6 best moments from #BiWeek 2015

We are coming to the close of the second annual BiWeek, BiNet USA's national campaign co-founded by GLAAD to accelerate acceptance for bisexual, pansexual, fluid, and queer people; and what a BiWeek it’s been.

As the week comes to a close, check out this round-up of some of the week’s most impactful and engaging highlights.

Evan Rachel Wood launches #BiWeek with honesty, visibility

Leading up to the launch of BiWeek, Evan Rachel Wood, kicked the campaign off with a visible bang on Twitter. The actress, who has long been proudly out about being bi, is often looked to as a celebrity who takes her role seriously as a visibile member of the community. She took an opportunity once again to educate her non-bi fans, speak to her bi+ followers, and bring media attention to an often erased community and its issues.

Evan shared her own person experiences with confronting things like anxiety, depression, and identity erasure--all of which the bi+ community grapples with at higher rates than their gay, lesbian, and straight peers.

Her series of tweets, which included citing stats on health and wellness within the bi community, not only garnered significant media attention, but inspired heartfelt responses from bi folks.

The White House invites bi leaders nationwide to make a difference

Alexandra Bolles, GLAAD's Programs Strategist, was one of about 100 bi, pansexual, queer, and fluid-identified advocacy leaders from around the country invited to the White House Bisexual Community Policy Briefing in DC. She reflected on GLAAD's blog, "Perhaps one of the most valuable elements to Monday's policy briefing was the opportunities for people to share resources – those resources were our experiences, fields of work, and knowledge, all of which varied widely but were strong across the board. When put together, these resources served to move the bi community as a whole towards cultural and political advancement. While the bi community must overcome a disproportionally high hurdle in order to access hard resources and to achieve, I felt we were in a space where being ourselves was valuable, productive, and enough."

The roundtable event was a rare opportunity not only to unite bi influencers from across the US in one room, but for folks to bring their experiences and stories to some of the country's highest powers-that-be in order to create a better, stronger, and brighter future for the bi community at large.

Check out GLAAD's orginal photos from the day here.

A snapshot of being bi in America portrays pervasive disparities

Last year, the report "Understanding Issues Facing Bisexual Americans" by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), BiNet USA, and the Bisexual Resource Center revealed vital and sometimes alarming facts about bi people's realities. This year, MAP created an infographic in order to make that information more readily accessible and shareable. The extended infographic, titled "Snapshot: Bisexual in America," explores what it means to be bi, the stigma around the identity, state-by-state legal discrimination, the widespread disparities that disproportiantely impact bi people, and difficulties in collecting data around the community.

"Snapshot" is a vital tool for educating the general public on the lived realities of being bi in the US. Be sure to check it out in its full form.

GLAAD’s profiles bi people killin’ it in real life, loving their identities

As a part of GLAAD’s original content for "Celebrate Bisexuality Day"--the peak of BiWeek--GLAAD released a video profiling out bisexual leaders Dr. Herukhuti, editor of Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men; Paul Nocera, facilitator of BiRequest; and Michelle Garcia, Identities editor at Mic. Though the three people featured in the video have different personalities, career paths, backgrounds, and identities, their experiences are united by a common thread: their bi identity, which they have learned to love, plays an integral role in their work that--albeit in varied ways--accelerates acceptance for bi people every day.

"Just being openly queer or openly bisexual, openly LGBT anything, can be the most radical thing a person can do...Being Black and happy is radical. Being trans and successful is a radical thing...That's what we can do as a community, is be happy and vocal and present and visible," says Michelle in the video.

 

A video posted by @glaad on

“Bi Any Other Name” celebrates its 25th anniversary with a re-release

This year, BiWeek overlapped with the 25th anniversary edition release of "Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out," a landmark book in the movement for bisexual equality by the professor and BiNet USA co-founder Lorraine Hutchins, as well as bi, HIV and AIDS advocate Lani Ka'ahumanu. In an article the two wrote for The Advocate, reflecting on the advancements made and still remaining for full acceptance of the bi community, the two women wrote:

What’s encouraging is that in 18 years, Celebrate Bisexuality Day has grown from one day (September 23) to a whole week (September 20-27 this year) in the past few years, and that Celebrate Bisexuality Day/Week has sustained itself as a totally volunteer improvisational grassroots effort, so that there are now hundreds of events all over the country in big cities and little towns, on campuses and in independent bookstores, at conferences and other events...In some ways things have changed tremendously for the better for bisexuals since Bi Any Other Name brought over 70 different voices sharing their bi stories in essays, poems, cartoons, and photos with the public. And in some ways, nothing much has changed at all, except that we now have credible research results that puts numbers to what we knew existed — the shocking and depressing statistics that document the exact ways bisexual people are disproportionately stigmatized, discounted, and hurt.

Still, the children of today grow up in a different world than the one we elders entered. It is no longer as stigmatizing or as alienating and isolating to be bi, at least in some areas of the country sometimes.

People on the ground and organizations commemorated the anniversary edition print and e-book release by taking to social media, using #BiAnyOtherName to honor the anthology's significance.

Unprecedented participation and media coverage

For the first time, #BiWeek became a nationally trending topic on social media in the United States--one of the highest trending topics of the day, it seems. This marked one of the first times that a bi-related topic has been so widely discussed at one time on social media. Holy shamoly.

While the bi community has a history of using the internet as a tool for both political organizing and community building, the widespread media attention to BiWeek made tangible a potential a turning point for bi visibility. From mainstream outlets like MTV and BuzzFeed to LGBT sites to personal blogs and beyond, the internet was full of content that showcased the bi community's needs, capabilities, diversity, and beauty.

GLAAD's work is centered around the belief that accurate and responsible media visibility is a vital step in gaining full equality and cultural acceptance. The participation of policy makers, the media, bi people and their allies in BiWeek not only mark a successful campaign, but are moving the bi+ community as a whole that much closer to ensuring everyone is able to openly and safely live the lives they love.

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