The March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Equal Rights and Liberation took place on the 25th of April 1993 in Washington, D.C. An estimated 80,000 to over 1 million people attended.
The 1993 March was the first March on Washington to include bisexuals in the title. Out of 18 chosen speakers, only one was bisexual: Lani Ka'ahumanu.
Afterwards, she wrote an article for bisexual magazine Anything That Moves about her experience entitled "How I Spent My Two Week Vacation Being a Token Bisexual", which can be read on her website here.
The webpage also contains a transcript of the speech she made at the event, which has been copied below the cut:
Aloha, my name is Lani Ka’ahumanu, and it ain’t over til the bisexual speaks...
I am a token, and a symbol. Today there is no difference. I am the token out bisexual asked to speak, and I am a symbol of how powerful the bisexual pride movement is and how far we have come.
I came here in 1979 for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
I returned in 1987 for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
I stand here today on the stage of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equal Rights and Liberation.
In 1987 I wrote an article on bisexuality for the Civil Disobedience Handbook titled, “Are we visible yet?”
Bisexual activists organized on the local, regional and national levels to make this March a reality.
Are bisexuals visible yet? Are bisexuals organized yet? Are bisexuals accountable yet?
You bet your sweet ass we are!
Bisexuals are here, and we’re queer.
Bisexual pride speaks to the truth of behavior and identity.
No simple either/or divisions fluid – ambiguous – subversive bisexual pride challenges both the heterosexual and the homosexual assumption.
Society is based on the denial of diversity, on the denial of complexity.
Like multiculturalism, mixed heritage and bi-racial relationships, both the bisexual and transgender movements expose and politicize the middle ground.
Each show there is no separation, that each and everyone of us is part of a fluid social, sexual and gender dynamic.
Each signals a change, a fundamental change in the way our society is organized.
Remember today.
Remember we are family, and like a large extended family, we don’t always agree, don’t always see eye to eye.
However, as a family under attack we must recognize the importance of what each and every one of us brings to our movement.
There is strength in our numbers and diversity. We are every race, class, culture, age, ability, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation.
Our visibility is a sign of revolt.
Recognition of bisexual orientation and transgender issues presents a challenge to assumptions not previously explored within the politics of gay liberation.
What will it take for the gayristocracy to realize that bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and gay people are in this together, and together we can and will move the agenda forward.
But this will not happen until public recognition of our common issues is made, and a sincere effort to confront biphobia and transphobia is made by the established gay and lesbian leadership in this country.
The broader movement for our civil rights and liberation is being held back.
Who gains when we ostracize whole parts of our family? Who gains from exclusionary politics?
Certainly not us...
Being treated as if I am less oppressed than thou is not only insulting, it feeds right in to the hands of the right wing fundamentalists who see all of us as queer.
What is the difficulty in seeing how my struggle as a mixed race bisexual woman of color is intimately related to the bigger struggle for lesbian and gay rights the rights of people of color and the rights of all women?
What is the problem?
This is not a competition.
I will not play by rules that pit me against any oppressed group.
Has the gayristocracy bought so far in to the either/or structure, invested so much in being the opposite of heterosexual that they cannot remove themselves that they can’t imagine being free of the whole oppressive heterosexist system that keeps us all down?
Bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people who are out of the closet, who are not passing for anything other than who and what we are all have our necks and our lives on the line.
All our visibility is a sign of revolt.
Bisexuals are here to challenge the bigots who have denied lesbian, gay and bisexual people basic civil rights in Colorado.
Yes, Amendment 2 includes bisexual orientation.
Yes, the religious right recognizes bisexuals as a threat to “so called” family values.
Bisexuals are here to protest the military ban against lesbians, gays and bisexuals.
Yes, the Department of Defense defines bisexuals separately as a reason to be dishonorably discharged.
And yes, out bisexuals are not allowed to be foster or adoptive parents,
And yes, we lose our jobs, our children, get beaten and killed for loving women and for loving men.
Bisexuals are queer, just as queer as queer can be.
Each of us here today represents many people who could not make the trip.
Our civil rights and liberation movement has reached critical mass.
Remember today.
Remember that we are more powerful than all the hate, ignorance and violence directed at us.
Remember what a profound difference our visibility makes upon the world in which we live.
The momentum of this day can carry us well into the 21st century if we come out where ever and when ever we can.
Remember assimilation is a lie. It is spiritual erasure.
I want to challenge those lesbian and gay leaders who have come out to me privately over the years as bisexual to take the next step, come out now.
What is the sexual liberation movement about if not about the freedom to love whom we choose?
I want to encourage bisexuals in the lesbian, gay and heterosexual communities to come out now.
Remember there is nothing wrong with love. Defend the freedom to express it.
