BiWifeLife Gender Inclusion?

Well, here we are at a crossroads. After a few years we’ve grown, folks have gotten to know and love us in concept, theory and as a resource.

Thing is bisexual married men, bi boyfriends, bi trans women and so many variations of bisexual in a relationship have asked me in the past few months “Hey, can I come to BiWifeLife too?”

The only thing my heart would allow me to say is “Of course, we don’t discriminate. This is a place for anyone bisexual involved in long term relationships.” The wheels started turning in my head to find a way to accommodate everyone who wanted to be here.

Even though the name of this blog is BiWifeLife, the issue is a bit bigger than that in my mind’s eye. The truth is there are SO MANY variations of bisexual that live lives within long term relationships and many face some of the very challenges bisexual married women face on a daily basis.

Men have such a stigma surrounding male bisexuality and when involved with a woman or even married to a woman being a bi guy can be insurmountably challenging.

Truth is, from issues pertaining to coming out to managing one’s sexual desires within relationships whether male, female, trans or in between life can be challenging on so many levels as a bisexual human.

After promoting biwifelife tirelessly for a few months I had to take in all the questions I’ve been asked and begin to realize the need for equal gender inclusion here in Our space.

The question is how to do that without alienating our steady readership of BiWives, long term girlfriends and straight husbands?

Well, after much thought KDaddy and I had a wonderful conversation on how to do just that.

As a bisexual husband himself, a great BiWifeLife Contributing Writer and a pretty straight forward kind of guy I’m beyond excited to announce KDaddy and I will join forces to launch a male inclusive aspect to BiWifeLifeBlog coming in Fall of 2015.

On the ground in NYC BiWifeLife will be joining forces with FluidBiDesign/MenKind to provide support here in New York City to bisexual men and women in long term relationships.

We will also be hosting a monthly Bisexual Social Mixer with a Roundtable Discussion in New York City. Wine and refreshments provided. 🙂 *If you would like to hold a BiWifeLife social mixer in your town email biwifelife@gmail.com and we’ll go over what we need to do to make that happen 🙂 *

We fully intend to be inclusive of all genders as of this Fall including trans women and trans men on both sides of this BiLifeBlog and of course in Our ground efforts.

Essentially we would become:  “A place for bisexual people of all genders involved in long term relationships and marriages.” 

Myself and Mercedes Jet will continue to cater to the BiWives and all female identified readers, KDaddy and newly hired writers will cater to all male identified readers.

There will be changes to the About page, Staff, tabs and the look and feel of the blog, but we WILL NOT loose focus in supporting bisexual married women in the least.

We aim to support everyone who struggles with bisexuality while maintaining healthy relationships with partners, spouses and friends.

We plan to roll out the “new” blog this Fall. 

In the meantime we’d love to hear what you guys think of the coming changes and how it may change our readership and community.

Please comment below. Your input on these changes are VERY valuable.

Sincerely,

-Jay Dee, Founder

What I Learned During Pride Month

Whew!

That was a very animated exhale of relief.

Pride month is over…but BiVisibility month is almost here.

June is the month designated for all things Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Asexual, Intersex (LGBTQAI). Rainbows drape our city from banners to building lights to colorful outfits on every other person and establishments working hard to get those gay dollars.

Every LGBTQAI organization or agency is in a frenzy the entire month promoting, throwing events, parties, classes, groups, gatherings, gallery showings, fashion shows, drag shows and anything else you can imagine to celebrate and acknowledge LGBTQAI Pride.

Sea of Flags. Coming down Christopher Street nearing the end of the Pride March, NYC, 2015

Now, here’s my take on it all.

My mother was very involved with The March as I was growing up. I marched as a child with her then in my teen years independently of her with youth groups.

I stopped participating in all things PRIDE around 18 for religious reasons (Pride is listed as one of the 7 deadly sins…I chose to not partake in any activities under that label). I marched again for the first time again at age 33 which was 2 years ago, then again this year.

The first year back was to immerse my husband in the Community so he could see this sexuality thing is much more than sex. There are many facets and layers to this sexuality thing. Not to celebrate my Queerness but to educate someone who knew a little but not a lot about the issues we face(d) and the journey we all still face. We did get “caught up” in the fever and partook in our fair share of indulgence 😉

The second year we marched together, him fully understanding the many faces of Our Community, in solidarity with “the movement”. He saw how the B in LGBTQAI seemed to be silent in so many ways. He understood the many levels of this LGBTQAI Community here in NYC and why I cared so much about Our Bi Community. 🙂

This year my daughter and I marched in partnership with The Brooklyn Community Pride Center to promote BiWifeLife in whatever capacity we could.

Under normal circumstances I’m not much involved in the LGBTQAI Community here in NYC or anywhere else due to the many layers and overtly oppressing politics within and the unspoken but all powerful “Gay hierarchy” in which Bisexuals are the dirty bunch, the bad apples and the kids “they” don’t like to play with.

