My Grassroots Are Showing

1970s

• Student and a founding organizer of San Francisco State Women Studies Program (WOMS)
• Served on WOMS committee hiring Angela Davis back into California State University system
• Coming out as a lesbian to children, ex-husband, mother, family, friends, colleagues at work
• Anita Bryant, Briggs Initiative – No on 6, Gay-cott of Florida Orange Juice, Gay Pride March
• Harvey Milk election, assassination, White Night Riots
• Mothertongue Feminist Reader’s Theater – writing and performance
• My real life coming out lesbian adventures with Carlos Castaneda, author of Conversations with Don Juan
• 1979 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
• First person in my family to graduate from college – 1979 BA Women Studies SF State
• Out lesbian chef at The Village OZ, a new age resort in Northern California

1980s

• Lesbian chef falls in love with bisexual man and falls out of grace with the lesbian community
• Bisexual coming out to French radical lesbian feminist theorist and author Monique Wittig
• Coming out as bisexual on-stage in Mothertongue’s “Did you come or fake it? Women and Sexuality” script – 1981-92
• West Coast Women’s Music & Comedy Festivals – bisexual visibility workshops and performances
• My first published article: “Biphobic. . . some of my best friends are”
• Founding BiPOL a bisexual feminist political action group focused on visibility/AIDS/ARC
• Creation of first Bi political buttons: Unity is Our Bi-Word and Bi-Phobia Shield
• Manager of the Valencia Rose Cabaret and cultural center – the first gay comedy club, where Whoopi Goldberg performed and Tom Ammiano, Marga Gomez, Lea DeLaria, Karen Ripley, and Monica Palacios got their start
• Mayor Bi-Anne Feinstein and Princess Bi and BiPOL win Most Outrageous contingent in Gay Pride Parade
• San Francisco Bisexual Center closes after eight years
• First Women and AIDS forum
• Sexual Healing of Jerry’s Falwellian agenda and the Brotherhood Family Forum
• Tippicanoe and Ka’ahumanu too! First out bisexual to officially run for Vice President of USA at a Democratic Convention
• First Bisexual Rights Rally – nine speakers, Ladies Against Women, Sister Boom Boom
• 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights – my article “Are We Visible Yet?” is published in MOW Civil Disobedience Handbook; bisexuals meet at Mayflower Hotel to march as contingent, this first national gathering sparks a core of people to organize BiNet USA
• Appointed to Gay Lesbian Advisory Committee to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission (“Bisexual” and “Transgender” added in 1992)
• Co-editing Bi Any Other Name, which helped catalyze the new movement for bisexual identity and activism [the book was published in 1991]

1990s

• First National Bisexual Conference in San Francisco – founding of BiNet USA
• How the bisexual magazine Anything That Moves got its name
• Working at National Gay Rights Advocates during the Gulf War
• First International Bisexual Conference in Amsterdam
• Successful campaign for inclusion in the name of the March on Washington for Lesbian Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation – bisexual organizers at all levels; over 1,000 people in the bisexual contingent; I’m only out bisexual invited to speak on main stage
• National bisexual conference in conjunction with the MOW draws over 600 participants
• Creation and wild adventures of the Safer Sex Slut team – dedicated to demolishing denial
• Christian Fundamentalists include bisexuals in the wording of Colorado’s anti-gay state Amendment 2
• BiNet USA National Co-coordinator and newsletter columnist
• National television talk-shows, Newsweek cover story, NY Times story, Dykes to Watch Out For
• Co-Grand Marshal with Armistead Maupin of San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade
• BiTransAction at Creating Change Conference plenary and meeting with White House staff
• National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Board of Directors
• Bisexual counter-ad to radical religious right’s national “ex-gay” full-page ad campaign

  2000s

• SAME SEX MARRIAGE: "An Open Letter to my Colleagues"