Thread by @p_vulnerable

We're supposed to be attracted to one, opposite, binary gender.

We've made some progress toward deleting "opposite."

The rest of it is still being defended fully, invisibly, and viciously.

This #BiHealthMonth, I want everyone to understand what that really means.

First:
* Yes, these numbers are real.
* What are the 2 resources? @NetworkBi (in the UK but also online), and the CPT group I'm about to start (info below).
* Why no aces? Bc these studies didn't give those stats. But FYI, the stats for aces are consistently closest to bisexuals.

* Yes, all this includes "straight-passing" bisexuals.

Think about it: do closeted gay and trans people avoid oppression?

No. They may avoid direct attacks by hiding, but they develop hypervigilance and anxiety, and become isolated and depressed. Every relationship is a threat.

More Q&A, with the citations, at the end of this thread.

But it would suck to post all this without some support for the people reading it. So, second of all: your next two #BiHealthMonth Advent Calendar gifts.

This community has always been at the core of the LGBTQ+ movement:

Bisexuals have had founding or foundational roles in:

The college gay student movement;
GSAs in high schools;
Pride;
The orange juice "gaycott" that brought national attention to gay rights for the first time;

The first LGBTQ anti-discrimination ordinance in NYC, and its very eventual passage;
The arrests in aid of that bill which led to the creation of Lambda Legal, and eventually, to the marriage equality movement it took on;
Radicalesbians/Lavender Menace;
The Furies Collective;

Sex ed in general; 
[Sidebar: here's why that's important! glaad.org/amp/queering-s…]
Safer sex education in the AIDS crisis; 
The first HIV/AIDS switchboard for women; 
Shutting down Michigan Womyn's Music Festival; 
The first queer anti-discrimination bill that ACTUALLY passed;

The first org for Black lesbians and gay men;
A whole lot of the organizing for at least the first three Marches on Washington;
The first national gathering of lesbian/gay people of color;
The first conference on HIV in the Black Community;

Sidebar: ALL of those bullet points were ABilly S. Jones-Hennin, @HenninJones. The man is a powerhouse! That Third World Conference was THE SAME WEEKEND as the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights! He was the logistics coordinator for the March! Just, HOW??

And in researching all this, I found out we wouldn't even have had those Marches on Washington for our rights w/o him. Because most D.C.-area gay orgs did not support the first March. But the D.C. chapter of his org smoothed the way for it to happen.

archives.rainbowhistory.org/exhibits/show/…

In fact he also:
Founded the Langston Hughes-Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, a feminist and anti-racist alternative to the Gertrude Stein Club;
Co-founded Gay Married Men's Association (GAMMA);
Founded Gay Fathers;
Directed Minority AIDS Programs for the National AIDS network;

Was an early staffer in Whitman-Walker Clinic's HIV/AIDS education programs for sex workers, injecting drug users, and homeless and incarcerated populations;
Managed federal/state HIV research & eval projects;
Served on the board of HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive).

#BiPlus activists also founded or co-founded:
The first Los Angeles Gay Pride March;
[great stuff here: berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2002-10-…]
The first Seattle Pride March;
The first Richmond, CA Pride events and the organization that runs them; 
GAYouth, one of the first youth orgs;

The Gay Teen Task Force in Miami FL (now PrideLines);
Florida's 1980 privacy rights amendment, which protected LGBTQ+ people from government policies against them;
The Health Crisis Network (now CareResource) which did HIV outreach, especially for Latino married men;

A lot of the pushback against the Briggs Amendment that would have banned gay men and lesbians from working in schools; 
The National Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans of America;
The first court case to guarantee gays the right to a government job;
AIDS Walk Orange County;

ACT-UP SF;
The ACT UP/Boston IV League needle exchange, one of the first in the US;
Training for religious leaders on how to support HIV+ people;
The first safer sex outreach to young women; 
The nation’s first family focused services to HIV+ women of color....

And more.

That's a LOT.

And I had to restrain myself, or I would never have finished. I didn't even start on Cianna Stewart, or Martha Shelley, or Lindasusan Ulrich, or Emily Drennen, or....

But I WILL add one last bit on Rebecca Hensler:

On the cover of an old SFBG, she is pictured howling with rage, as she prepares to scatter friend Colin Blakeney's ashes at a protest of the governor's needle exchange veto.