I also avoid political bullshit (and there’s A LOT in NYC’s queer community) because I’m a very outspoken politically incorrect person at times (think Wendy Williams, Whoopie Goldberg). Especially when pissed off, therefore I choose to refrain from situations where I may rub the wrong person the wrong way and stagnate the growth of this BiWife Community.

Now, with all that being said, I love BiWifeLife. I really do.

I worked my butt off this entire month to build partnerships and promote Us.

Why?

Because there’s clearly a need for Our space and I’d love to make it truly accessible to every woman all over the world. I aspire to turn this blog into a 501c3 organization with ground meetings across the U.S and beyond if I could.

I also realize it’s not within my capacity to do so without the assistance of others.

I’d like to thank Our Contributing Author Mercedes Jet for traveling into NYC to be a part of this year’s march.

She carried our sign (which I was mortified to find had the wrong url…but folks have been finding Us anyway) through the entire march behind the banner of The New York City Bisexual Contingent which included many Bi groups such as NYBAN, BiRequest and others.

What I learned this year is how pertinent preparedness is for promoting one’s LGBTQAI Org, how much work it takes to publicize a new org in a sea of other orgs and how little sleep I would get.

Again, I also realized how much I couldn’t do alone.

In all honesty I don’t want to take the month of June to run myself ragged. I do still have a family and a Community does not  include ONE person alone. Father’s Day is important, my husband’s birthday happens to be Pride kickoff, the 26th and he would like ONE year where we just don’t do ANYTHING pride unless he wants.

I implore all you regular readers to ponder how YOU can contribute to getting the word out about BiWifeLife and helping others find US. 

There’s a host of approaches one could take from social media management to ground promotions to calling other orgs and sending emails and of course CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS.

This  is a CALL TO ALL READERS,  participate, don’t just watch the posts and comments, get involved!

We are here for you, help us make it possible to be there for people who don’t even know we’re here.

Email: biwifelife@gmail.com to become involved.

HUSBANDS, WIVES OF BIWIVES, SUPPORTERS IN ALL RESPECTS WELCOME!!!

-Jay Dee, Founder

BiWives in Africa?

I had to share an excerpt from this article. I found the perspective on bisexual married women by the women themselves very interesting. The fact the husband’s support them as well is so awesome.

Sounds like the U.S could use a lesson…

“Kendall is often quoted in discussions around homosexuality in Africa due to her research on same-sex relationships and sexuality among Lesotho women. Kendall spent a couple of years in Lesotho in the early 1990s; initially hoping to find women who identified as lesbians like herself, she was disappointed to discover that no Mosotho woman identified as lesbian. Yet some of the women who befriended Kendall became comfortable enough to reveal to her that it was not uncommon for women to kiss each other passionately in private, away from the gaze of men. Not limited to kissing, there were instances of tribadism, rubbing, fondling and oral sex between Basotho women who described these instances as women simply “loving each other” or “having a nice time together” while at the same time insisting that what they did was not.

Still Kendall reached the conclusion that Basotho women were aware of the erotic nature of their relationships with other women, even if they did not view their encounters as sexual. To these women, the erotic nature of their relationships with other women did not count as sex because to them sex involves a penis. One Mosotho woman, Mpho ‘M’atsepo Nthunya, spoke candidly about how her “special friend” chose her, and how elaborate feasts were celebrated to show the commitment between the two of them. These feasts involved eating, drinking, dancing, the exchange of gifts, and the ritual sacrifice of animals in what would seem like a wedding. The ceremonies were observed by other people, including the women’s husbands, all of whom knew and accepted that the two women were making a commitment to each other.

No matter that these feasts resembled weddings, they are not weddings, and yet these lesbian-like institutions are part of tradition, and suggest that in the pre-colonial past there were similar instances in which women formed intimate and erotic bonds that were publicly acknowledged and honoured. Kendall’s research highlights a very important aspect that is often overlooked in the battle to place, or to completely remove, homosexuality in African history. That indigenous African worldviews do not have names for same-sex relationships does not necessarily mean that such relationships were alien. The field of sexuality in Africa remains largely understudied, but we cannot assume that our ancestors would have regarded homosexuality as taboo even if they did not have a name for it.

We can thank European colonialism for the reconstruction of indigenous African modes of thinking and philosophy.Colonialism is also the root of the criminalisation of homosexuality that still persists in most post-colonial African countries, and also the crafting of identities on the basis of sexual preferences. At the same time, colonialism brought new terms in which sex is/was understood as well as encouraging the rise of homosexual identity as a social lifestyle. In the present day, while Western governments push for African governments to have more friendly approaches towards gay rights – counter-productively, because the harder they push, the more African governments resist what they see as neo-colonial meddling – other Western institutions,most of them religious, have encouraged anti-gay sentiment in countries like Uganda.”

Homosexuality and African history: the roots of the criminalisation of homosexuality

What do American BiWives think about this article?

-Jay Dee, Founder