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Uh, we have, uh, Sandra, who is a bi biking bargain who wants to live in a world where all kinds of gender and sexual diversity is celebrated. We also have She's a describes herself as a chick who ended up in a nest with both a man and a woman seven years on, and she has decided to keep talking about it. And we have Chris Coles, who is a founder member of Asexuality, a New Zealand, a group set up to increase visibility and [00:00:30] understanding of asexuality. And he also has the dubious honour of having a minor Shortland Street character based on good. So the process that we're gonna use is this is going to go first and we're going to ask you to please listen to all of the speakers. After that, we'll, um, open the floor up to questions, comments and contributions. In case I forget, I'll let you know now that when we open up the floor to questions, comments, [00:01:00] comments and contributions, if you do not want to be recorded, please say I do not want to be recorded before you start the rest of your oratory. Thank you very much. I'll hand over to Frieda. Thank you. Um, hi. I'm Frieda, and I'm in a polyamorous relationship, which means I'm in a relationship with more than 11 person or an, um, a loving relationship. Um, I'm in a triangle relationship, which means we're all in relation to each other. We [00:01:30] all have a relationship as opposed to a V where there's one person in the middle and the other two have a relation to each other, but not not with each other. So I'm the triangle. Um, doing the speech really made me realise that there is quite a bit of invisibility around my, um, relationship First is the legal side of things. Um, next of kin is my family, not my partners. And so that means that, um [00:02:00] we have done well, so that will happen. But if my family contested it because our relationship isn't legal, that could actually, um, they they might have a chance of getting the money. So, um yeah, which isn't very much, anyway, Um, yeah. So another, um, part of going on from the legal thing is hospital next of kin we put down next of Kim. It's one person, so that's difficult too. Um, just [00:02:30] a personal, uh, story about hospital. We were in A&E on a Saturday night. You know what it's like? It's full on everyone everywhere. And we had a bed in the corridor and we were there with her. She was really sick. And, um, they asked one of us to leave and wait in the waiting room because there wasn't room for two of us. That was really hard. Because, like, how do we choose who's gonna be there and who's gonna be sitting in the waiting room, Um, worrying about the others. So that was another example. [00:03:00] Um, Also the mirroring thing, Like being validated by the fact that we have it in the media or in people around us. We just don't have that validation of the relationship. So what can happen is when I'm cheesed off with the other two instead of being cheesed off with them and trying to work that through, I'll be thinking, Oh, this is a natural thing. This isn't right. What's wrong with me? That this relationship is like that? And really I mean, a couple wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say Oh, [00:03:30] you know Oh, I think being in a couple was really bad and and what's It's really unhealthy and what's happening. So that's another area of invisibility. The other is the fact that we have to keep it secret from some people. Got two people in our everyday lives that we keep it secret from and, um, then actually having to tell people like we had this thing. The other day my partner was in, Um and I were in pack and save and the skill [00:04:00] comes up and they knew each other from primary school. Now in the middle of a supermarket, we don't really want to explain who I am, so that's that's quite an effect, but and sometimes I think, Oh, God, because it's none of their business. But other days when I'm feeling a bit low, that can have a real effect. Um, there's lots of good things about being polyamorous. You get lots of love you get. You get never a boring moment because there's three people adding [00:04:30] to the relationship, so you never get bored with it. Um, and there's cool little things that happen Like my little niece. Well, great niece. Her mother sent a, um, Facebook message to me and she said, Mum, I've got a girlfriend and a boyfriend because that's OK. A. So, um, any questions that people want to ask me afterwards? Just in private? I'm really happy to answer any questions there as well. Thank you. [00:05:00] Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming. Nice to see so many people here. Um, so my name's Sandra and I came out as bisexual 25 years ago. Now when I was 18. Um, just to give you some more context, I'm also I'm a woman. I'm a bogan and I'm very able bodied, ridiculously able bodied. Um, I want to talk today mostly about biphobia and bi invisibility and how those things impact on bisexual people. I'm not really interested in proving bisexual people exist, So if you need that, you need [00:05:30] to be somewhere else. OK? I'm keen to shift how invisible bi phobia seems to be even to radical queer people and encourage more of us to talk about it, challenge it and create safer spaces within queer spaces. For those of us attracted to genders similar to our own and genders different to our own. It's my belief that the persistence of Biphobia speaks to how disruptive to dominant power structures Bisexuality actually is. [00:06:00] So the title is ending by phobia by invisibility and the harms they cause by sexual people beyond by 101. OK, Has anyone seen you manage to even see it? Has anyone seen this flag? Yeah, OK. It was a bisexual pride flag. It was designed in 1998 by by artist Michael Page. He wanted to create a symbol that was going to sit beside the rainbow flag. The pink stripe at the top represents similar [00:06:30] gender attraction. The blue stripe at the bottom, different sex, different gender attraction and the blended stripe in the middle is attraction to all genders. So I'm going to start today with defining bisexuality, which