LGBTQ+

When flash fiction contests go (hatefully) bad

Warning: long, angry rant ahead. Contains screen shots. Yes, I’m making an email sent to me public, and yes, I’m publicly calling out this particular writing workshop.

I first saw this flash fiction contest in a Facebook group. A colleague posted it there in its original form:

The highlighted portion reads “No swearing, profanity, explicit sexual scenes, graphic violence, LGBTQ.”

People responded by contacting Deborah Owen, so she changed it to this:

The new text, which you can see in full here, reads:

All contests have parameters. We are not interested in the following genres:
Stories with swearing or profanity
Horrific deaths/torture/horror
Romance in general
Futuristic stories
Sexual scenes
Fantasy
Sci-Fi
LGBTQ – some have asked if they can use gay characters. It depends on the story and how it is written. The judges will make that determination.

(Side note: I read that to my kids. They both said, “Why don’t they just say they want literary flash fiction instead of listing pretty much every genre?” They also thought it was pretty funny that she listed “swearing” and “profanity” as separate and also listed “futuristic” and “sci-fi” separately.)

Aside from the poor wording, this still didn’t feel as if it addressed the overt discrimination. I should say here that one colleague said the site is Christian-based, but I didn’t see that when I went to the website. If anyone can confirm or deny, that would be appreciated. Not that being Christian excuses or even explains anything—there are plenty of Christians who are part of the LGBTQ+ community or are allies, and I doubt they appreciate Christianity as the reason why bigotry is acceptable.

Poet and writer Jan Steckel shared most of the above on her page, including the text of the emails she sent to Deborah Owen and the responses she received in reply. She urged us to contact Ms. Owen as well, which I did. This is the text of my email to her:

I am a published author and member of the LGBTQ community, writing about your flash fiction contest. I had seen the original call, which listed LGBTQ content as unwelcome for submission. I see that you have updated the parameters, but they remain discriminatory.

LGBTQ is not a genre. You have already stated that you do not accept romance or erotic content as well as other genres. There is nothing inherent to LGBTQ content that would place it in any of those genres. It is not necessary to list it as a separate category.

Stories should be judged based on whether they meet the criteria required by a contest. Unless a story with LGBTQ content fails to meet the other criteria, it should not be listed separately with a caveat that judges will decide whether it’s appropriate.

As it stands, there is no reason for me to recommend this contest to my colleagues. Given the discriminatory rules of the flash fiction contest, I also cannot in good conscience recommend anything else on this site either. I would have concerns that authors would face similar or worse antagonism.

I hope that you will reconsider removing any rules regarding LGBTQ content from this and future contests. If not, then I would expect a detailed explanation of why this policy exists and how you plan to address it. Otherwise, I will be sharing this with my writing groups as one place to avoid participation for their own benefit.

Sincerely,

Amy M. Leibowitz

To which she replied:

Does everyone have to like LGBTQ writing? I think not, and I don’t. Neither do I like a dozen other things, and we will not entertain those either. You are very welcome to enter like everyone else, under the same guidelines.

You ask why LGBTQ is still on the list. Because they have defamed my name, slandered my school, hounded my friends, disrupted my live interview, jammed my mailbox with garbage, sent filthy pictures and stories, called me every name in the book, threatened me, and declared war on me without so much as approaching me in a decent and reputable way to begin with. And for that reason it will remain on the list like a flag on a ship that will not go down. LGBTQ does not own my school. Gay writers are more than welcome to enter under the same guidelines as everyone else. I hope you will think for yourself, write an amazing story and win!

Thank you for your letter.

Deborah Owen

No one is asking her to “like” LGBTQ writing. And not one of us is suggesting that we “own” her school, so I am not sure where that is coming from. I cannot fathom what other way besides contacting her in the only method she has provided would be more “decent and reputable.”

She can certainly do what she likes; it’s her school and her contest. I actually don’t much care if she changes her mind on any of it, nor do I particularly care if she hates me personally or the entire LGBTQ+ community as a whole. Lots of people already feel both of those ways, so it isn’t as though it is life-ruining to discover one more person with that attitude.

A bigger problem for me is that her spoken rule is an unspoken one in a lot of other corners. Authors frequently can’t even get to the agent stage, let alone a publishing contract, if they are offering LGBTQ+ stories. It’s even worse for people who publicly identify as part of the community and are writing LGBTQ+ characters and themes. Many LGBTQ+ books are published by small presses or are self-published.

