“You put the ‘B’ in LGBT”—these lyrics from a song performed in the White House last week encapsulate the message of the third annual Bisexual Community Briefing hosted by the Obama administration.
Although the president himself chose to attend another White House event that day (the 2016 White House Tribal Nations Conference), a White House staffer in the Office of Public Engagement, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, the first openly transgender official in the Obama White House, opened the briefing, which lasted over two hours. The event was followed by an after party, video of which was posted by one participant. While one of its stated goals was to raise awareness of the “bi” community, the meeting received little coverage in the mainstream press, although several LGBT press outlets reported on it.
Freedman-Gurspan said topics would involve, among other things, bisexuals’ “disproportionate risk of mental and physical health struggles, poverty, addiction and violence and the need for fully inclusive non-discrimination protections.” After Freedman-Gurspan’s introduction, Faith Cheltenham, director of BiNet USA, took over as master of ceremonies.
The first speaker, Victor Raymond, an “out bisexual two-spirit man” and member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, “called upon the ancestors … and the great spirit Wakan Tanka” to witness and guide the briefing. Raymond recounted the struggles of bi-sexuals and the LGBT community at large, and said that they must also stand with other in “struggles against oppression,” including “‘No’ to the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Black Lives Matter, and immigrants here and abroad.
Next came Heather Benjamin, a “bi-queer fem” from the Bisexual Resource Center and Lynnette McFadzen, an “elderly disabled bi-sexual demi-sexual” from BiNetUSA. Benjamin said, “We in the bi- community… celebrate and we embrace all types of people… anywhere from pan-sexual to omni-sexual to two-spirited to queer, fluid, gender-nonconforming, and even no labels – just take them all in and hug them.” Benjamin and McFadzen asked all those in attendance who were part of the “Bi-Plus” community to stand and be recognized.
Monique “Honeybird” Mizrahi, a New York City based singer-songwriter, then performed “TMBLGBT“. The song’s lyrics include:
Following Mizrahi, Andrea Jenkins, a “black trans oral historian and poet,” read her composition “Bag Lady Manifesto, hashtag Say Her Name, hashtag Black Trans Lives Matter.” The poem spoke of making an “honest assessment of capitalism and its inherent violence” and included the line: “reflection: black bodies linking all oppressions, annihilating psycho-social development with lead-based drinking water.”
Some panel discussions took place as well, and panelists were invited to share their “names, as well as titles and pronouns.” Eliot Sutler, a lawyer and co-founder of Bi Women of Color Collective (pronouns are “she” and “they”) who led one of the panels and identifies as a “black bisexual woman and person with an invisible disability,” connected prejudice against bisexuals with racial bias. Sutler asserted that
