Robyn Ochs - The Outwords Archive

Robyn Ochs, age 3 1/2 months. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs, age 4, New York City, NY. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs, age 4, with two grandmothers and two great-grandmothers. L-R: Gertrude Ochs, Esther Dinnerstein, Fanny Ochs, Miriam Tanzman. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs, age 7, holds the banner for Bluebird troupe, “The Happy Bluebirds of P.S. 197 Queens.” (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs with bi activists at the rally following Boston Pride, ca. 1985, Boston, MA. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs and singer-songwriter Pat Humphries with the bi contingent at the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, 1987, Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs speaks at a Tufts University Rally on November 4, 1991, during a campaign to get the University to establish an LGBT center. Robyn taught in Tufts’s Experimental College from 1991-2003. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs (right) with Gays for Patsy’s dance troupe, ReneGAYdes from Boston. The group took 2nd place at the 1994 Gay Games country western dance competition in New York City, NY. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs proposes to Peg Preble in their backyard weeks after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, 2013. (Photo Credit: Kristine Grimes)

Robyn Ochs and Peg Preble on their wedding day. After obtaining a waiver of the 3-day waiting period from the Court House, they walked to the Town Clerk’s office and became the first same-sex couple married in Brookline, MA on May 17, 2004. (Photo Credit: Laurie Swope)

Robyn Ochs and Peg Preble are pronounced married by Town Clerk Pat Ward on May 17, 2004 in Brookline, MA. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs at a protest outside the Massachusetts State House in May 2014 in Boston, MA. Then Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had filed a lawsuit to block the start of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on May 17, 2014. Robyn’s sign reads: “Mitt’s last (grand)stand. Enough, Mitt. It’s time to move on.” (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs (left) with Rabbi Debra Kolodny outside the White House, following a meeting of bi leaders that was held there on March 15, 2016, Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Robyn Ochs)

Robyn Ochs accepts a “Fabulous 5” award at North Shore Pride, June 25, 2016, Salem, MA. (Photo Credit: Marilyn Humphries)

Robyn Ochs with President Barack Obama at the White House, June 29, 2016, Washington, D.C. (Photo Credit: Kelly Jo Smart)

Robyn Ochs was born in 1958 in San Antonio, Texas. She studied Language and Culture and Latin American Studies at the State University of New York at Purchase, and received a Masters of Education degree from Harvard. As a writer, teacher, speaker, and activist, Robyn has worked to promote the visibility and rights of people of all orientations and genders – but her primary mission has been carving out space for people who call themselves bisexual.

At age 23, Robyn came out as bisexual to her friends and family. Since then, she has created multiple organizations to promote bisexual visibility and community. In 1983, she co-founded the Boston Bisexual Women’s Network, followed by the Bisexual Resource Center in 1985. In 1990, she was also a founding member of BiNet USA, an umbrella organization bringing together bisexual organizations, communities, and resources.

In addition to creating multiple organizations for equality, Robyn has taught courses at MIT, Tufts University, and Johnson State College. Her classes focus on identity politics, the history of sexual minorities, and non-binary identities. She also worked as an administrator at Harvard University for 26 years, where she co-founded LGBT faculty and staff groups. In 2009, she received the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her advocacy on the Harvard campus. Robyn also served from 2004 until 2016 on the board of MassEquality, Massachusetts’ statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, working for marriage equality and the rights of transgender people.

But perhaps Robyn’s most tangible accomplishment has been creating a definition of bisexuality for people around the world: “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge in myself the potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually — to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree.”

Robyn’s editing collaborations include the 2005 anthology Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, and Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men, which appeared in 2015. Since 2009, she has edited Bi Women Quarterly (1983-present), the longest-running bisexual women’s periodical in the world.

Robyn currently lives in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, with her wife Peg Preble. When our OUTWORDS team showed up there in August 2016, at the end of a 13-day, 19-interview marathon, they discovered that Robyn had graciously secured a neighbor’s air-conditioned house for her interview. OUTWORDS thanks Robyn for her thoughtfulness, and for her dynamic, tireless leadership for a fully inclusive LGBTQ+ community.

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