| Robyn Ochs | |
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Robyn Ochs |
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| Born | 1958 San Antonio, TX USA |
| Organization | Boston Bisexual Women's Network, Bisexual Resource Center, BiNet USA, MassEquality |
| Political movement | LGBT Rights/Bisexual Rights |
| Spouse | Peg Preble |
| Awards | Susan J. Hyde Activism Award (2009); Havard Gay & Caucus's Lifetime Achievement Award for advocacy on the Harvard University Campus (2009); Reinaldo dos Santos Memorial Award for Bisexual Activism (1997). |
| Notes
editor of the Bisexual Resource Guide, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World
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Robyn Ochs (born 1958) is an American bisexual and LGBT rights activist who helped found the Boston Bisexual Network in 1983, and the Bisexual Resource Center in 1985.[1]
She is the editor of the Bisexual Resource Guide and the anthology Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World[1]. Ochs is on the staff of Harvard University and has taught courses at Tufts' Experimental College.[2] She is a professional speaker and workshop leader. Her primary fields of interest are identity and coalition building. 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 appeared on a number of television talk shows, including Donahue, Rolanda, Maury Povich, Women Aloud, Real Personal, Hour Magazine and The Shirley Show, to discuss issues relating to bisexuality. She has also been in Seventeen and Newsweek.
In 2009 at the Creating Change Conference 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.”[3]
Robyn is a co-founder of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Faculty and Staff Group at Harvard University and served as co-chair in 2008-2009.
She has served on the Board of Directors of MassEquality, Massachusetts's statewide equality organization, since 2004.
Ochs teaches courses on topics including LGBT history & politics in the United States, the politics of sexual orientation, and the experiences of those who transgress the binary categories of gay/straight, masculine/feminine, black/white and/or male/female.[4] Her writings have been published in numerous bisexual, women's studies, multicultural and LGBT anthologies.[5]
On 17 May 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 were among the first same-sex couples to get legally married (A Carefully Considered Rush to the Altar). Ironically, in an example of exactly the type of bisexual erasure she has spent much of her life fighting against, Ochs was publicly misidentified in the press as a lesbian.
Ochs is the niece of late folk singer Phil Ochs.
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