Robyn Ochs (born 1958) is an American

bisexual Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, wh ...

activist, professional speaker, and workshop leader. Her primary fields of interest are gender, sexuality, identity, and coalition building. She is the editor of the ''Bisexual Resource Guide'' (published annually from 1990 to 2002), '' Bi Women Quarterly'', and the anthology '' Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World.'' Ochs, along with Professor Herukhuti, co-edited the anthology ''Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men''. Ochs has appeared on a number of television talk shows, including '' Donahue'', ''Rolanda'', ''

Maury Povich Maurice Richard Povich (born January 17, 1939) is an American retired television personality, best known for hosting the tabloid talk show '' Maury'' which aired from 1991 to 2022. Povich began his career as a radio reporter, initially at WW ...

'', ''Women Aloud'', ''Real Personal'', ''Hour Magazine'' and ''The Shirley Show'', to discuss issues relating to bisexuality. She has also been in '' Seventeen'' and ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

''. She describes herself as Jewish, but not religious.

Education

Ochs has a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in Language and Culture, Latin American Studies from the State University of New York, Purchase. Additionally, she has a Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management and a Masters of Education from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Work in academia

Ochs teaches courses on topics including

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term i ...

history & politics in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, the politics of

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generally ...

, and the experiences of those who transgress the binary categories of gay/straight, masculine/feminine, black/white and/or male/female. She has taught at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

Johnson State College Johnson State College was a public liberal arts college in Johnson, Vermont. Founded in 1828 by John Chesamore, in 2018 it was merged with the former Lyndon State College to create Northern Vermont University. History and governance Both ...

, and

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learnin ...

. Ochs worked as an administrator at

from 1983 until she retired in 2009. While there, she co-founded and co-chaired the LGBT Faculty and Staff Group, co-founded and facilitated the LGBTQ Lunches, a monthly lunch series for lesbian, bi, queer and trans women faculty and staff, and served as the faculty advisor for QSA, Harvard's undergraduate student LGBTQ organization.

Work as a bisexual activist

Ochs helped found the Boston Bisexual Network in 1983, and the

Bisexual Resource Center The Bisexual Resource Center (BRC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, that has served the bisexual community since 1985. Originally known as The East Coast Bisexual Network, it incorporated ...

in 1985. In 1987, The East Coast Bisexual Network established the first Bisexual History Archives with Ochs' initial collection; archivist Clare Morton hosted researchers. The group became the

in 1993. In 2002 she delivered the first bi-focused keynote during the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Addiction Professionals. In 2004 and in 2007, she keynoted the Midwest Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Campus Conference, the largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender student conference in the United States. Ochs has served on the Board of Directors of MassEquality, Massachusetts's statewide equality organization, from 2004-2016. She has written frequently on bisexuality and LGBT rights and her writings have been published in numerous

women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...

multicultural The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for " ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchang ...

and LGBT

anthologies In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically catego ...

Awards and recognitions

In 1997 she received the Reinaldo dos Santos Memorial Award for Bisexual Activism. In 2009 at the

Creating Change Conference The National LGBTQ Task Force is an American social justice advocacy non-profit organizing the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. Also known as The Task Force, the organization supports ...

the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force awarded Ochs the Susan J. Hyde Activism Award for Longevity in the Movement. As she presented the award Creating Change Director Sue Hyde told Ochs: ''"We hear your clear voice, we see your staunch advocacy and we respond to your loving insistence that our movement includes all of us."'' Also in 2009, Ochs received the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus's Lifetime Achievement Award for advocacy on the Harvard University Campus. Ochs received the 2011

Brenda Howard Award The Brenda Howard Memorial Award is an award for activism created in 2005 by the Queens Chapter of PFLAG and named after Brenda Howard. It was the first award by a major American LGBT organization to be named after an openly bisexual person. The aw ...

at the Queens NYC

PFLAG PFLAG is the United States' first and largest organization uniting parents, families, and allies with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+). PFLAG National is the national organization, which provides support ...

chapter's annual awards luncheon on February 5, 2012. On June 13, 2015, Ochs received the City of Cambridge's GLBT Commission's annual recognition award for her work as an educator and activist. On July 22, 2017, Ochs received Campus Pride’s Voice & Action National Leadership Award.

