In honor of Bisexual Health Awareness Month, we interview Ellyn Ruthstrom, President of the Bisexual Resource Center.
Transcript
Transcribed by Greenpath Transcripts : www.greenpathtranscripts.com
Lynnette: On the BiCast we strive to be about and for our community. March is Bisexual Health Awareness Month and with us today to discuss it is Ellyn Ruthstrom, President of the Bisexual Resource Center in Boston. The BRC has been active in the community since 1985. They have designated March as Bisexual Health Awareness Month to help raise awareness about our severe physical and mental health issues.
John: Welcome, Ellyn. We are happy to have you here with us today.
Ellyn: Thank you so much. I’m really glad to be here and be a part of BiCast. It’s very exciting.
Lynnette: Thank you. Ellen, can you tell me, how long have you been involved with the BRC?
Ellyn: I’ve been involved with the BRC, oh, let’s see, at least a dozen years in lots of different capacities. First just as a volunteer and then I joined the board for a couple years, left the board and then I got back on the board and have been president for a number of years now.
Lynnette: Wonderful. That’s great. We’re glad to have you.
Ellyn: Thank you.
John: Where did you get the idea of focusing March as Bisexual Health Awareness Month?
Ellyn: When we came out of the White House meeting, the roundtable on bisexual issues last September on Bi Pride Day, that was a big meeting for our community and one of the overriding points we all took away from it was that the physical and mental health disparities going on in our community are severe and they’re not being addressed properly by the LGBT community, by the government, by any of the entities that are dealing with health. Many of us I think were really struck by all of the information that we ourselves had gathered together to present at that meeting. So that was one of the things. When I came back to Boston and I talked more to our board here, it was definitely something we knew we wanted to continue highlighting.
Then we were so fortunate because we have an intern this year who is a graduate student in public health at Boston University, Julia Canfield, and she needed to do a practicum. She designed this idea of the health awareness social media campaign and we were like… we just jumped on board and we thought it would be a great opportunity not just for the BRC but for the whole community to be able to work together and raise the awareness together in a social media framework. So we are really excited already about how well it’s going in the past week and almost week and a half and we’ve been really connecting with a lot of different groups. Groups have written to us and said they’re having a bi health awareness discussion because of this. They’re sponsoring different things. One man connected with his employee resource group in his corporation that he works for and posted information about the awareness month. So just interesting things like that are going on. So we’re very pleased it’s something the rest of the community is really responding to in a positive way.
John: Yeah, I know that Boston has kind of been a center for bisexual health for a lot of years, so you seem to be the group most likely to do this.
Ellyn: We’ve been lucky in that way. Luckily we’ve had Fenway Health here which is a center for LGBT health issues and because of that, the first bi health program was established several years back with Marshall Miller, and unfortunately that program is no longer being funded, so that’s a sad thing, but we continue to work with Fenway Health on bi-specific programming. In fact, in April we’re going to be doing a biphobia workshop with them through a health awareness lens. So we continue to work with them but they no longer have the bi health specific program.
Lynnette: That is a shame but maybe things will change.
Ellyn: I know. If funding were to miraculously appear, that would be wonderful, and I think that’s part of the awareness campaign that we’re trying to emphasize, is that funders and different agencies need to think about doing bi-specific programs and services. So hopefully that will make some people think about that, and certainly not just at Fenway Health but at other places around the country, we hope.
Lynnette: Exactly. That is my wish too. I know there’s a lot of people back there working very hard to get these things happening.
Ellyn: Exactly.
Lynnette: We need to back them. So what would you like to see changed to make Bisexual Health Awareness Month a success?
Ellyn: Well, we really want that idea of, that there is a bi-specific need in our community. We want that to be taken seriously. I think that some LGBT organizations think that, well, you know, the bisexuals, if they’re going to gay places then they’ll hear about us and they’ll come in and they’ll do things. You know, they’ll come and access our services. And that just isn’t the case. Many bi people don’t feel welcomed into LGBT-defined space and I think that people need to be welcomed openly and explicitly, that these organizations or agencies are going to be serving bi people. So I think that’s an important part of it. We also have a concern, and this came up during the Washington meeting. It was very important to us. We came up with the phrase, “Nothing about us without us,” and that to us means that, let’s say an organization decides, OK, it’s important for us to have a bi specific program. If you want to do it then you have to have bisexuals involved with making that program. So you need to have bi input, bi advisory, bi staff. Whatever you need to make that program work, you need to have bi input, and that’s another really important thing. We want LGBT organizations to understand that they are responsible to all of the letters of their acronym and so you know, it’s easy to say LGBT but if you’re not serving the B and very often not serving the T then we do not have a well-balanced community and we all deserve equal services and programs.
And I think lastly, one thing I would really love to see – last week we showed the examples of the anti-stigma campaign that they’ve done in Canada. It’s this beautifully done campaign that really shows the diversity of the bisexual community and really kind of works against the stereotypes of bisexuals and I would love it if an American entity were to take that on and do a major bisexual anti-stigma campaign. I think it’s time.
Lynnette: I think that would be very helpful. That would be great.
John: I mean, we did videos a few years back and that seemed to have somewhat of an impact.
Ellyn: Yeah, I think some of the videos are very helpful, and I know that the American Institute of Bisexuality has produced a couple and I think they’re still hoping to produce a few more. I agree with you. Those can be very helpful. We want to make sure that reaches out to even further because I don’t know that the reach of that campaign has gone across in a national way.
John: Or past our community.
Ellyn: Yes, exactly.