isn't nearly as simple as you think. And I'm going to pick a few definitions from a few sources that fit for me. This is, um, African American civil rights activist, feminist, queer activist, June Jordan. Beautiful paper on bisexuality, she wrote in 1991. That was part of a manifesto of papers around, um, liberation [00:07:00] and anti. You can see there that she's talking about bisexuality breaking up either or validating complexity. Yeah, the next one I want to use comes from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force was part of a, um, series of work around bisexual health that was done in 2004 to 2007. You can see here that they're talking about the capacity for emotional, romantic and physical attraction to more than one sexual gender, and that it [00:07:30] doesn't necessarily have to be se to account as far as they're concerned. And then, finally, the somewhat legendary Robin Oaks, maybe the best known white bisexual activist, at least in the world at the moment, she says she calls herself bisexual because she acknowledges that she has the potential to be attracted romantically and or sexually to people of more than one sex and or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree. What's interesting about this definition, I think, is that she's [00:08:00] stressing fluidity, OK, over type of attraction over time and over the intensity of attraction. Oh, that's interesting. I'll staple my paper so all of these definitions open up possibilities of desire of connection to other people, and I guess that's what attracts me to them because it fits my experience of my sexuality. When I came out when I was 18, I hadn't been sexual with a woman yet. But I knew at some point that I would. And I knew [00:08:30] that because while attraction is well and truly physical for me and that I like bodies and I like skin and I like hair and I like eyes and all of those things, it's also at a very basic level about connection. So it's about attraction to kindness. It's about attraction to integrity. It's about attraction to people who treat other people with respect and to people who have the intellectual capacity to take ideas apart and put them back together again. And none of those things exist solely in any gender. But I'm sure people aren't here to listen [00:09:00] to me. Talk about what I fancy. If you want to talk about that, we'll do it later. It will be a lot longer conversation. Um, what I'm interested in talking about today is biphobia and by invisibility, because it's true today, just as it's been true at every point, it fights for liberation for people from gender and sexuality, diverse communities that bisexual people get a pretty rough deal both inside and outside the queer community. I'm gonna use these definitions biphobia fear or hatred of bisexual people by invisibility, lack of acknowledgement of the clear [00:09:30] evidence that bisexual people exist. Be interested in hearing from the room. Now, some examples of biphobia. What do people think Bisexual people are supposed to be like Just just upgrading ingredient slutty, defused. Can't make up their minds. I I've had, um, clearly don't like trans people. Clearly, it's like who are you Clearly bind to the gender. Binary [00:10:00] is great because I never thought about those ideas. And I'm accused of being a liar about my own sexuality. Oh, no, you're not really, you know. So our sexuality disappears, depending on who we're with at the moment, any pressure to make up my mind. So I been to quite a while, then I should go to that side because I'm neither straight or gay or my Children. [00:10:30] I know he wanted to have babies, but not you. Are any of these, um stereotypes so shocking to anyone else in the room? They don't know what they mean or are these all pretty familiar things that many of us have heard? Mhm. Which familiar? Familiar? Yeah. OK, yeah. So I've got a few of those up there Something I prepared earlier. I wasn't typing that while you were writing. Um [00:11:00] and these are interesting because they're enduring. They're familiar. They've been around for an awfully long time. And I think they speak to anxiety that the Western world and Pakeha culture in particular has around sex and relationships. So I want to talk about that a little bit with each of these before I move on to other stuff. The first one. Greedy, uncommitted, promiscuous. That's just about wanting too much sex, right? It really is just about wanting too much sex when we live in a sex negative world which [00:11:30] is extraordinarily terrified of sex in all kinds of ways, wanting too much sex has to be bad because sex is bad. Interesting. The second one bisexual people are responsible for the spread of HIV and AIDS. HIV and AIDS has been constructed entirely as a queer disease. It's been constructed entirely as a punishment for being queer, especially for men, I think, um and what happens around um around this stereotype for us, I think, is that we've literally got [00:12:00] the idea in our in our minds and the public perception that bisexual men are carrying queerness into heterosexuality. And what's interesting about that is that how fragile is heterosexuality If we can carry Queerness into it and it's disrupted? I mean, what does that actually mean? It's kind of interesting. Next one, bisexual people are on the fence and cable confused. And some of the things that other people spoke to around the moment that we're in a long term monogamous relationship. Maybe it's gone. [00:12:30] My bisexuality is gone. We good. Um, those things all speak to fluidity, don't they? They all speak to the fact that, um, sexual desires can change over time. And as such, they're really dangerous, I think, to narrow social controls on sex and on relationships. Fluidity always kicks back against policing. It kicks back against binaries of any kind. And we know that Western world thinking is totally set up around hierarchies and binaries. So I think one of the reasons for the persistence of that is simply [00:13:00] that it disrupts some of those things. The last one here, bisexual people can choose to be gay or