The rare few books that do make it into the mainstream are often written by straight authors, and there are definite rules for how those stories must go. Even something like Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, which is now a major motion picture, suffered from this problem. It’s intended to be an uplifting meet-cute teen romance, but the problem is that the plot relies on a particularly tired trope: the gay kid being “punished” via bullying and public outing. Does that happen? Yes, of course. But exactly zero percent of heterosexual teen romance includes some form of tormenting the protagonists for a vital part of their sexual orientation.

I don’t fault Becky Albertali necessarily for this problem. The best I can say is “she tried.” I wouldn’t be surprised if her agent or editor recommended she include this little morality-play-type gem (or if that was what made it easier to gain acceptance). Although she did a similar thing with her book about a fat girl, so it’s entirely possible this is how she sees the world: teenagers having to endure shame in order to end up happy. In any case, it poses a distinct problem for LGBTQ+ writers which is connected to the above issue with Ms. Owen’s contest.

Jan Steckel accurately referred to calling LGBTQ+ books a genre as placing our writing in a ghetto. We have few options as queer authors. Publish with a small press or self-publish; pull a Simon and write a book with a limited vision for queer teens; or don’t write. We’re not welcome in a lot of places in the publishing world.

I’ve been disappointed for a long time at the shape of queer literature. If we aren’t being punished for who we are, then we are expected to forgive or even befriend our tormentors (another problem Simon suffers from). We must make our sexuality overt on the page or else be presumed cisgender (not trans), heterosexual (rather than lesbian, gay or bi) and allosexual/alloromantic (rather than asexual/aromantic). Our books must fall into some combination of Issues Books, erotica, and romance, or our stories must be cleverly disguised via speculative fiction.

And the difficulty with all of that is how much it limits our freedom to explore what is really underneath our struggles to come out and live authentically as ourselves. If I choose to write about what it was like coming of age as queer in a religious community that did not accept me, then am I, too, relying on queer pain to sell books? Or am I owning my past self with all my scars? If I tell a story about grief and loss after a long-term partner’s death, am I falling into the trap of Kill Your Gays? Or am I sharing the heartache of my losses?

None of that would matter at all if we weren’t being judged on the sexuality and gender of our characters. If our books were viewed through the same lens as any other story, then people like Deborah Owen wouldn’t need to mention us by name as though we belong in the same category of “filth” where she slots graphic violence, sex, and swearing. It could be assumed that we understand what “no explicit sexual scenes” means and that we, like any author of heterosexual stories, would not include it.

This is a time for our allies to step up. Read our books. Promote them. Author colleagues, understand us and our lived reality when you write about us, and understand that some stories probably aren’t yours to tell—especially if they rely on queer-specific pain. And please, please, if you have a moment, let people like Deborah Owen know that they need to move themselves into the twenty-first century if their goal is to guide new writers to improve their craft.

But it’s not grammatically correct!

Gender Identity, LGBTQ+, Writing

There are very few subjects I write about that get an immediate and angry response. Some of that is my natural avoidance of politics these days—anyone left still in the dark about my views probably hasn’t known me long. The one topic that gets instant and palpable hate, though?

Use of singular “they.”

No joke. Any time it comes up, there’s at least one person (usually more) who will still cling to, “But I learned in school…” I’m sure they did. I did too. But let’s discuss it, shall we?

If we were talking about whether or not use of singular they was appropriate in a generic context, that might be one thing. Still not wrong, but at least understandable why someone thinks it is, given how anyone over the age of 35 probably had at least one teacher who was a stickler.

That’s not what happens, though. It typically comes up in the context of personal pronouns. Someone says they use they instead of he or she, and within a heartbeat, someone else Has Words about it. These are not usually Nice Words.

I remarked recently that a person isn’t truly respectful if their reply to “My pronouns are they/them” with anything other than “Okay, got it.” You would think I’d accused people of eating babies and kittens for breakfast with how swift the defensive response was. (That’s not unusual, by the way.) If it bothers you, I can’t change that, but you really do need to keep it to yourself if you’re trying to show love and respect.

Inappropriate responses include but are not limited to:

Fine, but it grates on me.
That’s not grammatically correct.
I’m old-school, and we don’t say that where I come from.
But the style guides say it’s wrong.
We should have real gender-neutral pronouns.

