Bi Visibility Day: We Can't Be Your Trustees... Yet

Last month at a Superbia event for Manchester Pride there was a question from the floor to a panel I was on.  We were pressed for time toward the end of the event so I didn't get a chance to speak, but the questioner asked, and I paraphrase: I'm the trustee of an LGBT charity, when we put out calls for volunteers to take on this or that role what we get coming forward is a bunch of white, cis, gay, men. Why?

Well, it is an interesting question. Why don't all those people from other backgrounds come forward? Why - to pick the topical strand for today - aren't the bisexuals (and so on) stepping up?  Or the unspoken side question: why do the people who do step up not mention their bisexuality?

This is one of the big challenges for bisexual organising, too.  We know, and Bi Visibility Day events and materials work hard to remind us, how things are different for bis.  Not in the "double your chances of a date on a Friday night" kind of a way.  If only.  No, in the way that our mental health statistics are worse than those of gay and straight people.  Our experience of being victims of domestic violence and other abuse are worse too.  Economically, we earn less than gay, straight and lesbian people.  We might be in the closet at work with all the negative consequences that has; but we might be in the closet at home too.

Now these are terrible facts and figures: issues where a lot of work is needed to change the way our world works.  But I know what you are thinking - the vacancy on your board of trustees isn't going to wait for that to happen.

But those facts should be telling you things about the pool of people of whom most of your bisexual volunteers, bisexual organisers, bisexual group steering committees, are made up.

Those statistics aren't just there to frighten us. They ARE us.

So when you ask: can we have a bisexual person with free time, great qualifications and experience in these demanding roles from which they will have skills that our charity's board needs, and why aren't they coming forward?

Those people you would be looking to are the people who didn't get those promotions because of how biphobia limits their career.  That lower income means they're worried whether they can afford to come to all your meetings and fundraising shin-digs.

Those people you would be looking to are the people who don't get to be out and proud because it upsets their non-bi partner if they "keep going on" about being bisexual.


Those people you would be looking to are the people who don't "look the part" perhaps because the intersectional identities they have mean they don't have the right professional look-and-feel that you warm to, or whose bisexuality you are oblivious to because they tick some other box. 
Those people you would be looking to are the people who have those mental health challenges you have read the statistics about and who aren't sure your organisation would be tolerant when their health meant they needed to take some time out. Who use up their mental and social energy holding down that job and don't have the extra to spare that you need, because they are weaving their way through a gay-straight world.


This is not meant to be a counsel of despair, though it does read that way.  And I know some will be saying: there are plenty of burned-out or fighting-health-issues gay and straight people.  Yes there are, far too many.  But like for like, more of the bis are dealing with those problems.

We can change this.

Well, you and your organisation can change this.

I'd love to see more mentoring and support rolled out for bi people.  Don't ask for a new treasurer or chief exec; invite the groups who never get represented on your boards to shadow and be mentored by the person already doing it.  They may wind up volunteering for some other organisation instead: so be it.

We can't do it on our own. But we would benefit from it, and so would you.  Let's have a programme across business and the heavyweight end of the voluntary sector to give the bis who should be on your boards the skills and authority they need to take their seat at the table.  Who's up for it?

Profile for LGBT History Month - MM

A few weeks ago I was featured by the Co-Op in their intranet bulletin for LGBT History Month, which was fab :)

I'm also one of the people local online news hub Mancunian Matters picked to profile as a local LGBT 'name'. I think the interview went pretty well and gets a pleasing blend of bi and tg/gq things... have a read:

Me and Alan

Delighted, honoured & a bit surreal to be one of the Co-op LGBT bulletin's two featured LGBT 'names' this week for History Month... me and Alan Turing!

Sadly can't link to it as it's on an intranet, but thank you to the Co-op person who forwarded me a copy :)

Bis are not more evolved...

One of the bi stereotypes / cliches that gets rolled out is that bisexuals are more evolved than other people. Cos, y'know, we see personality not gender or genitals. And by 'see' they mean fancy, or indeed intimately enjoy.

