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Saturday, April 23, 2011

2 of 4 - Oh the Power of Ecosexual Poetry! - My Genderless Love - Yemisi Ilesanmi

MY GENDERLESS LOVE!

I don’t walk straight

Not even for the bait

I am merry yet not gay

I am bi and I can bay

But saying goodbye

Is not my hallmark

Yet you all smack

Like I always play

Our goal is acceptance

Where is the tolerance

I am not gay enough

To be enfolded

Not sufficiently lesbian

To be embraced

Do I even talk Trans

Can’t brace the rants

You preach diversity

As community necessity

Yet you sneer

While I leer

When in the mall

Yes I want it all

With the dick

I play and lick

And the boobs

Makes me smooch

The big breasted

Leaves me besotted

With the hermaphrodite

I am a smitten Aphrodite

With the pussy

I get all fussy

The shaven sight

To suckle all night

The pert bums

Makes me bowl

The bouncy balls

I love to maul

With the Pecs

I need no specs

I am bisexual, not a player

So don’t make me a slayer

Like you I choose my partner

It is a natural attraction

And not just a selection

A sex you choose

My love I embrace

It matters not the gender

All I want is tenderness

For my love is genderless.

By Yemisi Ilesanmi 17 March, 2011

Biographical Note

Yemisi Ilesanmi

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a trade union/human rights activist. She has a Masters of Law (LLM) on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights from Keele University, Stadffordshire, UK and a Law degree(LLB) from Obafemi Awolowo University ile -Ife, Nigeria. She works with the Nigeria Labour Congress . She has served on many national and International labour/ human rights committees including as Vice president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) 2006-2009 and President of the ITUC Youth committee (2004-2009)

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a passionate human rights activist, bisexual, atheist and an unpublished poet and budding writer. She is interested in and often make public presentations on gender issues, sexuality rights, workers rights, youth representation and environmental protection. She is commited to a world of peace where justice reigns supreme.

Text originally published as a Note on Facebook, republished here with permission.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

1 of 4 - Oh the Power of Ecosexual Poetry! - Mother Nature, My Explosive Lover - Yemisi Ilesanmi

Mother Nature, My explosive lover !

Mother Nature

Beautiful you are

You smile and I waver

You kiss and I quiver

Aroused by your touch

Fed by your smooch

Melting my heart

Twisting my feelings

Swinging my being

With your seduction

Warm in the embrace

Of your blazing love

Your magical fingers

The waves conjures

Your tsunamic orgasm

Blows high and mighty

Many cry and scream

As you explode in cum

Your volcanic temper

Leaves me high and dry

In the grip of your love

I gasp for breath

How long shall I drown

In your magical prowess

Making love drenched

Like there is no tomorrow

Oh your anger

I cannot bear

You huff and puff

And the roof goes off

You blow hot and cold

And up it all goes in flames

You bat your seismic eyelashes

And everywhere floods

You shake your bounty

And the earth quakes

With your waves

The wind bows

You move a disc

And everything falls

Licking at your walls

Is it vanity that gives you airs

To sail on howling hairs

Do you seek attention

Or is it my provocation

That gets you in a hoot

For I am guilty too

Bombs I blow

Tear gas I howl

Carbonized air I emit

To get you to submit

Blame it on my human nature

To plough, prod and tear apart

But you my love

I thought are above

My human frailties

In all your subtleties

Lovesick I worship

At your holy shrine

In awe of your majesty

I marvel at your beauty

But now you come wheezing

With many screaming

Sorrows, tears and blood

You leave flowing

In the wake of your howling

Do you in sadistic pleasure gloat

Seeing the disaster you float

Or are these disasters

A harrowing cry for help

Do you cower in the dark

Hoping for a hug

You I cannot but bug

Amidst the floating bodies

Do you hear the screams

Of your helpless victims

Children, old and young

Barely hanging on

Do you flinch?

As they cling?

I preach acceptance

My wish is tolerance

I accept diversity

As life's necesity

But how long shall I bear

The brunt of your anger

Or is it just who you are

Oh mother nature, my love

With your tears you let me know

You are neither a God nor a Goddess

But like me, just a mere creation

You and I are not perfect

My human caprice we will capture

Your wild nature we will nurture

I tame mine, we tame yours

You and I babe

Can be together

A lifetime longer.

Yemisi Ilesanmi

By Yemisi Ilesanmi 14 March, 2011

Biographical Note

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a passionate human rights activist, bisexual, atheist and an unpublished poet and budding writer. She is interested in and often make public presentations on gender issues, sexuality rights, workers rights, youth representation and environmental protection. She is committed to a world of peace where justice reigns supreme.