straight. That's kind of one of the things you're talking about. K A, um, a lot of human rights discourse in the queer community more broadly, especially from socially conservative queer people, comes from the idea that we're born this way and we can't change it, right? That's why we should have rights. We are born this way. What that does is positions the, um the natural. The being born [00:13:30] this way is authentic and the social. The ability to make choices, however constrained those choices might be, is inauthentic in some way. If we can choose our sexuality, how stable are any of our identities? Pretty fascinating, I think, Um, I have to say, though, that all of these stereotypes are not neutral for me, and they're probably not neutral for other bisexual identified people. Either. They're harmful and hurtful, and talking about them with any comfort varies for me considerably from day [00:14:00] to day. If I think about how they've played out in my life, I think I can think of layers and layers and layers and ex of experiences of pain, which forced me to consider in every context I'm in how safe it is for me to be out and how safe it is for me to talk about my life and who I am. If we move on to buy invisibility, this basically just tells us that by people don't really exist. We're on the road to gay town or we're really straight. Um, [00:14:30] what's interesting to that about that, I think, is that there's something going on here, and this is really enduring right. People have been saying this about us for at least the last 40 years, if not earlier. What's interesting about this is that there's something so disruptive about the category of bisexuality that the Western world actually needs to eradicate it. It's too scary for us. It gets pulled out for many bisexual people whenever we have [00:15:00] a new lover. Several people talked about that. Are we still really bisexual? Or have we shifted to a much more comfortable category that plays out in literally dozens of examples? Bisexual people literally getting edited out of research? This is a real quote from a real study, and it's far from alone. It happens over and over again, who who's familiar with the phrase gay relationship lesbian relationship. We've all heard that right? We are bisexual people in there. Invisible [00:15:30] gay marriage Can Can we go back to that, though? That's something that I struggle with that I. I was in a relationship with a bisexual person, and we had to call it a lesbian relationship. But then the same, I think the same goes for a straight relationship. How do you How do we change the language? So that we can describe this as a same sex relationship between people of different sexualities, rather than using the sexuality to define them? Does there need to be human language [00:16:00] like I end up using the umbrella term of queer? But I had actually for the most part, stopped using the word bisexual because it invites intrusive questions, first of all, and then secondly, I am like a bisexual woman married to a heterosexual man. So I pass it straight all the time. And so I will like, especially during the gay marriage thing. I marriage equality. I, of course, I use marriage equality, But like people, I had a lot of people from the lesbian [00:16:30] community being like, Oh, let's see heterosexual people get happy about marriage equality. What's up with that? And I'm like, Well, I am a queer person in a relationship. Therefore, my relationship is queer, just by definition, by existence, and that, as you say, it is totally erased by gay relationships. I totally agree. The umbrella queer is used, but it's still not perfect. It's not like I don't know if there is a perfect description. I don't either. [00:17:00] I wonder, can we park those very interesting points for after we finish talking, if that's OK, But I love the fact that there's so much passion in the room that wants to break out. That's awesome. Um, we also see bisexual people getting misnamed in the media all the time. These are two bisexual men who went to the media to talk about the fact when they tried to find a place to go and live that was supported to care for them. They couldn't. They couldn't find a place where they could live together, But you can see from the title. Actually, according to the mainstream [00:17:30] media, this isn't a story about bisexual people at all extraordinary. Both men are out in the articles bisexual. Both insisted that they be out in the articles bisexual, but the mainstream media struggles to cope with that. We are literally erased. So some of those things are probably pretty familiar to people, I think, if not in quite the way that I'm, um I'm pulling them into focus now. Another example that I only became aware of quite recently is Google. When you type in words to Google, [00:18:00] you get the auto. Complete the suggestions right of places you can go to look for information. If you type in gay or lesbian or heterosexual or intersex or transgender, you will get a number of suggestions of places you can go to. If you type in the word bisexual, you will get nothing. It's been blocked since 2010. Yeah, I, I think it's biphobia. I'm really serious. I think it's [00:18:30] sorry. Not if it doesn't apply for heterosexual. