It's 23 years ago today that I first went along to BiPhoria, then a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new meetup for bisexual people and today the oldest bi group in the country.
It wasn't my first time in bi space, but it was the first time I'd been in a bi space I hadn't had to lobby for and organise myself. And unlike those bi spaces I'd contributed to small conferences and events, this wasn't a one-off, but a regularly repeated chance to hang out with other bis. Rather than just meet people and talk here was a space to get to know people over time and make friends. So exciting!
Back then we met at the Sidney Street Lesbian & Gay Centre, whose name gives an honest reflection of where bisexuals came in the pecking order: every so often meeting rooms would be overbooked and upon arrival at the centre we'd find ourselves meeting in the kitchen. We were given use of a filing cabinet to keep bi resources in, but no-one had a key to it so what we really had was a filing cabinet we could perch a couple of cups of coffee on top of whilst talking.
It was technically not before the internet, but for all practical purposes it was. Communication was through postal mailouts, and people got in touch to know more about the group by writing letters to us at our P.O. Box address. As the person most likely to turn up first I was entrusted with knowing where the post went, collecting it, and doling it out ("we have a letter from someone wanting to know if there is a bi group near them in Liverpool, who wants to write a reply?")
But I think getting information through the post was much better for people actually coming to the meetings: rather than a vague "oh, I'll post it on the facebook group when I remember" you'd have a half-dozen flyers for whatever upcoming event might be of interest to pass around and be taken home by anyone interested.
Decision making was painfully slow. A side project, Bisexual Action Manchester, engaged the local council in debate about their policy of the non-existence of bisexuality. We'd meet one month and hammer out a letter; a month later, with a typed copy, we'd sign it and put it in the mail. Another month on we would meet and read the reply, and agree a rough wording for what we should say in turn. With no quick way of rounding people up, dates for meetings were set on a "they'll probably have written back by then" basis, and at least once we got to the bar to talk and the person with the typewriter sighed that they hadn't.
A simple discussion like that would go on for six months then and today would be over in an afternoon's worth of angry tweeting.
What's interesting is what hasn't changed. With growing bi visibility in public life, people are much less likely to write in asking: is this real, am I not the only one after all? But the moment of personal crisis when coming out to family, friends or partners still wants a human face and connection for support and advice. People who have come along for the first time to the group in 2017 describe being in a special space where you don't have to defend the existence of bisexuality or that your bi-ness is valid when you have a broad preference for this gender over those ones or are trying not to be erased into monosexuality whilst in a monogamous relationship is still just as real, the same way we did back in the 1990s.
23 years on for me, 23 and a quarter years of regular meetings for the group. The change all around us has been remarkable but BiPhoria being there is still surprisingly important.
Showing posts with label bi-bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bi-bloggers. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 December 2017
Thursday, 10 October 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
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:
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:
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
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.
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.
Monday, 30 July 2012
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)
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)
Monday, 27 February 2012
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 :)
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 :)
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Back in the army
It was all in good fun and we filled a website with bad punnery - like how we were challenging bisexual invisibility through the use of bad camouflage, capable of marching both ways on the parade ground at the same time, and had a regimental motto of all we need is a few good men, and a few good women, and a place that sells really sturdy beds.
Well, the website stayed up for a while but in the end it wasn't going anywhere fast and so we let the domain lapse, and so while the B*R*A Facebook group is still there, there was no more sign of the B*R*A.
Until now. Back up as a subsection of the BiPhoria website, I give you: The Bisexual Recruitment Army. Hope it gives you a good giggle.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Inky goodness
One of the enduring strengths of bisexual community focused activism or bi organising in the UK over the last three decades has been the arc of newsletters and magazines giving us a tangible existence outside of groups and events. You might be fifty miles from the nearest bi social meetup and nine months from the next BiCon, but there was the prospect of the secret newsletter of the bisexuals dropping onto your doormat any day now.
Originally there was Bi Monthly, which grew from the newsletter of the London Bi Group in the early 80s to being a national forum for bis to talk to one another. When that ran out of steam at the end of the 80s, a successor grew up called BiFrost. It ran for four years and 40 or so issues, some of which were slender and others quite chunky black-and-white magazines.