Though that's a worrying definition of bisexual so far as I'm concerned, because I've 'seen' a lot of personalities, a lot of genders and (gasp!) even some genitals as well.  Sometimes the gender of the person has been important to me, sometimes it has been important to them; oftentimes not. 

It is I'm sure a well-meaning thing to say. It implies a certain "I wish I were, I just don't have it in me", and it's complete nonsense. We're as evolved and as prone to cockwomblery as anyone else.

Earlier I was reading someone (no links, doesn't deserve the traffic) bewailing that they had tried going to bi spaces, but it was just so terribly unwelcoming because they had to listen to women, too.

More evolved? Pffft. In this case: the 1950s called, they miss you and want you back.

Join the Bi Visibility Day tweet-storm!

Are you on twitter? And if so, have you joined in the 2014 Bi Visibility Day mass-tweet yet?

Sign up here to be one of LOADS of bis and allies tweeting to mark Bi Visibility Day on September 23rd

Homo Hero Lesson 3: Revealing Antonyms

Antonyms. Remember them in school? Synonyms and antonyms. Opposite-words.

One of the lessons of spending an evening at the Homo Heroes Awards was that cis remains a word too far, for far too many LGBT activist brains. With award winners, presenters and hosts representing a wide range of notionally LGBT or LGBT-community-engaged organisations, talking about their varied work with LGBT and non-LGBT alike, I don't think it passed the lips of a single person given a platform at the awards.

It wasn't a fluke. So many people in notionally-LGBT activism and volunteering still think 'heterosexual' is the antonym to 'LGBT'.  But when we talk of something as being the opposite to LGBT, or want a collective term for people who are non-LGBT, the word we need has to be more than just non-gay.  It's non-trans. Straight isn't the antonym, because loads and loads of trans people are straight.  People who aren't trans are cis, and you need to say that qualifier out loud too.

Strictly, it's not just trans fail.  While straight or heterosexual may work well as the antonym to gay and lesbian, either term is only the antonym to LGB in the sense that we are socially deemed heterosexual until found to be bisexual or gay.  There's a fair case to be made that the antonym to LGB is SA, for straight and asexual, but therein lie a series of nuances about biromantic, homoromantic and heteroromantic asexuals, so I'm prepared to take the "straight is the opposite of LGB" on the chin as being where our collective discourse on sexuality has got to.

This lack of thinking through and understanding is a reflection not just of my experience of Manchester's notoriously LGbt culture but of the level of wider LGBT debate outside of bi and trans circles. It reflects how sadly stuck in the 80s so much of 'LGBT' is wherever the B&T have not been able to break through and rise up the queer power pyramid in significant numbers.

When you hear comments like "everyone - LGBT or straight" you have to wonder if you're listening to someone who has 'got' the LG part of the equation, and merely trained themselves to tack some extra letters on when they speak. It's a bit like saying that there are disabled people and normal people, gay people and normal people, immigrants and normal people. 'Normal' believes it doesn't need a word to define itself: but as Derek Jarman pointed out so sharply twentysome years ago, there's a subtle difference between normal and common.

Brighton's Bi Celebrations on film

Back in September I was along (and a fleetingly brief speaker) at Brighton Bothways' event to mark Bi Visibility Day. This was a lavish affair at the city's main library, with lots of food and speakers.

They also showed a fistful of short films from YouTube about bisexuality, which were (I think) all from the USA due to the lack of good bi short films from the UK suitable for such an event. Partly to help start changing that, and partly to document the Brighton event itself, I filmed several of the speakers on the night and have since had to learn a few tricks to get the best out of the footage.

Four of those people have now given their permission for us to use the videos I made so here are four short clips of people talking about being bi in Brighton and the UK. I do hope you enjoy them.

Klara talks about growing up bisexual:


Arwen reads a poem she wrote about being bi:


Andi from the local council's LGBT workers forum:


Jak talks about growing up bi:

18 years of BiPhoria!

