By FENIT NIRAPPIL
When Ben Iglar-Mobley, 42, and his wife, Valerie, 39, hold hands, everyone assumes they're a heterosexual couple—but actually, they're bisexual. They moved to Chicago in 1996 to marry and raise a family, the bi community was struggling. The couple joined the Chicago Bisexual Network, a small advocacy group. In 1998, they proudly marched in Chicago's pride parade with only a dozen other bisexuals, alongside hundreds of Chicago gays and lesbians. Their signs read: "Bridge Builders Not Fence Sitters," "Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun," "Two Way Traffic Ahead." Many people cheered for them. Then, the Iglar-Mobleys heard a different sound: booing. They looked over to the sidewalk and saw several people holding their thumbs down. To their horror, members of the gay community were booing them.
"That kind of shocked us, and we were reticent about being active again," said Ben Iglar-Mobley. Several years later, after organizing members started leaving, Chicago Bisexual Network fell apart. The Iglar-Mobleys activist days ended, but they continued to take pride in their bisexuality even without a strong community to back them.
Bisexuals like the Iglar-Mobleys only have a small presence in Chicago. But the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth conducted in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found 3.5 percent of Americans identified as bisexual and another 3.5 percent identified as lesbian or gay. Yet, dozens of Chicago groups focus on homosexuals while only a handful serve bisexuals.
Angered by bigotry and needing support, Chicago bisexuals are fighting to distinguish themselves and to build a vibrant community. New bisexual-exclusive programming started this year at the Center on Halsted and the Howard Brown Health Center, Chicago's two major LGBT institutions. "Now the bisexuals are coming out of the woodwork. Gays hide in the closets, we hide in the attics," said Brother Michael Oboza, a 34-year-old Orthodox Catholic monk, and co-chair of Center on Halsted bisexual programming.
Bisexual organizations in Chicago
The history of bisexual groups is plagued with low membership and overdependence on a few leading members. For decades, one Chicago bisexual group has taken different forms. Chicago BiWays emerged first in 1978, evolving into Chicago Action Bi-Women in the early '80s after bisexual women rejected by lesbian groups needed a space to find each other. That group turned into Chicago Bisexual Network as it attempted to become more politically active and visible. Around 2000, Howard Brown Health Center incorporated the CBN, but didn't last long. For much of the 21st century, Chicago lacked any bisexual groups.
But in February 2009, when 38-year-old bisexual Matt Koop felt depressed and isolated, he needed a community to turn to. "I wanted to feel part of something larger than myself that affirmed and mirrored back my experience," he said. All of Chicago's major bisexual groups were gone, so he turned to the internet. He discovered the Chicago Bisexual/Queer Community on Meetup.com, a Web site that helps users meet others like them. When Koop first joined, the group only had 12 members. But in a year, it grew to 224 members and held dozens of events as casual as apple picking and as formal as traveling to the National Bisexual Conference in Minneapolis.
The group's founder, Noel Spain, is a 38-year-old Logan Square resident who came out five years ago. "I thought, wow, Chicago has a huge LGBT community, I'm sure I'll hook up with other bisexual groups, but as time went on and as I was feeling the need for more bisexuals—I couldn't find it," he said. So Spain started his own group in July of 2008.
But it's hard to create community with just a Web site. The Meetup group is currently the largest bisexual group in Chicago, but only about a dozen people go to each event. Allen Rosenthal, a third-year psychology graduate student at Northwestern University researching bisexuality, went to some meet ups. "There isn't really a bi community here. There's like 15 people sitting around having cookies," he said.
"We probably haven't made that much of a dent in adding visibility to the bisexual community in Chicago," Spain said.
The nature of their sexuality makes it hard for bisexuals to be visible in public. When a bisexual man kisses a woman, people assume he's straight. When the same man kisses a man, people assume he's gay. "It's not like there is a bisexual neighborhood or a bisexual signal like the bat signal," said Amy Andre, a San Francisco bisexuality advocate. "Bisexuals have to go out of their way to create a community and make it clear what they are doing is creating a community."
