Early Iterations of Bisexual Activism in Toronto, Ontario: A Historical Examination of Bykes and the Ontario Bisexual Network

Abstract

This article seeks to illuminate the activities of historical bisexual community groups in Toronto in the late twentieth century, a peak era of bisexual activism in Ontario. The city’s first bisexual women’s group, Bykes, was founded in 1983, and the first mixed gender group, the Ontario Bisexual Network, was established later in 1989. While the former was influenced by radical lesbian separatist politics in 1970s and 1980s Toronto, the latter demonstrated the need to amplify bisexual concerns across the gender spectrum, in addition to serving a growing membership within the burgeoning bisexual community in the city. In order to contextualize the significance of these bisexual community groups, the following research questions are addressed: what were the objectives of Toronto’s early bisexual community groups and how did activists accomplish them? How did bisexual people in these groups situate themselves in Toronto’s gay and lesbian landscape? What were the main tenets of bisexual community building in the city? Through analyses of oral history interviews and archival materials, we can observe that bisexual activists involved in Toronto’s first community groups participated in creating meeting spaces for each other and engaging in public advocacy that revolved primarily around visibility, education, and community care.