The first two letters of everybody’s favourite initialism – that is, L and G – have made significant strides toward broad cultural acceptance in recent years. B and T on the other hand, perhaps not so much. Possibilities Calgary aims to narrow that gap through dialogue, outreach, and good, old-fashioned organizing. For the third year running, Possibilities is hosting their annual BiBQ, as a part of the forthcoming Pride festivities at the end of this month. We recently had a chance to speak to Tiffany Sostar, creator of Possibilities Calgary and organizer of the BiBQ, about the event and its purpose.

Sostar relates that Possibilities started as a project designed while taking a course at the University of Calgary, specifically devoted to feminist praxis – that is, applying the principles of a theory to the real world, and affecting change.

"Our project was to do some kind of activism or work in the community," Sostar says, "since I’m bisexual myself, and I realized there wasn’t really anything in Calgary for the non-monosexual community." Sostar quickly developed an affinity for the nuts and bolts of community outreach.

"I loved it! And there was a significant demand for it and need for it, and it has now been running for four years."

Possibilities’ purview was narrow at first, hosting regular discussion groups aimed specifically at bisexual and pansexual individuals. This was rapidly followed up by a coffee shop night focused on the queer community as a whole. It seems that as soon as the subject of non-monosexual identities was broached, Sostar’s organization ended up serving the needs of a broad cross-section of queer people.

"I found that there were quite a few asexual folks who were coming to our meetings, because there’s nothing for the asexual community. We decided that ‘zero’ is not ‘one’, so they would also fall under the non-monosexual umbrella, so we started doing occasional discussion nights focused on asexual issues. And we had a ton of trans community members, so we started including that, and it has just kind of grown." Beginning in September, Possibilities will begin hosting a group designed specifically to support transgendered individuals as well.

Devil’s advocates and those who haven’t been paying particularly close attention may be wondering just what it is that non-monosexual queers in general, and bisexual people in particular, have to overcome. In short, the problem is of visibility. How does one assert one’s identity as bisexual while in an opposite-sex relationship? How does one maintain an asexual identity when so many people are prepared to dismiss it as "not having met the right person yet"?

In late July, Anna Paquin found herself having to defend her identity as a bisexual woman to a comically incredulous Larry King. When Paquin asserted that she was bisexual, married to a man, and monogamous, King needled; "but you were bisexual?" – proving that a copious amount of hair dye isn’t the only thing going over his head. Even media that gives queer people decent representation and well-rounded characters can’t seem to stomach the word bisexual. Piper Chapman, one of the lead characters in Orange is the New Black, is clearly presented as bisexual in the context of the story, and never once is the word uttered by another character, even when directly discussing her relationships with both men and women. Sostar underscores this point as a primary focus of Possibilities Calgary.

"If I go based on the last four years of discussion nights, I would say the issues that come up over and over and over are: how can we be visible? How do you perform bisexuality or pansexuality or asexuality and not get erased?" Enter the BiBQ.

"There have been BiBQs in various cities for quite a few years," Sostar says. "One of the prejudices that gets directed against the bisexual community, specifically, is that we access a theoretical straight privilege, and don’t give back to the queer community... The BiBQ seemed like a perfect way to do that – something that would be accessible to everyone in the community. It could be family-friendly, so that would challenge some of the stereotypes about bisexual folks as being hypersexual, and would be something that would be open to everybody. We’d be offering a service, and kind of challenging that narrative of bisexuals as interlopers, or intruders or traitors."

For the past two years running, the idea seems to have been a resounding success. "Our first BiBQ, we anticipated 30 people; we were thinking it would be pretty small," Sostar recalls. "We ended up having more than 150. We had to run out to buy more hot dogs three times over the course of the three-hour event."

This year Sostar and Possibilities Calgary are hoping to host 300 people in their new venue at Central Memorial Park. This official Pride event looks to be continuing its tradition of offering family-oriented entertainment, with live music, crafting tables aimed at the kids who will be in attendance, a bouncy castle, and of course, the titular barbecue. All this, of course, is in service of Possibilities’ all-embracing goals of inclusion and connection.

"[We are] bringing different community groups in to showcase what they do in the community so that people who come to the BiBQ this year can find other groups to connect with; to continue that community building," Sostar says. "The Quiddich club from the UofC [will be] doing a demo. They’re an awesome, trans-inclusive, queer-friendly group for people who want to do something nerdy and sports-related. We’re going to have a video game exhibit with the Museum of Interactive Entertainment and, again, it’s a queer-friendly, trans-inclusive group offering a service that’s interesting and different from what’s been available so far."

The BiBQ, like all of Possibilities’ events, aims to forge and solidify connections in Calgary’s queer community by creating safe space, and giving their attendees the means to network and find friends, allies, and colleagues.