It's That Time of Year Again!

11/13/2019

Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day!

Click here to donate to support BOP and BECAUSE!
BOP will once again be participating in Give to the Max Day, which is TOMORROW, November 14! BOP is a volunteer-run 501c3 non-profit. Your contributions go directly toward building and supporting Minnesota's bi+ community. What can your donation accomplish?

Sponsor pay-what-you-can and no cost admission to BECAUSE, the largest and longest-running conference for the bi+ community in the United States.
Support BOP's presence at local and regional Pride festivals.
Provide free meals and food at BECAUSE and other BOP events, to make these programs more accessible to our diverse community.
Allow BOP to provide free social events and community spaces year-round, such as our Bi+ Book Club, Bi+ Discussion Meetups, Bi+ Walking Club, Bi+ Board Game Nights, "Pancakes for Pansexuals", and many more!
Help BOP to produce our annual Bi-Lesque performance, which has been hailed as "one of the most important burlesque shows in [the Twin Cities]."

Bi+ individuals make up 52% of the LGBTQ+ population, and experience significantly higher rates of mental illness, sexual assault and intimate partner violence, substance abuse and chemical dependency, workplace discrimination, poverty, and social isolation than gay, lesbian, and heterosexual populations. However, according to Funders for LGBTQ Issues, institutional funding of bisexual issues and organizations has been the lowest of all LGBTQ+ demographics tracked since 2002, and most LGBTQ+ organizations still do not offer bi+ specific resources or programming. Your donations go directly towards helping the bi+ community thrive!

You don't have to wait until tomorrow to donate!
Click here to donate to support BOP and BECAUSE!

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Save the Date for Bi-Lesque 1/25/20!

10/17/2019

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October's Bi+ Book Club Meeting Rescheduled

9/26/2019

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Bi+ Book Club will not be meeting in October! Instead, join us November 6 at 7:00 pm at Quatrefoil Library to discuss "First Time Ever" by Peggy Seeger!

Thank you for your flexibility!

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Bi+ Book Club Reading for October 2019

9/13/2019

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Our next Bi+ Book Club Meeting will be Wednesday, October 2 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at Quatrefoil Library (1220 E Lake St, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407)! We will be discussing "First Time Ever" by Peggy Seeger.

Summary: "Born in New York City in 1935, Peggy Seeger enjoyed a childhood steeped in music and politics. Her father was the noted musicologist Charles Seeger; her mother, the modernist composer Ruth Crawford; and her brother Pete, the celebrated writer of protest songs.

After studying at Radcliffe College, in 1955 Peggy left to travel the world. It was in England that she met the man, some two decades older and with a wife and family, with whom she would share the next thirty-three years: the actor, playwright and songwriter Ewan MacColl. Together, Peggy and Ewan helped lay the foundations of the British folk revival, through the formative - and controversial - Critics Group and the landmark BBC Radio Ballads series. And as Ewan's muse, Peggy inspired one of the twentieth century's greatest love songs, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

Peggy's life comprises art and passion, family and separation, tragedy, celebration and the unexpected - and irresistible - force of love. It would by any standards be an extraordinary story, but what elevates her account is the beauty of the writing: it is clear-eyed and playful, luminous and melodic, fearless, funny and always truthful, from the first word to the last."

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August 07th, 2019

8/7/2019

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The BOP Connection

August 2019

A Newsletter bi the Bisexual Organizing Project
Edited by Cary Crawford and Sally Corbett

Twin Cities PRIDE 2019 in Pictures

BOP Events Calendar
August 2019

Pizza and Drinks
Wednesday, 8/14 @ 5:30 - 8:30 pm
Pizza Luce: 2200 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404
Let's get together for pizza, appetizers, drinks, and socializing at Pizza Luce - Seward location. Happy hour specials run until 6:00 pm. “Whiskey Wednesdays” specials until close. Gluten free, vegetarian, and vegan options available. You will need to pay your own way, this meet up is organized just to meet other folxs in a fun space with delicious food options. There is free street parking on Franklin and surrounding area and it is on bus routes. There is a ramp and building and restrooms are accessible. To find us, tell the host you want to be seated with "BOP". https://pizzaluce.com/menu