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it only it only to to bisexual across those gender and sexuality. Diverse genders. OK, so very brief whistle stop tour through biphobia and bi invisibility and what it looks like. I want to talk now a little bit about some of the impacts of that on bisexual people. Um, and because I'm a geek, I'm going to use some research to talk about this. This is a really interesting [00:19:00] study. Um, from the states. Nearly 1200 queer people, um, asked them all kinds of questions about their lives. The one thing I want to raise here is they asked the question around Are you out to the people in your life that matter to you? The people that are important to you? Have you told them about your sexuality? You can see here if you're bisexual, you're way, way, way less likely to have told people in your life about who you are. It's even worse if you're a bisexual man. Just 12% of bisexual men [00:19:30] tell the important people in their life that they're bisexual. Not really that surprising when we think about the stereotypes that exist out there about bisexual people and the way we're likely to be responded to when we come out, they told the people in their lives that are important Or they come out yes, about their sexual identity because I think those things are different. I'm using them in the same way in this in this context. Yeah, So they've told people in their lives that they are bisexual, lesbian or gay. Yeah. Um, [00:20:00] OK, second area of impacts health. So we have a growing body of research now, which is essentially showing us that there are hierarchies along sexual orientation, with bisexual people being the least healthy gays and lesbian gay men and lesbians being less healthy than heterosexuals and heterosexuals. Unsurprisingly, being the most healthy, there's a quite a significant piece of research done on this in 2007. According to that piece of research, bisexual [00:20:30] people have higher risks of problematic drug and alcohol use, not fun. Drug and alcohol use, problematic drug and alcohol use. We have higher rates of sexual health issues. We have higher rates of tobacco use. We have higher rates of cancer, partly because we're less likely to go to screening and less likely to have preventative health activities, but also because we're more likely to be doing things like smoking, which cause cancer. We have poorer heart health. We have higher rates of depression and anxiety, and those rates of depression and anxiety for gay [00:21:00] men and lesbians significantly decrease across the life span for bisexual women in particular, they don't. We have higher levels of self-harm and suicidality for some of those harms. We sit pretty close to gay men and lesbians, but we're way worse off on others. We're also, and again growing body of research. We're only starting to get through some of this stuff. This is a, um this is a national study in the United States that looks at, [00:21:30] um, intimate partner, sexual and stalking, intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking. And they've drilled down into that, um, data along sexual orientation. That's probably pretty hard to see. Essentially bisexual women. 61% of bisexual women will have an experience of sexual violence stalking an intimate partner, violence in their life that some for heterosexual women, the figure is 35%. For lesbians, it's 44% way more at risk. The same is true for bisexual [00:22:00] men, although you can see there that figures for men are lower. Overall, bisexual men are still more likely to be experiencing those forms of, um, violence and harm from someone that they're intimate with. I hope that it's given you enough evidence of the harm of Biphobia to begin to think about using the term and to begin to thinking about it every using it every time we use homophobia and transphobia, because when we leave out, naming [00:22:30] biphobia is a specific type of oppression. We're essentially denying the existence of bisexual people every time Biphobia is missed out. We're continuing the erasure of bisexual lives, and I know for radical queer people that's not something we want to be doing. I wanted to, um, when I was preparing the information for this and there was a lot of other stuff that I didn't include. I didn't want to leave us holding those harms because that's not all that being bisexual is about for me. [00:23:00] And I know it's not all of what being bisexual is about for lots of people. So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that people that are allies to bisexual people can do when it comes to starting to end by phobia and naming some of these terms. So the first one, you know, you guys aren't gonna be able to see this. The first one's really simple. Just believe that we exist, Yeah, when you hear someone who's bisexual come out. Don't ask them if they're sure. Don't ask them if they thought about [00:23:30] it. Really, Don't tell them like you were saying that you can't possibly be. Just don't do those things. They're disrespectful. We don't do. We don't do those to other forms of sexual identities. They're not OK. Don't try to talk me into redefining my identity and something that's more comfortable for you. My father has been telling me for 20 years he would prefer it if I was a lesbian, that it would be easier for him. And I tell him I've been telling him repeatedly for 20 years. It wouldn't be easier for me, and I think [00:24:00] in terms of my sexual relationships, what's easier for me is more important. I'm sure I'm not alone in having had that experience. Third, one celebrate bisexual culture along with me. We have all kinds of examples of, um, by people doing fabulous things by history by history that gets invisible often under the queer umbrella. Um, one of those examples and Prue was in the talk earlier around. Naming [00:24:30] is around the ways bisexual women's experiences get subsumed in our queer history. Um, we were talking about the lesbian radio show and the number of bisexual women that have been involved in that over the years. Um, yeah, Don't rub us. Don't rub us out. Don't try to convince me that people who've lived bisexual lives in the past would have been gay if they'd lived today. They might be. We don't know. I don't know. You don't know? We're not sure. Basically, [00:25:00] it's It's simple. We're not sure. We don't know Every time we do that, every time we say, Oh, they were probably really gay. We're basically erasing bisexuality from from our world. Views validate my frustration with the gay and lesbian community when they ignore or exclude bisexuals. This happens all the time every time we hear gay and lesbian. And it's actually supposed to be including of more diverse sexualities and gender identities than just gay and lesbian. [00:25:30] Help us challenge it. I think if I could pick one of these things, that would be my favourite. Um, yeah, Fred has just talked to this a little bit, and I luckily I knew you were talking