An inside look, just for A+ members, from Autostraddle’s editors on the process, struggles, and surprises of working on what you’re reading on the site. We learn so much from this work before it ever even makes it to your eyes; now you can, too!
I was already in the midst of planning the first outlines of this week of content when a spate of very silly and very tired bisexual takes rolled through the discourse — whether it was the ~validity~ of bisexual women (what does that even mean? I’ve always wondered!) or what we’re like to date, it felt like we were in an unforgiving spotlight just as I was trying to think about how to best celebrate us. It didn’t feel great, and specifically felt weirdly anachronistic; after a summer defined by new horizons I hadn’t dared to imagine possible, it was so bizarre to somehow be sitting through the same conversations I felt like we were having back in 2010.
Another way of looking at it, though, I guess is that another thing we were reminded of this summer is how progress always moves in cycles, and some of them aren’t even that long; we’re always working on the same things we were working on five, ten, 20, 50 years ago; they’ve just been shifted up and into a different place, but they don’t go away. Which I guess is also what I’ve been thinking about for bi week of this year; I know we don’t ever get to stop thinking entirely about the annoying issues we have to keep re-litigating over and over, but I do want us to get to move the conversation forward. And I want us to be able to have it on our terms – not as a reaction, not as a defense or a justification, but a conversation amongst ourselves about ourselves that lets us connect with and affirm each other.
Sometimes I feel insecure or unsure about the role of these discussions – what are the conversations we want or need to be having in this community? What does ~community~ actually even mean for us? Am I like the only person who still calls themselves bisexual, or has the next generation moved on to different ways to talk about themselves and their experiences, like how there are all these new drugs I don’t know anything about? What kind of vocabulary do we have as a community to talk about everything that’s urgently on the table right now for us all? I wasn’t sure! And I’m still not, which is fine; the point is the questions, not insisting on having answers. But the submissions that rolled in for this week have made me feel so grateful and excited about what we’re already thinking and doing as a community and what we’re capable of doing. We have pieces on trying to stay in touch with the huge possibilities of how sexuality can shift with new awareness of gender, the interplay of a sexuality people find tough to parse with a disability that people find illegible; the power of community and Dungeons & Dragons, what it’s like to be literally at the cutting edge of new representations of bi women by writing your own webseries, and complex, multilayered conversations I’m truly thrilled to get to share with you. Thank you for being here and for being part of them, and being part of this week!