John: One topic that always comes up when discussing our health is the level of violence and abuse we face. Can you talk about the focus on these issues this month?
Ellyn: Yes, and I’m glad you mention that, John. The last week of the month we’re going to be dealing with sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Some people might say, why is that in a health month, but that to us is very important. It overlaps with the other parts of our health issues. Obviously when you are a victim of violence you need to access health agencies and also that violence and trauma may result in different mental health issues that you may need support with. It could affect your job performance. It could affect your employment which then again can affect your health. It can affect then your access to health if it affects your employment. So when we started talking about some of these things we realized that a lot of these issues are very interconnected. This past year, 2013, there was a major study that came out and fortunately they did break out the statistics so we could see the difference between the straight and lesbian and gay community and bi community and the numbers for both bi women and bi men showed that the level of violence is tremendous. The experience of having violence in an intimate partner relationship is very high and for bi women in particular it’s the highest of any orientation. And for bi men as well but it’s strikingly high for bi women. So we want to definitely draw attention to that. We’ll be putting a lot of effort into that last week to make sure that people really see the interconnectedness of these things.
Lynnette: That is great. That is something near and dear to our hearts. Even now though, some therapists believe sexual abuse is the cause of bisexuality, so for us we might find that kind of help actually damages us further. How do we find mental health specific to bisexual victims of sexual abuse?
Ellyn: That is a very good question and I think that’s hard because people usually have to access services in their immediate communities. We definitely try and help people find bi-supportive space and bi-supportive therapists but that is a complicated issue. I would suggest, as usual, that for people to try and find the safe spaces in their community and try to find, if there are LGBT-supportive spaces in their community, go to those places first, as opposed to just a general health center. Speak explicitly about being bi and looking for bi-supportive services. I think it’s important both so that they know that there is a need for that and also obviously if they do have people who are trained specifically with that sensitivity, it’s important to match those people up.
That’s another part of this that I think is important. We want to make sure that people understand that it’s important that you have a bi competency that you can get more informed about how to serve the bi community better. The BRC, BiNet USA, several other bi organizations, we are really stressing this within our communities, that organizations have to become more bi-competent.
Lynnette: Agreed, yes. And we can help with that by sharing our information, too.
Ellyn: Exactly.
John: Yes. What could we do to help the campaign on the ground, to do more to push for resources that focus on our health issues?
Ellyn: What a great question, John. Use your creativity with the campaign. If ideas pop up by looking at what is going out on Facebook or Twitter, if you see organizations responding to the campaign and think, oh, that’s an organization that’s in my community. I can go and talk to them, you know? They seem to be looking at this messaging about bi interests, so I should go and talk to them and see if they’d be interested in starting a bi-specific program. So keep aware in that way to see who’s talking about these issues. Obviously we want as many people as possible to pass along the messages within their own networks. We hadn’t thought about this early on but we’re thinking about it now. We’ve been creating some graphics to go along with the campaign and we’re thinking now of whether it might be possible that we could produce some posters so maybe that could be something that LGBT centers, college centers, could use and have a real visual representation of some of these important bi-specific issues.
Lynnette: I think that is an excellent idea.
John: Oh, I agree.
Lynnette: At our Q Center is what it’s called, I think that would be wonderful. That would be great. That would be very helpful.
John: In DC too it would be a great thing to have.
Ellyn: Good, good. That’s good to have that feedback because we just started talking about that and I think we can really think about that and get them to look really sharp so that people are going to want to put it up. It will be colorful and eye-catching and hopefully people will get the messages.
John: Yeah, I think it’s great. I’ll tell you, since it’s Bi Health Month, at a party I was talking to a clinical therapist who works with a lot of AIDS patients and she said, I’d like to get this kind of training because I feel like I don’t know when I’m talking to bisexual clients how to relate and act sometimes. So you know, we just have to be in our community wherever it is sometimes.
Ellyn: Exactly. So I hope that as people are watching the campaign, they get some ideas. And if you want to connect with the BRC and find out how we can help you, please email us. You can email us at [email protected]. You can go to our biresource.net website and there are different ways on there that you can contact us through. Yeah, just reach out to us and we will try and connect you to other people, to other organizations near you. It’s important for us to continue or community building.
John: Yes.
Lynnette: Absolutely. We’re behind you on that. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us today?
Ellyn: No, but I want to congratulate you both for starting up the BiCast and reaching out to community. We have to do this in all different ways and your podcast is yet another great way of reaching out and connecting people so I really applaud you for doing it.
Lynnette: Thank you.
John: Thanks. It’s not just us though. We have others that are working with us and as you know the bisexual community is pretty much an all volunteer community so we all have to put a hand in.
Lynnette: Yeah, we have quite a crew that, besides being on the air with us, has all these different functions they do for us. It’s how we stay alive so it’s great.
Ellyn: Yeah, good for you. Actually I will just say, the campaign, we called it Bi the Way, Our Health Matters, Too. I just want to end with that: it’s important to us to value our own community’s health even if nobody else is. We do and we are there for each other.
Lynnette: Exactly, yes, that’s wonderful. So I do encourage everyone to visit the BRC and look through all of the topics and the whole site really. It’s a wealth of information. And please share that information on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or wherever you feel like you need to and want to. The more information we all have access to the better. Ellen, I want to thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate it.
John: Yes, it was wonderful.
Ellyn: You’re welcome. Thanks so much. It was really great talking to you.
Lynnette: Thank you. Bye.
Ellyn: Bye.
(end of audio file 17:45)
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