other groups. Nope, the Jewish GLBT group doesn't have people walking up to their table shouting anti-semitic remarks. My friend at a group for GLBT African-Americans reported that people didn't approach their table yelling racist remarks.
I was shocked only at myself for being so blindsided by this.
So I phoned the friend that started this conversation and reported on my research. She wasn't surprised at the results.
There's this thing called the Kinsey Scale. Developed in the 1950's by Alfred Kinsey, it is a tool to explain that sexuality varies from person to person. The scale runs from 0 (completely heterosexual) through 6 (completely homosexual). There are 0s and 6s out there. They are the straights and the gay/lesbian people, respectively. But the majority of people are 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s. That is, they're bisexual.
Why do so many gay people feel perfectly comfortable explaining the Kinsey Scale on one day and denying that bisexuals exist the next? Why do people feel comfortable harassing the bisexual table in a way that they would never do to any other group?
JPI, the organizers of New Jersey's GLBT Pride Parade, have always been wonderfully supportive of bisexual issues, something that our bisexual brothers and sisters in other states have not found to be true about their local Pride organizers. We're very lucky.
The apauling thing about all this is that we never thought to report this to JPI until recently. Why did we keep this to our selves? The sad fact is that we're just so used to having to defend ourselves and justify our love that we never even thought that it was noteworthy enough to mention to the organizers.
I guess that shows the grim reality of bisexual activism today. For all of our successes, we are still stuck in the situation where we have to explain and justify our existence. This is not where we want to be, but politically it is our current challenge. We'll over come this challenge. This should not be our only focus, but instead a milestone on the way to full freedom for people of all sexual orientations.