Off the fence: Bi Vis in the Village

I had an idea last month, and after a bit of prep work like finding out who at the council you have to get permission from to do this sort of a thing, I made a banner and - with a gaggle of people from BiPhoria - today we went and hung it on the side of the park on Canal Street.

In a city - and especially in a gay quarter - that has often struggled with the B in LGBT, hopefully this banner will last the next couple of weeks, and maybe garner a few tweets and conversations along the way.

With bars that only display in the rainbow and trans flags, I think this is the most visible we've ever managed to get things in the gay village!

The Big Day Out

Back in June was the big announcement of the Queen's Birthday Honours List, but yesterday was the Big Day itself: and I was off to Buckingham Palace to meet a senior royal and have a medal planted on my chest for Services To The Bisexual Community. An MBE, or as I inevitably punned, an MBiE. The first such and the first Mx, a fabulous thing for me but also a tiny bit of trail blazing.

The Investiture

About three months on from the publication of the Honours List in June an invitation arrives in the post.  It's just about the best "boss, I want to take the day off work because..." you could hope for.  The Head of State, HRH Queen Elizabeth II, wants you to pop round to her place so you can be given a medal.  I'm sure there are employers who would say "no" to that one, but you really wouldn't want to work for them if you could avoid it.  I am finally sure from the paperwork that when you get the gong it's called an Investiture: I am very much a fish out of water here so the language is all a bit alien.

You get to take three guests with you. I make my choices and so we are attending as a quartet of people who have volunteered with some of the UK's most prolific and enduring bi projects.

9am on the big day and I and my three guests are pulling on posh frocks and the like.  It's not far from where we've stayed the night to Buckingham Palace but there's unanimity on "in these shoes, we're getting a taxi".

To the Palace and we arrive early so there is time for some queueing in the grounds, being photographed through the gates by tourists. This is followed by being guided around the building and after a short while separated, recipients from their guests.  The guests - being mostly in threes - can chat amongst their groups or with one another, while we recipients are led to a room where we mill about together for about an hour - so lots of respectful conversation with people you'd probably not otherwise meet who you know are bloody good at whatever it is they do.  A couple of them I know faintly from their equalities work or from the occassional 10 Downing Street LGBT receptions.

There are about 83 of us in attendance, and about two dozen people guiding us around the building, checking who is there and so on. One with exquisite politeness takes me to one side: the medals are in female and male versions, and we wanted to make sure which you would prefer, very sorry to disturb you and ask.  An answer is given and from that point on there is never so much as a flicker of an eyebrow.

The honours come in descending order of rank so I get a while of waiting while the Knights and what have you are taken first.  A CCTV feed lets you watch the ceremony in progress - and there are my guests in the front row!  Hell, they look so fine.  And then my name is called and I am off to the final queue.

Presentation of each honour is made in female first then male, and within each alphabetical order, so being a Yockney I conveniently came either at the end of the women or between the two big gender blocs depending how you choose to see it.  It's not often having a name at the end of the list works out to my advantage!

Whatever you think of the monarchy as a thing, it is amazing what a fine job of her role here the Princess Royal makes. Each one of us, whether the highest ranking or the last in the line, get a very similar amount of time in conversation, and I gather afterwards that the ones higher up the queue who have ever received another honour from here are greeted with how good it is to see them again.  I know she must be very well briefed but it is flawless and consistent.

Everyone wants to know the conversation you get: the Princess Royal asks about where I live and reflects that on matters of gender and sexuality diversity it must be difficult to know quite when and where to be out. I think herein is kind of an acknowledgement of the struggle I had back in the spring, working out what to put when it asked about things like gender and title, as well as the wider world. I answer that the thing is that while it can be hard to be out, everyone who is makes the closet door that little bit wider open for the person behind them. And my time is up and my medal is on my chest and I have shaken a Princess' hand.

In the structure of the presentation you bow or curtsey, go forward to receive your honour and brief talk, walk backward, curtsey or bow again and move on.  To blend things as best as I can, I curtsey at the start and bow at the end.  Again: no flicker of judgement or what have you, just the same warm congratulation from the team keeping the wheels turning as they give every other recipient.  The monarchy is ancient, the honour I'm receiving some hundred years old, but the people making the wheels turn are thoroughly modern.

An orchestra plays as the presentations take place - as I took my seat after the presentation I realised we were being treated to an arrangement of a David Bowie song. Deliciously appropriate. (As I was receiving the award I'm told it was Nobody Does It Better. I have no idea, I was far too lost in worrying about falling over as I curtseyed or what have you).

And it was over and outside for photos and off for a huge slap-up meal and strawberry cider and, at last, taking your posh shoes off and being able to walk more easily!

The Honour Thing

It's a big deal, and one I find a bit weird: I have to tell myself now and then during introductions to add "MBE" to who I am. I didn't start volunteering for glory (hell if I had I'd've picked a different field!) but because I'd come out as bi and trans and tried to find support and social spaces, but the services and spaces I found were so lacking that I felt the only way they would happen would be if I learned the skills and got stuck in.

But I have been volunteering, for various bi causes, for over 20 years - I started in about 1992 depending on quite where you draw the line. Since 1995 there's been at least something every month and from 1996 or so something every week, barring hospital levels of health problems like having to lie down for a month after four charmers queerbashed me.  Some of the projects have been fleeting, others carry on for years: frontline support for people coming out as bi at BiPhoria, for example. 

