News

As a lesbian who came out at the age of 34, I had no experience with the LGBTQI+ community, at all. I grew up in a regional town, moved to an even smaller regional town when I was 28, and only found my feet once moving to Melbourne in March 2019. When I say Melbourne, I mean a leafy suburb that is very family focused. So even though I came out a few months after moving to “Melbourne”, I was still unable to immerse myself in the queer culture.

Pride season or otherwise, I love a good queer story. It’s a central theme in the LGBTQIA+ experience – every “a-ha!” moment, turning point, faux pas, you name it – if it’s a tale of the queer journey, I am here for it.

If you’re a bi+ person in an opposite-sex relationship, this situation may be all too familiar. You turn up to a queer event, hoping to meet some new people and fulfil a desperate need to belong, when the inevitable moment arrives: you must reveal your partner’s pronoun. If you’re a ‘she’ in a relationship with a ‘he’ (or vice versa), your queerness is immediately questioned. If you’re a cis woman with a femme appearance, or a cis man with a masc appearance, you could be treated with suspicion and even anger.

Kimmy grew up in a Wheatbelt country town 40 years ago, and says they first recognised they were “same-sex attracted at the same time I was aware I was heterosexually attracted.” But in this town “there was no such thing as bisexual.”

“Gay was something that happened once a year in Sydney,” Kimmy says, “and violent homophobia was the norm.”

Throughout childhood I was always the outsider. Geeky, socially inappropriate, independent and protective of my freedom, the natural tendency to fit in didn't rule my life. And it's not because I'm a natural rebel. Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, this was the 1980s and individualism was not yet in vogue.

The vast majority of people around the world are now familiar with the terms gay, lesbian, bi, and trans. Over many decades the familiar acronym that started as LGB has grown to LGBTQ+ (and other acronyms depending on where you are), but less is known about who the “+” represents. As we explore and learn more about ourselves and each other in our ever evolving and rapidly changing world, we coin new terms to include other forms of love and/or attraction (or lack thereof). That “+” is a small symbol with an enormous meaning, and among the many terms included with that little plus are pansexuals like me.

Transgender Awareness Week has rolled around once again. This internationally recognised LGBTQ event is a chance for transgender folks to make their struggles known. The week ends with Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual day to look back in horror, disgust and sadness at the lives of transgender people who've been taken from our world for living as their authentic selves.

Many don’t understand how someone can be ‘non-binary’. The term has become an umbrella for those of us who don’t connect the genders we were assigned at birth, and don’t connect with our opposite. And no, we can’t “just pick one”.

The calendar has finally flipped over to June and we know what that means - it’s Pride Month. I have a complicated feelings towards this time of year.  Admittedly, it’s not all that different from how I feel about Sydney Mardi Gras in many ways.  As a bi person, I have felt excluded from Pride events more times than I can count.  I’m sick of giant corporations trying to convince us they actually care about LGBTQIA+ rights by selling things with rainbows on them.  I’m fed up with the cis-man, white, gay, able-bodied, neurotypical lens that is pushed in order to make the LGBTQIA+ community seem more palatable to straight people.

When I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of friends that were boys. In fact I don’t think I had a boy as a friend until I got to university and...well, I’m still dating him. I did have a lot of female friends however, and from a fairly young age I started experimenting with girls (and not in a science lab, wearing white coats). At this point in my life I didn’t know what gay or straight was. I didn’t know the words for any of the things I was doing. I had a sense that it needed to be kept secret, that if anyone knew what we were doing with each other, we’d probably get in trouble. But that didn’t stop us from doing everything we could think of.

The 23rd of September is International Bi Visibility Day, or to give it its official title, Celebrate Bisexuality Day. It’s not widely known, let alone celebrated, by the greater LGBTIQA+ community. But every year there are more events being organised by bisexual+ (bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, queer and multi-gender attracted) people around the world.