Text originally published as a Note on Facebook, republished here with permission.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

8 of 8 - BiTopia: Conclusion and Works Cited. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010's Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

Conclusion

Last August at UEL a sense of hope and joy of coming together emanated from the mere simultaneous presence of so many bis with different interests, backgrounds and motivations for participating. When BiCon 28, 10 ICB, and BiReCon converged, BiTopia came alive. The sober walls of academe were made more spirited and effervescent by the concrete presence of such an imaginative congregation of folks from many countries, genders, queer subcultures, age groups, venues, and walks in life.

The 26^th was research day and at BiReCon one would find work that breaks new ground. The research presented was informed and reliable yet wide-ranging enough to trade in paradigmatic issues. It was free of media friendly sensationalism and ivory tower abstractions. The very concept of bisexuality, with its multiple meanings and implications, offers a prism through which the semiotics that organize cultural constructions of love can be sorted out. The contents of that day have been elaborated into articles and organized in five clusters. We are grateful to the authors who submitted to us and revised. We hope to have orchestrated a volume that honors BiReCon’s momentous quality.

In subsequent days, one would get a sense of the lore of bisexuality, how bi people like to dress, how they relate, what they talk about, the urban legends they trade. Imaginativeness, creativity, playfulness, a certain taste for the odd, the eccentric, an inclination for the carnivalesque, the topsy-turvy, for the giggly excess, the performative, the subversive. Different age groups met, who have experienced biphobia at different times and in different contexts, yet with the same sense that integration of perceived opposites is what dissipates the fears. The festive atmosphere was traversed with a vibration that energized the intention to respond to the challenges that make bisexuality necessary as a transformative force for the new millennium.

Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, February 20^th, 2011

Works Cited and Consulted

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena. Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena, ed. Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Cantarella, Eva. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. Yale University Press, 1992. (Original title: Secondo natura, “according to nature”.)

Chedgzoy, Kate. “Two Loves I Have: Shakespeare and Bisexuality.” In Bi Academic Intervention Eds, The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire. London: Cassell, 1997.

Garber, Marjorie. Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution. University of California Press, 1997.

______ . Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Marshall, Nowell. “Refusing Butler’s Binary: Bisexuality and Performative Melancolia in Mrs. Dalloway.” In Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Jonathan Alexander Eds, Bisexuality and Queer Theory. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Storr, Merl. Bisexuality: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, 1999.

Wikipedia: Docklands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Docklands

Thanks for reading us. We hope you have enjoyed. Please leave a comment. More exciting posts to follow on diverse topics in the near future!

© Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, transferred to Taylor & Francis for upcoming publication in BiReCon, a selected proceedings issue of the Journal of Bisexuality. Prepublished here courtesy of T & F. Stay tuned for volume and buy it online!

Read the Journal of Bisexuality online, the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of all aspects on bisexuality. Check out our latest: a provocative special-topics issue on Bisexuality and Queer Theory!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

7 of 8 - BiTopia: Bisexual Cultural Productions, Interpretations, Reflections. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010's Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

Cluster 5. Bisexual Cultural Productions, Interpretations, Reflections

The imagination is the realm of human life out of which new visions emanate, with their powerful reverberations across space and time. The fifth cluster includes contributions that discuss cultural constructions and interpretations of bisexuality in the social media, film, drama, and future life. These articles, and the sources they discuss, help us imagine how the world beyond the homo/hetero divide—this wide open world without binaries--would feel, look, read, and perform like.

“Blogging Bisexuals” is a social-media article that registers the experiences of two bloggers and their respondents to examine the role of blogging in the bloggers’ coming out process. Sue George is known to the public for her work on bisexuality. She also draws on her own experience as a blogger in this article. The blogosphere is a new realm of the imagination where love is signified. Its virtual character makes it more open to unconventional expressions and impulses. Its accessibility makes it a natural resource for “coming out” of one’s asphyxiating monosexual lifestyle. The two cases discussed show how the blogosphere served the purpose in different circumstances.

In “Bisexuality in the Cinema,” B.C. Roberts analyzes Anglophone film criticism discourse about bisexuality as mapped by critics who identify as bisexual. Robert reviews a vast array of secondary sources ranging over a fairly inclusive body of films with prominent bisexual tropes. Her claim is that this discourse has been shaped by dominant strategies for representing bisexuality. Roberts suggests a focus on the medium itself as a way to eschew this dominant bias.

Plays By Shakespare, Painting by Sir John Gilbert

On a more hopeful note, Kaye McLelland proposes bisexual readings for a significant range of Shakespeare’s works, including plays and poems, in her multivoiced article, “Toward a Bisexual Shakespeare.” This is the kind of article any formally trained drama critic who honestly studies bisexuality would like to publish. Since my early days as an English major in my undergraduate career at the University of Sassari, Italy, I thought English literature was fabulous because its centerpiece, its cultural icon, was bi. That’s what really got me to continue in that field and specialize in drama! “Two loves I have” (# 144) is the sonnet I typically use to start off my workshops on bisexuality. The Bard declares he loves a “man right fair” and a “woman coloured ill,” I reason--who in the wide world could doubt he’s bi?