As published recently in Bi Community News under the headline "Manchester's 18".  A few reflections on the story of eighteen years of a local bi social & support group; it would have been more navel-gazing and reflective without the word limit on the article!


BiPhoria emerged, like so many bi groups, from Manchester bis meeting up at BiCon and getting talking, and deciding they wanted a bi group back home.  There were already bi groups in the city - one for men, one for women.  However it seems the penny dropped that meeting in separate groups when the uniting factor was that you were people for whom gender was less of an issue was a little peculiar.  At the very least there was room to get together as well.

The model used took organising ahead of each group meeting: every month’s meeting had a defined topic with workshops planned out for months ahead. That seems to have been the case with most other bi groups at the time.

The group started out meeting at Manchester's Lesbian & Gay Centre on Sidney Street. It was a good central location close to bus and train routes, and familiar to people attending the men’s or women’s bi groups.

The first few years were quite energetic, as seems to often be the case where a new bi group forms in an area with pent-up demand.  The monthly calendar had clubbing nights, cinema trips, a bi hill-walking group and more.  Among the spin-off projects was one to lobby the city council, whose equality policies and monitoring firmly declared everyone to be either gay or straight, and to challenge the “no bisexuals” door policies of several gay venues in the city in the 90s.

But after a time early impetus dies out, people find their lives are taking them elsewhere and in the odd case the realisation that you don’t get paid for running this puts people off too.  Planning meetings saw a diminishing pool of people willing to run the group. This was a crunch point - I wound up running the group and if I’d stepped away too there would have been no volunteer base left. 

Groups have momentum and this downward arc continued; for about six months we had typically 3 people a month to meetings, where the group would consist of me, someone who had last been to the group a year or two earlier asking “where is everyone?” and a new member who would never come back on the grounds that it clearly wasn’t the place to meet bi folk after all.  It is hard work summoning up the energy to go back again each month at times like that.  But the steady grind of small publicity work (flyers and posters) and luck of the draw meant eventually breaking out of the cycle - you get a month where four ‘occasional’ members and two or three new people means the mood in the room changes and things start to grow back up from there.

This slow build included bidding for the 2000 BiCon to come to the city.  For years BiCon had moved around the country from year to year without ever landing in Manchester. This turned into a bit of a joke - with Queer As Folk all over the TV, that Manchester was too busy partying the night away to host a BiCon.  The team were mostly not part of the group though: hosting BiCon 1998 had torn apart the Cambridge group, and Manchester wasn’t strong enough to face that kind of stress.
While all eyes were on BiCon there were changes afoot: the city's Lesbian & Gay Switchboard and gay men's sexual health project HGM were merging, and once again the dilapidated Sidney Street building was under threat of closure.  Most groups meeting at Sidney Street merged into this new Lesbian & Gay Foundation, but BiPhoria stayed at arm’s length, meeting in the new LGF building but remaining independent.

This meant finding funding: previously group costs were met by a quick whip-round at each meeting and room hire was free.  Now room hire cost £30 a time so some of the energy that would have gone into group work had to go into funding bids and accounting to these.  But that also meant a greater engagement with other LGBT groups in the city, and a slightly higher profile. 

That profile and more members getting involved again with organising aspects of the group’s work meant the tide was now flowing with the group; we had day-long events to mark Bi Visibility Day in 2001 and 2002, were drawn into the city’s Local Strategic Partnership work and in 2003 published a research report on bi needs in the city based on funded qualitative interviews.  The shape of group meetings changed, with a three-stage evening that starts with half an hour new members’ induction, 90 minutes of discussion normally without a pre-assigned subject, and then adjourning to a nearby quiet pub for chatter over drinks.

Another BiCon in 2004 was our last big blow-out, since when there have been small to mid size events each year - a BiFest or something to mark LGBT History Month - and things have balanced out with structured group meetings and pub / cafe meets.  We’ve had a consistent profile elsewhere too at local LGBT conferences and at Prides in our wider catchment area (which goes right up to Carlisle!) - something that can only happen with enough volunteers making time in their lives to do that outreach and visibility.  In the end the local council even admitted bisexuals exist.

