Transcript
Speaker: 🎵
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Two Bye Guys. I'm going to get right into it today because I'm so excited to have a true bicon here with us. This is the season of bicons on this podcast. I've been reading her work for a while. It was really helpful and formative for me when I was coming out. I'm going to geek out and fanboy a little bit here. I'm the little starstruck. Today we have Robin Oakes on Two Bye Guys. Robin is an educator speaker.
Speaker: grassroots activist, an editor of Bi Women Quarterly, and two other anthologies, the 42 country collection, getting by voices of bisexuals around the world, and also recognize the voices of bisexual men, which I devoured when I was in the coming out process.
Speaker: Robin is an advocate for the rights of people of all orientations and genders to live safely, openly, and with full access and opportunity. Her work focuses on increasing awareness and understanding of complex identities and mobilizing people to be powerful allies to one another within and across identities and social movements. And Robin was named by Teen Vogue as one of the nine bisexual women who are making history. I agree.
Speaker: So, welcome to Two Bye Guys Robin Oaks. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. It's great to have you. I can't believe I just said that sentence. Welcome to Two Bye Guys Robin Oaks. This is dream come true.
Speaker: I'm so excited. Hi, nice to meet you finally. We'll get into all your work and everything and all the impacts you've had on me and stuff like that. But to start, I would love for you to introduce yourself. How do you identify? I'm guessing as bisexual, but however else you would like to identify and also what pronouns do you use?
Speaker: You are super smart. I do in fact identify as bisexual. So again, my name is Robin Oaks. I go by she and they pronouns and I have identified as bisexual now for 45 years this month. This September is my anniversary day coming out privately to myself as bisexual. So I came out as by 45 years ago, which feels like 200 years ago.
Speaker: And it was my very first month of college. And it was exciting because the reason I realized I was bisexual, like many people, is that I developed a crush on someone of my own gender. Surprise, surprise. And part of me was absolutely excited and delighted. And part of me was terrified because the excited part was just having crushes feels good. It was exciting. It was exhilarating.
Speaker: just all kinds of good things. But on the other hand, it was terrifying because I didn't know what it would mean for my life. I had never considered that possibility before, at least consciously. And I felt like my universe had been turned upside down. So for five years, I got stuck in the space between knowing and being. I knew I was a bisexual person, but I didn't know how to be that publicly in the world. Finally, after I graduated college, a coworker came out to me
Speaker: She said, I'm bisexual. And I said, so am I. And that was the first time I was able to say it out loud. And it was a wonderful moment and I haven't shut up since. Wow. Long story short. Yeah. So I've been doing this work now. I've been doing by advocacy or now I would say by plus advocacy since 1983. And basically I've spent my entire adult life trying to create resources
Speaker: that I wish I had had when I was trying to come terms with my own identity because I know it was so hard for me and I know it's hard for other people and I don't want it to be that hard. I want to do anything I can to smooth the road, to ease the path, to make people feel possible, to make people feel validated, to help people who are feeling
Speaker: like they're not bisexual enough, or they're the wrong kind of bisexual, or all the different struggles that we face. So that's the work I do in the world. So I do that through writing, through the two anthologies that I co -edited, through Bi -Woman Quarterly, which I currently edit, through speaking, and through my social media presence, which I try to use as a force for good.
Speaker: That's so awesome. And like, I identify with that so much. And also, like, we just interviewed Shiri Eisner, who also said the book that she wrote was the book that she wanted to read, but it didn't exist. And the reason we started this podcast was because it was what I wanted to hear and I couldn't find it. And so, you know, it's interesting we all have that in common, but you did it a long time ago. Like, I'm impressed you even realized you were by
Speaker: so long ago because, I don't know, it seems like even 10 years ago, there was not as much information as there. Your work was out there, but it's, I don't know, it's become more ubiquitous lately. What was it like back then? Well, one thing that I say when I talk about my own coming out experience is that I came out BG before Google. And that was a very important dividing line in how people
Speaker: experience they're coming out process at least most people who have access to the internet because when I came out there was no internet so my access to information was seriously limited we didn't even have answering machines yet like never mind
Speaker: this little, you know, amazing encyclopedia that you can hold in your hand and put in your pocket. So, you know, when I came out as bi, I came out from a place of low information, like everybody else around me pretty much. I didn't know how to get information. And there was very little information available and what there was, I didn't know how to access. And I think it's really hard to understand that for people who are younger, because like, for example, the summer of the Stonewall riots, the weekend of the Stonewall riots,
Speaker: I was in Washington Square Park, getting on a bus to go off to summer camp. It was happening just two or three blocks from where I met that bus to go to camp, and I learned about the Stonewall riots in my 30s. I didn't know that this thing that was happening right practically around the corner, I didn't know that it was happening. I think that people who came out BG, people who are old enough to not have had the internet as a resource,
Speaker: just didn't have some very, very, very basic information that people take for granted now. So it was horrible. It was isolating. It was terrible. On my campus, there was a burgeoning lesbian and gay community, but they meant lesbian and gay. Other letters were not welcome, really.
Speaker: Did you like interact with those groups or consider that or did you kind of know even without much information that by was a thing and you were by or like I knew I was by and I don't even know exactly how I got that far and I knew I was clear I was by I wrote it in my journal but that was all you know just a conversation between me and myself in private in public
Speaker: I got peripherally involved, not because of my own identity, but just as friends.
Speaker: with some folks who were part of the lesbian and gay community on campus. And looking back, that was actually a pretty smart tactic, which I didn't realize at the time, but what I did is I made best friends with three gay men, Ernesto, Terrence, and Kenny, and they were my guys. I did everything with them, everything with them, and so they were my ticket to gay town.
Speaker: Like I was able to go to gay bars and I was able to, you know, hang out with gay people through them as their presumably straight friend, this fruit flyer, whatever words you want to use to describe that. And, and I think in retrospect, I don't, I don't, I don't think I realized at the time what I was doing, but I think in retrospect, that was a way to get inside without a ticket. Right. It's a nice opportunity to explore it safely.
Speaker: And they also taught me how to dance, thank goodness. So it was an interesting process. But then when I finally moved to Boston, it was still BG after college. And I opened up the local feminist newspaper. And in the newspaper was their calendar of events. And one of the events that was happening was this thing that they called Women's Wrap. It was happening at the Women's Center in Cambridge.