Personal life

On May 17, 2004, the first day it was legal for same-sex couples to marry anywhere in the United States, Ochs and her long-time partner Peg Preble (a self-identified lesbian), were among the first same-sex couples to legally marry. When early news reports spoke of the marriage as a "lesbian wedding", Ochs objected strongly to being classified as a lesbian rather than a bisexual. In follow-up news coverage, Ochs publicly denounced this as an example of exactly the type of

bisexual erasure Bisexual erasure or bisexual invisibility is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources. In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can includ ...

she has been calling attention to for much of her life. She is the daughter of

music producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

and

radio host A radio personality (American English) or radio presenter (British English) is a person who has an on-air position in radio broadcasting. A radio personality who hosts a radio show is also known as a radio host, and in India and Pakistan as a radi ...

Sonny Ochs and niece of

folk singer Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has be ...

Phil Ochs Philip David Ochs (; December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American songwriter and protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer). Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, political activism, often alliterative lyrics, and ...

Selected bibliography

Books

* '' Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World'', co-edited with Sarah E. Rowley (2005; second ed., 2009) ()
''Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men – An Anthology''
co-edited with H. Sharif "Herukhuti" Williams (2014) ()

Anthologies (as a contributor)

* "From the Closet to the Stage," i
''Bi Any Other Name: Bisexuals Speak Out''
( Lani Kaʻahumanu &

Loraine Hutchins Loraine Hutchins is an American bisexual and feminist author, activist, and sex educator. Hutchins rose to prominence as co-editor (with Lani Kaʻahumanu) of ''Bi Any Other Name'', an anthology that is one of the seminal books in the bisexual righ ...

, ed.) (1991) () * "Bisexuality, Feminism, Men and Me," i
''Closer to Home: Bisexuality & Feminism'' (Weise, ed.)
(1992) () * "Moving Beyond Binary Thinking," (co-written with Marcia Deihl) i
''Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price'' (Blumenfeld, ed.)
(1992) () * "Biphobia," i
''Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority'' (Firestein, ed.)
(1996) ()
''Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures, Volume 1'' (Zimmerman, ed.)
(1999) () * "What's in a Name? Why Women Embrace or Resist Bisexual Identity," i
''Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan'' (Firestein, ed.)
(2007) () * "Bisexuality, Feminism, Men and Me," i
''Women: Images and Realities: A Multicultural Anthology'' (Kesselman, McNair, & Schniedewind, eds.)
(2011) () * "Beyond Binaries: Seeing Sexual Diversity in the Classroom," i
''Activities for Teaching Gender and Sexuality in the University Classroom'' (Murphy & Ribarsky, eds.)
(2013) () * “LGBTQ politics after marriage: a panel discussion with Gabriel Foster, Paulina Hehn-Hernandez, Robyn Ochs, Steven William Thrasher, Urvashi Vaid, and Hari Ziyad,” i
Queer Activism After Marriage Equality (DeFilippis, Yarbrough, & Jones)
(2018) () *“Without Wincing of Clenching: Bisexual People’s Experiences with Health Care Professionals,” i
Bodies and Barriers: Queer Activists on Health'', (''Shanker, Kendell, & Levine)
2020)()

References

External links

Robyn Ochs' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ochs, Robyn 1958 births 20th-century American Jews 20th-century LGBT people 21st-century American Jews 21st-century LGBT people Activists from New York (state) Bisexual academics LGBT rights activists from the United States Bisexual feminists Bisexual rights activists Bisexual women Bisexual writers Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni Harvard University staff Jewish American writers Jewish feminists LGBT Jews LGBT people from Texas American LGBT writers Living people People from Queens, New York State University of New York at Purchase