Let me answer those:

So? It’s not my job to use the pronouns you prefer.
It’s grammatically just fine and has been used for centuries.
I’m old-school too, and I managed to adapt.
I have access to multiple style guides for work. Allow me to prove you wrong.
We’ve tried neutral pronouns. People complain they’re “too weird.”

Besides being plain rude to speak to anyone that way, there are two specific points I want to elaborate on. First, I work in the publishing industry. I rub shoulders with people at all stages of the process, and there’s a wide range of education among my colleagues. I can assure you that use of singular they is considered appropriate and correct. Most style guides and dictionaries have adapted. The holdout, the Chicago Manual of Style, allows it specifically for use as a personal pronoun. If you’re not in the industry, you simply don’t get to use our references to uphold your view. And if you are in the industry, then perhaps try educating yourself on what’s in those style guides you cling to.

Second, there is no one more indoctrinated into “singular they isn’t grammatically correct” than I am. My parents were more strict about it than my teachers. My parents insisted from the time I could make sound that I do it properly. I mean, my father was the sort to take a pen to a library book if he found something he thought was wrong. One time, he humiliated me in front of my friends. He was giving them a ride home after an event. When he asked how it had gone, I said, “It was so fun!” And he gave me a 5-minute lecture on how I could only say, “It was so much fun” or “It was such fun.” Slang? Not in my household. And forget about singular they—I got corrected more times than I can count.

All of that is to say I was thoroughly immersed in the cult of Grammatical Correctness. I am now in my 40s, and I am happily using singular they as a personal pronoun as well as in many other situations. My kids have never heard the rule, not even at school.

The last thing I will say is to ask, why is that the hill you want to die on? What is so vitally important about clinging to an outdated (and frankly incorrect) rule about singular they? Are there really no other important issues to discuss? Even if it does bother you, why make a fuss about it to the person who is obviously coming out to you about their gender identity?

When someone comes to you and says, “My pronouns are they/them,” that person is coming out to you in the same way any other person in the LGBTQ+ community comes out. That is someone telling you they do not relate to or experience the binary identities of “man” or “woman.” It’s not your turn to question them, even “nicely,” about it. It’s not your chance to go all philosophical about the tragedy of our gendered pronouns or an opportunity to educate anyone on proper grammar. It’s a chance to embrace a person you care about and make the effort to treat them how you would want to be treated.

Either you respect people or you don’t. Slip-ups happen, and using the wrong pronouns while you adjust is normal. But there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for intentionally shaming someone by playing Language Cop. Do better, folks.

Some less friendly advice on “writing the other”

LGBTQ+, Writing

I thought about sharing this individually on my social media and decided that was too much work. But it’s only Wednesday, and I’m already tired. I need to say a thing before my head explodes. Third time in two days that my identity has been erased, shamed, and/or co-opted for someone else’s gain.

Here’s a piece of advice for non-queer/allosexual-alloromantic-cisgender-heterosexual* authors: If you’re going to write about us queer folk, then it is YOUR JOB to learn how to be an ally to all of us.

I don’t care if you are super passionate about writing hot sex between two cisgender dudes. If you are not an ally to the entire community, you have no goddamn business making money off telling our stories.

Yes, queer folk have a responsibility to be allies to each other. Maybe we even need to make extra effort as insiders. But that’s an issue of us calling each other in and taking care of our own.

No one is expecting you to include the entire QUILTBAG in your next book or any future things you write. You know what we do expect, though? That you take some care to:

get people’s gender and pronouns right
not erase their sexuality based on who they’re married to/partnered with/having sex with
understand our lived experiences and have some empathy

Like, these are not difficult asks here. They’re basic common courtesy you all ought to be doing anyway, but doubly so if you plan to write stories with us as main characters.

It feels really, really terrible to have your identity erased because someone made at-a-glance assumptions. And it feels even worse to be told that someone not queer needs “safe space” or “feels uncomfortable” in a community of queer folks. You know where you can find that? WITH OTHER NOT-QUEER PEOPLE, all over the goddamn world. If you’re choosing to involve yourself with our interests, expect us to be part of that.

And for god’s sake, stop telling our coming out stories until you have a very firm grasp on what that means to us and how it feels (or possibly never at all). Please. You cannot compare hiding the fact that you write smut from your grandma to a teenager being kicked out of the house for being queer. Or to a spouse beating you because they find out you’re bi. Or to being fired from your job because a coworker publicly outed you to your boss. You will NEVER stay up late praying and crying and wondering what’s going to happen when you’ve finally decided that you cannot live a lie anymore but you know your whole world is about to change.