And here we are 18 years on, inheriting along the way the mantle of the oldest bi group in the country as other groups from the early 90s have folded.  Join us to celebrate our 18th birthday downstairs at Taurus, 1 Canal St on September 1st (from 3pm).  Bring cake!

Selling to bisexuals

The first (that I have seen) market research about the buying habits of bisexuals has been published in the USA. In the fine traditional comedic trope, I hereby present the next 12 months' bi news.


October.  With polls still close in the Presidential election, and polling showing bis split 12:1 in his favour, Barack Obama railroads the "Bis Vote Twice" bill through Congress.  The plan comes unstuck in November when bisexuals with a preference are nonetheless allowed to vote both ways.

November.  Prof Debunked of the Dodgy Research University publishes his latest findings about bisexuality.  He explains that subjects were shown gay and straight porn on different smartphones while sensors attached to their genitalia recorded whether that type of phone was doing it for them.

December.  The New York Times retracts its "iPhoneite, Androidite or lying" headline admitting the findings related more to how attractive the research assistant looked in a white lab coat.

January.  Apple announce their response to the findings that bisexuals are more likely to buy £100 android phones than functionally-similar £400 iPhones. "Clearly the problem is in our marketing feeling excluding to bi people," says a spokesPad, "and so we will be updating our rainbow striped apple logo to include a pink stripe next to the purple and blue ones."  The new biPhone will cost just £75 extra, and is available in five shades of purple.

February.  Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne slaps 20% VAT on valentines cards purchased by bisexuals, thus milking the Purple Pound for all it is worth.  "Woody Allen told me the bisexuals have twice the chance of a date on Friday night, and that means they must be buying twice as many valentines cards" he explains in an emergency budget statement. 

Stung by Apple's cornering of the bi market, Google releases a customised version of its phone operating system called pandroid.

March.  Not to be outdone by cheap pandroids, Apple launch the new biPhone2, with an extra button that speed-dials the complaints department at Stonewall. A new app for smartphones lets biphobic people automatically block calls from biPhones.

April.  After the quarterly economic figures reveal the valentines card ruse failed to raise a single extra penny, on account of the bis all being far too busy playing on their biPhones to remember to send one another cards, George Osborne goes on television to admit he's not the real Chancellor, just to be a schoolboy on a really long Jim'll Fix It.

May.  Apple takes Google to court over pandroid phones, claiming they are a blatant rip-off of the biPhone.  Google's lawyers defend the clear and vast difference between the two: "it is not just another word for the same thing. The pandroid phones are a touchscreen with a suffusion of purple, whereas biPhones are a suffusion of purple with a touchscreen".  The judge listens carefully and throws the case out of court on the grounds that everyone knows there is no such thing as a bisexual.

June.  Concerned that it is missing out on the purple pound and that the bi- and pan- prefixes have already been snapped up, Microsoft launches Windows Mobile Omnishambles.  Following the flop of a youtube 'viral' ad campaign where Gerald Ratner observes "people ask me how Microsoft can sell a phone this cheap, and I say: it's because it's total ...er, totally purple" it is reviewed as both completely unusable and the best implementation of Windows yet.

July.  At a star-studded television awards ceremony, the heads of Sky, BBC and Virgin make a joint statement on the findings that 73% of bi women and 44% of bi men regularly see biphobia in the mainstream media. They pledge to make the negative portrayal of bi men that bit more obvious to help the boys catch up.

August.  Despite the market research claims of a year earlier, sales figures of biPhone, pandroid and omnishambles handsets reveal the purple pound to be as yet a myth and the bisexual community resolves to go back to taking all research about itself with a pinch of salt.

September.  Market research work begins to find out what kind of salt bisexuals find most reassuring.

Chez Dave

"BCN magazine editor Jen Yockney was among the guests at last night’s LGBT garden party hosted by David Cameron at 10 Downing Street." reported BiMedia last week.

Yes, dear reader, it's true. After about five years of Prime Ministerial Downing Street LGB&T receptions, at last someone finally got invited on behalf of one of the projects that focus on the "B" thread.