on this panel, so I could I could raise this one. Ask me if it's appropriate about my different sex relationships and my similar sex relationships. Don't just ask me about one of them. Don't pretend the one that you're not that interested in doesn't exist. Actually, they're important to me because [00:26:00] they're the people that I'm choosing to be intimate with. If there's some sort of bisexual scandal in the news, don't use it as an opportunity to make the rise of remarks about bisexuals. Generally, I'm just gonna leave that. I'm sure people can work that out for themselves and finally speak up when bisexual people are defamed or excluded, whether we're there or not. So it's lovely to see people doing that when I'm there. I'd love to know you're doing it when I'm not there, too. And it doesn't happen enough. Biphobia does not get talked [00:26:30] about enough in our queer communities. OK, I'm going to finish with another quote from another beautiful out bisexual person. This is from Seth the author, he says, in the strict ranks of gay and straight. What is my status? Straight or great? And I have to say for me, despite all the bio and by invisibility that exists within the queer community and outside I've never for one moment not considered describing myself as bisexual. I've never considered for one moment not calling myself [00:27:00] stray and great and modest as that might sound. Um, I think that opening that possibility up to other people who experience both similar and different gender attractions is really important. And when we don't do that, we continue the harms of biphobia by invisibility. That's all. Thank you. I just ask everybody to call [00:27:30] your questions and comments and contributions till after Christmas is finished. That way, we'll also all get Oh, yeah, actually, let there be light and her last night. Hi, everyone. Um, I'd just like to start by, basically defining what an asexuals. Well, this is the most common definition you're probably gonna come across. Is that an asexuals? Someone who does [00:28:00] not experience sexual attraction. So, in other words, someone who has no desire to interact sexually with another person. And, um, I'd like to say that despite the lack of sexual attraction that's common to asexuals people, many experience romantic attraction, a desire for a romantic relationship with another person. So in the asexuals world, we have romantic orientation. So we talk about people being hetero, romantic, bi, romantic, homo romantic, [00:28:30] pan romantic. And we also have people who do not experience romantic attraction either. And these people are known as a romantics, and that's what I am. I'm an A romantic asexuals. I have no desire to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone. So I knew I was as sexual as soon as I heard about sex in the school playground when I was about 10 years old. I just knew really deep down that it was something that I was never going to get interested in. And actually, this wasn't a problem [00:29:00] for the next couple of years, anyway. And when my friends and peers hit puberty, bang, you know, they were off and it was romances and crushes and snogging and all the rest of it. Meanwhile, I was left about 500 miles behind going, Hey, um, and despite repeatedly expressing my disinterest in sex and relationships, I was simply not believed. The thought that anyone might not be interested in sex was simply just it was just too preposterous [00:29:30] to be taken seriously. So consequently, over the years, my lack of interest in sex has been dismissed. In many ways, I've been told often with great authority that my lack of interest is, and some of these may be familiar to other people in the room. A passing phase, an attempt to draw attention to myself, a fear of intimacy, a symptom of self hatred, an indicator of sexual abuse. The failure to have met the right person. Um, just the result [00:30:00] of never having tried sex. The school of thought. Yeah, well, if you try it, you'll like it. It's a bit like whiskey or whatever Brussels sprouts. I don't know. It's a smokescreen for my homosexuality. It's part of a deeply cynical world view, and I am quite a cynical person. Maybe not that simple. And of course, it's a symptom of a psychological and all physical illness. So for me over the years, this has been a very painful experience. [00:30:30] Despite making great efforts on many occasions to tell people how I felt, I was never really believed and thus rendered truly invisible. That all changed, though nine years ago, and I came across the website of the US based Asexuals Visibility and Education Network. It's known as a for short, thankfully and This was a site that featured an active forum and there were people on there who discussed their lack of sexual attraction. [00:31:00] They played around with asexuals identities. They considered different types of attraction and they told they're growing up and coming out stories because asexuals come out. Um, incredible as it may seem, this was the first time I had ever encountered any people like myself. I was 38 years old. It was pretty special and this kind of encounter turned out to be a very common experience amongst the asexuals [00:31:30] on the forum. So many of us thought that we were the only people in the world who felt the way we did, and all of a sudden we were no longer alone or invisible. It's magical, so quite a bit has changed over those last nine years. Interest in asexuality grew following the publication of an academic paper in 2004 that estimated the number of people who do not experience sexual attraction to be around 1% of the population and the concept [00:32:00] of asexuality entered the mainstream and it was featured in newspapers and magazines, blogs, radio TV programmes and here in New Zealand. I founded a group in 2005 called Asexuality a TO in New Zealand, and we aim to increase the visibility and awareness of asexuality. Although really, for me, what I really wanted to do was to reach out to all the other asexuals and to let them know that they weren't alone. I wanted to give other people that kind of