Bi+ Board Game Night
Monday, 8/19 @ 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Quatrefoil Library: 1220 E Lake St, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407
We will bring a few games to choose from, and feel free to bring some of your favorite games to share! Food is welcome in this space, and we will bring snacks. Also, feel free to just come and hang out and chat, knit, etc. We hope to see you there! Wheelchair accessible. Alcohol and drug free event. Please avoid wearing strong scents. Label any foods you bring to share. Free parking lot in back and street parking as well. On multiple bus routes.

Bi+ Discussion Group
Thursday, 8/22 @ 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Boneshaker Books: 2002 23rd Ave S, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404
This is a safe and welcoming environment and a great way to navigate bi+ issues and bond with other community members. A Board member facilitator will bring topics to get the conversation started or we can talk about your questions and issues. Main level and accessible. Room holds 20. You are welcome to bring food and drinks for yourself or to share. Please label any shared food. This event is alcohol and drug free.This event is free and the meeting space is free. There is a small off-street parking lot and there is parking on the streets available in the area. Bus line accessible.

MN LGBTQ+ Educator Meet & Greet
Friday, 8/23 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Common Roots Cafe: 2558 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55405
MN LGBTQ+ Educator Network will host our first of many Educator meet and greets on Friday, August 23rd from 4-6PM at Common Roots Cafe in the Common Meeting Room.
Come join us for networking, support, fun and frivolities!

Accessibility:
On multiple bus lines. Small parking lot and street parking available. Wheelchair and scooter accessible. Common room is located at back of coffee shop on main floor and has a door that can close off from main shop. There are two gender neutral bathrooms on main floor.

Menu:
https://www.commonrootscafe.com/menu

What is MN LGBTQ+ Educator Network?
Our goal is to support and advocate for MN LGBTQ+ Educators and their allies. We provide resources, networking, community building opportunities, training, compassion, and empathy.
We understand that isolation, invisibility, and discrimination can impact our mental health and feelings of belonging. We believe that supporting LGBTQ+ Educators helps not only Educators but also our students and our school communities. We partner with OutFront MN, Education Minnesota, and Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP). Members of this group are expected to promote a respectful and positive culture.

Bi+ Hiking Group
Saturday, 8/24 @ 1:00 - 3:00 pm
Lake Street and Knox Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
We'll meet at the northeast corner of Lake Street and Knox Avenue (next to a restaurant called Brim at 2919 Knox Avenue S) at 1:00 pm. We will depart at 1:10 pm and will walk as far east as everyone wants to go. We’ll stop by cafes in Uptown and Mexican bakeries in Powderhorn if people get hungry. We’ll also stop by a few exciting destinations such as the Quatrefoil Library (a library dedicated to LGBT books), the Somali Museum of Minnesota, and Moon Palace Books, and anywhere else that you want to go! Bottled water will be provided.

BOP Celebrates Pansexual Visibility Day
by Leah Yoemans

On May 24, Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) celebrated Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day by hosting a meetup at LUSH Minneapolis. Pansexuality is a very important identity to BOP because it fits under the bi+ umbrella as a non-monosexual identity, and many of our board members and community members use this label. So what do the two labels mean? First of all, when someone shares their label with you, it’s important to thank them for sharing it with you, and to ask them what that label means to them. Our language is alive, and words can mean different things to different people, while sharing a common purpose. Secondly, I will leave you with this very simple quote from the article “Bi, Pan, and the Insufficiency of Prefixes” by BOP Administrator Sally Corbett:

Bisexuality is simply the attraction to more than one gender. Full stop.

Pansexuality is the attraction to all genders, or anyone regardless of gender.

Semantically, bisexuality encompasses pansexuality, but there is a point where we can distinguish between the two, and this is important to much of our community.