I've no idea quite how I got on the guest list, but the invite dropped into my BCN email account so I have to conclude it was for my work on Bi Community News as editor for a decade and more of the main UK bi news source and journal of what the bi movement's been up to and talking about. 

It could have been someone from one of many other projects who got picked though: for example BiPhoria is 18 this year, the UK's longest running bi group these days. They might have picked a veteran of the London Bi Group which ran for longer but closed down a few years ago. Bisexual Index and BiUK are doing fabulous work. And BiCon is I think the longest-running LGBT festival / pride / whatever in the UK, with 28 years of track record and never a year skipped or new organisation formed following a tricky financial implosion.

Whichever of us were to be picked though, it was high time the bis were invited to the LGBT party. And the White House's LGBT receptions have shown that one person the first year can grow to be a sizeable bi caucus over time...

But to Number 10.  It was so damn exciting to be there: I grew up watching Yes Minister and listening to Week Ending and here I was walking through the black door into the epicentre of power, among so many people who have done great things for the LGBT communities – and in blazing sunshine after weeks of rain it was a lucky date to have picked. I'm told last year it bucketed with rain and the attendees were crammed inside. Garden drinks in warm late-midsummer sun much better.

Cameron spoke for a few minutes about how the anti-equal-marriage wing of the faith groups is making the same mistake of pushing away their natural friends just as the Conservatives did in the 80s and 90s (and 00s) with their homophobia and biphobia. He kept referring to 'gay marriage' but in a politician who just seven years ago was campaigning to get elected by attacking his opponents for the scrapping of Section 28 that's a very healthy amount of travel. I want more, but I'll settle for that much progress. What matters is not the Prime Minister getting the nuances of LGB&T identity and debate, but that the 'gay marriage' legislation that ends up coming forward reflects how the current partnership law particularly makes life peculiar for bi, trans and intersex people. You did include those things in your submission to the equal marriage consultation, didn't you? Good. Me too.

Outside in the twitterverse a few people errupted in the "oh my, how can LGBT people go there?" type remarks. Because the way round that the lustre of shiny importance travels when a big ole lefty genderqueer bi activist like me goes to 10 Downing Street is that it improves Cameron's image... riiiiight. Pish. It says that the kind of policymaking people who have spent years and years ignoring bis are starting to change their tune, starting to acknowledge our work, our existence and particular needs - which is what we as bi activists were working for all those years and what work like The Bisexuality Report has been building the focus towards more sharply of late.

That aspect of it was a bit frightening though - being the first one through the door means you have a tiny sense of carrying the future of better bi representation here on your own shoulders.

So? It was a pleasant gathering of a bit over a hundred key people in LGB&T community work: from groups like Pride Sports, Manchester Pride, Albert Kennedy Trust, TREC, GIRES and so forth, grassroots and policywranglers alike, alongside various clergy on the side of the angels, and only a very small smattering of politicians. Like many LGBT conferences I've been to down the years, it was a chance to swap news and ideas, to find out what we're all up to, only this time with fewer workshops and speakers between those conversations.

And it's going to be a long slow grind towards equal marriage legislation, but I think Call-Me-Dave is as committed to it as the rest of us there. Which is going to be an important part of the battle.

BCN Summer Special

The BCN Summer Special has gone to the print shop. 

It's not very summery, but even so this one will be a little bit special... fingers crossed and all will be revealed in a week's time.

Hopefully as we have gone to a different printers from where we got the last summer special done, it won't be trucking round the country all summer when people should be flicking through a copy at the bar at BiCon! You have no idea how frustrated I was to open a boxful of Jimi Hendrix zines the day before BiCon as the delivery truck pulled out of sight down the road.

The best bit about BCN going to press is that I can then stop, breathe, catch up on emails and even start to worry what to wear to the Ball.

Canada setting a healthy standard

How deliciously awesome is this Canadian CAMH video seeking to draw in bisexual people to talk about their health needs?