In 2011, she founded Grief Beyond Belief, for grieving atheists.

toreallybeawitness.com/2020/10/17/ash…

Now it's time for the #BiHealthMonth Advent Calendar's next gift:

This brochure from @BRC_Central
has helpful guidance, both on supporting mental health FOR bisexuals, and supporting bisexuals if you're not one.

biresource.org/wp-content/upl…

And today's. Which brings us back around to the topic of #BiHealthMonth, and that second resource for trauma survivors.

Beginning on Sunday, April 11, I'm running a 12-week, online, peer-led CPT group. It's excellent for getting rid of negative internalized beliefs from trauma.

You can sign up here:
…werfullyvulnerable.vipmembervault.com/products/cours…

Any kind or "amount" of trauma. And yes, research shows that being marginalized is traumatizing.
doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi…

Anyone with a non-binary sexual or relationship orientation is welcome. Bi+? A-spec? Polyamorous? C'mon in.

It's $18/week for 12 weeks, starting on April 11th. Scholarships are available, just DM if you need one for you or a friend.

(Do not worry about taking somebody else's scholarship. I promise you there are more scholarships than anyone will need. I pinky swear.)

Pass it on!

And now for all those citations from this infographic. (Remember the infographic this thread started out with? That was a long time ago. In fact, I might just have to paste it in here again.)

We're supposed to be attracted to one, opposite, binary gender.

We've made some progress toward deleting "opposite."

The rest of the sentence is still defended fully, invisibly, and viciously.

This #BiHealthMonth, I want everyone to understand what that really means.

Suicide stats for trans youth are from the Trevor Project: thetrevorproject.org/survey-2020/?s…

Suicide stats for cis youth are from the 2019 YRBS:
yrbs-explorer.services.cdc.gov/#/graphs?quest…

Cis youth depression is again from the YRBS, trans youth depression is from the Trevor Project: thetrevorproject.org/wp-content/upl…

Disability and poverty are from the williams institute williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/upl…

College food insecurity:

hope4college.com/wp-content/upl…

Stats on trans sexual assault by orientation are from the bi+ report from the us trans survey: lgbtmap.org/file/A%20Close…

And on cis people are from the CDC's NVSIS:
cdc.gov/violencepreven…

Stats on sexual victimization are from studies that use the SES-SFV, which includes a broader range of different kinds of sexual assault, and doesn't require them to think of it as assault/rape. So the numbers are higher, and more accurate.

Gay & bi men: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Correction: CIS gay and bi+ men.

Straight women, lesbians, and bi+ women:
sci-hub.se/https://journa…
That one does include a tiny number of trans people, but too few to affect the outcome statistically.

Straight cis men: 

28% using the SES-SFV: commons.und.edu/cgi/viewconten…

38% was using the PRSPS-V, which seemed to be more accurate for het men: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

I didn't screenshot before my free trial expired, and it's paywalled. Ask @raeann_a_phd if you'd like to read it!

Binary trans people:
There was almost no research that used the SES-SFV and had large sample sizes of trans people. This one did, but it did not separate their rates out by gender. (It did have a few nonbinary people, but not enough to affect it.)
rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_…

And the nonbinary bi+ number:

There were no studies that included a large enough number of enbies to be statistically valid, except for @raeann_a_phd's study of bisexuals - which ended up being 65% enbies.

commons.und.edu/cgi/viewconten…

Again, the two resources on earth for bi+ survivors are:
1. The Bi Survivors Network, @NetworkBi, and
2. The CPT group I'm starting.
…werfullyvulnerable.vipmembervault.com/products/cours…
Literally, that's how bad it is, I just doubled the number of resources.

There is a chapter by Sarah Head, called "Understanding Power Dynamics in Bisexual Intimate Partner Violence: Looking in the Gap," in this new textbook, though.

Looks like great, groundbreaking research, but I haven't read it yet.

sci-hub.se/downloads/2020…

And the 0.089%?
Here are the global-but-not-U.S. numbers: lgbtfunders.org/research-item/…
Here are the U.S. numbers: lgbtfunders.org/research-item/…
I just added the 2017 and 2018 dollar amounts for the bi+ community together, did the same for the total funding, and divided A by B.

IIRC, it was 0.1% for the US specifically, and 0.05% globally-but-not-U.S. that's one-tenth of one percent, and one half of... a... listen, I'm not here to do math.

And to answer the obvious question there: Yes, there is also funding for LB, GB, and LGBT+ causes/orgs, which in theory should help bisexuals.

Look at those numbers again, and tell me if it is helping bisexuals.

(The longer answer is this: