The Obama administration has announced that next month it will hold the first ever White House round table to discuss bisexual issues. The session, to be held September 23, will be off the record and closed to the press. No word on whether President Obama will put in an appearance.
Invitations to the meeting were sent via email on August 16. In the invitation, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Blade, White House LGBT liaison Gautam Raghavan says that “participants and administration officials will discuss a range of topics including health, HIV/AIDS, domestic and intimate partner violence, mental health, and bullying.”
“It’s a testament to this administration that they are focusing on all elements of the LGBT community and they should be applauded for hosting an event focused on some of the specific issues impacting bisexual people,” HRC spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz told the Blade.
tdx3fan
This can not possibly be a real meeting because we all know that bisexuals do not actually exist!
Kangol
So glad to see the White House is advancing the conversation on LGBTIQ people, including the “Bs” in that acronym.
GeriHew
@tdx3fan: Huh?
You’re just joking, right?
boring
This can not possibly be a real meeting because I wasn’t invited.
grero
Nothing but pandering.
GeriHew
@grero: I sincerely hope it is not because this is going to give many people some hope. It should have happened a long time ago and is absolutely necessary.
‘ This discussion will be the first time this administration or frankly any administration has acknowledged the myriad issues affecting bisexual Americans. While it is often assumed that non-monosexuals are easily assimilated into LGBTQ culture and deal with similar struggles, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s 2011 report Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations – http://www.sf-hrc.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=989 – paints a very different picture. According to their research, bisexuals were statistically more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, hypertension, complications from smoking, alcoholism and other mood or anxiety disorders, and poor health in general. They were also more likely to live in poverty, less likely to have access to health care and quite significantly more likely to commit or seriously consider suicide than their straight, gay or lesbian counterparts. The report attributes many of these findings to non-monosexual individuals feeling invisible or isolated, that their sexual orientation is considered immoral, invalid or “just a phase.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that in a sample group of nearly 1,000 women, 61% of bisexual women reported some incident of rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner, compared with about 43% of lesbian women and 35% of heterosexual women. The research also found that bisexual women were statistically more likely to be raped or subject to unwanted sexual contact regardless of relationship status, and also more likely to report that the incident(s) had affected their lives in a negative way. While this of course does not mean that the stigma and oppression faced by bisexuals are “worse” than that experienced by gays, lesbians or any other group, the data clearly points to the conclusion that the issues experienced by bisexuals are unique and distinct, and that investigating their solutions requires treating them as such. ‘
Read whole article:
http://www.autostraddle.com/white-house-will-talk-about-bisexual-issues-for-the-first-time-ever-192051/
crazycorgi
Bisexual issues? What issues could bisexuals honestly have since they present themselves to mainstream society as straight by only having visable relationships with someone of the opposite sex? True, they “fool around” with same sex partners but at the end of the day they always find an opposite sex partner to marry and have children with in order to conform.
grero
@GeriHew: And what is a man living a mansion going to do about any of this? Does Obama have a magic wand to fix these problems? What is he going to do?
@crazycorgi: Issues like people who make them feel unwelcome by painting bisexuals with a broad brush.
grero
@crazycorgi: Also, it’s bad enough that straight people are bigoted against bisexuals, but why wouldn’t many bis opt for conformity since so many gays like yourself are completely unwelcoming?
BrandoPolo
@crazycorgi: Typically misinformed biphobic bigot. In fact, most people who qualify as more or less bisexual on the Kinsey scales prefer their own sex. And, in fact, most out bisexual men end up with sex lives that are effectively gay due to unwillingness of straight women to have relationships with bi men, relative to gays.
But don’t let facts get in the way of your bigotry.
GeriHew
@crazycorgi, grero and BrandoPolo
All your comments are showing why bisexual people need a lot more visibility.