Whither the Bisexual Bar?

Building bisexual community on the pages of Anything That Moves

A couple of years ago, I gave a guest lecture for a LGBT literature course I was TAing for. Students were reading Stone Butch Blues that week, and my lecture was on the history of lesbian bars in the US. Toward the end of class, a student raised her hand and asked, “have there ever been bisexual bars?” I think I answered something along the lines of, “the cultural forces that produced gay bars and lesbian bars didn’t produce bisexual bars, but bisexual people have always been present in lesbian and gay bars, as well as straight ones. That also doesn’t mean there could never be a bisexual bar!”

I basically stand behind this answer, but I’m not sure it entirely satisfied my student, and I’m also not sure it entirely satisfies me! After all, there was a deeper implicit question underlying her actual words: have bisexual people created spaces and cultures, distinct from gay and lesbian ones? What has bisexuality historically meant, not just as a sexual identity but a cultural and political one? This post is my attempt to give my student a better answer.

Bi activist Lani Ka’ahumanu at the 1984 Bay Area Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade. [source]

I wish I’d told my student this: though there haven’t (as far as I know) been bisexual bars, there has been a bisexual movement. In the U.S, this movement was at its most active and prominent from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. This was also the era when a national trans movement began to cohere; one way we might make sense of this is to consider that the 1990s was a period when a visible cohort of cis gay men and lesbians had begun to achieve a type of (incomplete! conditional!) political and cultural acceptance at scale. The intense radicalism of 1970s gay liberation and lesbian feminism (neither of which had ever fully accounted for bi or trans concerns, and had at times been actively hostile to both) had spawned a new era, exemplified by the Human Rights Campaign: pragmatic, outward-facing, resourced, enmeshed in mainstream and electoral politics. This is not to say that there were not radical gay and lesbian political efforts during this era, just that they were now on the fringe not just of the mainstream but of the gay rights movement itself.

It makes sense that these conditions would spur mobilization for queer groups who had been sidelined or rejected within gay and lesbian movements. Bisexual people had been present in the movement all along, but up until the 1990s, they had not created networks that supported a distinct shared cultural identity or political agenda. Luckily, a new generation of intrepid bisexuals was ready to change all that.

Photo by Efrain John Gonzalez of the bathroom at the first National Bisexual Conference in 1990. [source]

Bisexual women coming out of lesbian-feminist spaces had a particular set of baggage to deal with. In 1992, the lesbian feminist scholar Sharon Dale Stone wrote in the feminist journal Frontiers of the pernicious stereotypes about bisexual women that had circulated in lesbian feminist spaces since the 1970s and the urgent need to put an end to these attitudes and embrace bi women. Bi women, Stone explains, had been smeared as “fence-sitters” whose loyalties could not be trusted. She writes:

Individual lesbians, such as myself, may have changed their minds about bisexual women, but it remains generally true that the loyalties of bisexual women are regarded by most lesbian feminists as deeply suspect.

The irony of this position is that bisexual women have been present in lesbian spaces and worked alongside lesbians for lesbian rights throughout the history of the lesbian feminist movement. What has changed in the 1990s is that bisexual women are becoming increasingly vocal, demanding that lesbians recognize their commitment to lesbian liberation without denying them the right to love whom they choose. Few lesbian feminists, however, are responding by making them welcome.¹

In an essay published that same year in the anthology Close to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism, the trans bi lesbian feminist women’s music pioneer (ok, mouthful!) Beth Elliott struck a similar note.² Her essay, titled “Holly Near and Yet So Far,” criticized the high-profile women’s music artist Holly Near for publicly stating that that she had both a passion for women and a need to be open to affairs with men and yet refusing the label of “bisexual.”³ Elliott, who is of the same generation as Near and came up through similar radical lesbian feminist spaces, expressed her fervent wish for bisexual feminist role models for her demographic (and her frustration that Near refused that role). In her essay’s conclusion, she writes:

Many lesbians insist that any lesbian who acknowledges her bisexuality - no matter how tenuous or latent - must really belong to a community different and separate from the lesbian community. Although some of these women are “willing” to engage in dialogue with this theoretically distinct bisexual community, the very idea strikes me as being incongruous: too many women fall into both groups, and too many bisexual feminists do too much for the lesbian community to be regarded as separate from that community.⁴

Though there were bi women whose political affiliations lay squarely with lesbian feminists, there were also bisexual women who saw themselves as needing to organize in their own separate spaces, in part because of their need to build affiliation with bisexual men.

