Activist Looks Beyond Identity And Sexuality

LEWISBURG, Pa. — The Bucknell University Office of LGBT Awareness will host the talk, "Beyond Binaries: Identity and Sexuality: An Evening with Robyn Ochs," on Tuesday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. in Rooke Chemistry Auditorium (Room 116) at Bucknell University.

Ochs is a bisexual and LGBT rights activist who helped found the Boston Bisexual Network in 1983 and the Bisexual Resource Center in 1985. Along-time activist, professional speaker and workshop leader, she is the editor of the new, 42-country anthology,Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World; and the quarterly newsletter, Bi Women.
 

In her interactive program, Ochs will address several concerns, including, "How do we assign labels to our complicated and unique experiences? What is the relationship between experience and identity, between self-identity and the way we are 'read' by others? How does our geographic and cultural location affect our experiences of identity?"

She has taught courses on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgenderhistory and politics in the United States, and has spoken at hundreds of colleges, universities and conferences in the United States and beyond. She is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Susan J. Hyde Activism Awardand the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ochs' writings have been published in numerous bisexual, women's studies, multicultural and GLBT anthologies, including: Bi Any Other Name: Bisexuals Speak Out ( Kaahumanu and Hutchins, eds.); Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism(Weise, ed.); Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price (Blumenfeld, ed.); Women: Images and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology(Kesselman, McNair, and Schniedewind, eds.); Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (Zimmerman, ed.), Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (ed. Adams, et al.) and Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World(editions in Chinese and Spanish are forthcoming).

She has appeared on a number of talk shows, including "Donohue,""Rolanda,""Maury Povich,""Women Aloud,""Real Personal,""Hour Magazine" and the "Shirley Show"(Canada); and inSeventeen and Newsweek magazines.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the University Lectureship Committee, the Offices of the Provost and FLAG&BT, the Women's Resource Center, the Center for the Student of Race, Ethnicity and Gender, and the Departments of Psychology, Sociology/Anthropology, and Women's and Gender Studies.