You, non-queer/allosexual-alloromantic-cisgender-heterosexual people, are “writing the other” no matter how many novels you’ve published or how many books you’ve sold or how many years you’ve been at it. I won’t tell you not to write about us, but for fuck’s sake, examine your own privilege and try to understand where we’re coming from.

*Allosexual: experiencing primary attraction; i.e., not asexual

Alloromantic: experiencing primary romantic (vs. sexual) attraction; i.e., not aromantic

Cisgender: not transgender

Heterosexual: You probably know this one

On pen names, author personas, and ethics

Ethics, LGBTQ+, Social Justice, Writing

Because of a current situation with an author, the question of pen names and author responsibility has come up yet again. I don’t want to get into details about any particular author, especially with something ongoing that I’m not closely involved in. This has to do with an author whose books I’ve never read and who I’ve never followed on any social media, so I cannot and will not speak directly to that. Suffice it to say it’s a JT LeRoy situation with a good dash of Rachel Dolezal thrown in.

That is not the subject I want to discuss. There are two intertwined ideas at play: author pen names and authors’ life stories, which converge as Author Personas.

Four years ago (it’s hard to believe it’s been that long), I was still writing as a progressive Christian blogger. Before that, I’d halfheartedly kept a random, anonymous “mommy blog” with posts about some of the cute and weird things my kids did. It was a bit of a silly mix between sunny and sarcastic. The only people reading it were real-life friends.

The “mommy blog” morphed when I started questioning things at our church. I was emerging from what I call fundamentalism lite, and I was seeking the company of other like-minded people. I was still anonymous at that point. But I wanted to really put myself out there, and I’d read advice to use my real name and just enough detail to give myself credibility. So I did.

I’m not sorry I did. During that time, I met some really cool people. I traveled across the country to see them in person, and some are still friends to this day. My religious and political views shifted really far to the left, and I had a ton of support.

At the end of that time, I was dabbling in fan fiction (as an outlet for some of the deep hurts from my religious days) and also beta reading for a website. I met a colleague who became a friend, and she encouraged me to send my first manuscript to her publisher, which I did (and it was accepted).

Meanwhile, some things were blowing up in the progressive Christian world, including a well-known blogger being outed by another well-known blogger. There were as many opinions as people, but the biggest thing I learned was regarding Own Voices writing. A lot of bloggers wanted the conversation to be led by LGBTQ+ Christians. Some of the most vocal were also vicious and saying hurtful and harmful things.

Because I’m a particularly sensitive person, I internalized a lot. I ended up believing that my one book with a bisexual main character might be “offensive” if I didn’t come out myself. So…I did. Publicly. Really, really publicly.

While this was happening, several other progressive bloggers also came out. I’m not exaggerating when I say they weaponized it. People threw accusations at each other that they were posing as “fake queers” to gain credibility points, either to speak for the LGBTQ+ community or to avoid scrutiny for problematic statements. Having just come out myself in order to protect against being accused of appropriation, I no longer felt safe in a community I’d trusted. I felt like a fraud, especially given that I wasn’t out until I was approaching my forties and wasn’t doing things considered “queer enough.” I left, but not without doing my share of damage and leaving broken hearts on both sides.

Fast forward to being a published author. My blog is still public. You can read back through for all my old posts. A few have been deleted, but I’ll bet you could even locate those via Wayback. Everything I just said can probably be found and verified, though I didn’t give much information. I still use my legal name on my Facebook account, and I use my author name (which is actually my birth name) everywhere else. I wasn’t trying to give all the sordid details of my life so readers could feel like they knew me. It’s simply an outgrowth of already having had a public profile while blogging non-fiction. I chose not to cover it up.

All that said, I have no issues with how authors choose to present. Take a pen name, or not. Take a new one for each genre you write, or not. Divulge details, or not. It makes no difference to me as a reader or as a colleague.

Where I find the ethics get tricky: Creating an author persona which is entirely different from your real life.

On the surface, that probably doesn’t matter much, if no one is being hurt. However, it does present a problem when it comes to Own Voices and when there’s risk of harm to others via that persona.