Photo by Efrain John Gonzalez of attendees at the first National Bisexual Conference, 1990 [source]

The bisexual magazine Anything That Moves was one such space where bisexuals of all genders gathered to build connection, develop political critique, and celebrate shared bi identity. The magazine’s first issue was published in 1991 by the Bay Area Bisexual Network, and it ran for ten years, racking up a total of 22 issues. The first page featured an editor’s note widely attributed to founding editor Karla Rossi (which, in a modified form, was printed on the first page of every issue of the magazine). The note announced:

ATM was created out of pride; out of necessity; out of anger. We are tired of being analyzed, defined and represented by people other than ourselves. We are frustrated by our imposed isolation and invisibility. We are angered by those who refuse to accept our existence; our issues; our contributions; our alliances; our voice.

It is time for the bisexual voice to be heard. ⁵

The note explains that the editors knew that their choice of title would be controversial, playing on the stereotype that bisexual people would fuck “anything that moves.” The provocation was intentional. “Read our lips,” the note declares. “We will write or print or say anything that moves us beyond the limiting stereotypes that are displaced onto us.”⁶ And thus a boundary-breaking magazine was born.

Early issues of ATM feature a number of articles concerned with bisexuality and HIV/AIDS. For context, remember that the first issue of ATM came out in 1991. 1981 was the year that the first cluster cases of Kaposi’s Sarcoma were identified amongst gay men. ACT UP was founded in 1987, and the AIDS cocktail, which was the breakthrough treatment that provided the first effective long-term treatment for HIV, was not introduced until 1995. In 1991, the AIDS epidemic had been raging for a full decade. LGBT communities were exhausted and grief-stricken, without a dependable treatment for the lifelong management of HIV in sight.

In the magazine’s inaugural issue, Christopher Alexander offered an analysis of the particular struggles and dangers faced by bisexual men during the AIDS epidemic. Alexander had worked in counseling for HIV-positive people for years, including running a support group for positive heterosexual and bisexual men. Many of these men, he said, identified as straight and had wives and children but met men for anonymous sex in parks and bathrooms. Such men were difficult for the bisexual community to embrace as they embodied what many in the community saw as negative stereotypes, but Alexander argued that the community needed to find ways for HIV/AIDS education to meet these men where they were at. Meanwhile, out bisexuals faced particular stigma as potential bridges between gay and straight sexual communities while suffering from a lack of tailored research and education regarding safe sex for men who were sexually active with both men and women. “As we organize and develop the bisexual community and movement on an international level,” Alexander argued, “one of the most positive moves we can make is to work towards affirming bisexual identity in society at large while at the same time, respecting those who don’t feel safe coming out as bisexual.”⁷ Bisexuals had a specific set of vulnerabilities and (in Alexander’s view) responsibilities in the fight against AIDS, and ATM provided a community forum for discussing the situation frankly, in a space free from biphobic finger-pointing.

Photo by Efrain Joh Gonzalez of bisexuals marching in 1990 [source]

As I discussed earlier, the national bisexual movement and the national trans movement were emerging concurrently in the 90s, reacting to the exclusions of the increasingly mainstream gay rights movement. These bi and trans movement efforts were not siloed from one another; they shared participants and energy, not least on the pages of ATM. The third issue of the magazine features an interview with the trans writer Kate Bornstein as its cover story. Though Bornstein did not identify as bisexual (she’s a lesbian, who now identifies as nonbinary and uses she or they pronouns), the ATM writer Jim Frazin reached out to interview her after seeing her play Hidden: A Gender and the two discussed Bornstein’s story, her ideas about gender and sexuality, and the overlaps between trans and bisexual struggles in the early 90s. At one interesting moment in the interview, Frazin points out that both the bi and trans communities face difficult questions about how to self-define.