Speaker: And they had different topics every week. And of course the topic for the very week I moved to Boston was bisexuality. So I was more than ready to have conversations. I was more than ready to find community. I was starving for that. And so I got myself to that meeting, walked in the door. They were 20 women in the room and 19 of us identified as bi. Wow. The 20th was a lesbian named Madge who had come to cruise.
Speaker: True story. And she was very nice, but she just came to see who was there. And I think that until that moment, I don't think I was 100 % certain that there were 19 bisexual people in the world, because I only knew three. And talking to other people after the meeting, that was a pretty common
Speaker: Sensation we were all looking around going. Oh my god, there were so many there are so many of us Wow Yeah, and I still remember my main memory from that evening is smiling so hard that my cheeks felt Kind of funny the way they do when you when you grin too much Yes, it was so affirming and so wonderful at the end of that meeting a woman named Marsha deal stood up and said Is anyone besides me interested in forming an ongoing support group?
Speaker: and I was so in. Eight of us became the bivocals, which was a support group. I will say one of the great privileges of identifying as bisexual
Speaker: is the pun potential of that prefix is limitless. I was going to say, every bi group or publication needs a bi pun attached to it. There's so many. I think bi and trans folks, they're not that many privileges that we get, but pun potential is absolutely one of them. That's funny. The bi vocals met monthly and there were eight of us. We had little in common except for identifying as bi and as women.
Speaker: It was such a wonderful safe space to not be questioned and challenged about your identity. And we ended up helping two other groups form out of two other times that the Women's Center did that topic. And then the three groups together ended up forming the Boston Bisexual Women's Network in 1983. And that organization is still in existence. And that's the organization that started by Women Quarterly.
Speaker: Oh, and well, tell us about Buy Women Quarterly. Let's get into that now. I have so many more questions about what you said, but tell us how that started and what that's about. So Buy Women Quarterly is a grassroots publication, meaning that we operate on a next to nothing budget. For 38 years, we had no legal status. This year, we finally got
Speaker: a 501c3 nonprofit status so we can get donations. If anyone wants to give us donations. There are certain things that we can apply for, like grants or interns. There just opens up some doors for us. Finally, during lockdown, I was able to focus on that project. Cool. Yeah, it happened. It happened finally. We got our status approved this spring.
Speaker: And so Bi -Women Quarterly is a publication that's been around since 1983. It's the longest, it's probably the second or third longest running bi -publication in the world. There's one in the Netherlands also that's been around for a very long time and one in the UK.
Speaker: In case you were wondering and which I'm sure you were And I was it's the only it's it's the longest certainly longest lived by women's publication and It's expanded its mission over the year. So now I would say it's a bi plus woman plus publication. So Bi plus meaning it's really the voices of bisexual pansexual queer fluid hetero flexible homo flexible
Speaker: Etc. The word doesn't matter. It's more everyone with a non -binary Sexuality everyone who has the potential to be attracted to people of more than one gender and because our understanding of gender has expanded so beautifully and I love I love what's happening around that because that's expanded so so beautifully We've also expanded our
Speaker: so that we invite, it features the voices of women and also non -binary folks who are comfortable in that space. Which means some non -binary folks would opt out, but we allow other people to decide if it's their space or not. We don't police borders ever, because policing borders can hurt people quite badly. So yeah, we let people decide if they are comfortable in this space. And we also have opened it up so that anyone of any gender
Speaker: and any sexual orientation identity is invited and welcome to read it. Realizing that the only way we're truly gonna be safe is if people have a greater understanding.
Speaker: Right, right. I mean, I think it's like, to a certain extent is affinity spaces where we can see ourselves very represented are so important. That's why we call this to buy guys. But we also have so many, you know, not people who do not identify as men listening to us, learning about the experience or, you know, finding these connections. So I'm sure that anyone would benefit from learning and reading by women quarterly.
Speaker: And it's so important because I mean, it's interesting because it's important both because people may be on their own identity journey and this might help them, you know, move to wherever it is they need to move to. But also again, we need to understand each other. Right. And so, yeah, so it's a wide open publication. Um, we also offer it for free on purpose. Like that's a, for me, a political strategic decision because I want it to be accessible to everyone, period.
Speaker: No exceptions. So we support ourselves through a shop that I have. I have an Etsy shop. Are you ready for another pun? Yeah. It's called By Products. I love it. So the Etsy shop is called By Products. So it's byproducts .se .com.
Speaker: Yeah, and I sell things that I wish I had. I had had like I sell pride flags. We have seven different pride flags. We have earrings. I'm wearing my beautiful bi pride earrings right now. They are so lovely. And I sell the two anthologies that I co -edited.
Speaker: Even though Etsy is not usually about books, why not? And I sell pins, lots of awesome pins that a few of which I designed, but others which have been designed by other artists. And we sell the original bi -pride pin from 1987 because we still have just a small stock left of those. Actually, the ones that were actually produced in 1987 around the March on Washington.
Speaker: Um, we also have one, one of my favorites is I'm bisexual and I'm not attracted to you. Yep. I've seen that. Um, another one is, do you like boys or girls? Yes. And there's another version that says yes and more. I love it. I love it. Okay. I'm good enough to go shopping. And then there's badass bisexual, which is one of my favorites and all kinds of great stuff. So it's just a, it's a wonderful place where people can get some things to be visible.
Speaker: and to affirm their own identities. And so that's about 50 % of our income. The rest is from donations. And yeah, so it's basically short essays, poetry, visual arts, reviews of books or shows or films or whatever. And it's really designed to be a grassroots publication with the widest range of voices possible. So I try very hard and have succeeded, I think, pretty well.
Speaker: It's always getting better in getting age diversity, geographic diversity, racial diversity, having trans and non -binary folks well represented in the publication, having first time authors and people who have published novels, multiple novels, like on their own. So like just a really wide range of experience.
Speaker: And everything else, it's become increasingly international as well, which is very exciting to me. Like now, I do a, it has an around the world feature where someone either writes an essay or gets interviewed from a different country, be it Vietnam. I think this new issue is, was Chile. Someone from Chile wrote. And, but not only that, but in the regular essays, they're also, you know, usually at least a few articles from other countries, essays written by people from other countries.
