QUESTION OF THE MONTH: A eulogy

Content notes for this month’s column: anti-bi+ violence, anti-trans violence, death, bi and pan erasure and invisibility, depression, and much more. Please take care of yourselves. You are so important.

This month’s question is my own: How do we go on?

How do we keep placing one foot in front of the other, much less holding our heads high to see the obstacles in front of us? How do we stop from tripping, falling, skinning our knees, scraping our hands?

This Pride Month was marked by a distinct lack of coverage of bisexual+, pansexual, and other nonmonosexual community celebrations, despite bi+ contingents attending festivals and marching in parades across the world, including in London Pride, marked last year by the exclusionary rhetoric of anti-trans feminists. Carrying a huge banner shouting #BWithTheT, bisexual, pansexual, queer, fluid, and other nonmonosexual Brits marched this year in open resistance to the anti-trans, anti-bi+ rhetoric that seeks to drive our community apart.

Did the #BWithTheT action get any coverage? No.

Photo credit Hollie Wong (@HollieWong on Twitter).

The few widely-published articles on the bisexual+ community during June walked the same well-worn paths that articles on bisexuality+ tend to take: Can you believe that people are still mean to bisexual+ people? We make up more than half of the community! Bisexual+ people are so depressed!

Now, I want to lift up the authors of these pieces. Zachary Zane is one of the few consistently published bi+ journalists writing on bi+ and pan topics. And Robyn Ochs wrote a gorgeous piece for the Nation about how bi+ community has always challenged norms. Instead, I want to critique the mainstream media outlets who continue to ask for and accept tragedy porn, trauma porn, and listicles about the bi+ community, instead of asking for and accepting pieces about our resilience, our resistance, our diversity, our truth, and our beauty.

So what is our truth? What is our beauty?

Our truth is that we are depressed. “[We] suffer from poor mental health due to biphobia, invisibility and erasure, . . . especially those in opposite-sex relationships.” We are attacked. We are harmed.

And we are killed.

The deaths of two openly* bisexual+ people marked the month of July. On the 13th, Bianca Devins came out as bisexual on her Instagram. The next day, her boyfriend killed her, taking photos of her body and posting them on unmoderated forums across the internet.

Less than a week later, Russian activist Yelena Grigoryeva was killed after her name was added to a violent anti-LGBT hit site that offered rewards for the deaths of prominent Russian activists. (*There is some dispute over Yelena Grigoryeva’s sexual orientation. GayStarNews reports that a source told them she was bisexual.)

That same day, Denali Berries Stucky was killed in South Carolina, the twelfth black trans woman to be killed this year. Her family is fundraising for her funeral. Why did I include Denali here? For many reasons. First, our fates are entwined. White cisgender inaction (including the inaction of white cisgender bisexual and pansexual people) is killing black transgender people, and when black transgender people are safe, so will we all be. Second, many transgender people are bisexual+ or pansexual, but those intersections are often erased to make way for easy storytelling and accusations of bi-erasure and transphobia. Denali is part of our community.

We stand BWithTheT.

How do we go on?

How do we mourn and march and act through our pain?

How can I as a white, mostly cisgender bi+ person stand in true solidarity with my full community, leveraging my grief into action?

Even before Bianca, Yelena, and Denali’s deaths, I asked my community on Twitter about their sadness.

The answers were predictable, emotional, and telling. The lack of community support for bisexual and pansexual people is killing us, quite literally, and so we are building our own communities, our own support.

Milo is a black, queer, goth writer, budding leftist, and synthesizer fan. They said:

Amy, is a shameless fangirl, a political junkie, and a runner. She says she feels:

Gwen is a queer UU 30something. She told me:

wiskey wine water told a short story.

I worry that this is another one of those articles. The trauma porn. The tragedy porn. Maybe there isn’t a way to escape that right now, when we’re dying and hurting and struggling to feed ourselves and one another.

Maybe we’re all just doing what we can.

Or maybe we can do better, demand better.

I don’t know the answer. Correction: there are lots of answers and we are they. We are the answers. Our lives, our beauty, that is our truth.

This is a eulogy for Bianca, for Yelena, for Denali. For ourselves. For our pain. For our pride.

Tell me what you’re mourning this month. Whom you’re celebrating.