“The bisexual community…has taken on this incredibly broad definition to be inclusive and to give people the most possible room to explore who they are,” Frazin notes. “Come play, or come visit, or join us, or not. It’s not a sense of belonging perhaps so much as a sense of, ‘it’s ok, you’re ok,’ in order to avoid that trap.”

“I think that it’s sadly inevitable that, as soon as we call ourselves, a group, we’re going to have to define ourselves by excluding people,” Bornstein responds, noting how trans communities self-divide. “It’s like everybody has to have their little niche, everybody has to - what? - belong! I think that’s very silly.”⁸ From the vantage point of 2024, it’s actually a bit shocking to read two queer writers in conversation arguing against belonging as an animating goal for LGBT community work (and it took me a second to understand that this is what they were doing!), as the notion of belonging has become such an ingrained aspect of how we think about LGBT community that it’s scarcely noticeable. It’s fascinating to me that, in 1993, Bornstein and Frazin were both drawn to think about how the paradigm of belonging could become a trap that produced too many exclusions. They saw themselves as situated in a milieu that could explore formulating their goals differently.

ATM also served as a platform for bisexual trans writers. In Issue 10, a poem by M. S. Montgomery titled “BiTrans Blues” describes the challenges of being bi, trans, and polyamorous: “I’ve got the mean Bisexual, Transgender Blues / From people telling me I’ve got to choose. / Sometimes I’m a woman and sometimes a man; / Sometimes I want a woman, other times a man. / The things I can’t do, I do the best I can.” Montgomery then goes on to describe pressures from four different “greedy lovers,” including a male lover who says, “Faggot, just get honest with your life,” and a wife who asks if the male lover “visits sex arcades,” worrying that “He does that we’ll all end up with AIDS.”⁹ The poem has a playful and humorous tone, but it also expresses real pain caused by the challenges of occupying multiple identities that continued to be misunderstood within both gay and straight social worlds.

This poem was followed on the next page by an open letter to the Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, which was subtitled “The BiTrans Blues Continued.” The letter, written by the prominent bi activist Lani Ka’ahumanu (pictured in the first image in this newsletter!), protests the HRC’s general failure to include bisexual and trans people in its vision, even as it appealed to those groups in its fundraising. Ka’ahumanu points out that the right-wing attacks against which the HRC was positioning itself targeted bi and trans people right alongside lesbians and gays. “Bisexual and transgender organizers and activists are involved in all aspects of fighting the forces of the Radical Right,” Ka’ahumanu writes. “Our basic rights are under attack. Bisexual and transgender people are bashed, fired from our jobs; we lose our homes and custody of our children, cannot adopt or be foster parents, are discharged from the military (the DoD explicitly defines bisexuality as a reason to be dishonorably discharged), and scapegoated as carriers of HIV. This battle for basic human rights is our battle, too.”¹⁰ Ka’ahumanu positions her appeal as part of a larger shift, asking the HRC to “shake off whatever remains of the strict identity politics of the ‘80s and join in the broad-based coalition politics of the ‘90s.”¹¹

Anything That Moves published its last issue in 2001. At the beginning of that issue, editor Keith Bowers described some of the struggles that the magazine had faced of late. “If you don’t live in Northern California or you haven’t heard,” he wrote, “things have gotten increasingly tough in recent years for those of us not concerned with making our first million in the stock market.”¹² The rent on ATM’s office had gone up by a shocking 98%.

In that same editor’s note, Bowers recalls the excitement of working on ATM when he first came on as editor late in 1999. The staff buzzed with activity and purpose: “We were all in it together, reaching out to the Bisexuals of the Future.” In this, Anything That Moves was remarkably successful. The Bisexuals of the Future are now the Bisexuals of the Present, and the magazine has reached them.

