Or so I’ve heard it said. And, based on my own experience and empirical research, I’m inclined to agree. Hell, even the Portland Mercury – the pinnacle of scientific research and scholarly thought – backs me up on this.
The 2007 Portland Mercury Sex Survey drew 2,300 responses. Women made up 52% of the group and men 46%. (Yes, I know that doesn’t add up to 100%. The Mercury says it’s because “some of you didn’t fill out every single question on the survey”). Of the women who responded, 34% said they’re straight. 37% of the men said they are straight.
Now we get to the juicy part: 9% of the 2,300 respondents said they’re gay or lesbian while 17% said they’re bisexual! That means there were 207 homosexual respondents and 391 bisexuals. I’m not saying that this can be extrapolated across the entire population of the City of Roses because we know that only the cool people read the Mercury. But even if we take into consideration the fact that the entire pool of 2,300 survey respondents are more open minded and less boring than the population at large, there are still almost twice as many bisexuals as there are homosexuals in this study group. That’s a lot of folks who have chosen to not go through life with one hand tied behind their backs! (as James Dean put it, referring to his own bisexuality).
So where are all the bisexuals? Are we so ubiquitous that we don’t need any special venues, events and so forth? Or is it simply that we’re still being completely marginalized, ignored and/or villified by the two monosexual communities (homo/hetero)? Perhaps a combination of both? Or are we all just taking advantage of “hetero privilege” and living under the radar, getting our same-sex nookie on the sly without all the hassle of coming out and sharing the challenges and rewards of queer pride with the LGTQ’s?
Check out the “entire site” of the Portland Bisexual Alliance. It’s a whopping… one page. And that one page was last updated on May 31, 2002! A Google search turns up a second page that isn’t linked to from the top page – and for good reason. It’s the calendar page and it was “updated 5-29-01!“
I’m determined to get to the bottom of this (if only because I love bottoms so much!), so watch here for more!
Tags: bi, bisexuality, Oregon, Portland, Portland Bisexual Alliance, queer
September 6, 2008 at 6:35 pm |
The Portland Bisexual Alliance ran from 1995-2002, and I was on the board for six of those years.
We did just about everything that a bi organization *can* do…
* Every month: a bi themed panel or workshop, a bi community orientation night, and bringing in a guest speaker from an outside organization.
* Bi 101 education workshops.
* An annual “Bi Day” rally, with ~15 bi speakers, bi musicians, even bi ASL providers.
* At Pride we had a “famous bisexuals” exhibit and gave out thousands of free bi pins.
* We ran two statewide bi conferences.
* We published a monthly newsletter and a calendar of events for the seven Oregon bi organizations that we were in contact with.
* We had representation at countless queer community political meetings… We even played a small part in putting Multnomah County’s sexual orientation non-discrimination policy in place.
…And so, ultimately, those of us who were running the organization burnt out. It was a phenomenal time commitment, with once-a-week board meetings — and sometimes three meetings a week when we were hosting an event, or political events were afoot.
A cursory google search suggests that Portland Bisexual Women is still around… They’ve been going for 16+ years now. If you want to connect with what the state of things is now, they’d be the first folks I’d talk to.
File this under “where are they now?”, I suppose.