Posing as a member of a marginalized community that you don’t belong to does damage. I’m not simply talking about those people who invent tragic back stories and then con followers out of money, although that’s clearly a terrible thing to do. I mean even in situations like mine.

A white person posing as someone of a marginalized race (like Rachel Dolezal) can easily be sussed. If they come back with claims they really are this other person, they’re rightfully removed from any position of authority. But it’s much more complicated with the LGBTQ+ community.

For one thing, some authors really are transgender and discover this or are able to come out through writing. And some cannot be out, so their author persona reflects their true self. They don’t typically invent tragic back stories to manipulate readers, however. For another thing, there are plenty of folks like me who present to the world as cisgender heterosexual but who actually are not. We may choose to be open about it (or not) for a variety of reasons.

But once a person has invented something for the purpose of manipulating others or for financial gain, it calls into question every single one of us who thought being honest about ourselves was the right thing to do. It means that I might be grilled on my history, since I’m a genderqueer bisexual writer who has only ever been in one long-term relationship that appears cisgender heterosexual. It means trans folk have to out themselves in order not to be accused of lying and manipulating and threatened with legal action. It means potentially losing genuine allies due to lack of mutual trust.

I’m not sure what the way forward looks like. We need to weed out individuals who manipulate, and I have no trust for people who pose as LGBTQ+ folks and really are cisgender, heterosexual, and allosexual (i.e., tick all three boxes). I don’t think they care about or have the best interests of our community in mind.

I do think we need to talk more honestly about Own Voices and why it’s important that people who are part of marginalized communities are heard. This is not to limit what people are “allowed” to write. But I suspect the pressure to be Own Voices touches each of us in different ways. I felt pressure to come out; others may feel the only way is to lie about who they are. Which speaks to the privilege of those folks, and that’s also a much-needed conversation.

I’ve long been an advocate of self-reflection, and this is no different. Rather than a blanket always/never for what authors write or how we present to the world, we should think about the motivation for both of those things. What is underlying our choices, and how can we make those decisions ethically?

If an author is contemplating taking on the persona of someone marginalized, even if it doesn’t include a tragic history or involve money-making scams, that person should ask themselves why they are compelled to do it. Faking being LGBTQ+ or any other marginalized identity doesn’t come with the burdens and joys of our real-life experiences.

Bi Visibility Day 2017

LGBTQ+, Life, Sexuality and Gender, Writing

Happy Bi Visibility Day! We celebrate every year on this date, and you can learn more by visiting BiNet USA or GLAAD.

I’ve been posting all week, flash fiction (which will replace my current Featured Story) and book reviews and the Big Bi List (which is still growing!). Today, I’ll get a little more personal.

A great conversation in the Queer Sci-Fi group on Facebook took me back years, recalling my teenage crushes on celebrities. Before I Got Religion™, I used to think my fan crushes on women were just admiration. I wanted to be like them or look like them or something. I didn’t, actually (I’ll get to that). But I also didn’t have the language to describe it. I just knew I wasn’t what the girls at school called me (which you can guess and I won’t repeat here). After I joined a church, I figured that it was a “sinful desire” to be suppressed. The rest…well, my coming out story is floating around in my archives, back around three and a half years ago.

My earliest memory of being fascinated with a celebrity was when I was maybe eight or nine. We were at my grandparents’ house for the summer, as we usually were. That summer, an ad ran for the Broadway production of Cabaret. This was long enough ago it was the Joel Grey version. My pre-adolescent self was utterly captivated. Every time the ad was on, I would drop everything and go watch. I would not exactly call my near-obsession with Grey’s androgynous Emcee sexual attraction. But there was definitely something I liked. Still do, in fact, on both counts. Joel Grey is still pretty in his eighties, even when not made up, and I still love that particular aesthetic. There is something in me that responds most strongly to people whose identity and/or presentation blends and transcends the gender binary.

(Side note: Just to keep things in the family, Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing was my first real girl-crush. While everyone else swooned over Patrick Swayze, I was thinking he was one lucky guy. She, too, is still gorgeous and seems like a really cool person.)

For years, I kept my real-life crushes only to boys. I was pretty decent at suppressing anything else. I did once let something slip. I was talking to a guy about movie stars he thought were attractive. I made a comment that one woman was more beautiful than another, and he paused, considered, and then agreed with me. I recall feeling really weird about it, but the subject never came up again. Even now, three years on from coming out, I still struggle to admit when I find a non-male person attractive, famous or not. I’m fairly sure the thread in the QSF group was the first time I’d publicly owned my teenage fancies.

