tenth anniversary

[memevector]

Ten years ago today, I first went to my local bi group.

I'd been looking at a lot of bi/queer stuff for a few months before that, because I'd recently fallen in love with someone who identified as bi, and I felt a desire to understand their world. I'd found gay politics interesting ever since I understood that there was such a thing, but I'd thought of myself as straight, albeit with a few question marks.

One day in January 1995, I was reading an essay by a Lesbian writer, and it suddenly dawned on me: If I reframed some of my teenage feelings in the knowledge that it wasn't compulsory to choose between straight and gay, then the category "bi people" might include me. Ooh!

So for a few days I tried that idea out in my thoughts ("Here's the bi person walking down the street...") and it seemed to fit, and the sense of limits falling away was exhilarating.

Luckily it was only about a week from that day of realisation to the next bi group meeting (which I knew about from a listing on the net). And I happened to see a post from another newbie bi person nearby, and we made a plan via email to meet up and go together.

I was quite trepidatious waiting for the group to start, in case someone I knew walked by in the building and said "oh hi, what are you here for?" I didn't feel ready to answer that question! But luckily that didn't happen.

When we were actually sitting talking at the bi group, I looked round the room and I had a sense of "yes! these are my people!"

Afterwards as we left I was still harbouring some "am I bi enough? do I qualify?" But I was reassured by K, who said "Oh don't worry, I've been out as bi for years now and I still have that thought".

So I jumped into the bi community with both feet and here I still am! Hurrah!

Comments

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

Ten years ago today, I first went to my local bi group.

Blimey, I beat you there by about ten days. I always assumed you got there first.

[memevector.livejournal.com]

Happy tenth anniversary :-)

[mistdog.livejournal.com]

Nice to have you here.

I remember you being at Bicon 13 (1995), I didn't realise you were relatively newly out. You looked happy and confident, which I'm sure I didn't at my first Bicon, despite having been publicly out for about a year and having figured out I was bi about 7 years earlier.

[goodarcher.livejournal.com]

I've been in and out of the closet for years so it's nice to read positve postings like yours. I think I went to the First International Bicon in Amsterdam (1991) even before I went to a group (talk about jumping in at the deep end). The first group I went to was in Düsseldorf at around that time and it was run (initially unbeknown to me) by one of my students - a very nice surprise!

[memevector.livejournal.com]

Nice to have you here.

::grins::

I didn't realise you were relatively newly out. You looked happy and confident

Hmm, I remember someone else saying something like that a while ago.

I think one way in which I probably differed from the average BiCon first-timer is that, having gone to almost every bi event I could find in the previous 6 months, I knew about a dozen other BiCon-goers quite well before I got there, and I was sharing a flat with some of them. So I never had that "don't know anyone, who can I talk to, try to get the social courage up" stage.

It's also probably relevant that I'd spent a lot of time from 1990 to 1995 doing lots of "self-development" type stuff. I'm wiser now than I was then, but I was already getting to be fairly at home with my own feelings by then, and with the principles of how language relates to reality - a useful grounding for the world of identity politics :-) So I feel like it didn't take me long to get my bearings in the new territory when I first came out.

Having said that, it's not actually the case that I spent all of that BiCon happy. I took advantage of the "see a counsellor" facility at one stage, because being in the BiCon environment was stirring up some unfinished business with the aforementioned person I was in love with (although they weren't there themself).

I also remember feeling a bit oppressed, and at one point intensely irritated, by the apparent assumption (as expressed in numerous jovial references to "pulling") that everyone there including me was in pursuit of sex or at least snogs. I remember having a ranty outburst about that as we walked to the disco one night (not aimed at one person in particular, but a frustration with the whole environment). "I'm NOT here to PULL, all right?! There are other reasons to be here!" Or words to that effect.

But it's true that on the whole I had a good time and thought the whole thing was basically fab :-)

[mistdog.livejournal.com]

I've often found that assumption oppressive too, even sometimes when I did want to pull (I never succeeded).

As I've said elsewhere, I think BiCon has got more about this than it used to be in the early 90s.