Our visibility is a sign of revolt. We cannot be stopped. We are everywhere. We are bisexual, lesbian, gay and transgender people.
We will not rest until we are all free;
We will not rest until our basic human rights are protected under federal law;
We will not rest until our relationships and families are not just tolerated but recognized, respected and valued;
We will not rest until we have a national health care system; We will not rest until there are cures for AIDS and cancer.
We deserve nothing less. Remember we have every right to be in the world exactly as we are.
trans women can be butch without it invalidating their womanhood. trans men can be femme without it invalidating their manhood. if masculine cis women and feminine cis men exist, there will always be masculine trans women and feminine trans men. if being a butch woman doesn't invalidate cis womanhood, it doesn't invalidate trans womanhood. is being a femme man doesn't invalidate cis manhood, it doesn't invalidate trans manhood. trans people are allowed to be gender non conforming, too- this delight isn't reserved just for the cisgendered.
Trans allyship leaving y’all’s body the moment a trans women has a unique relationship with femininity/womanhood and doesn’t want to look like a cis women
Recently started Transgender History by Susan Stryker, and was pleasantly surprised to see intersex be given about a page and a half of text in the Contexts, Concepts, and Terms section of the book. There are some parts of it which I think are good, some "good enough", and some which I feel miss the mark a bit. Overall, I think Susan Stryker did a pretty decent job here and I'm happy to see intersex included, though I do think there's room for improvement and criticism.
A note I'd like to make here is that this book was originally published in 2008 and revised in 2017, and I'm unsure how much this section in particular was revised since the original publish date - If anyone can find that out I'd be very interested to hear about it!
I'm going to be copying the text from the book here and giving my thoughts on it.
Intersex: Typically, being an egg-producing body means having two X chromosomes, and being a sperm-producing body means having one X and one Y chromosome. When egg and sperm cells fuse (i.e., when sexual reproduction takes place), their chromosomes can combine in patterns (or "karyotypes") other than the typical male (XY) or female (XX) ones (such as XXY or XO). Other genetic anomalies can also cause the sex of the body to develop in atypical ways. Other differences of sex development might take place during pregnancy or after birth as the result of glandular conditions that contribute further differences in the typical development of biological sex. Some of these anomalies cause a body that is genetically XY (typically male) to look typically female at birth. Some bodies are born with genitals that look like a mixture of typically male and typically female shapes. Some genetically female bodies (typically XX) are born without vaginas, wombs, or ovaries. All of these variations on the most typical organization of human reproductive anatomy -- along with many, many more -- are called intersex conditions.
Starting off with examples of intersex variations rather than giving a definition first followed by examples left it hard for me to follow exactly where Stryker was going with it, but that could be a writing style preference; personally I think I would've been a bit lost if I didn't already know what intersex was. Overall I think this starts off pretty solid, gives a good overview of the massive spectrum of sex we're dealing with when we talk about intersex - it doesn't fall into the same "mix of male and female, ambiguous genitals" trap that many other definitions do which I appreciate. The use of typical/atypical (instead of, say, disordered) is good. I also do appreciate the preference for differences of sex development over disorders of sex development.
Intersex used to be called hermaphroditism, but that term is now usually considered perjorative. Some intersex people now prefer the medical term DSD (for Disorders of Sex Development) to describe their sex status, but others reject this term as unduly pathologizing and depoliticizing. Such people might use DSD to refer instead to "differences of sex development," or they might hold on to the word intersex -- or even hermaphrodite, or the slang word herm -- to signal their sense of belonging to a politicized minority community.
This is also good! Really feel like we're addressing the elephants in the room here. Hermaphrodite is perjorative, some intersex people use Disorders of Sex Development but other intersex people consider it unduly pathologizing and depoliticizing and instead use differences of sex development or just intersex (or reclaim Hermaphrodite), and we belong to a politicized minority community. Very cool! Lots of things were said here that other authors are often too afraid to touch on, if they even mention us at all.
Intersex conditions are far more common than we tend to acknowledge; reliable estimates put the number at about one in two thousand births.
Actually, it's more like 1-2 in 100 births, my guess as to what's being referenced is actually the statistics for those born with ambiguous genitals ("The estimated frequency of genital ambiguity is reported to be in the range of 1:2000–1:4500" [Link]), which is disappointing. I do appreciate Stryker going against the "intersex is rare" myth, though.
Intersex doesn't really have all that much to do with transgender, except for demonstrating that the biology of sex is a lot more variable than most people realize. This becomes significant when you have cultural beliefs about there being only two sexes, and therefore only two genders.
