By Denise Penn

Bisexual activists were well represented among the more than 2,500 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights advocates convened in Oakland, Calif., to strategize around the critical 2006 mid-term elections. Racial justice was a key critical theme: As LGBT people are facing unprecedented attacks, the right-wing attempts to divide the African-American and LGBT communities to keep them from working together on issues of justice and equality. Combating these divisive efforts and strategizing for racial justice was a key focus of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change Conference, which included a pre-conference People of Color Organizing Institute and conference-wide workshops on racial and economic justice.

Bisexual activist and author Loraine Hutchins, co-editor of Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, and one of the founders of the modern bisexual movement, and Juba Kalamka (aka Pointfivefag), founding member of "homohop" crew Deep Dickollective (D/DC), were the opening speakers for the Thursday night plenary session Nov. 10.

Bisexuality and biphobia were important issues addressed at the conference. The religious right's attempts to create divisiveness within the LGBT community by promoting biphobia have been evident. Earlier this year, after an article titled "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited" appeared on the front page of The New York Times Science section on July 5, there was a firestorm of controversy. The article, which delved into reactions to a study of male sexuality, discounted bisexuality completely by concluding that bisexual men essentially do not exist.

Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman took the lead in organizing a response to the study: "The profoundly flawed 'study' [is] laced with biased premises, misstatements and inaccuracies. It equates sexual orientation with sexual arousal, as supposedly measured by a crude device -- considered highly suspect by researchers -- in the hands of an individual with a long history of controversial research. It defames the truth in the lives and loves of millions of bisexual men," he stated.

In the opening plenary, Hutchins addressed racism, sexism, biphobia, and homophobia as well as the themes of sexual freedom and liberation that were part of the movement in the '60s and '70s. She shared her favorite icon: Wonder Woman. "I have an obsession with Wonder Woman and have since the early '70s," she said. "As a dominatrix who is neither married nor a mom, she subverts gender norms, and advocates love, discipline and emotional re-education through bodily exercise and erotic bondage. She's all about pleasure and non-reproductive sex; sounds pretty queer to me."

"It was comforting to have Wonder Woman there as the war in Iraq looms," said Hutchins. "When I'm channeling Wonder Woman I quote the original 1940s Wonder Woman comic strip which explains her mission in this world. 'Remember she came here from an all-women's land to help out the U.S. government in a time of war. She is here because the forces of evil threaten our planet and my dear mother, the Amazon Queen of Paradise Island, has sent me here to the man's world to teach you all the way of loving submission to justice, and enlist you in her service to truth and love.'"

The plenary speech delivered by Juba Kalamka, founding member of "homohop" crew, Deep Dickollective, known for his commentary on the convergences and conflicts of race, identity, sexuality and class in pop culture focused on racism within the community and on racial, social and economic justice as well as commentary about life as a bisexual man. He talked about being 19 years old and seeing the late black gay filmmaker Marlon Riggs' film Tongues Untied on public television and then going to the Castro for the first time "I visited the Castro for the first time and found myself outside near the Castro Theater where Riggs walks in several scenes. In that moment, I thought, 'This is why I am here -- I am home.'"

"My idyllic notions of a queer community that was progressive around race had been shattered years before by Riggs' film, by the way he described his experience of the pervasive racism of the Castro and the Bay Area's extended gay community. Nevertheless, the infighting that existed among queer factions and how it began to overlap my preexisting issues made for some challenges around creating community out of these communities."

Kalamka expressed some of the challenges in blunt terms: "As part of those challenges, I learned that I and my fellow bisexuals weren't gay enough for a biphobic gay-ristocracy; that I dated too many women and too many white men for a black gay community; that I was too nigga, too hip-hop, and too feminist for a white gay male community comfortable in its overt and implicit misogyny and racism; too black and too funky and too black sissy for parts of my bisexual community too steeped in oblivious privilege and heteronormative pretense to recognize the overlaps of its classism, sexism, racism, and transphobia."

"As a black bisexual man, I have been at once frustrated and exhilarated standing at the intersection of communities and (seeming) conflicts of identity. To my gay brothers and lesbian sisters -- my brothers especially because the policy decisions of gay-identified men have controlled the timbre of much of the conversation within queer institutions."

Some attendees found the opening session a bit too "in your face," but Foreman disagreed, emphasizing that these are challenging times. There were several workshops on bisexual politics, bisexual health, and "honoring and getting beyond labels," as well as one on bisexuals and the same-sex marriage issue. There was also a bisexual caucus meeting which included a strategy session and plans for the next conference.

Kalamka's call to action was both a pledge to work together and a warning: "When they come -- and you know who I mean by they -- they will come for all of us, like they always have. When they come, they will not ask if you are queer in a same or different sex relationship, if you are monogamous or not, or how long you've been with a current partner. They will not care if you've sucked two dicks or 2,247 clits, if it was an hour ago or at Creating Change '98. They will not care if you are top, bottom, or switch, or how long you've been clean. They will not care if you're a Kinsey six and it was just that once that you snuck and had sex with a girl or a boy. What will matter is that they know -- because you were here, today -- that you are not one of them, and that is all that matters."