magic moment I've been given. [00:32:30] So during the five years the group was active, um, I appeared in newspaper articles, was interviewed on national radio. I spoke at conferences and ran a stall at the Wellington Gay and Lesbian Fair. That was fun. Possibly more significant, though, than my little efforts was the fact that Shortland Street featured an Asexuals character, the first asexuals soap character in the world between 2007 and 2010, and this [00:33:00] introduced the concept of asexuality to more people than I could have possibly hoped for. So while our group, I think, was successful in raising awareness in mainstream media, we were less successful in carving a niche in the LGBT world. When I founded the group, I thought extremely naively as it turns out that every type of non heteronormative group would simply run up and embrace asexuals. Asexuality, Just like that, Uh, I was dead wrong. [00:33:30] Many, many people in groups found it difficult to see how asexuality fitted into a queer world asexuals weren't persecuted in the way gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual people are. So why did Asexuals need to ally with queer groups? And why did we want to be part of a queer community? Surely asexuals. We were just something else entirely. Really. And as well as this kind of puzzlement, We also encountered hostile reactions as well as being seen as a fiction, something that never really existed. Anyway, a sexuality [00:34:00] was seen also seen as something dangerous. Me dangerous. Look at me. Do I look? Yeah, I'm a qualified librarian, but asexuality was a trap, and it could hobble the development of queer youth. You don't want people being caught, you know, not fulfilling their proper potential as gay or bi or straight or whatever. You know, uh, asexuality can mask the diagnosis of mental [00:34:30] and physical illness. It's basically considered a problem. I was very much saddened by these kinds of reactions. Actually, I wrote this I wrote this paragraph quite a few times. The first one was more explicit, but then I thought, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Don't pull it back in. I was very much saddened. I was really upset by the reactions. Um, that we got the last time I did the gay and Lesbian Fair was in 2010, And, um, [00:35:00] the people from either side there was the green Party, nice people. And there was the family planning people that side. And, um, people from both sides came up to me over the day. I was just there by myself and both people from both sides. We cannot believe how people are treating you, how people are talking to you. You know, people just would stand and point and laugh. Ha. Really sexuality What the fuck out of here? It was just Yeah, it just It was pretty overwhelming [00:35:30] for me, so I decided to stop, so I, um yeah. So I eventually gave up any real effort to convince queer individuals and groups that asexuality should be recognised as a valid, legitimate orientation. I am asexuals. I am queer. And if people want to debate that with me. Well, then that's fine. But I've yet to come across any argument or point of view that has convinced me I can't be both now. Lastly, I'd just like to say that [00:36:00] even though the treatment that I've had from some members of the queer community has been harsh, I did discover a really easy way of avoiding 99% of negative reactions. Can anyone guess what that is? No, it's not. No, it's not staying in the closet. No, it's basically I try to avoid at all costs discussing gay sexuality with anybody older than I am. I think I'm born on some kind of border or LA line or something, [00:36:30] because anybody younger than me, I'm 47. By the way, anyone younger than me seems to have little or no problem with the concept of I said 99%. And so and so is Bill. I know. And so, Tony, they're all in this room. It's it's amazing. Yes. Um, whereas older [00:37:00] people, um, yeah, for this look that usually just comes on their faces and they shut down and they think it's very It's a very serious thing to, you know, to classify myself as and and avoid, you know, avoiding all this potential and all the rest of it. And I thought seriously about this, that and the other. And I can live without that, actually, um, so that's that's that makes me feel very positive, actually, because, you know hey, go, young people. Yeah, you're fantastic. But also that this I see this problem as generational and in, [00:37:30] you know, 20 or 30 years time as sexual people won't have to deal with those kind of reactions or as many of those kind of reactions as they do today. Thanks. And we're gonna open the floor up to questions, comments and contributions. Can I just give my little warning by now? That is, um, for those of you that wrote, um, just a little bit later into the session, we do [00:38:00] have the session recorded. If you do not want your question or comment, say I don't want to be reflected, and then that will be dealt with in a place in history. Thank you. Because if I could just get them all out at once with bisexual partners. Um, have you ever come across that like a partner? Themes that you're 40 or 60% leaning until you've, I guess, [00:38:30] had that communication or the 50 50. However, I guess they perceive we have. Have you had the complication that they might worry that you're either gonna leave for a woman or a man, depending on who you're with. Do you want us to answer them one at a time, or do you want to give us all of the questions? That was my first one. And just for Chris was have they done studies on the first of all? And also, have you considered the utility of a relationship [00:39:00] that's not based on, you know, for other companionship rewards that you might get? Do you want to answer your question? OK, um, I don't date explicitly biphobic people. I certainly have dated people for whom thinking about bisexuality is new. Um, and as in any relationship, when you have an identity that's different from the person you're dating, part of being intimate [00:39:30] with sharing stuff around that, um have I ever had anyone tell me they're worried