Speaker: I'm very excited about that too because I think that we're going to take over the world. Yes, by revolution.
Speaker: Your hearings make me want to pierce my ears. That's my next step in my queer identity. And also, by the way, we're going to put the Etsy shop, the buy -in quarterly, the link to donate in the show notes. So if you're listening to any of this, check the show notes for links. I want to jump back for a second, because you said something that I wanted to ask about before we move on, and there's more to get to. But when you
Speaker: had that crush when you had that first crush on somebody on a woman. Like I had the same thing, but I didn't realize it at the time. I only look back and go, Oh, that was a crush. At the time I was like blind to it. And I just thought like he was weird to me and I couldn't figure out why we were awkward or whatever. How did you even like access that and realize it? Well, there's an expression when all you have as a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Speaker: So I will say that this particular crush that I referenced was not my first crush. One of the things that we commonly do after we figure out that we're not straight is we play the 2020 hindsight game and we go back into our history looking for clues. When I did that, I actually found some, not just little bleeps, but flashing lights and sirens and other things that at the time
Speaker: I overlooked, I didn't understand them to be crushes. I had a friend who I thought was perfect. And I wanted to be her best friend more than life itself. I wanted her to be my best friend so badly. And I still remember when she said that I couldn't be her first best friend because Regan was already her first best friend, but I could be her second best friend. I was devastated.
Speaker: And you're already learning about polyamory and relationship hierarchies, aren't you? I was devastated. I was heartbroken. I was just like, and way out of proportion to what was going on. But looking back, it's like, oh, right, I had a crush on her. And it wasn't a crush the way an adult would have a crush on another adult. Because I think child crushes are different. But it was most definitely a crush. And it was also a bigger crush than I had ever had on a boy.
Speaker: but I saw my boy crushes as crushes and I saw my girl crushes as like undefined or just they were just perfect or I just wanted to be in their orbit. And so, you know, looking back, I was so clearly bisexual from maybe age eight or nine. I figured it out just before I turned 18. The third crush, this third major crush,
Speaker: I think it was West Side Story level crush. It was so huge and so overwhelming that it was, there was no way I could ignore it or pretend it wasn't happening because it was, it was, I was overwhelmed. Oh, what'd you do? Nothing. As, as we saw often do with crushes when we're young, of course. I still haven't told her. Maybe she's listening.
Speaker: That's why I haven't said her name. Okay, I won't ask. No, but your first crush that you didn't quite realize sounds a lot more like the ones I have in hindsight. I was like, oh, I really want to be friends with this person. Why am I so awkward around him? I was like, oh, because he's cute and I have a crush, like simple. And people think that little kids don't get crushes, but they do. I remember one of my neighbors,
Speaker: He was in second grade and he had this this is not too long ago like five or six years ago. He had a crush on a girl in school and I asked to about it and the look on his face and the way his body responded and the way he just like turned beet red and
Speaker: Like everything about his response made me just validated the idea that, oh, yes, we do get crushes when we're young. Oh, yes, we do. Not everybody does, but oh, yes, we can. And this boy, this boy is right there. He's 100 % in right at this moment. And so I think that little kids do get crushes. And not all do. Everyone's on their own journey in terms of when they start having crushes. But yeah.
Speaker: makes sense, yeah, and like what it looks like. All right, I could ask you a million questions about you forever, but we have to move on. I want to touch on your very popular definition of bisexuality, which we've talked about many times on this podcast. I think we did a whole segment on it on our first episode because Alex and I both
Speaker: love it and that's the one we use the most and other people have come on the show and said the same thing. And okay, so before I ask a question about it, would you like to deliver it or would you like me to? I feel like I'm asking a musician to play their greatest hits. It's my greatest hit. I'll play it. Please.
Speaker: Let me just tune my voice in POC. So, okay, here's my definition of bisexuality. And I want to say that this definition is one that evolved over time. Because when I first came out as bi, I thought it meant attraction to men and women. And then as I learned more and as our culture learned more, at least our subculture, I kept on modifying it and modifying it, but it hasn't changed in a long time. So it might be cooked. But I'm open to changing it if I learn something new.
Speaker: So my definition at present, since the 1990s, I guess, is that I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge in myself the potential to be attracted romantically and or sexually to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree. And every word matters.
Speaker: every single word of that is. It does. And so actually what you were starting to say is what I wanted to ask you about because it doesn't seem to me like this definition is something you said offhand and it went viral. It seems very
Speaker: carefully crafted, purposeful, and everywhere does matter. So I didn't realize since the 90s, yeah. Okay, so go ahead and tell us about the development of that. Or maybe the end of the 90s. I don't know when it came about, but I think it first appeared in print
Speaker: I don't know when, maybe in the 90s or the early 2000s, but it's old. But I think that one of the, like even little tiny tweaks in it, like the fact like when people say, I'm attracted to more than one gender, I'm not actually attracted to any gender, I'm attracted to people. People have genders and I'm not attracted to like,
Speaker: man -ness or non -binary -ness or woman -ness. I'm attracted to individual people and then I look at, oh, this person holds this gender and this person holds that gender and this person, look, I see a pattern. The pattern is that I'm attracted to people with more than one gender. I think even little words of it like that that I'm not attracted to genders, but I'm attracted to people of more than one gender. Then not necessarily at the same time is so important because
Speaker: I'm not attracted to that many people, ever. I don't get crushes that often. There are often times when I'm not attracted to anyone at all and that doesn't make me asexual.
Speaker: You know, so it doesn't matter when and if I'm attracted, if I'm partnered with the, like I am actually my wife and I had been together. We're in season 24 now of our rom -com. The show's still running well. So I'm still, still interesting. But you know, just because I'm with her and we are in a monogamous relationship, which I totally support polyamory. Like I'm not saying, Oh, like I think everyone should choose a relationship that works relationship style or format that works for them.
Speaker: as long as everybody involved consents. So I haven't actually been with a man in a really long time. But that doesn't make me a lesbian. And if my partner right now were a man, that wouldn't make me straight.
Speaker: Right. Well, I met so many people on another pun, the bi -cycle, where they are fluid in their attractions and sometimes they feel a certain way and other times they feel differently. And this definition really creates a safe space for that and for not having to like make some choice that is forever. And, you know, acceptance of that fluidity really has helped a lot of people come to this identity, I think.
