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. When 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."
Read more about Fenit Nirappil's article on bisexuals—including discrimination, identity crisis and the revival of the community—online at www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com .
