Homo Hero Lesson 2: Do we need a "challenging biphobia" award?

I have a longer blog about a wider issue around this coming shortly but a quick, more focused blog question first.

One of the awards at the Homo Heroes, the Alan Turing Memorial Award, was introduced as being co-sponsored by Manchester City Council and the Lesbian & Gay Foundation, given to "an individual or organisation that has worked to challenge homophobia in our city".

Media coverage of the award this year and in 2012 confirms this was not just a slip of the tongue by the presenter. It's definitely about fighting homophobia.

If you are, to come up with a few implausible real-life examples of people who might be put forward for their work challenging homophobia*, a councillor who leads on LGBT issues for your council group, and who when asked about bi people's needs shrugs it off with a dismissive claim that no-one really knows about bisexuals - you could still be winner of the Alan Turing Memorial Award. If you opine that bisexuality is "the grey area of the rainbow flag", it won't count against you in this one. Go on the record that bisexuals are "not part of LGBT" because they don't experience any discrimination? Heck, welcome to the shortlist, and don't worry, we won't ask what you think the B in that acronym stands for.

As I'm one of the BiBloggers, you can perhaps guess where this is going.  Do the Homo Heroes - as at least notionally LGB awards - need a parallel award for challenging biphobia?  Maybe they do.

Probably best if it is not co-sponsored by Manchester City Council though, an organisation whose record on bisexuality has made it (literally) a textbook example of how councils have failed on the bisexual strand of LGB / LGBT.




* that I couldn't possibly have encountered from reasonably prominent politicians locally in the past year. Ahem.