Speaker: Yeah. And a lot of people struggle with what I call bisexual imposter syndrome. Like if they know that they've had crushes, but they've never actually been in a relationship with someone of maybe with anyone at all, right? Or with someone of a particular gender, then they feel, Oh, I don't have the right to call myself that or I'm not bisexual enough. It's like all those things that I think they're just such a waste of our energy. Like I wish we would spend more time living in less time agonizing over
Speaker: over whether we qualify for a particular category. All these categories are human constructed and mean different things to different people and they're subjective and I say just like use, and I think one of my big things is like we should use language as tools for communication, not as boxes that we have to lock ourselves into.
Speaker: Well, yeah, and that's another very bi thing is like it means, we'll get to this in a second when we talk about your Beyond Binaries program, but like the labels can mean different things to different people and they shouldn't be boxing us in. I think they should be like a door opening to have another conversation. Oh, you're bi or oh, you're pansexual or okay, what does that mean for you? Now we're going this direction, but what does that mean for you?
Speaker: When I met Peg, who was the woman I'm married to, we went out on our second date, and I knew we had to have the bisexual conversation. I was worried that I knew she was a big old lesbian. Long time lesbian. Yeah, she was very well known in the community. And I just was very concerned that she wouldn't want to date someone who was bisexual. So I wanted to I was like, I had actually been celibate for several years before I met her, happily celibate.
Speaker: The time I call being in a primary relationship with myself was great. I actually became very good friends with myself, which was a good thing. That's nice. That's nice, yeah. That's what I needed to do. So I met her and I was very ambivalent about...
Speaker: I wasn't really looking for a relationship. I was happy being with myself at that point. But I really liked her. I really liked her. And so I was worried that she wouldn't like me back if she knew I was bisexual. And so I sat her down and I said, we actually were at a restaurant. And I said, so Peg, I need to tell you something. I want to make sure that you know that I identify as bisexual. And I held my breath. And Peg is one of those very annoying people who thinks before she speaks,
Speaker: And so there was this silence that felt like a year, it was probably a few seconds, but it felt endless and I'm holding my breath and waiting for her to respond and wondering what she's gonna say. And then finally she said, actually, I already knew that about you. A hundred seconds, right? Yeah, well, I guess I'm pretty well known in some communities, but she said, but I do have a question for you.
Speaker: She said, can you tell me more about what it means to you to identify as bisexual?
Speaker: And that's when I knew I had a keeper. That's when I knew that she was a keeper, that this was actually a thoughtful, intelligent, open -minded human being. Yeah, that's a great question. And it's the exact opposite of what so many people do when they hear by, which is make an assumption or draw on the experiences they've had that are not representative or whatever.
Speaker: Oh, I got left once by a bisexual. Right. I got left by lesbians. I've been left by straight men. Like, yeah.
Speaker: Whatever, right? Right, exactly. Yeah. So actually, that's a good question to revisit now. So you have that definition of bisexuality, which is so all -encompassing and inclusive of everyone and kind of as universal as you can craft it, I think. But what does your bisexuality mean to you today? Has it evolved since you answered that question on your second date?
Speaker: Probably it's changed some, but it's probably just like refined itself. But I think what I will add to that is that the reason that it matters to me to identify as bisexual, even though I'm in a relationship that will very likely last the rest of our mutual lives, is because I feel that identifying as bisexual is a way of embracing my wholeness of being my entire self.
Speaker: all the time because who I am is not dependent on who I'm with. Like how I understand myself and my identity is not dependent on any particular relationship. During those six years that I was in a relationship with myself, I was still bisexual. I was a non -practicing, I guess bisexual, but I was definitely bisexual. It doesn't matter who I'm partnered with. And it's a way of being whole.
Speaker: One of the essays in Getting By actually is written by a woman from Australia named Mary Heath who says basically that idea in a very eloquent way. And it really is a way of embracing my wholeness.
Speaker: That's awesome. And we have so many listeners, the majority of the comments that come in are from bi people who are married and in monogamous relationships. And sometimes they ask, why do we come out? What is the purpose of it? But then other people who have come out, we get so many messages of universal
Speaker: I feel so much more like myself. I feel free. Even though we're monogamous, I feel complete now. That's such a great answer. It is so important regardless. And then one other thing I'll add to that is there's also the aspect of being a beacon. Because bisexuality is not visible, the way to become visible is to say it out loud. And the number of people
Speaker: who have responded to my coming out to them with coming out to me. Or either it's like, oh, so am I, or so is my brother, or so is my grandmother, or so is my mother, or so is my sister, or so is my niece. Whatever it is, or so is my best friend from college. We don't see that enough, and so we're hungry for that. And so I know that I've helped people feel possible just by my own
Speaker: Visibility it's helped other people feel like they can exist too like and that they're not alone And you know the same way that the woman at work who came out to me She made it possible for me to say it out loud
Speaker: Exactly, and I literally have had the exact same experience of people I was friends with for many years, and I had no clue they were bi, and when I came out to them was when they came out to me, including my sister. Literally, the same conversation. I had been working up the courage to tell my family, I told my sister before my parents, and I said, I think I'm bisexual, and her first words were me too.
Speaker: And I had no clue. That's it. That's it. And we live, even those of us who try to do this work, even those of us who try to live outside binary thinking, even those of us who try to think in complex ways, we do the same thing other people do. Like we assume things about people and we make binary assumptions based on what limited information we have about other people. And yeah, so there's so much power in coming out and
Speaker: Obviously it's not everybody's responsibility or everyone's job, but those people who are willing to do that can make such a huge difference, both in making other people aware that we are, that we exist. Um, just that basic awareness that there are a lot of bi plus people out there, um, is really powerful. And then just for people who do identify as bi or pan or whatever, just
Speaker: Realizing that there are other people and that it's okay, and I've had so many people say you're the first adult People say lots of other kids my age, but you're the first adult I've ever met who's like happy and Successful and has a life and identifies as by Yeah, and I'm like actually you probably know a lot of other people, but you just don't know which ones they are You know, but that's that's the power of saying it out loud. I
Speaker: Absolutely. It is so invisible. And it goes back to what you were saying earlier about the power of meeting people in real life. Because even when I was researching online for a couple years, learning about it for myself, that was sort of one thing. And then I stepped into by request in New York City, this sort of discussion support group. And being in the room with 30 by people,
Speaker: what was worth years of reading on the internet because just that feeling of, oh, these are real live people. I don't doubt them at all. Like I can see and feel in my body that this is real.
