BGLTSA Stages ‘Bisexuality Weeks’

The Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) kicked off its second-annual “Bisexuality Weeks” program with events yesterday and Sunday.

During the next two weeks, the group hopes to build on last year’s program by discussing bisexual men and by focusing on the marginalization of bisexuals within the larger queer community.

“These are issues that aren’t normally addressed in the GBLT [Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, and Transgender] community,” said Jana S. Y. Lepon ’08, treasurer of BGLTSA and one of the co-chairs of Bisexuality Weeks, in an interview.

Last night, Robyn Ochs, a technology and publications specialist in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, led an open-ended discussion about the prejudices that those who identify as bisexual face in modern society.

The workshop drew 13 undergraduates.

During one activity led by Ochs, who is also an adviser to BGLTSA and speaks about bisexuality across the country, participants positioned themselves along a room-sized “Kinsey Scale”—named for ground-breaking sexuality researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey. The rubric measures same-sex attraction on a 0-6 scale.

Ochs asked students to stand at a point on the scale corresponding to the level of same-sex attraction they felt before their tenth grade year.

“Wait, when did ‘Dark Angel’ come out?” Kathryn M. Albert ’08 asked, referring to actress Jessica Alba’s action television show.

Six more events will be held before the conclusion of the program on Friday, Feb. 24. Lepon said one of the most hotly-anticipated portions will be next Thursday’s public discussion with Peter A. Chvany ’85, a systems administrator at Harvard Law School who recently published a collection of essays titled “Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way.”

“Last year we really wanted to address the issue of bi men, and that didn’t work out,” Lepon said.

Bisexuality Weeks began on Sunday night, with a screening of the 1995 film, “French Twist.”

Ochs said it was important to spread information about bisexuality because bisexuals face unique prejudices.

“Bisexuality does not get its fair share of attention when it’s included as one of the letters in the chorus,” Ochs said in an interview before her workshop. “I can’t even tell you the number of people who have come up to me and said, ‘You don’t exist. Bisexuals don’t exist.’ That’s something that doesn’t happen much to lesbians and gay men.”

The definition of bisexuality has come under debate in the queer community.

Co-chair of Bisexuality Weeks Mallory R. Hellman ’08 said she did not like the term.

“I don’t think that it’s inclusive enough,” she said. “If bisexuality is, in the strictest sense, being equally attracted to men and women—that’s a very conventional, straightforward, limited definition.”

Ochs encouraged a loose definition of the term bisexual.

“When we try to over-define bisexuality as exactly equal attraction to two sexes, all the time, we can then practically define it out of existence,” she said.

—Staff writer Abe J.Riesman can be reached at riesman@fas.harvard.edu.