All the bi* labels you can hope for, no fighting over them, just cutting to the chase: health services are failing us, the stats say.  They are failing us moreso than gay, straight and lesbian service users, we need to assemble data on our lives to build the pressure for health providers to take the time to 'get' us and get over their biphobia and hetero/homo normativity.

If you're reading in Canada and are bi, or any of those mishmash of "fancying more than one gender" labels in the purple arc, please follow through on the plea for input this video. For the rest of us it's just lovely viewing, and hopefully might inspire something over here some day   :o)

Northerners won't marry

Want to meet someone and get hitched? Head to the Midlands. 

That's the most interesting finding of a survey ComRes have conducted for the 'Catholic Voices' website into attitudes to same-sex marriage.

Their own presentation of the findings plucks out the anti-equality messages and spins them as best as it can against the tide of history - heavens! 26% of gays think civil partnerships are as good as marriage! we don't need to do anything then, and they just hope that no-one mentions the implied inverse figure of 74% having seen through 'separate and lesser is equal' in our stretched newsrooms. And only bisexual, lesbian and gay people are asked whether same-sex marriage is a good idea, perhaps for fear of finding that other people aren't that threatened by the issue after all.

But fair play to them, they include a reasonable amount of the analysis data. The most interesting bit for me is the page looking at bisexual, lesbian and gay people and asking - are you in a civil partnership, would you get married if it were an option?

This breaks down not by my first choice of sexuality identity but by geography. Would you get married?

South East 26%
Midlands 38%
Northern England 19%
South West & Wales 29%
Scotland 24%

I wonder if the numbers are big enough to have any statistical significance? Fun if they do - we've just found that Brummies are twice as likely to marry another woman or another man as Mancs and Scousers. It's queer up north, we're just not the marrying kind...

Read the stats here as a pdf. You're bound to find something interesting that I've missed :)

Bisexual men health stats from Gay & Bi Men's Health Report

Stonewall have a chunky new bi & gay men's health report newly out, which seems to be the counterpart to the pale-blue bi & lesbian women's report you may remember from about 4 years ago.

There's lots of good stuff in there, by which I mean lots of quite bad stuff but important data to have available for NHS planning and so forth.

Mostly it combines bi and gay data together, however two snippets:

"In the last year, 27 per cent of gay men thought about taking their own life even if they would not do it. This increases to 38 per cent for bisexual men" (p9)

 That's a bit of a jump - what, about a third higher?

"One in five (21 per cent) gay and bisexual men aged 16 to 19 have deliberately harmed themselves in the last year. One in six (15 per cent) gay and bisexual men aged 16 to 24 have deliberately harmed themselves in the last year. Seven per cent of men in general aged 16 to 24 have ever deliberately harmed themselves.

"Rates of self-harm are also higher among bisexual men; eleven per cent of bisexual men have self-harmed in the last year." (p11)

That one feels like one of those simultaneous equations lessons in  maths when I was at school - we don't know how many gay men they have or how many bisexual men but the scores are 7%, 11% and 15%, solve for x and y... but it makes for about 50% higher rates of self-harm among bi men than among the male population as a whole. A sobering thought.

www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/stonewall_gay_mens_health_final.pdf

"LGB" charity Stonewall fails us... yet again

By Lesbian, Gay, Bi & Trans 'sector' standards, Stonewall is a great big organisation with a turnover in the millions of pounds. It proclaims its mission as equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and attracts flak from a number of directions: not least for being almost entirely focused on lesbians and gay men, and only remembering the existence of bisexuals now and then. Usually, they remember the bis when there is the prospect of money involved.

This has been going on a long time; when I first dipped my toe into queer activist circles in the early 1990s, I fast learned why Stonewall were widely and rightly seen as a joke among bisexual people and activists. They never mentioned the "b word" on their materials except when it came to the bit asking you to donate, when suddenly, bis were very welcome too.

In 2003, when Ben Summerskill took over the helm, my first conversation with him was about bisexual inclusion. A change at the top could be a good opportunity for cultural change throughout the organisation. Alas, it was not to be.