Discrimination
At the root of the failure to create a Chicago bisexual community is a strong contempt for bisexuality. According to a 2002 study published in the Journal of Sex Research, the only group heterosexuals viewed less favorably than bisexuals is drug addicts. Koop experienced this contempt first hand. When he tells female partners he's bisexual, the women become startled. "There's an unfounded fear that bisexuals are not capable of monogamy. Several times in my straight relationships there has been an [ horrified ] 'Oh you're bisexual? You sleep with men?" Bisexuals call this kind of discrimination "biphobia."
Surprisingly, gays and lesbians also stigmatize bisexuals. "Even within the gay community, there are very fixed binaries, and I've found that for both men and women, there is a shocking lack of respect for bisexuality," said Christine Forster, a Center on Halsted women and transgender programming intern.
Adrienne Williams, the 44-year-old founder of BiSocial News ( a "bisexual Huffington Post" ) , leaves stacks of her website's business cards at the Center on Halsted's reception deck every week. But they would always disappear in a few days. It wasn't because they were popular—no other business cards went missing. Last summer, Brother Michael Oboza came to the center to socialize. He saw a young gay man pick up a pile of William's business cards, look at them with disgust and hurl them into the trash can.
"Yeah, we don't really need these cards. Bi people don't belong here," the man said when Oboza pressed him.
This attitude didn't surprise Oboza. He came out as gay when he was 16, but felt incomplete because he liked both men and women. He worried about how people would respond. Even in his Orthodox Catholic church, people accepted gays and lesbians but not bisexuals. The monk spiraled into a destructive pattern of drug and alcohol abuse, even attempting suicide. After meeting Noel Spain and researching bisexuality- last year, Oboza came out for a second time—this time, as bisexual. To his delight, the other monks and nuns held a celebration feast. But, just like he feared, not all response was positive.
"Those same people who accepted me when I was gay didn't accept me anymore because I was no longer gay," Oboza said. "Some would say 'Oh, you're probably diseased, you sleep around with anything you can.'"
Many bisexuals consider the inclusiveness of the term "LGBT" an illusion compared to the reality of how they are treated. "People told me I didn't count as gay because I was bi, that I was confused, that I was doing it for attention or that I was really gay but I wouldn't admit it to myself," said Christie Stiehl, a 21-year-old bisexual student at Northwestern University.
The stigma of bisexuality can cause major health problems. In 2007, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released Bisexual Health, a publication exposing the unique health challenges of bisexuals. For example, bisexual women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse. Bisexuals also have higher rates of depression, attempted suicide and drug and alcohol abuse. "All of these things [ … ] are related to the fact that bisexuals are more stigmatized than gays and lesbians," said Amy Andre, one of the report's authors.
Apart from stigmatization, sometimes the LGBT community just doesn't acknowledge bisexuals. Darnell, who asked to withhold his last name because he's not out, says he has never heard bisexuals mentioned. "You just don't hear discussions about bisexuality at all, which makes it more confusing for people who are coming to that decision," the 27-year-old Uptown bisexual said.
Even leaders of LGBT activist movements fail to include bisexuals in their efforts. Last October, the annual National March for Equality in Washington, D.C., had no bisexuals out of 86 speakers until they were pressured by BiNet USA, a national bisexual advocacy group. "You can step into a room in a 'Vote for Equality' or any queer marriage organization, and you'll get a huge range of answers for you being there: I didn't know bisexuals cared about marriage. I thought you guys would be covered because eventually you'll choose," said Faith Cheltenham, the vice president of BiNet USA.
When it comes to discrimination, homosexuals and heterosexuals have more in common than they think. "They are very used to operating in a system where you're just attracted to one gender. But bisexual people say gender has nothing to do with it—I'm attracted to human beings. That's probably one of those things that is hard to understand," Andre said.
Although being mistreated makes many bisexuals bitter toward the gay community, some feel sympathetic. "I think there's resentment from gays and lesbians, and justifiably so. They think, 'you walk with us in pride parades, but the rest of the year you can enjoy straight privilege.' The same sex couple doesn't get to hide the way Val and I do," said Ben Iglar-Mobley.
Biphobia stunts the growth of a community because it's easy for bisexuals to hide their identities to avoid mockery. "I've had people confide in me that people would identify as bi, but that it's easier to identify as gay because of the biphobia in the community," said Stiehl, who started a bisexual support group at Northwestern University in 2006.