Speaker: I want to talk about your program, Beyond Binaries, which I attended back in March of this year virtually. And I loved it. And even though I'm already a convert to the spectrum view of sexuality and gender and everything, I still learned so much from attending it and kind of watching that play out in real time. It just reinforced everything in a big way for me.
Speaker: So okay, this doesn't take the place of attending your workshop, but can you tell us a little about what you do in those workshops and like what you're trying to teach people? Sure. So I start from the assumption that humans are complex creatures, that our sexuality is one of the most complex things about us and that labeling and identity are also very, very
Speaker: challenging and complex. And I really believe that humans are too complex to ever fit neatly into simple human -created categories. No matter what categories we create, some of us will fit comfortably and some people won't. I feel like that's just a characteristic of identity in general. And so I focus on the idea of sexuality being complex
Speaker: And so I talk about the idea of mapping sexuality, like instead of saying, which box do you fit in? Like, what if we ask, like, where do you fall on this landscape? Where would you locate yourself on this landscape? And, you know, I start by just kind of talking about the Kinsey scale, which was one of the very earliest maps of sexuality all the way back from 1948. And, you know, and so
Speaker: So Kinsey had a continuum with one end being exclusive heterosexuality, one end being exclusive homosexuality, and everybody else is somewhere along there in his map. And so I start with that. But then realizing that Kinsey did his work almost 70 years ago, more than 70 years, a long time ago. Really? Yeah, wow. Yeah, 72 years ago. That's wild. 73 years ago now, yeah, a long time.
Speaker: What I do is I have come up with some updates to the map. I think before we talked about how ideas get developed, everything that I talk about in the program is based on what I've learned from people who have attended the programs over time. Some of it is I've had hurdles of ideas, but they've been shaped and corrected and revised.
Speaker: improved by by other people's comments or feedback. So I try really hard to always do that and wrap what I've learned back into the program and just keep on changing it. So the program is different now than it was a year ago. It'll be different again in a year. So so basically in this program, what we do is I talk about Kinsey, then I update the thing because I think that, for example, same sex opposite sex. I don't ever use the term opposite just when talking about sex or gender.
Speaker: The fact that we conflate sex and gender culturally, we tend to use those terms man and male, woman and female interchangeably. The fact that the Kinsey Scale is based on a binary, whether you're talking about sex or gender is based on a presumed binary. And we've learned, thank goodness, in the last 70 years that things are more complex than that. And so I've learned that there are people who fall between the binaries and also people who fall completely outside of a binary. If we create a binary, some people
Speaker: They're not between, they're not along the continuum. They're not, they don't even see themselves as on a particular continuum. So I added space off the continuum as well. So there is X meaning I don't see myself on this map on this line. It's like, it's a separate space. There's NA meaning I haven't had that particular experience. So if I asked you about your sexual experience in the past year and you actually hadn't been sexually active with anyone except perhaps yourself, you could say NA and then
Speaker: There's also question mark, because I think that questioning is really important. It's absolutely fine to not have it all figured out. It's fine to be on the journey. It's fine to live with questions. I feel like that's a feature, not a flaw of identity. Anyway, so I added all these extra things to the map. And so what we do in the program is everyone's given a 20 or so question survey to fill out. And on the Zoom version, people do it anonymously. They do it themselves on their own computer.
Speaker: And then on the Zoom version, there's like maps that are put on the screen on a Google Jamboard and people can actually move, answer their questions based on what they had filled out in the survey. And so what we do is we go through the questions and everyone shares their information, but because it's on a Jamboard, it's anonymous. So people are sharing their information, but nobody knows whose answer is what. So it gives people privacy.
Speaker: But what it gives us is a picture of ourselves. And so some of the questions have to do with age, like where would you put yourself in terms of your fantasies in the present? How about before age 16? What about your sexual experience, like different points in your life? What about, do you experience your gender as fixed or fluid? Do you experience your sexual orientation as fixed or fluid? And that's a continuum kind of response.
Speaker: Where would you put yourself on a Kinsey scale in terms of this not know that not the Kinsey scale the revised scale in terms of this or in terms of that and so what we see is that people move in very different places depending on what questions being asked about what particular period of time and That fantasies and behavior may be entirely different that your past and your present may be entirely different For many of us like one year ago may be entirely different than now Especially this year
Speaker: Yeah, that's also true, right? Definitely. A lot of M .A. this year. Oh, yeah, yeah. I hadn't taken into account when I did the workshop this spring. It's like, all right, a lot of people are sitting home by themselves. So then, and there's other questions, like, at what age did you have your first crush?
Speaker: your first major crush, at what age did you first use a sexual orientation label privately to describe yourself? At what age did you share that label with another person? And then there's also questions like there's an asexuality spectrum question about how sexual are you? And all these great questions, but basically what it shows is that we are all over the place that for every single question you could ask a group of people about
Speaker: about their sexuality, no matter which question, there's a wide array of different responses. And I think it just makes people feel validated because no matter what you responded, there are probably other people who are similar to you and at least some of your responses, no matter how you responded, there are certainly people who are different from you.
Speaker: in some of their responses. And I think it just puts us more in context as, yep, yet another complex person amongst other complex people. And that even when you can't see someone's complexity, it's usually there under the surface. One of the pins that I sell on my Etsy shop says a normal person is just someone who you don't know real well yet. I like that. I do too.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And that was my big takeaway from it, was just seeing how all over the place everyone was. I mean, there was one point where you asked us to write your label on the little sticky note, and then move the label to where you identified for this. And you would see some people who identified as straight, and their thing was still moving around. It wasn't all the way at the end. Or gay. And the people who were bi or pan or other things were moving.
Speaker: sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the X or the NA. You couldn't tell what was going to happen based on the label. Right. Because when we imagine the word straight, and I fall into this trap too. Sometimes if someone tells me they're straight, I imagine them. If I were thinking of a seven point scale, I imagine them on the lowest number. Yeah.