Report after report, press release after press release, soundbite after soundbite, Stonewall 'forgets' bisexuals. Oddly it's the only one of the LGB strands they miss out: I've yet to see them issue a correction to a press statement where they, say, mentioned lesbians and bisexual people and completely forget to refer to gay men. Come to that, they have yet to issue corrections for the times they miss out the bis.

There is a notable exception: their report on the experience of bisexuals in the workplace. When commissioned to do specifically bi work, they remember us. Just as on those donation appeals in the 90s, where there's brass...

And so, as the government's consultation on how to implement same-sex marriage rolls out, Stonewall publishes its response. To one of the questions they say...

Question 8: The Government is not considering opening up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Do you agree or disagree with this proposal?
Stonewall's Answer: This is a matter for heterosexual couples and Stonewall would recommend that the Government consults with them and stakeholder organisations representing them.

The thing is, lots of people who are in mixed-sex couples are not heterosexual. Perpetuating the myth that your relationship defines your sexuality helps perpetuate bisexual invisibility: it is a classic piece of bisexual erasure as identified in The Bisexuality Report (pub. 2012 Open University, endorsers including... Stonewall... talking the talk but not walking the walk). 

Now, I can imagine some voices at the back suggesting that maybe this was a bit of a slip-up: that anyone can read a question, fail to spot a certain angle, and so miss something. Most of us at some point have done that in an exam and got back a mark noticeably lower than we thought we were going to get. Didn't Stonewall just make a bit of a boo-boo and we should let them off?

Fair question. But on this one... no. As long ago as last August, Stonewall published their draft of what they would have to say when the marriage consultation began. That ran with the same "being in a mixed sex couple means you're heterosexual" line.

I challenged Stonewall over their bisexual erasure then, here.

What I said then still applies now:

Newsflash, Stonewall: bisexual people get married. Bisexual people get civil partnerships. Some of the bis who do the one would like to do the other, in either direction, but the law won't let them.

A charity claiming to give voice to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, really ought to be listening to and giving voice to those bisexual people too - even when it does make the answer on a form a little more complicated.

Come on. A campaigning group that was working for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights, would be able to remember bisexuals existed all the time rather than just now and then.

And the most frustrating thing is, in discussing the marriage / civil partnership divide that currently exists, bisexuals are a brilliant case to cite for what's so broken. Ten years ago, bisexual people found their relationships were treated differently in law based on the genders of themselves and their partners: today, after so much equality campaigning and the introduction of civil partnerships, that situation is exactly the same.

Bi people get into relationships with lesbians, gays, straight people and other bis.  Gay and lesbian people get into relationships with bis.  We are your queer family.  And LGB equality is only worthy of the name if we break down the barriers around civil partnerships as well as marriage: campaigning and lobbying for anything less puts the lie to a claim to be campaigning for equality for lesbians, gays and bisexuals. 

Now, I know from comments elsewhere that the relevant people at Stonewall read that. If this were an accidental oversight last summer, that defence no longer applies. It seems to me that this can only be read as a deliberate and premediated pretence that there is no such thing as bisexuality from an organisation that soaks up the lion's share of funding for LGB work in the UK.

If you're thinking of donating to an LGB cause any time soon, I suggest there are far better alternatives. And if you haven't responded to the marriage consultation, please make sure you do so. And make your submission better than Stonewall's.

Marriage and Civil Partnerships: Not Quite The Same Thing

With a hat-tip to the Neue Politik blog, this is a good succinct video about some of the differences for people in the UK between marriage and our system of Civil Partnerships. The talk's all about lesbians and gay men, but of course this is an issue that affects a hell of a lot of bisexual people too: there're trans, genderqueer, nonbinary angles as well.

I'll be writing more on this subject here quite soon ;)

Spending a Penny.

Today was Manchester City Council's nearly-annual LGBT Consultation Day. They didn't have one last year but that was a blip: it's been annual otherwise since about 2006, and the last two or three have been titled "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans" rather than the 80s throwback "Lesbian & Gay".