Identity crisis
The stigma of the word "bisexual" makes people hesitant to associate themselves with it. At the National Bi Conference in Minneapolis in August 2008, activists actually debated whether to abandon the term all together, ultimately deciding to keep it. In addition to stigma, not everyone who is attracted to both genders considers his or herself bisexual. Many members of the Chicago Bisexual/Queer Meetup group say they're "omnisexual" or "pansexual." Others reject labels. "Bisexuals are the only group in the LGBT community that do not want to say their term," said Williams. "We have to say 'I'm bisexual, I'm in your face' and from there we will have a community, and without the term we can't have a community."
But research indicates people are more comfortable being called bisexual than proponents of abandoning the term argue. University of Utah sex researcher Lisa Diamond conducted a 10-year study of bisexual women. She found many abandoned the label at one point. She also found they became more comfortable being called bisexual with time, and many re-adopted the label.
Yet, not everyone who identifies as bisexual even thinks his or her sexuality is the biggest part of his or her identity. Matt Koop, who used to work as an after-school theater teacher, identifies as being an artist more than being a bisexual. "I never felt I had to manufacture a gay persona or a bisexual persona," he said. But he does acknowledge the necessity of a community when fighting for acceptance. "I see very clearly that throughout the late 70s, throughout the 80s the gay community stood up and created an identity for itself as a culture so that they had a power to fight discrimination."
When bisexuals deal with discrimination, pretend to be gay or straight or do not even consider themselves bisexual, a community seems burdensome and unnecessary. However, some experts disagree. "Something really magical happens when people become engaged in bisexual communities—especially for those who feel isolated and depressed," Andre said. "A lot of people feel better when they realize there are others like them out there."
The revival of a community
In recent months, Chicago bisexuals demanded to meet others like them, sparking the rise of new bisexual-specific programs. The Howard Brown Health Center started a support group for bisexual women in late February 2010. Although the center specializes in providing health services for the LGBT community, this is the first time in 10 years they've had programs exclusively for bisexuals. The group's purpose is to give bisexual women an opportunity to talk about their struggles and connect with each other. However, only six women showed up for the first meeting. Bisexual programs in Chicago have often failed because of low attendance. "Women are quick to say, 'we totally need a group for this and that,' but then they don't show up. We have to pick and choose what the community wants," said Lisa Katona, the director of the Lesbian Community Care Project at Howard Brown.
A few miles away, after Spain, Oboza and Williams' intensive lobbying, the Center on Halsted started bisexual programs for the first time. "I wanted them to take ownership of the bisexual community as part of the larger gay community," said Spain, who is a co-chair of the programming with Oboza and Williams. In December 2009, the Center began a monthly movie night and bisexual discussion group.
"We're an LGBT center that receives lots of funding from many sources. The Bs and the Ts are as deserving of resources as the L and the G," said Christine Forster of the Center on Halsted. "If they're not being given the terminology and the space, even at a LGBT community center, then in a certain sense, they don't exist."
More than 30 people came to the first meeting, but only seven ( including three organizers ) came to a March 2nd discussion. Despite the rocky start, the co-chairs remain optimistic about the potential of the programs. "Right now we'll get about seven people at a time, but the bigger story there is that we have representation at one of the country's largest GLBT institutions—it's a big win for the bi community," said Spain.
The organizers hope that bisexual programs will give a space for people to explore what being bisexual means. "When I was younger I knew at heart I was attracted to guys but I would try and ignore it because it was confusing because I knew I was also attracted women, but never really considered being bisexual as an option," said Darnell. He had no openly gay or bisexual friends, and didn't know where to turn. Then, after looking at the Center on Halsted website, he saw advertisements for the new bisexual programming. Darnell came to a discussion meeting and became more comfortable with his sexuality as he heard others who went through the same challenges he did.
Bisexual community organizers acknowledge that it will take years before a community really takes off. They hope to become part of the norm in Chicago's LGBT population and to remove the shame of being associated with the "B." Christie Stiehl said she has an ideal goal for the perfect bisexual community in Chicago.
"I want there to be a space where people can say I think Angelina Jolie is hot—and I think Brad Pitt is hot."
