Bisexual Alliance of St. Louis

Bisexual Alliance of St. Louis

Are you bisexual and live in the St. Louis area?

Have I got a group for you.

BASL, or Bisexual Alliance of St. Louis, is an informal group that has been around for 17 years. 17 years!!! It is a fluid organization that meets a few times a month, once as a family-friendly outing, and once as an adult social gathering.

They also have a monthly discussion group at the LGBT Center. (One of the active members has a Queer book group that meets monthly; the last book they discussed was The Whipping Girl. You can  check the SEX+STL calendar for more info or find BASL events listed on facebook.)

People who attend their events are bi-friendly, bi-curious, or bi-sexual. Other terms for bi-sexual are pansexual, queer, omnisexual, and trysexual.

An important function of the group is to create a warm welcome for bisexuals, as they often receive a bi-phobic response from the straight AND gay community. At the last meeting, the members joked, “We need a Growing American Youth organization for bisexual adults!”

A SEX+STL reader shares, “As far as my own persona experience goes: when I was in high school, a trusted pro-gay teacher told me that “bisexuality doesn’t exist, you’re just confused”.  My personal development went to a screeching halt for the next 4 years.  My ex-husband finally flat-out told me “look, you’re bisexual”, and then proceeded to cry about how he was afraid I was going to leave him for a woman, and once he got over that, he turned around and started trying to use me as a ploy to pick up women for himself.  After coming to terms with my sexual orientation, I tried to reach out to a lesbian co-worker, only to have her reject me because “bisexuals don’t exist”.

YES THEY DO.

Will this proof  do? The San Francisco Human Rights Commission put out this Bisexuality Invisibility Report. An excerpt can be found here.

A bisexual swinging in rural Missouri

One of BASL’s important goals is rural outreach. So many people live in the country and don’t have access to a variety of activities, leaving them feeling isolated. Instead of falling into a patten of self-loathing and excessive drinking, BASL encourages people in the surrounding Missouri and Illinois area to make a trip in to St. Louis to spend time with friendly, like-minded people.

Swinging is one of  BASL’s social activities. I didn’t guess they meant the sex kind of swinging, so I assumed they meant swing dancing. Only after they started talking about Turtle Park did I realize they meant swinging on swings swinging. They decide by consensus on activities.

Regardless of whether you swing or not, it’s good to know that you can be monogamous or non-monogamous and still be bisexual. Bisexual is a noun, not a verb.

My ex-husband, it should be noted, did not get that memo. When I was married and monogamous with him, he liked to sneer, “You USED to be bisexual. Now you’re STRAIGHT.”

I found that annoying.

As the great poet once said: “We’re contextual, we’re bisexual, get used to it!”