Just like people who identify as bisexual, people who identify as pansexual have similar experiences with erasure, antagonism, phobia, and mental health disparities within monosexual communities - even within our LGBTQ+ communities. This is why BOP feels the need to create events specifically for pansexuals, and to celebrate this valid identity and our many community members which live this experience.

Our event at LUSH was fun, and folx could just drop in at anytime and join us for appetizers, drinks, or join some of us for the additional shows that were being offered that night on the entertainer's stage. BOP purchased and shared several appetizers, and LUSH offered three-for-one drink specials during happy hour. If you haven't been to LUSH lately, they have redecorated and it looks and feels great in there! They have expanded in size, parking is still free, there was no cover to get in, and the place is accessible, including gender neutral bathrooms. The wait staff is always really efficient and kind to our BOP meetup groups, and their food is delicious!

Our meet up group slowly grew from a few shy queers on the BOP Board to a big, beautiful group of pansexuals, and the conversations went well. It was a diverse group which included many new members and some old members of BOP! A handful of us left the table for a while to watch the drag show, "Birthday Roast of Christina Jackson" which was really fun. A few people stayed even later to watch the "Black Hearts Burlesque" show.

The Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) Board of Directors acknowledges that an event held at a bar is not accessible to all members of our community because of the availability of alcohol, age restrictions, and the crowded environment. We make an effort to describe our events in detail on social media, and wherever else we promote our events. We also try to offer a variety of meet ups, so everyone can feel welcome in our spaces. Our funding is limited to donations made to our organization, and our events schedule is limited by the availability of our volunteers and their time. If you would like to reach out and help us in any way and support our community so we can serve it even better, please contact bop@bisexualorganizingproject.org.

Bi+ Book Club for September
"The Buddha of Suburbia" by Hanif Kureishi

Wednesday, 9/4 @ 7-9 pm
Quatrefoil Library: 1220 E Lake St. Minneapolis, MN 55407

Summary: Karim Amir lives with his English mother and Indian father in the routine comfort of suburban London, enduring his teenage years with good humor, always on the lookout for adventure—and sexual possibilities. Life gets more interesting, however, when his father becomes the Buddha of Suburbia, beguiling a circle of would-be mystics. And when the Buddha falls in love with one of his disciples, the beautiful and brazen Eva, Karim is introduced to a world of renegade theater directors, punk rock stars, fancy parties, and all the sex a young man could desire.

Copies available at Hennepin and Ramsey County Libraries.

"Plurisexual": An Inclusive Label for an Inclusive Community
by Sally Corbett

In the wee hours of the morning during this year’s BOP Board retreat, Directors-at-Large Lo McDonald and Jeff Burfeind were inspired to design a flag that represents our entire community, and give it a name that unites us.

There are many, many labels used by folks who are attracted to more than one sex or gender to describe how they experience attraction. Some of these labels are similar or have overlapping definitions, and some describe very specific, nuanced experiences. All of these labels can and do co-exist independently of one another, because they exist to describe the lived experiences of those who use them. This function of language is beautiful and useful, but also messy.

Whatever these labels do or do not have in common with one another, they are all under the plurisexual umbrella. “Plurisexual”, like “bi+” or “non-monosexual”, is an umbrella term for the community of individuals who are attracted to more than one biological sex or gender identity. This includes individuals that identify as bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, omnisexual, queer, fluid, or an otherwise non-monosexual identity.

However, the advantage of the term plurisexual is that it is not yet a widely used term, and it doesn’t carry any of the alienating connotations that some feel both “bi+” and “non-monosexual” do.

“There is very little currently out there related to this term, so it seemed like a nice blank slate to start with so our community could define it accordingly, as opposed to all the rhetoric that follows a lot of the other labels” says Lo McDonald. “I was toying with the idea of using the term multi-sexual, but that already has a lot of connotations surrounding it, but in my searching I found ‘plurisexual’.”