Speaker: But in reality, and what I've learned from doing this program hundreds of times, thousands of times, I guess, is that straight can actually go one or two or three, and sometimes even four, and someone might identify as straight, but then if you ask them about their fantasies, they might be a four or a five, or who knows? You just don't know that basically, not everyone is, I mean, I guess part of the complexity is that some people aren't complex, but that there's so much more
Speaker: complexity in our experience and our identities and in our internal machinations and goings -on, then we realize that, and certainly then as apparently, when we look at other people, we may think, oh, there's a symbol and mine's mess, but we're all messy, and I mean messy in a nice way. We're untidy in our identities. That's okay.
Speaker: right and the more questions you ask and dig into it like behavior behavior recently in the past year or your fantasies are like the more you see that yeah and then there's emotional there's like romantic attraction and sexual attraction which may be entirely different and then in the in some versions of the program when i have time i also talk about all the other kinds of attraction like you know there's sexual attraction who makes you hot there's romantic attraction who makes you warm there's
Speaker: Aesthetic attraction, those people who you just kind of stop looking at, there's something about them that you just want to keep beholding them all the time, right? And then there's attraction to someone's intellect. Like I call them brain crushes. I've had some serious brain crushes, like someone who I, it's like someone who I have no interest in sleeping with, but oh my God, their brain is hot. Like their brain is really sexy, like really exciting. And then there's like,
Speaker: sometimes like some crushes you could be attracted to someone because they're passionate like because of they're so passionate about what they believe in or you could be attracted to someone because of their confidence or because of their skill at something or because I'm sure some people are attracted to people because they're wealthy or you know whatever like or because of this particular type of external look like attraction is so many different things and it's so beautiful and so wonderful and so
Speaker: just multifaceted and yet we sometimes try to squeeze all that complexity into like these little words like I'm straight, I'm gay, I'm bi. In fact, every one of our identities really on many levels should be a conversation, not a word or two. One word, right, exactly, yeah. And so I'd like to see the word as the doorway to the conversation, not as the conversation.
Speaker: want to ask you about that straightness thing. And I think we're seeing a lot more in the world and in this program like fluidity within straight identities. But I also know we talked a few minutes ago and your writing has encouraged people who are safe and comfortable to do so to come out because of all the positive benefits that can have both for yourself, mental health wise, and
Speaker: but also to be an example and create the space for others. I don't know, what do you do with that as an activist? Do you wanna talk more about fluidity within straightness? Or is that a thing where you would encourage people to actually adopt a bi -identity? But I struggle with it, because I don't wanna push people to identify a way they don't want to. How do you approach that?
Speaker: That's very complex, like everything else. I guess I don't think that I have the right to tell someone else how they should identify. One of the other pins that I have on the Etsy shop is it's identity, not you -dentity. Every single person has the right to self -identify with the word that works for them. That said, there is a lot of, actually, in an essay in By Women Quarterly in the 1990s, I'm guessing,
Speaker: There was an essay called The Blas, the bisexual label avoidance syndrome, written by Lucy Friedland. And I think that there are definitely people out there who are very hesitant to use the word bisexual, even though they certainly fit all the, you know, yeah. And for some people, it's because they've been traumatized around that word, like they've been
Speaker: like all the negative stereotypes about that word have, you know, stuck to them in a way that makes them afraid to take that label on or hesitant to take that label on. That makes me really sad because I feel like I want to see people, I don't like labels being avoided because of stigma.
Speaker: But that's also up to each person. And then some people don't like the word bisexual because they like another word better, and that's fine. That's fine. I think that in our community, we sometimes get into the bisexual versus pansexual debate.
Speaker: It's unproductive. It's completely unproductive. I would rather see all of us just work together to hold space for all the non -binary sexualities and for everyone to be their complex, you know, beautiful self. And when we waste energy having internal fights about words, that makes me frustrated and sad. I mean, in a way, I feel like part of what we need to do is expand the word straight to like,
Speaker: make sure that people understand that straight doesn't necessarily mean one on a seven point continuum that it can mean. Like no matter how you identify, you can have feelings or thoughts that aren't commonly associated with that label. Same thing for lesbian and gay people. It's okay to have, I'm putting this in quotes, impure thoughts. It's okay to have, I hate when I see someone have a crush on someone and they say, oh, I'm not allowed to have that crush because I am this identity. Like that's really sad.
Speaker: Right. Then you're being held back by the label, which is meant to do the opposite. You get trapped in the box and it's like, just don't like, I just like, let's not let's use identities as tools and not as boxes. Nobody owns the copyright about what a particular label means. Like there's no single simple definition.
Speaker: I love your answer about that because I struggle with like, okay, what do I do? What should I encourage? But the real thing is to understand why some people are averse to the bi -identity and then address those reasons. So we can't push people to identify a certain way and that wouldn't be good for them or anyone, but
Speaker: we can start to address whatever those stigmas are and at least try in the broader sense to correct those. Yeah. So like if someone says, Oh, I don't, I don't use the word bisexual because that just means attracted to men and women. I'm like, actually here's my definition and it means something very different to me. Like that, that's, that's legit, right? And that's something that I feel perfectly empowered to do, but I wouldn't feel, I wouldn't then lead to the conclusion of therefore you must identify as bisexual too.
Speaker: I wouldn't go there because that's not right. That's their choice.
Speaker: That makes sense. I do the same thing, except I say, here's Robin Oak's definition, not mine. I have a listener question that's about this, and it's actually something I would like to ask you too. But a listener says, Robin has done an amazing job of raising awareness to bisexual identities and issues, stressing that sexuality isn't just binary. Are there any other binaries that you've discovered and challenged within your life as a result of this kind of reimagining?
Speaker: Oh my God. I think it's interesting. In some, I think for many people, once you bust through one pretend binary wall, it's very easy to realize that there are a lot of other pretend binary walls out there. And our culture is so shaped in binaries. Democrat, Republican.
Speaker: Left, right. Are you left -handed or right -handed? I'm mostly left -handed, but I can write with my right hand too. That kind of thing. I think in the US, the racial binary is one that is beyond ridiculous. When most people in the United States, in most parts of the country, think about race, they think about black and white. It leaves out so many people. It leaves out people with
Speaker: multi or biracial identities and it leaves out entire groups of people. That's a stupid, stupid binary. Even questions like religion, those are also binary things like, are you Jewish or are you not Jewish? Are you Jewish or are you Christian? First of all, there are other religions, but are you Jewish or are you not Jewish? All sort of. Right.