Specifically, what reached them was the Bisexual Manifesto. Remember the editor’s note by Karla Rossi, announcing the magazine’s intentions, which was printed on the first page of every issue of the magazine? That note, which was modified a bit over the years, was eventually termed the Manifesto by the ATM team and posted in full on their website. Over the years, snippets of the manifesto began to circulate in queer spaces online. This passage particularly gained traction:

Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have "two" sides or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don't assume that there are only two genders. Do not mistake our fluidity for confusion, irresponsibility, or an inability to commit. Do not equate promiscuity, infidelity, or unsafe sexual behavior with bisexuality. Those are human traits that cross all sexual orientations. Nothing should be assumed about anyone's sexuality, including your own.

The young bi writer Kravitz Marshall came across the circulating snippets of the manifesto, and in 2020 he found his way to the Web 1.0 ATM website, which hosted an incomplete archive of magazine issues.¹³ Describing his connection with the magazine, Marshall said, “there's urgency, there's knowledge, there's joy, there's righteous rage, there's lust, and you don't have to go searching between the lines for it — it grabs your shoulders and shakes you until you reach the back cover."¹⁴ He purchased a copy of Issue 16 from Bolerium Books, scanned it, and put it online for free, scheming to find a way to do this for the magazine’s whole run. He also began discussing this project with pals on a bi Discord server, and soon there was a whole team of bisexual amateur archivists who wanted to pitch in. In a stroke of luck, one of the members of the team found access to the complete run through her university library, and a free complete online archive of Anything That Moves became a reality.

For the young archivists who created the ATM archive, the magazine gave them a sense of connection to a bisexual cultural and political history that they’d been missing. This came, too, with a sense of sadness about how little had changed. Jo, one of the members of the archivist team, notes that “a lot of the subject matter [in ATM] is stuff that the bi community has been dealing with forever. The same stereotypes and heterosexism that bisexuals faced nearly thirty years ago are still very prevalent today."¹⁵ Marshall points to the first stanzas of the poem “This Poem Can Be Put Off No Longer” by Susan Carlton, published in the first issue, as exemplifying the persistence of biphobic tropes over the decades:

The poem, Marshall observed, "could have been written yesterday.” But ATM was proof that joy, humor, pride, and friendship could be found in the struggle for bisexual liberation, then and now.

Go check out the archive of ATM and peruse some issues! What I’ve touched on here is just a tiny fraction of the wonderful work published there. And thank you to the ATM archivists and everybody else out there doing the work of preserving gay history. <3

1. Sharon Dale Stone, “Bisexual women and the "threat" to lesbian space: Or what if all the lesbians leave?,” Frontiers 16, no. 1 (1992).

2. Despite writing about Elliott in my dissertation and speaking with her over Zoom (she rocks) I did not know that she was bi until researching this essay!

3. Indeed, Holly Near has been with a man since 1994 and still refuses the label of bisexual as far as I can tell! I can see how this is both annoying and kind of punk lol.

4. Beth Elliott, “Holly Near and Yet So Far,” in Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism, ed. Elizabeth Reba Weise (Seattle: Seal Press, 1992), 251.

5. Anything That Moves, Issue 1 (1991), page 3.

6. Anything that Moves, Issue 1 (1991), page 3.

7. Christopher Alexander, “Ten Years Into the AIDS Epidemic: Bisexuals Battle Invisibility,” Anything That Moves Issue 1 (1991), 35.

8. Jim Frazin, “Bay Area Playwright Kate Bornstein: on Gender and Beloning,” Anything That Moves Issue 3 (1991), 25.

9. M. S. Montgomery, “BiTrans Blues,” Anything that Moves Issue 10 (1996), 14.

10. Lani Ka’ahumanu, “A Letter to the Human Rights Campaign (Fund), Anything that Moves Issue 10 (1996), 15.

11. Ka’ahumanu, 15.

12. Keith Bowers, “On Fundraising, Fires, and Rent,” Anything That Moves Issue 22 (2001), 2.

13. My account from here on out is drawing on this article by Anna Iovine for which she interviewed ATM archivists.

14. Quoted by Anna Iovine, “'90s bi zine 'Anything That Moves' is shockingly relevant today,” Mashable, 2022.

15. Quoted by Iovine.