that I'm gonna leave them for the different gender from them? No, I don't think so. Because I think I guess for me. When you're beginning a relationship with someone you're exploring, how good it is to be in that relationship. There hasn't been a conversation about, But you're going to leave me, aren't you? Um, that pressure has certainly, with some women I've dated, it's certainly been, um, things that friends around them have said to my female partners, [00:40:00] some of my female partners. So it's been a, um, a part of biphobia that we've had to navigate together. Yeah, but no, not directly from lovers. Thank, thankfully, thanks. And you talk about with the utility. Have I considered being in a relationship because, well, not the romantic ideal, forever after kind of thing. The utility of Well, I think I get all my emotional needs Met through friends. I think friendship is really, really undervalued in our society. You know, there's so much focus on finding the [00:40:30] one your other half your soul mate. Whatever. Sorry. You know, I'm complete as I am. Or at least I feel complete, you know. So, yeah, I have absolutely no difficulty meeting my emotional needs through friendship. And what about studies on the on the be Well, asexuality is quite a new phenomenon. So there hasn't been a lot, um, from small studies that have been done. Um, there doesn't [00:41:00] seem to be any, and sexuality isn't about libido. It's about attraction, if you see what I mean. Um, you I I'll let it be that it's not about the Can I elaborate? So, II I Yeah. So I don't feel so if someone held a gun to my head and said, Look, I'm gonna shoot you unless you sleep with Bill Logan. I could do it. I thought, that's a common [00:41:30] No, but it's something Nothing personal me like I just saw your face. Uh, it's not something I want to do. I could have you know, I could sleep with Kay. I could sleep with any of you, I reckon, and and manage to do it. But it's not something I'm attracted to do. It's not. It's There's no internal kind of desire there for me. 20. Um, you know, I identify this is a question for Frieda. [00:42:00] Um, and I'll just share my little context. I identify as as polyamorous, but I'm in a long term relationship with someone who's monogamous, and part of the challenge for me has been negotiating with him about to what extent I can actually explore that. And over time, I have actually built up this thing that, yes, I can go off and have have flings, flirtations, whatever. And that's it's OK, because I've built that, um, in your [00:42:30] sort of, um, situation. Did you start with forming a relationship with one person expanding, or was this something that you sort of? Oh, I'm attracted to this. How did you sort of do those negotiations? Sort of, uh, they were actually looking for had been looking for a partner and had several, um, partners, but it hadn't worked out. And then we ended up together. Yeah. Um, I have two sort of question slash observations. One is for Sandra [00:43:00] and the room in general, I guess. And that says a young woman who identified as bisexual and now queer because I guess that kind of, you know explains better. But often I felt really, um, difficult about the fact that often young women who are exploring bisexuality get sort of dismissed as bisexual or doing it for the male gays. And it's it's really gross [00:43:30] to feel your sexuality be centred in something that men are like, Oh, check out the chicks kissing. That's so hot. They're doing it for us and you're not. But how do you deal with that? You know who. That's not a little question, is it? God, I think that kind of the colonisation of queer women getting it on by the straight male gays is of concern [00:44:00] to all queer women. I think not only bisexual women, Um, and I don't know the answer to that, apart from smashing the patriarchy, Um, but I certainly have heard, you know, some of the things, even from, um, even from other queer people who consider themselves the allies that but those people aren't really bi, and it comes down to that. Sometimes they're not really bisexual. They're just doing it for da da da da da da da, da, da. Whatever the reason is, um [00:44:30] God, I don't I don't have an answer for this. I'm sorry. It's gross and yucky, and I completely agree with you that it's rubbish. I, um I come across it with our partnership, of course, and it's like, Hi, five. Good on you. You know, you got two women, and it's really Yeah, we get a lot, and I mean, especially as someone who's in a relationship with a man. People are like, Oh, well, you must have threesomes or whatever, but it's just gross [00:45:00] intrusive. My other thing for you is, um I mean, I Recently? Well, fairly. Recently, I'm an acquaintance with a young New Zealand author who is an author of young adult fiction. And she, um, featured an AEX character in one of her recent books, and I thought that that was really great to see that people are trying to introduce that to young adult fiction as well, because it gives young kids the [00:45:30] awareness. Surprisingly, it yeah, through home. Sadly, you talked a bit about, um, um, born that way social construction choice stuff, which I think is important not only to bisexuals, but should be important to all community. So it isn't always, I mean, or rather, there's an awful lot of, um, we're born [00:46:00] that way, and it's very convenient politically to have we're born that way because you can't help it so absolutely fall to discriminate against us. There are a heck of a lot of lesbians, of course, who also who do believe they're born that way. If I was, I was concerned that maybe they they certainly believe that that's all fine. But there are a lot of us who who go talk about choice. And of course, it goes right back to and rich and, you know, giving to women in your life emotionally the works. And, um and of course, that at a time [00:46:30] might have been seen very exclusionary, because, I mean, that was but it was part of feminine. So it wasn't just and, um, but there are a lot of us who do regard it. It came out politically as a choice. And, you