Stryker lost me here. Intersex doesn't have much to do with transgender except as a demonstration of the variability of sex? I'm tired of people saying intersexuality's only relation to transgender is this when there are many more connections to be found between the two. It's exhausting to have your community be constantly stripped down to a singular point or a debate tool for someone else's use. Didn't like this part.
These beliefs can lead to intersex people becoming the target of medical interventions such as genital surgery or hormone therapy, often while they are still infants or young children, to "correct" their supposed "abnormality". It is being subjected to the same cultural beliefs about gender, and acted on by the same medical institutions, through the same body-altering techniques that give intersex people and transgender people the most common ground.
This part is better, and I do like the connection between intersex and trans people here. I do believe that acknowledging that both communities are impacted by much of the same systems and techniques is good and should be further talked about.
Some trans people who think that their need to cross gender boundaries has a biological cause consider themselves to have an intersex condition (current theories favor sex-linked differences in the brain), and some people with intersex bodies also come to think of themselves as being transgender (in that they desire to live in a gender different from the one they were assigned at or after birth).
I think that there is... quite a large difference between the two groups suggested here, in a way that makes the comparison uncomfortable. Additionally, I did also notice the difference in "trans people" vs. "people with intersex bodies"; it leaves me wondering why they were referred to differently, especially when "intersex people" was used further up in the passage. Perhaps it's to contrast with, for lack of better words, trans people who consider themselves to have differently-sexed brains which make them intersex?
Still, it's best to think of transgender and intersex identities, communities, and social change movements as being demographically and politically distinct, albeit with some areas of overlap and some shared membership.
Complicated thoughts here. Yes, there are differences in our movements and communities, and yes, we are distinct groups - this is important, especially when a lot of people still try to conflate intersex and trans as being the same. However, I think "some areas of overlap and some shared membership" is really underestimating things; While I believe it's pretty safe to say that most trans people do not identify as intersex or participate in intersex communities or advocate for intersex issues, the opposite doesn't appear to be true - a report from Trevor Project found that "58% of intersex youth identified as transgender or nonbinary or were questioning
their gender identity". [Link] (PDF)
These are all my current thoughts, going back to reading the book now.
some of my fav pins from the Lesbian Herstory Archives
[ID: 9 close up pictures of a pin against a gray background. In this description, images are numbered 1 through 9.
1. A pale pink pin with purple text. In caps, it reads: "male lesbians unite."
2. A pale yellow pin with cartoonish dark blue text. It reads: "Mr. Lady records • videos. The punctuation points are little white stars." White curvy lines and more stars are inside the word lady.
3. A black pin with gothic red text. It reads: "Serenity through viciousness."
4. A white pin with gray text. It reads: "I'm Hetro-Phobic." The word "I'm" is tilted.
5. A pin with dark gray text. The bottom half is red, and the top half has a bunch of red, distorted smiley faces, with a white background peeking through. In caps, the text reads: "happy gays are here again."
6. A white pin with saturated purple text. In caps, it reads: "don't feed or tease the straight people."
7. A sky blue pin with small gray text. It reads: "fondle with care."
8. A grey pin with a light gray illustration of a shirtless, tired looking cowboy. They hold a mug of beer in their hands, resting against a fence with a saddle on it. The sign next to them reads "Boots & Saddle."
9. A royal blue pin with lilac purple text. The first and last line are in a larger, serif font, and the center line is a smaller, sans serif font. In caps, it reads: "love is a many-gendered thing."
Quoted with slashes indicating line breaks, it reads: "love is / a many-gendered / thing." /End ID]
some of my fav pins from the Lesbian Herstory Archives
[ID: 9 close up pictures of a pin against a gray background. In this description, images are numbered 1 through 9.
1. A pale pink pin with purple text. In caps, it reads: "male lesbians unite."
2. A pale yellow pin with cartoonish dark blue text. It reads: "Mr. Lady records • videos. The punctuation points are little white stars." White curvy lines and more stars are inside the word lady.
3. A black pin with gothic red text. It reads: "Serenity through viciousness."
4. A white pin with gray text. It reads: "I'm Hetro-Phobic." The word "I'm" is tilted.
5. A pin with dark gray text. The bottom half is red, and the top half has a bunch of red, distorted smiley faces, with a white background peeking through. In caps, the text reads: "happy gays are here again."
6. A white pin with saturated purple text. In caps, it reads: "don't feed or tease the straight people."
7. A sky blue pin with small gray text. It reads: "fondle with care."
8. A grey pin with a light gray illustration of a shirtless, tired looking cowboy. They hold a mug of beer in their hands, resting against a fence with a saddle on it. The sign next to them reads "Boots & Saddle."
9. A royal blue pin with lilac purple text. The first and last line are in a larger, serif font, and the center line is a smaller, sans serif font. In caps, it reads: "love is a many-gendered thing."