The "Bard"

But obviously, my reasoning does not take into account the dynamics involved in the construction of national literary canons. What if English children found out at a tender age that a whole literary tradition is built on someone so “unpromotable” and “unreliable”? That’s where McLelland’s article helps out. The only reason why I can think so freely--I realize--is that I’m not a subject of the British Crown! McLelland enters the fray of this highly charged discussion with a gentle yet firm touch. She claims that bisexual readings of Shakespeare are realistic and plausible, with the added bonus of being--to bisexual readers--highly desirable. From her discussion, one gathers that the complexity and depth of understanding of bisexuality in Shakespeare’s oeuvre is such that it requires one to revisit all the meanings of bisexuality as they evolved in the modern era and became interrelated in culture and language.

Oberon, Titania, Puck, in Midsummer Night's Dream

In this article, we observe that as a side effect of the homo/hetero divide, Shakespeare has been monosexualized one way or the other. McLelland’s discussion levels the playfield to where any actual bisexual interpretations of a specific work or set of works by the Bard will register as as legitimate as one based in any other sexual orientation. When it comes to a cultural icon around which so much in the ways of maintaining the status quo is invested, that is to say a lot! Last but not least, Hartmut Friedrichs’ “Politics Strategy: Bisexual or Queer” envisions transformative goals for bisexuality that affect a whole range of areas in human life, and discusses strategies that may be effective in timeframes ranging from the present to a whole century from now.

To be be continued: 8 of 8 - Conclusion. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

6 of 8 - BiTopia: Bisexuality at Work. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010's Proceeding Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

Cluster 4. Bisexuality at Work

For people who work for a living, the expression of bisexuality is possible to the extent to which it is compatible with the way we make a living. Research on bisexuality in the workplace featured prominently at BiReCon, providing evidence of a clear need to make the environments where people work more aware of bisexuality and its complexity. Dispelling myths, educating people about differences, putting a human face on the ‘different,’ all of these areas of action are common with other queer subgroups. But what is specific about bisexuality? How do bis get constructed in public and professional spaces by those who don’t know us for who we are? These were the foci of the “Workplace” BiReCon track.

The three articles contributed to our cluster give evidence that more study is necessary. Awareness of other non-normative sexualities that abide by the monosexual paradigm--including gay and lesbian sexualities--is by no means sufficient. Indeed, it is precisely among these queer subgroups that the challenge to monosexuality bisexual people present is often met with most distrust. Are bisexuals really “reliable”? Or is some deep-seated distrust in the way of a fuller appreciation of our profession qualities?

Heidi Bruins Green, Nicholas Payne, and Jamison Green are a team of scholars who research the workplace experiences of bisexual people. In “Working Bi” they present their preliminary findings based on an extensive questionnaire administered to over 800 respondents from five continents. Helena See and Ruth Hunt also team up in “Bisexuality and Identity” to observe the experience of bisexuality in the UK, based on data compiled by Stonewall (a major LGBTI advocacy organization in the EU). There is an uncanny resonance between the two accounts. Both studies observe that bisexual people’s perceived “failure to choose” causes the perception that we are “less competent and reliable than [our] straight, lesbian or gay colleagues” (See, 7). Green and her team directly correlate this construction with out-bisexuals being seen as “unpromotable by management and leaders” (Green, 15).

Why does this sound familiar? It’s another aspect of the homo/hetero divide--binary logic that clutters genuine perceptions of reality. The perceived “failure to choose” makes the potential and talents of bisexual people largely invisible in the workplace. Our talents get fewer chances to develop, to the potential detriment of society and the planet. It’s time to reorganize discourses about sexuality! Bisexual people choose! Especially when we are out in the workplace--and any other areas of our lives--our choice is a very difficult one. It is highly demanding of oneself. Its price to society and the planet is yet to be assessed. Gays and lesbians, who have suffered similar stigmatizations in the past, can now invoke the protection of monosexuality--with the affinity for monogamy that implies.[1] More support from these sectors of the LGBTI community is desirable.

When the playfield is leveled, when monosexualities are not considered intrinsically superior to bisexualities, that demanding choice will be a strong reason to consider bisexuals especially promotable and reliable. In her brief article, Carola Towle outlines the progress of UNISON, a service trade union in the UK, toward outlining a policy appreciative of bisexuality. Let’s hope that by the time this and other policies are implemented, the ignorance upon which this false sense of mono superiority relies is debunked.

[1] For overlaps between polyamory (or responsible non-monogamy) and bisexuality, I refer to my edited collection Plural Loves (2005).