People ask me about the monarchy and the empire aspects. There are those who turn down their gongs and the press is busy this week with a story of how John Lennon sent his back. I'm not wild about either the monarchy as a system or the empire as, well, my heritage is not very empire. But the bottom line for me is: this is the current Head of State of the country I choose to live in, and this is the system that same country uses for recognising the work in the community of its citizens.  It is both an Honour and actually an honour, and a world away from the world I grew up in that such a symbol of the establishment is recognising someone genderqueer championing bi people's liberty and equality.

So: it was an amazing day out, and I shall probably spend the next fortnight gazing into the middle distance and going "wow" as I zone out for a moment. A double first, so to speak, that I hope to see followed up with seconds and thirds quite soon.

Oh: and here are some photos!

 

 

  

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?

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 :)

Bi Volunteering Diary

This post may seem a bit self-indulgent or congratulatory, but every so often people badger me to get this or that done on queer activism and seem to find it hard to imagine why I don't deal with that particular thing. So an incomplete diary of last week's bi activist shenanigans: it wasn't an especially busy week, I just decided to make some notes as I went along. Done around having a low-paid day job that is nothing to do with lgBt, partners, important radio listening, slouching on a sofa and so forth. So, if I didn't do the thing you were hoping for, I was probably taking care of stuff like this instead...


Monday. From midnight to 2am, try to work out why a PDF isn't generating properly of the otherwise finished artwork for the new issue of BCN. Get to bed when it finally does what it should do. Over breakfast, upload the PDF to the print house's servers. And go off to the day-job for a rather taxing day.

Monday evening, book a last-minute stall at small local Pride festival a few miles away. I wasn't going to do this, but the stall we did recently at a Pride some 50 miles away reached a lot of people who were clearly really happy to find something specific for bis at last, so I'm on a bit of a high. I suspect this weekend's event won't have such a sunny day and such luxurious icecream, but I'm on a high from last time so let's give up another Saturday eh?

Jot down a few ideas for a piece for a book on bi life someone's writing. I usually get these at the wrong time, like when I'm in the bath or on a bus somewhere and my thoughts will have flown by the time I get anything onto paper.

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Tuesday. After work, spin up the database to generate mailing labels and get the envelopes stickered up for a magazine mailing. Over the years I have developed very fine labelling skills for getting envelopes labelled up in the most efficient way possible! Talk with Katie who is our finance person about when we can arrange for me to get back a load of expenses owed. Some tweeting and facebooking about Pride London and about Tameside Pride. A researcher who we helped last year gets back in touch, so I thank them for being one of the rare breed of researchers who are conscientious about feeding back to the community after - a practice I try hard to encourage! Jot down first thoughts about what's going in the August edition of BCN. Line up a story on BiMedia about same-sex partnership recognition on the Isle of Man.

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Wednesday. Early in the morning BCN arrives from the print house; this means it's time for a BCN stuffing party! Call in enough pairs of hands and ensure tea and cake to keep up the stuffing momentum. Lug the first two bags to the post office and get them out into the post.

Around all this, find out that the organisers of the bi entry for Pride London have realised the banner they were going to use has gone awol. Contact people nearby who I think are going to London this weekend to see if anyone can take our banners down - no joy. Run up some designs for banners, get feedback from some people in London, run up some further designs, get more feedback and do more artwork tweakery. Find a print company and order the pair of them to be made as a rush job and off it all goes. Not used this print house before, fingers tightly crossed that they will do a good job.

Post this week's edition of my "what I'm doing at the moment" bi activism blog, which is not on blogspot.

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Thursday. Before work, line up some news items about today's announcements re Civil Partnership and Marriage reform in Wales & England. Bill in the post goes onto the BCN "stuff to sort out" pile for the next time we have a finance meeting. Notice a news release about the TUC's LGBT conference which has decided it is against homophobia, with nary a mention of transphobia & biphobia, which I could blog about...

Instead go for dinner with one of my partners. Generally, take an evening "off the grid". Someone else can grump at the TUC for us, I'm sure.

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Friday. Run round a quick circular about Tameside Pride on email lists. Talk to people in the USA about some problems they've picked up on. Tweet a bit about Bi Visibility Day and try to engage some other organisations in thinking about what they are doing in three months' time, so we get information in before September rather than all in a rush in the final week.

Find a soundcloud podcast of a meeting recently hosted by the council - feel glad I didn't attend as the whole thing is achingly LGbT and I'd only have been disenchanted. The good thing about podcasts is you can do the housework while they play...

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Saturday. Get up early, take three trains and a bus ride to run the bi stall at a small local Pride. Awesomely [thanks to the power of the internet on my phone] get to see photos of the new bi banners being unveiled at Pride London 200 miles away. Run stall for four or five hours, chatter with a wide range of stall visitors, give out different leaflets and resources according to their needs. It's a small event but there are a couple of stall visitors for whom I think us being there has been really important. Feel loved as a stallholder when the event organisers bring us fruit and cake.

Public transport wends me slowly home and there I find an email waiting. Someone wants to reference a particular item in an old issue of BCN but it is not yet on the website. Get it up on the web for them as a rush job and settle down for dinner before catching up with two of my partners and generally going floomp on a sofa.

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Sunday. Fried breakfast, shopping, an afternoon of watching episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, and a game of Civ.  Eager volunteers need time away from activism too :)