Plurisexual also functions as the converse of monosexual, in place of the widely used “non-monosexual”. “Monosexual” describes sexual orientations in which one experiences attraction to one sex or gender only, such as heterosexual and homosexual. “Non-monosexual” is often used as an umbrella term for everyone who isn’t one of those two identities, meaning everyone attracted to more than one sex or gender. Many plurisexuals feel that this language is othering. Why do we have to define ourselves in relation to others using their language? Why do we have to be the “nons”? We are not negative space on the spectrum of sexuality.

Similarly, “bi+” is commonly used by many organizations and individuals, including BOP, as an umbrella term for the plurisexual community. However, some people who identify as pansexual, or an identity other than bi, feel erased by this term. Because it centers the bisexual identity, some feel that it isn’t inclusive enough to truly serve as an umbrella term for the entire community.

This is not to say non-monosexual and bi+ are “wrong” or are not useful terms. However, but there may be space for growth that the term plurisexual can fill and serve us better.

It is important to clarify that plurisexual isn’t here to replace bisexual, pansexual, or any other existing personal or community labels. It is a way to talk about all of us collectively. It is also not a synonym for bisexual, etc., because plurisexual is an umbrella term that talks about the entire community of non-monosexuals at once, and is not necessarily an individual identity.

McDonald, who has a background in graphic design, created the plurisexual flag to reflect the common elements of the bi, pan, and polysexual flags, and to illustrate community solidarity. The pink stripe on top and the blue stripe on the bottom reflect the stripes and colors the three flags have in common. “The pink is pretty much the same throughout, but I did change the blue a little, and chose a shade of that was sort of in the middle of the brighter color on the pan flag and the deeper one from the bi flag” says McDonald. The purple, yellow, and green interlocking circles represent the colors unique to the bisexual, pansexual, and polysexual flags, respectively. According to McDonald, the circles “are reminiscent of the Olympic flag because it feels like it better represents solidarity between the groups”.

Some “alphabet soup” critics may balk at the conception of another label for sexual orientations, and argue that it is divisive to create and define more words for queer identities, as though we can’t see the forest for the trees. However, the point of using “plurisexual” is to unite us, not create further division. Umbrella terms help simplify our endeavors to identify and connect with our communities, especially for a community as large, diverse, and stratified as the plurisexual community. Whether or not “plurisexual” breaks through into the greater queer lexicon, the malleable and transient nature of language will continue to serve the pursuit of queer liberation, as long as we continue to use it to explore and express our truths.

Editor's Note

Let me introduce myself, my name is Cary Crawford, and I’ll be the editor of the BOP newsletter for the duration of the ride. I hope you enjoy reading about our various activities and personalities, I’ll try to feature an interview with a BOP board member, and a BOP member profile, info about all our activities that we offer for member participation, upcoming events, and features on BOP allies. I’d also like to include member poetry and creative writing, artwork, and photos.So send me yours. Let me know if you want to interview and write an article, or edit another’s writing. Right now it’s just me and Sally Corbett. I’ll try to get this newsletter out quarterly, with a special editions dedicated to the BECAUSE conference and PRIDE weekend. If you think you’d like to help out or include your work contact me at cary.crawford@bisexualorganizingproject.org, I’d love to see what you’ve got for me.

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BECAUSE

BECAUSE 2020
October 2-4, 2020
Location Wellstone Center, St. Paul, MN

LEARN MORE

Mission

Build, serve and advocate for an empowered bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and unlabeled (bi+) community to promote social justice.

Vision

Within the next five years grow Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) into a successfully-run Upper Midwest nonprofit organization with annual funding of $100,000 that provides community building, education, and advocacy for the bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and unlabeled (bi+) community and our allies.

It's That Time of Year Again!

Save the Date for Bi-Lesque 1/25/20!

October's Bi+ Book Club Meeting Rescheduled

Bi+ Book Club Reading for October 2019

August 07th, 2019

The BOP Connection

BECAUSE

Mission

Vision

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