There are many other things I want to say about it, but the first needs a post all of its own I feel. About four such conferences ago, I raised the problem of the loos. There are male and female toilets marked... but an LGBT event in this day and age will bring not just cismen and ciswomen and transwomen and transmen, but other trans folk too. Genderqueer, fluidly gendered, nonbinary, whatever your choice of term. And, like everyone else - especially after slurping down town hall coffee - they will at some point in the day need to go to the loo.

Alas, as I say, I've raised this one on feedback forms and in person several times with regard to Manchester Council. They're still not getting it.

It's one thing I'm delighted about within bi circles: wherever they can negotiate such things with venues (which, after all, can be run by people who are a bit lacking in clue on this) the bi events around the UK have for the last many years had ungendered toilets. Happy little signs on the doors "cubicles & urinals" or "cubicles only", or suchlike. There was a bit of a stir at 2010's BiCon when such signs weren't up: it was simply that the desk team had not yet had enough people there long enough to get round to ticking that one off the long to-do list that setting up a transitory bi space can involve.

Bi events, with no staff, no access to the site beforehand, and so forth, can manage this. It's no longer cutting edge stuff. So when we put on events aimed at the LGB&T communities, and in particular given the huge space of the venue and resources at the disposal of a Town Hall putting on its long-planned own events - if we are calling them LGBT, seriously, can we make them LGBT? Not LGB-some-T-and-some-hopping-on-one-leg.

That'd be good.



(Naturally, I'd like it if other spaces were accomodating of the need for a wazz too, but if you actually put the "T" on the label...)

Caption Action

Meg Barker made a video for the Open University talking about The Bisexuality Report.

I ripped it and added subtitles last night for all the people those help when it comes to videos.  Here it is:


I'm hoping this won't be the last of the video material about the report - I'm having a few teething troubles with the footage from the launch in London ten days ago but hope to have something up online soon :)

LGBT History Month 2012

As a foolish thing to do for the BiMedia bisexual news website, I'm trying to mark LGBT History Month this year by giving a little dash of visibility to a different bit of bi history each day of February. 

Like a lot of LGBT work, History Month resources and events in my experience tend to be good on the LG bits and frequently good on the T strand but often the B is weak. But there has been plenty of bi history:albeit sometimes things we need to (re)claim. I have an assortment of ideas of things to highlight, and at one event a day that's just 26 more to go...

All that said, I could use your help, dear intermaweb people. I don't really want a calendar that is just about the things that seem important to me. For all the obvious reasons I remember less about bi men's projects or BME stuff. I never watched This Life or Queer As Folk. So a calendar all of my own would be skewed toward lefty things, Northern things, Radio 4 and suchlike.

So please do suggest – whether a person or event – a little bit of bi history you think a bi history timeline should include. It might just be a name or an event, it might be you could add a paragraph or two about what it was and why it mattered (or who…) – and whether you want to be named yourself or keep it an anonymous submission.

Hopefully by the end of the month we may have quite a Bi History timeline getting going, which can then be built on as a resource for bi visibility in LGBT History Month in years to come. Drop us an email on historymonth@bimedia.org

New Year's Promises

Wearing my BiPhoria hat I've written a New Year circular to people who we have met at outreach stalls at Prides, Freshers fairs and suchlike. It offers up three suggestions for new year's resolutions for bi folk.

Maybe you’ll want to take one of them up, so I'll share them here too!


* going along to a bi group – there are groups in Manchester, Bristol, Swansea, Sheffield, London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and so forth; see the UK bi calendar.
* booking for BiCon, the year’s biggest bi event – this summer in Bradford and bookings are now open. It makes BiCon runners feel much happier when people book early - and when I say 'feel happier' I mean 'able to sleep at night'.
* subscribing to bi magazine BCN. Because it's remarkably affordable a way to support there being a bi voice alongside the gay and lesbian voices that titles like GT and Diva provide, and because it gives you oodles of writing about bisexuality popping through your letterbox six times a year.

Whether you take up one, all or none of these suggestions – a happy new year to you