Speaker: culturally, yeah, all the different, it's everything so beautifully complex and messy, and everyone's so different, and so many people are trying to impose their simplistic frames around everything. I guess, yeah, so many things are binary and gender. Oh my goodness, gender. I honestly give a lot of credit to
Speaker: It's been interesting watching how non -binary gender identities have exploded in use. You know, the number of people using them and also starting to be represented in popular culture and in media. And that's really interesting watching that happen. And I think it's a very good thing because once you, if you can understand that the gender binary is not real, then that actually by definition, if you are thinking person, that by definition explodes the sexual orientation binary.
Speaker: Because if there are more than two genders, then our historical construction becomes moot. It doesn't really quite work anymore. And I hope that it will lead to, and I think we're seeing this even with the census and not just check which one are you, but the idea that you could check more than one box.
Speaker: around racial identity, for example, I think that that's, check as many boxes of supply is really a much better, check as many words as you use. We were talking about my bi identity, but I also identify as queer, and I also identify as pan. Same. Yeah, so even there, which one of those are you? Yep. Right, right, right. All of them. I love it.
Speaker: And I think therein lies this sort of unique connection and understanding among the communities, like the bi -fluid sexuality community and the fluid gender and trans communities. And there's a lot of overlap, too. But I've found this unique understanding and support and solidarity that is very important, because they are so connected. Once you look at one one -way, then
Speaker: then you're going to start to look at the other the same way. When you talk to real people, it gets so just everything. Even questions like, are you an immigrant or not? For so many people, in my situation, I was born in the US, but my mother was born in Scotland, but my mother's father was born in the US, but my mother's mother was not born in the US. She was born in Scotland, but her parents were born in Lithuania.
Speaker: Like, what am I? Am I, am I first generation? No, yes, yes, no, depends sort of, you know, what's my ethnicity? It's a bunch of different things, you know? And I just, I think that just in general, that that's when you start talking to real people, you start to see that there were some people who have very simple trajectories around any identity, but so many other people have these stories that we've in and out and then aren't yes or no identities there.
Speaker: yes and or guess but or sort of. It makes so much sense and it's and again I had the same experience of like my bi identity opened me up to all of that and I started to see all these other areas you know as much more complicated and less binary than than the world was telling me until that point.
Speaker: So, your book recognized the voices of bisexual men. I want to talk about for a minute, given this is too by guys. And it was one of the books, like Shiri Eisner's book and like a couple others, that I read like when I was starting to come out to myself but not ready to talk to other people yet. And like, I just flipped through it again this morning and like, I have all these things underlined and highlighted that like,
Speaker: now to me are part of my worldview and so normal to me. And I'm like, yeah, of course, who would think otherwise? But when I read them, I was like, oh my God, other people look at the world this way. It's not binary or a lot of stuff about masculinity and the box of
Speaker: the mailbox I was put into and how bisexuality helped me break out of that. Anyway, I could read all the things I highlighted, but it was just so helpful and informative for me and helpful to read the voices of real bi men and actually hear a bunch of different experiences, some I related to more than others. And anyway, why did you write this book? How did you go about it? What was it about the bi male experience that you wanted to focus on? Tell us about the book.
Speaker: Okay. So what happened is, you know, I bring copies of by women quarterly to all of my speaking engagements and I give them away and pass them out and invite people to sign up for a free digital subscription, which you can do on by women quarterly .com. You know, so I invite people to do that. And so many times, so many times, um, a band would come up to me after the program.
Speaker: and say, it's great that you have that publication, is there anything comparable for bi men? And I would say,
Speaker: No, I'm sorry there isn't, not that I know of. So that happened enough times over enough years that I finally decided I'm going to do something about this. So what I thought I would do is I would do a fifth issue of Bible and Quarterly, just a one -time special, and do an issue on by men and invite by men to write. And I was like, I'm going to do that. And so I put out a call for writing. And so what I figured I'd do is do that, and then I would just put it up on the web.
Speaker: as a PDF, and then if someone asked me that question, I'd say, well, there's this thing. Like, here's something, right? I want to do something. And so I put out the call for writing, and within a couple of days, I heard from two bi men who said, I think it's absolutely wonderful that you're doing this, but don't you think that a bi man should be doing that? Not a bi woman. And I said, absolutely, you're 100 % right. Would you like to do it? Either with me or separately? The first person said, uh, no, I'm too busy.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, fine. And then the second one said, yes. And so H. Tareef Williams or Dr. Harukati and I conspired together to create this. So what we did is we rewrote the call for writing and we got so many good contributions so quickly, like, I mean, not quickly, like in days, but over the course of weeks and a few months, like some really good submissions came in.
Speaker: And it quickly became apparent that we had more than one issue of By Woman Quarterly, but that we actually had the makings of a book. And so when he first came on board, we rewrote the call for writing to make it ours in that mind. And we changed the language and we did some great stuff because we're so different that I think we worked together really well because we brought in very, very different perspectives and
Speaker: and framings and ways of looking at the world. It was a real gift. It was challenging sometimes because you have to really wrap your brain around someone else's frame to understand, but it was great because I learned so much in the process. I think he did too. Anyway, we ended up turning it into a call for writing for a book and we sent it out again and then that's how this book got born. We were very committed to making sure that there was a diverse representation of voices.
Speaker: And so we, after the first call for writing was over, we sat down and looked at what we had and we looked at, we, we actually tried to figure out what was missing and we made a list of some thought leaders in the community who were not yet in the book and we reached out to them very specifically. And we also like looked at certain diversities that were under people. There was lots of diversity already, but we wanted more. We wanted it to be like the widest, broadest representation. So we,
Speaker: We reached out to specific communities as well. And I think the result is a book that might be the most intersectional book I've ever read. Because the men, I think, in the book range from 20 to 77. And like most books, if you said the book ranges in age from 20 to 77, there'd be like one 77 -year -old. Yeah, right. But there are six men in their 70s.
Speaker: You know, so like it's, we really got a good spread of age and a really great racial spread. I think 20 % of the men identify as trans or non -binary. Wow. And it was just really like just amazing. Like the people who step forward were amazing humans and they put forth their very widely, you know, varied experiences. And yeah, I'm really happy with this book. And I think that it's also reflective of the conversation that's gotten more complex over the years. Like it's the,
Speaker: beginning anthologies were even my first anthology, like things are, the conversation's getting more sophisticated.
