Formation | 1985 |
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President | Jessica (Belle) Silverman |
Website | biresource |
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Bisexuality topics |
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The Bisexual Resource Center (BRC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, that has served the bisexual community since 1985. Originally known as The East Coast Bisexual Network, it incorporated in 1989 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and changed its name to the Bisexual Resource Center in 1993. [1] [2] [3]
Describing itself as one of the oldest nationally focused bisexual organizations in the U.S. the BRC's current president is Jessica (Belle) Silverman. [3] [4] It provides education about bisexual and progressive issues and support for bisexual people. The organization, the most active American bisexual advocacy and resource group, [2] also sponsors bi-positive programming, holds a support group, promotes visibility at Pride events and provides speakers about bisexuality.
It has a "long-standing role as a clearinghouse for bisexual information," and has a lending library with approximately 200 books about bisexuality and some movies. [5] In 1987, The East Coast Bisexual Network (as it was then known) established the first Bisexual History Archives with Robyn Ochs's initial collection; archivist Clare Morton hosted researchers. [1] The 1987 East Coast Bisexual Network Conference inspired the founding of the Bay Area Bi+ & Pan Network, originally called the Bay Area Bisexual Network. [6]
The BRC publishes the biannual Bisexual Resource Guide, a comprehensive listing of bisexual and bi-inclusive organizations, [5] bi-related books and films, [7] web sites, and academic articles. [8] The first edition was published in the mid-1980s. [9]
The BRC produces Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World , now in its second edition. The anthology is edited by Ochs and Sarah E. Rowley and has 220 entries from people from 42 countries. Topics include coming out, relationships, politics, community, and more. The book also addresses the intersection of bisexuality with race, class, ethnicity, gender identity, disability and national identity.
The BRC had its first float at the Boston LGBT Pride parade in 2010. [10] In 2014, the BRC declared March of that year as the first "Bisexual Health Awareness Month", with the theme "Bi the Way, Our Health Matters Too!". [11]
The bisexual flag, also called the bisexual pride flag, is a pride flag representing bisexuality, bisexual individuals and the bisexual community. According to Michael Page, the designer of the flag, the pink stripe represents attraction to the same sex, while the blue stripe represents attraction to the opposite sex. The purple stripe, the resulting "overlap" of the blue and pink stripes, represents attraction to both sexes.
BiNet USA was an American national nonprofit bisexual community whose mission was to "facilitate the development of a cohesive network of bisexual communities, promote bisexual visibility, and collect and distribute educational information regarding bisexuality. Until 2020, BiNet USA provided a national network for bisexual organizations and individuals across the United States, and encouraged participation and organizing on local and national levels." They claimed to be the oldest national bisexuality organization in the United States. In 2020, all of the content on BiNet USA's website was replaced with a statement that the BiNet USA president, Faith Cheltenham, now identified as Christian conservative and was walking away from progressive politics entirely.
LGBTQ culture is a culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. It is sometimes referred to as queer culture, while the term gay culture may be used to mean either "LGBT culture" or homosexual culture specifically.
Lani Kaʻahumanu is a Native Hawaiian bisexual and feminist writer and activist. She is openly bisexual and writes and speaks on sexuality issues frequently. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Bisexuality. She is also working on the books My Grassroots Are Showing: Stories, Speeches, and Special Affections and Passing For Other: Primal Creams and Forbidden Dreams – Poetry, Prose, and Performance Pieces. In 1974, she divorced her husband and moved to San Francisco, where she originally came out as a lesbian. She was a student leader in the nascent San Francisco State Women Studies Department, and in 1979, she became the first person in her family to graduate from college. Kaʻahumanu realized she was bisexual and came out again in 1980.
New York Area Bisexual Network (NYABN) is a central communications network for bisexual and bi-friendly groups and resources in the five boroughs of New York City and the surrounding Tri-State area. The mission of the New York Area Bisexual Network is to facilitate the development of a cohesive bisexual community in the New York Area. The network promotes bisexual visibility, works to protect the bisexual community from discrimination and biphobia and assists and empowers the individual community members, their families and friends to live full, rich, safe and happy lives.
Tom Limoncelli is an American system administrator, author, and speaker. A system administrator and network engineer since 1987, he speaks at conferences around the world on topics ranging from firewall security to time management. He is the author of Time Management for System Administrators from O'Reilly; along with Christine Hogan, co-author of the book The Practice of System and Network Administration from Addison-Wesley, which won the 2005 SAGE Outstanding Achievement Award, and in 2007 with Peter H. Salus he has published a compilation of the best April Fools jokes created by the IETF entitled The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs.
The bisexual community, also known as the bi+, m-spec, bisexual/pansexual, or bi/pan/fluid community, includes members of the LGBT community who identify as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual and sexually fluid. As opposed to hetero- or homosexual people, people in the bisexual community experience attraction to more than one gender.
Sheela Lambert (1956-2024), a native and lifelong resident of New York City, was an American bisexual activist and writer.
Robyn Ochs is an American bisexual activist, professional speaker, and workshop leader. Her primary fields of interest are gender, sexuality, identity, and coalition building. She is the editor of the Bisexual Resource Guide, Bi Women Quarterly, and the anthology Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World. Ochs, along with Professor Herukhuti, co-edited the anthology Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men.
Celebrate Bisexuality Day is observed annually on September 23 to recognize and celebrate bisexual people, the bisexual community, and the history of bisexuality.
Bialogue, a portmanteau of the words bisexual and dialogue, is an American activist group that started in New York City, working on issues of local, national, and international interest to the bisexual, fluid, pansexual, queer-identified communities and their allies. Bialogue's mission is to dispel myths and stereotypes about bisexuality, address biphobia and bisexual erasure, educate the public on the facts and realities of bisexuality and advocate for the bisexual community. Its slogan is "Taking Action not just Offense".
Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World is an English anthology edited by Robyn Ochs and Sarah E. Rowley. It is an important book in the history of the modern bisexual rights movement and appears on numerous bisexual and general LGBT reading lists.
The first English-language use of the word "bisexual" to refer to sexual orientation occurred in 1892.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
National Bisexual Liberation Group was a bisexual rights advocacy organization formed in 1972 in New York City and active in the 1970s.
Bisexual literature is a subgenre of LGBTQ literature that includes literary works and authors that address the topic of bisexuality or biromanticism. This includes characters, plot lines, and/or themes portraying bisexual behavior in both men and women.
Bi Women Quarterly (BWQ) is a global grassroots publication that works in affiliation with the Boston Bisexual Women's Network in Boston, Massachusetts. Started in September 1983, it is the oldest running publication for bisexual women.
BECAUSE is an annual, national conference for the bisexual community and other bi+ people that takes place in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. It was founded in 1992. It has been organized by the Bisexual Organizing Project since 1999. The conference is "dedicated to building an empowered bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and unlabeled (bi+) community." It is the longest-running and largest conference for bi+ people in the United States.
The history of bisexuality concerns the history of the bisexual sexual orientation. Ancient and medieval history of bisexuality, when the term did not exist as such, consists of anecdotes of sexual behaviour and relationships between people of the same and different sexes. A modern definition of bisexuality began to take shape in the mid-19th century within three interconnected domains of knowledge: biology, psychology and sexuality. In modern Western culture, the term bisexual was first defined in a binary approach as a person with romantic or sexual attraction to both men and women. The term bisexual is defined later in the 20th century as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to both males and females, or as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to people regardless of sex or gender identity, which is sometimes termed pansexuality.