To be be continued: 6 of 8 - Bisexual Cultural Productions, Interpretations, Reflections. Includes comments on contributions by Sue George, B.C. Roberts, and Kaye McLelland. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

5 of 8 - BiTopia: Bisexuality Through the Lifespan. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010's Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon

Cluster 3. Bisexuality Through the Lifespan

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

While the effects of biphobia rage in many quarters, the discourse of bisexuality has expanded in others, including the meaningfulness of bisexuality through the human lifespan. This is the focus of the third cluster.

Jones's Study: Bis Imaging Future

“Imagining Bisexual Futures” organizes data from past BiCon surveys and a workshop on aging at BiReCon 2010 called “When I Get Old” to explore how bisexual people imagine and wish to organize our late life. Rebecca Jones, a Lecturer at the Open University in Buckinghamshire, proposes an ethnomethodological perspective to examine normativity as defined within a given subculture in its interfaces with scripts and expectations that evolve in mainstream culture. In her view, in these subcultures, we observe a forging and re-forging of normativites that are in flux. Her research implies the trust that imagining non-normative futures in a workshop can help to actualize them. Being on the verge of designing the next chapter of my own life, I found this workshop very inspiring. How can bis design chapters in our lives that reflect the way we want to be? Can ‘normativity’ be redesigned to accommodate bisexual people’s dream late-life? Or will old bis get to be ‘normalized’ and pushed back into the closet by assisted living and the medicalization of late-life? Could old-age be the time when we bis get to finally fulfill our inclusive amorous fantasies? Jones’ research maps these possibilities, since the imagination is where it all begins!

Jones's Study" Bis Imagining Future

In “There Has Been No Phase in My Life When I Wasn’t Somehow Bisexual,” Finnish anthropologist Jenny Kangasvuo provides some concrete examples of how the meaning of bisexuality can evolve in one’s life. In 1999, Kangasvuo’s interviews with 40 bisexual-identified Finnish people opened her career. Now she revisits a number of her subjects with follow-up questions designed to understand “what kind of meaning does the concept of bisexuality have in their lives” (7). Informants evolved along different paths: Some had children, some formed a family with a same-gender partner, some with an other-gender partner, some married and divorced under the new Finnish laws for marriage equality. Bisexuality remained significant in organizing meaning in their lives.

Jones' s Study: Bis Imagining Future

To be be continued: 6 of 8 - Cluster 4: Bisexuality at Work. Includes comments about contributions by Heidi Bruins Green, Helena See, and Carola Towle. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!

Saturday, April 2, 2011

4 of 8 - BiTopia: Contexts for Biphobia and Bi-Negativity. Read Introduction to BiReCon 2010's Proceedings Volume

Bi ReConNaissance: Introduction to BiReCon

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

Cluster 2. Contexts for Biphobia and Bi-Negativity

Freedom of sexual expression is often considered a fundamental human right. In this context , we observe that when research projects are designed with the intent to respect this right, results for bisexuality are encouraging. Even so, when we open up wider horizons, when we delve more deeply into human relatedness and its dynamics, we find that biphobia and bi-negativity are far from disappearing. This is the focus of the second cluster. Where does the fear of bisexuality make its appearance? What are the contexts, dynamics, situations that trigger biphobia? What deeper levels of disunity, denial, mistrust, does this fear manifest? How are organizations, communities, families, relationships traversed by it? How do biphobia and bi-negativity get symbolized? What political, cultural, economic forces power its perpetuation and reproduction? What are the costs to humanity in terms of personal and social life? These and many related questions are addressed in the two articles in this section: “Deconstructing Biphobia,” by Miguel Obradors-Campos, and “Shady Characters,” by Christian Klesse.

People at BiCon

In “Deconstructing Biphobia,” Miguel Obradors-Campos presents a non-essentialist theory of biphobia as a form of oppression that manifests within and without LGBT communities and is a direct result of the overarching binary that organizes knowledge about love in western cultures. Obradors’ perspective is steeped in epistemology, ontology, and other significant aspects of the Western philosophical tradition, from the classics to Kant and beyond. He brings his background in the Romance languages to bear on the complexity of the topic, showing how biphobia is a state of mind. It is an honor to bring such complexity of Latinate lexicon and sentence structure into the multivoiced discourse of this volume. Klesse shifts to the even more personal and unstable terrain of amorous relationships. His reference point is heteronormativity, or the ‘normalization’ of heterosexuality that typifies essentialist discourses. Can bisexuals really organize our amorous lives around a divide that denies us? Both authors provide evidence of how prejudice, fear, ignorance, and confusion about bisexuality affect the lives of openly bisexual people very deeply, and keep bisexual cultures and communities from expanding as naturally and organically as they should in a healthy society.

To be be continued: 5 of 8 - Cluster 3: Bisexuality Through the Lifespan. Includes comments about contributions by Rebecca Jones and Jenny Kangasvuo. Watch out for this exciting section in a few days!