know, in the end, you know what you may maybe you are on that way, Who knows? But it's, um But it worries me, the politics of it that that, um that so much of the whole queer politics or not a whole lot of a lot of queer politics has been certainly about how change has been, and I don't [00:47:00] know what we can do about that. And I don't want to suggest for one moment that people who experience themselves as having gone to primary school and only experienced similar gender attraction didn't really That's not what I'm saying. Um, what I am saying when we shut down those choice conversations when we shut, shut down the, um, ability to, um, pay attention to the fact that those things change over time for lots of us, um, and change, depending on the context we're in for lots of us. I know when I've been playing um, women's sport, for example. That's pretty much been a site [00:47:30] of, um, lots of similar gender attraction and not much different gender attraction. And there's other situations where it operates the other way around cricket. Um, so I guess for me it's about continually opening up that dialogue of choice and continually insisting that we don't have to be born this way to have human rights. You know, that's that's a, um, a red hearing, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, and I think we need to keep stressing that and keep talking about that in our conversations [00:48:00] does. Anyway, do you have a I mean, that's because it's relevant for all three of us. Probably. They're born this way. Convo. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Um, and OK, if not, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I really thought about it. I mean, from my experience of the asexuals community, which isn't in a physical sense isn't very big, but online. It's very big. [00:48:30] Um, people are extremely accepting. Um, so if if a person wanted to define themselves as asexuals for whatever reason, could be political or social or whatever. Generally speaking the as community is far. Yeah, um, when we were when the group I was in was kind of corresponding with and I forget who it was, some kind of Rainbow network group. Um, we said, Well, you know what if what if people who are sexually abused you say sexuality [00:49:00] as a as a cover or whatever we said That's perfectly fine. If if they want to take that label and use it to protect themselves while they're figuring out stuff or choose not to figure out stuff, that is totally fine, it's their choice. Yeah, so totally. Yeah, totally fine. With people taking that label, the person should choose the label on the other way around. Right. Um, we're needing to wrap up, so I have one more question from the contribution. [00:49:30] Um my, my name is, um uh, question for all of you is, um just, you know, I I would like advice on Yeah, How to, um, Sorry. We can coming out. But it's about, like, you know, how do you do what you do there with other kinds of sexual [00:50:00] expression and gender expression. So, you know, I don't know what labels but me. So, you know, OK, like gender queer seems to come about close in terms of my gender and fluid in terms of sexuality. And so in my journey, um, coming to these labels, which I don't actually take time, they're just close. And in my journey of gender identity and sexuality, I've come across lots. And so, you know, I did stand [00:50:30] up comedy, and there was a you know, we got the whole alphabet. You know, it was kind of a choke. I actually, you know, I've heard people further the alphabet community. So we're talking about, um, invisible, um, identities. Um, yeah. How do How do we stop being invisible in a safe way? Like I really liked what you said. You could really feel what you [00:51:00] said about, um don't talk to older people about it. You know, like, and I like to talk with older people about it in safe ways. And so any comments around that subject would be a great thing to appreciate it. Well, sometimes. Well, if I If I am talking to older people, I don't use labels, labels gets talking about labels as asexuals. Oh, well, that's, like homosexual, bisexual. Well, suddenly into a whole different territory. So with older people, I tend to just describe [00:51:30] my feelings. So I'll say I'm I've never been interested in having a relationship. And I go, Hm? Oh, right. And then sometimes I say, Yeah, I'm like, a stick of rock. If you've cut my head off, I've got single written all the way through me and they go, Oh, yes, right. And they kind of poodle away. And so I've told them how I'm feeling. I've told them that don't set me up on any blind dates with your grandson or granddaughter, you know? So I've I've expressed [00:52:00] myself. I've told them what I feel, but I haven't used labels. I don't know if that helps with me. Um, I find that, uh, people watch our relationship. They see how it works. And that's what is the proof we put in. And, um, so and just on the telling, old people, Yeah, it is interesting. And like, relations will go now. You're a good friend, and so that that does happen. But, um, yeah, definitely. [00:52:30] Just seeing our relationship work is the best. Is the best proof really for us? Hm. And for me, um, kind of almost the opposite of what you're saying. It's really interesting because I really liked how you phrase it. But I think coming out for queer people is a political act every time we do it and whether we want to claim a label around that or whether we want to talk about who we are around that I think both of those both of those [00:53:00] things are valid ways of doing it. But I think talking about who we are, and I know it's terrifying sometimes, and I know we have to be careful about safety around that, but I think that is the only way our world is going to change if we speak to our truths. And if we speak truth to the power around, um, groups around us that are trying to deny those identities. So for me, I come out and I come out and I come out and I come out and I come out. Yeah. Hm. Just [00:53:30] like that panel again for another break.
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