Quoted with slashes indicating line breaks, it reads: "love is / a many-gendered / thing." /End ID]
I first read this phrase online many years ago and unfortunately I can no longer credit it to anyone but it's stuck with me through all these years. When it comes to sexual, romantic and gender identity, we are all unique and individual. We're not always going to fit perfectly into neat little boxes and that's okay. Labels can bring us comfort, pride, community but if we find that using certain labels feels like obligation, expectation, or requires us to ignore or downplay parts of ourselves, it's important to remember that labels are there to serve us and not the other way around. For some people, that might mean identifying with many labels. For some, only identitifying with umbrella terms. For others, no labels at all. If it works for you, it works. Stay true to yourself and be kind <3
Hey, cis women who say "I wish I was a man but definitely not a trans way, haha! I would never be a man :)"
I say this with all the gentleness in my heart: It is okay for you to be a man. If you want to be a man, you can just be one. You also don't have to stop being a woman to be a man. Multigender people exist. You can be a man and a woman at the same time. Or you can be just a man, or a non-binary man, or non-binary, or something entirely different. You can do and be whatever you want and whatever makes you happy.
Becoming a man is not a betrayal of womanhood and feminism. And everyone who makes you feel like it is an absolute asshole, and you should not ever listen to them. You do not have to push your own happiness aside for other peoples' comfort.
If you want to be a man, try it out! See where it gets you. Maybe it turns out that you really weren't trans, or not a trans man but something else entirely, and that's fine, too. Maybe it turns out you are a trans man. In any case, following those thoughts might get you to a happier and better place in the end. And if you turn out to be happier as a man than you were as a woman, that is wonderful.
Please don't feel forced to stay a cis woman for feminism - any feminism that mistreats or hates trans men and transmasculine people is bad feminism. Being a trans man or transmasc is not a moral failure.
Trans manhood and masculinity are wonderful, and you deserve happiness. And if you find that happiness in manhood/masculinity, you don't deserve to be shamed or harassed for it, and you should not be made to feel the need to put yourself down for it, either.
Saying this because I used to be this "cis woman/girl" a few years ago, and felt exactly the same about myself. I did believe the "every woman feels like this! You're not trans!" shtick for years, and forced myself to stay a girl and a woman because that was "the right thing to do" according to the "feminists" I was around.
I know what it feels like. It can get better.
All of this also goes for trans men and transmasculine people who still struggle with such thoughts, of course. It doesn't just go away the second you realize you are trans.
What sparked this post, however, was a video I saw made by a cis woman lamenting that she was a woman and wishing she was a man but she couldn't just be a man because she "wasn't trans" and still liked being a woman, and a lot of other cis women in the comments agreeing. And I just feel so bad for them. If you feel miserable being a woman and wish you were something else, try this "something else" and see how it feels. See if you'll be happier. Because sometimes, the grass is greener on the other side, and you don't have to keep suffering in your own body or mind.
And being a trans man or transmasculine is not giving up, or taking the easy way out (fucking lol), and it doesn't mean you are less of a feminist or that you will become an outsider to feminism. Your relationship with your life as a girl/woman and the misogyny you've experienced is yours alone. You are allowed to be a man in ways that cis men do not understand. You are allowed to have a relationship with misogyny and womanhood that cis women do not understand.
Hell, you can just decide one day that you are a man and change nothing about your life if you want to. The possibilities are endless. Transmasculinity is not a loss, a lessening, a closing of doors. It does not mean you are boring or traditionalist or falling in line with the status quo. It's cool as fuck, actually, and takes a lot of bravery and determination.
Surround yourself with revolutionary transmasculine feminists; let yourself realize how many doors can open when you stop defining transmasculinity by everyone else's metrics.
"Sex is what makes us human" is stupid. Almost every species fucks. Humans are the only species that jumps motorcycles over school buses that are on fire. Some other things too probably
here's to every bisexual who has had their bisexuality policed. here's to every bisexual whose defintion of bisexuality differs from people who try to define it for them. here's to every bisexual who gets told they're just straight. here's to every bisexual who gets denied access to queer spaces because they "look straight" or they're "in a straight relationship." here's to every bisexual gay and lesbian. here's to every bisexual butch and femme. here's to every bigender and genderfluid bisexual who has their identity questioned because of one or more of their genders. here's to every trans bisexual person whose bisexuality comes into question when they come out or start transition. here's to every bisexual who gets told they're bisexuality is "incorrect". here's to every bisexual who gets told their idea of bisexuality is actually pansexuality and they'd be better off identifying that way instead. here's to every bisexual of color who has their bisexuality questioned due to racism.
here's to every bisexual.
bi and proud @positively-bi - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