Speaker: Yeah, it's even changing since the book came out. Are there certain things you've seen by men struggling with in particular? And I read something online that you wrote. You said, I have someone close to me who's a man whose biggest fear was how people might perceive him after coming out as bisexual. He was afraid that they would see him differently. And that was a huge issue for him coming out.
Speaker: And I identified with that so much. And I think a lot of guys, there's that, you know, what will people think or will they judge me? Is that or what other things have you seen people struggle with? Yeah. And that person, by the way, still hasn't come out to other people, which makes my heart because I think that silence can suffocate you. So other things I see the Biden deal with specifically,
Speaker: I think that, well, because of the nature of sexism, there's a perception that all women who call themselves bi are really straight, but are just like open -minded and dabbling in tourists in the lesbian land or whatever, and that all bi men who call themselves, all men who call themselves bi are really gay. Because ultimately, everybody's looking for what? A man, right? A man. A man. Yeah, of course. Sexism needs exploitation.
Speaker: So I think that stereotype is very strong. And so I think that by women and also the women's community is much more historically, like the old lesbian community was much more like different kinds of politics. And so the threat was perceived as a different kind of threat. I think that by men in the gay community tend to be just like trivialized and dismissed a lot in ways that really annoy me. I think that the HIV and AIDS, the whole perception of by men as a
Speaker: vehicle for the transmission of HIV and AIDS is one I think that ties in with the stereotypes about bisexuality itself being uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Anyone who calls themselves bi can't possibly be satisfied with one relationship and they're inevitably going to sleep with everyone in the world. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. Some of us are monogamous. Some of us are polyamorous. Some of us are celibate.
Speaker: Some of us are different things at different points in our lives, and it's not because we're bisexual. So are some straight people, so are some lesbian and gay people. But I think those stereotypes also present a particular challenge for men. And then also just the lack of, I think women are better at organizing culturally. We're better at creating organizations and groups and resources, and men have more resources in terms of income and stuff, but we're not,
Speaker: They're not so socially oriented to create social organizations. And you see that in what's available in terms of resources out there. And it's not seen as a masculine thing to provide support networks for each other, in a way, if that makes sense. Yes. I have to consciously do that these days with some of my guy friends, and I'm making a conscious effort, but it wasn't a natural thing.
Speaker: Yes. So I think the cultural differences in how we're conditioned can really create different challenges. But that said, I am committed to working with my bi men friends and my non -binary bi friends and my plus friends and all. I feel like if we all work together, we'll make a difference. I also want to say that I see change now that I couldn't have imagined five or 10 years ago.
Speaker: We have a long ways to go, but I feel that we are actually getting some traction and there's some progress. And I finally feel that like the spinning my wheels for so long that they're not entirely spinning anymore. Sometimes they are making a difference.
Speaker: Yes. Yes. You laid this groundwork and I feel like it's it's finally starting to sort of accelerate very quickly and numbers exploding and the conversation changing and representation in TV kind of really finally starting to happen a lot more last few years. Yeah. And a lot of people have laid that groundwork. Like there have been so many activists over the years who have been doing the work in the background and just like steady as they go.
Speaker: But I think the people coming out more is bi too, in public. If you look, some of the people who are on television have helped shape their bisexual characters. Some out bisexual people have helped shape how their characters are represented. I'm thinking of Stephanie Beatriz from Brooklyn Nine -Nine. I'm thinking of Sara Ramirez from Grey's Anatomy and from Madam Secretary. You know that they had a say in making sure those characters were represented.
Speaker: Absolutely. You could tell. Yeah, in ways that I can actually relate to and see myself reflected.
Speaker: Absolutely, I agree. Okay, okay, very last thing, because you mentioned something and it might be a nice note to end on. You mentioned suffering and silence. And I think like I identify with you of like, I didn't realize the toll it was taking until I did come out. Can you tell us like what that's like? And a lot of people are looking for the like, it gets better, like it's a hard hurdle, but what are the benefits for you or that you've seen for other people of
Speaker: coming out? Well, if you believe that there's something about yourself that is so toxic that it will cause other people to no longer want to associate with you, like if you believe that, it's really hard to be healthy. It's really hard to be emotionally healthy. And when people are suffocating in, in that kind of toxic soup, like then we engage in coping behaviors, like people drink and they smoke and they do drugs and they, you know,
Speaker: engage in other just like destructive behaviors and it's like we have to get out we have to break out of that because we're too valuable to keep on harming ourselves and also when I finally came out the things I was afraid of the things I feared people would say what happened was so much less horrible than what I was afraid would happen some people had strange responses I mean I definitely there was a small cost but
Speaker: it was tiny compared to what I feared would happen. And I think that that's true of, of most people I've spoken to who have actually come out that they've said, Oh, what I thought was going to happen was so much worse than what actually happened. So just the sensor and also the sense of relief that I had, like that I experienced a physical sense of relief when I finally said it out loud, like just that feeling that this very heavy weight had been lifted from me. Like it was such a,
Speaker: a feeling of lightness and relief. It was great. I don't know. Even if it means you have to find different community that's going to celebrate you, I think it's so important to have at least some people you can talk to and some people you can be your full self around.
Speaker: you wrote something online. Even if it's one person, you can start there. One person you trust and feel safe with. And you'll see how that feels, and that may knock something loose. And everything you're talking about, I had the same experience, too, of like, yeah, there were some costs, some things I was afraid of did happen. But
Speaker: it paled in comparison to the lightness I felt and the way everything started to click for me. So yeah, I agree. That makes me happy that you said that.
Speaker: Yeah, well, partially thanks. Thanks to this. Thanks to your work. So thank you so much for being here, Robin. It's really nice to finally meet you and chat with you. I'm a big fan and admirer of your work. I'm kind of in awe. We're following in your footsteps and I really appreciate this conversation. All right. Well, thank you, Robin. Cube up the good work. Bye.
Speaker: Two Bye Guys is edited and produced by me, Rob Cohen, and it was created by me and Alex Boyd. Our music is by Ross Mincer, our logo art is by Caitlin Weinman, and we are supported by The Gotham, formerly IFP. Thanks for listening to Two Bye Guys.
