There'd be some kind of jousting, clearly...

I keep an eye on LGBT and bi references in Hansard through the magic of Google alerts. One that only made it in through my general LGBT filter was this response to a question tabled recently:

"Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, House of Lords; Labour)

The Permanent Secretary and other members of the Northern Ireland Office's departmental board volunteered to be diversity champions for underrepresented groups in the NIO. This supports the NIO's strategic approach to improving diversity and equality in the department. There are board-level champions for lesbian, gay and transgender staff; black and ethnic-minority staff; disabled staff and staff with caring responsibilities. Two members of the board also co-chair the NIO's Diversity Steering Group."

Now, is that an inadvertently missing "b" word there, or has the NIO had problems recruiting a bisexual champion? I think we should be told - and that a champion bisexual for Northern Ireland clearly needs to be found!

Strictly Homo Heroes?

Local LGB project Lesbian & Gay Foundation this summer launched an eyecatching (they have lots of money and people for image work) campaign to nominate "Homo Heroes" this summer. Despite the brandname we're invited to name our L,G,B,&/T hero and pose holding a sign with their name on for a photo gallery. After considering a range of possible nominees I joined in, waving a placard with Paddy Ashdown's name on it: straight, cis people can be LGBT community heroes too.

The project reaches its next stage today with a push for donations. It cites support from
"Beth Ditto, lead singer with The Gossip; Sir Ian McKellen, actor Lord of the Rings; Russell T Davies, producer and chief writer of Doctor Who".

So far as I'm aware that's two gay men and a lesbian: sadly this is not so surprising, but the lesbian voice is Beth Ditto. Beyond being a minor-league popster, Beth is probably most notable in LGBT politics for her biphobic comments about Angelina Jolie (to the effect that if you're not in a same-sex relationship, even if you have been so in the past, you're straight).

Come out, come out, and admire the guidance of this biphobic person as you do so? No thanks.

Quizzed

I'm skipping the bisexual activism weekend in Leicester this weekend as I'm a bit worn down and burned out still; so naturally I take time off by being interviewed for a documentary on being bisexual in Britain today. Funny the definitions of relaxation activism gives you :o) It helps that my interviewer is rather gorgeous, though I don't know that til they show up, so I really am doing it as a peculiar way to unwind.

Most of the questions are the usual kinds of things: how bi do you have to be to be bi, do you get more prejudice from the gay or straight worlds, and such. I start well and then become more waffly in the later questions: I need to do this stuff more often. One iussue which I hadn't pondered in a while was about it being harder for people to accept being bi - the situation of straight people saying "well, it'd be easier to understand if they were gay". I don't have a simple, sane answer for this one figured out yet and will have to work on it!

An hour of chatter and it's over, so naturally I'm bubbling with ideas for who else documentary makers ought to talk to for angles on bisexual life. Talking about this stuff from the basics up is actually a great way of stimulating your own interest and ideas too: I should line up an interviewer to quiz me ahead of each new BCN deadline to help with the creativity.

15

Manchester's bisexual social-support group BiPhoria is fifteen this month. We'll have a bash this weekend to celebrate and to help reach out to more new people.

That makes us the longest running bi group in the UK that is still going - I'm not sure whether to be proud or sad about that. The "original" UK bi groups were in London and Edinburgh, in the mid 1980s. London's LBG fell by the wayside about five years ago and EBG in Edinburgh nearly a decade ago, though there's a new EBG which was set up a few years later. BiPhoria itself came out of a move toward joint working by a men's bi group and a women's bi group, both of which closed down in the 1990s.

Overall the network of bi support and social organisations is flourishing in a way it has not done for some time: new groups springing up in Swansea and Cardiff; Sheffield blossoming and more. But there's still no-one employed to work in or with the bi community specifically at any level, so the momentum may fade as quickly as it grows. Local groups that are sustained over time seem to depend on core committed activists who get something worthwhile out of carrying on.

So Manchester's fifteenth birthday reflects that a decade and a half ago I decided to set down some roots in the city, and that I had a personal investment in wanting there to be a strong bi scene so people who didn't fit the binaries well had a space to find friends and acceptance.

That's not all you need though: in helping get things like the Cardiff LGB youth group going, I'd made mistakes and learned basic skills in doing publicity and running group space.

That leads me to one of the areas where I think we often fail in getting bi groups up, running and then sustained. Someone will pop up and say "I want to run a bi group in Bloggstown" and we will simply encourage them to do so, maybe help with some flyers and websites or advice on how to find a suitable venue. If you happen to have the right skills for group work that's great, but if not it might be best to first find a local LGBT organisation and volunteer there for a few months: building your personal contacts in the community along the way but also getting peer support and advice first-hand. Until we organise bi group runners away weekends, of course!

Rebranding?

I’m not sure where it has come from, but I love the way bits of the internet seem to be slyly rebranding 23/9 as Bi Visibility Day. "International Celebrate Bisexuality Day" is a hell of a mouthful as a name, and a little nebulous as a concept: what do you do for International Celebrate Bisexuality Day ? Are you being celebratory enough? International enough?

Whereas Bi Visibility Day, you could sensibly mark with a bi resources stall in a bar or student union foyer, with flyering local gay or straight venues, with a balloon launch outside your town hall, or whatever.

The only downside I can see is where ICBD sounded like a type of Russian nuclear weapon, BVD sounds more like something you need to go to the clinic to get treated. But the shorter name will in itself be less in need of having a shorthand form.

We’ve had ten years of 23/9 being ICBD. I love the subtle shift in the name, and I think ten years on is a great time to start using a new name for the date that can inspire new forms of visibility activism.

One step forward

As I wrote about few months ago, we for the first time had a bi segment at the local Town Hall's annual LGBT day.

The report has just come out, a six page glossy colour thing. Very shiny and pretty.

Half a page is on bi inclusion, drawn from the workshop :o) this can only be a good thing, putting about fifteen top tips in front of many people who work in and with the LGBT communities across Greater Manchester.

Otherwise the workshop reports are as bi marginalising as ever though - headings on "Lesbian and Bi Women" that lead to reports that talk exclusively about lesbians, and so forth.

But still: one step forward.

I turn on the box, it's like punk never happened

While the big Pride festival settles across Manchester for the weekend, outside the sprawling mass of the gay village there is a small 'free' Pride event in parallel.

Of course, like the NHS it's not free, simply free at the point of use and the ways the money get there are a bit more hidden away.

Part of the incoherent mission of the alternative event is to recreate the spirit of the 1990s when Manchester Pride in its various incarnations didn't have the gated area that exists now.

And fair play to them, they have got one bit of the 90s spirit right. Back in the 90s, Pride - or Mardi Gras as it was - never invited any of the bi groups running in the city to take part: sure enough, just as we weren't invited there then, we weren't invited to this rose-tinted take on 90s Pride now.

There are a smattering of things wrong with the big Pride, or things that you might equally do differently, but I do like that even if we have to pay for a stall, these days when Pride are putting on a parade or an exhibition, at last the bis are invited to the ball.