I’m not a person who becomes romantically or emotionally attached easily. Mostly, as a monogamously-married bi person, I simply find people interesting and nice to look at. There’s not much that I don’t find pleasing to the eye. People are so cool! I mean, there is a heck of a lot of variety in humanity, and it’s fun to admire all different kinds of things. I’ve never really understood when people say they think an entire category of people are unattractive. I especially don’t understand making fun of physical features.

Like with people, I have a wide range of taste in books. Yesterday, I tweeted about my frustration that authors of MM romance were using the label “LGBT” for their work. Not as a tag category on booksellers, but on their personal websites. I asked that if people are exclusively writing MM, especially if it’s only cisgender gay/bi men, that they call it what it is. Lesbians (and queer women and non-binary people in general) are being obscured by the mountains of MM books available.

While I understand some of the reasons for labeling as “LGBT,” as a reader, it’s frustrating. I want to find authors in genres I like who write all across the spectrum. Not with just side characters but as main characters. I also don’t want my LGBT books to be limited to romance or my romance to be limited to LGBT and/or MM and FF (for example, I want more romance where the MCs might be an MF couple but one or both are bi—and it’s no big deal).

I suppose my appetite for books and my fondness for admiring all kinds of people are parallel with my interest in all kinds of things. I’ve never considered myself a superfan of anything. Not people or books or authors or celebrities or movies or comics. I like so many, many kinds of things. Maybe it should not be at all surprising that I don’t want to “pick a side” in any aspect of my life.

You know what? There are benefits to my kind of rich enjoyment of life. I’ve made friends all over the place, read books in a wide variety genres, listened to many kinds of music, and tasted traditional foods made by people from all over the world. Why would I ever want to limit that in any way?

Sometimes, people think that I’m not “queer enough” because I married a man. Yes, they’re probably right in that a homophobic society encouraged me to limit my partners to cisgender men. It doesn’t mean that I only married him out of obligation, and it doesn’t negate my bisexuality.

To use a different example, I’m fairly adventuresome when it comes to trying new foods. I’ll give most things a go. Yes, I would even eat insects if that’s what was being served, and no, I would not complain. When someone invites you into their home and their culture, not only is it polite to appreciate it, it’s also fun. Anyway, I have not actually eaten bugs or octopus or even the comparatively mundane caviar. Does that mean I don’t have the potential to try them? Nope. I still would. Do I need to provide you a list of past Food Credentials in order to have you believe I’d taste new and (to me) unusual stuff? I should hope not!

Being bi is a matter of potential. I’m in a monogamous relationship. But if for some reason that changed, I’d be cool with that too. And if I were single or non-monogamous, then I’d be open to whatever. That’s all it means for me. No more, no less. You don’t need my relationship history or my list of celebrity crushes or to browse my book shelf to see how many queer books and which kinds I own. It’s enough for me to say, “This is who I am, this is who I have the ability to love, and that’s the end of the story.”

So what does that mean in a more specific sense, if I’m not about to leave my spouse to go have Bisexual Proof-Texting Adventures? It means mostly that I want to expand the kinds of books I write. If I like to read all over the map, why not let that out in my own work too? I’m excited to see where it goes.

Hey, if you made it this far, thank you. Happy Bi Visibility Day, and happy reading and writing!

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The Big BiList: Awesome bi writers, books, and resources

Blogs, Books, LGBTQ+, Writing

As promised, here is a list of bi+ writers, artists, and books. For the purpose of #BiWeek, we’re using the definition from BiNet USA:

Bisexual – A person whose enduring physical, romantic and/or emotional attraction is to other people of various sexes and/or gender identities. Individuals may experience this attraction in differing ways and degrees over their lifetime.

More definitions can be found here, as collected by activist and educator Robyn Ochs.

Bi+ is a community term; it is used here as a welcoming umbrella for all multi-gender attracted people. I use it as a political and uniting term for the purpose of activism, visibility, and gaining funding for our whole community. Within that, many people choose other multi-gender-attraction labels. People who identify as asexual but bi-, pan-, etc.-romantic are included as well.

This list is by no means exhaustive. These were simply the people gracious enough to respond to my call. Please feel free to share and add more in the comments. And of course, check out all the fantastic writing! We want to support all our talented bi+ folks.