BiFrost burned bright and then burned up, and in its place came Bi Community News, or BCN. That started in 1995 and is still around today, as the magazine cover with Gwen and Jack from Torchwood above will suggest. With over 100 editions published it's now got glossy with a splash of colour, comes out six times a year, and is one of the two best queer magazines in Britain. As its editor for the last decade, I am entirely unbiased when I say that!
Yet - with all the love I have for the Boston-focused Bi Women newsletter, there isn't anything quite like BCN that seems to have such a national aim or reach. I'm not aware there's even more than one bi magazine in print in the USA any more, since North Bi North West and Bi Tribune folded a few years ago and more importantly since legendary 90s bi and queer magazine Anything That Moves shut down. There is the Journal of Bisexuality but it's an academic quarterly book rather than coffee-table reading.
So it's good to see Bi Social Network trying to break out of that with its bid to launch an offshoot Bi Social magazine, albeit as an electronic magazine for most editions with inky print specials.
I grew up addicted to magazines, the things I was passionate about as a teenager were there in piles of inky paper by my bed, be they Private Eye, Smash Hits or the geekier end of the home computer magazine pool. That might be colouring my judgement, but for me print publications - things you can hold in your hand, leave next to the loo, spill coffee over at breakfast and leave to dry out over the radiator - mean much more than electronic ones.
So I hope that - though their original fundraising plan seems not to be going as well as you'd hope - Bi Social Network can get their magazine into shape and into print too. America could use a vibrant bi press, and the sense of a little competition from over there could only do good things for BCN and BiJou too.
(However, if you're in the UK, BCN needs your donations more than BSN does!)
Thursday, 22 September 2011
The least trumpeted success of the week?
This has been a week of three dollops of good news from the government on LGBT issues, but two of those seem to have garnered the most attention.
So while the news of the left-right coalition's plans for same-sex marriage and for changes to the restrictions on donating blood are fab, here's a cheer for the other one that has slipped out.
The government are considering - and presumably with a fair chance of it happening given that these things are more rarely kite-flying under the rigour of the politics of coalition - options for degendering passports. That you could have your passport record you no longer just as M or F - but as M, F or X: Male, Female or Other/Refused.
Brilliant. Brilliant for those of us for whom either our gender does not fit the popular two categories, and those for whom their sense of self is more mutable or shifting; also brilliant for anyone who doesn't think the state has any business recording extraneous data beyond "this is who this is, this is where they are allowed to travel" on a passport.
I wonder if, when it comes in, I could upgrade my old gender-infested passport for free?
So while the news of the left-right coalition's plans for same-sex marriage and for changes to the restrictions on donating blood are fab, here's a cheer for the other one that has slipped out.
The government are considering - and presumably with a fair chance of it happening given that these things are more rarely kite-flying under the rigour of the politics of coalition - options for degendering passports. That you could have your passport record you no longer just as M or F - but as M, F or X: Male, Female or Other/Refused.
Brilliant. Brilliant for those of us for whom either our gender does not fit the popular two categories, and those for whom their sense of self is more mutable or shifting; also brilliant for anyone who doesn't think the state has any business recording extraneous data beyond "this is who this is, this is where they are allowed to travel" on a passport.
I wonder if, when it comes in, I could upgrade my old gender-infested passport for free?
Friday, 3 September 2010
Talking to one another
One of the crazy things I promised to do at this BiCon was to build a blog aggregator site for bloggers who write about bisexuality (if you follow me in other places, sorry to be repeating myself!)
I did talk about doing it 2 years ago, but just didn't have the tech-savvy to make it work. But nowadays there is a lot more stuff off-the-shelf you can use, so a little work and I have the first mockup of the site running. Yay open source things that plug into one another and just damn work.
It remains to be seen if I can get enough bloggers to make it feel like a conversation space, but I'd like it to be. There's one for left/centreleft bloggers that works really well for me. There is the question of how much bandwidth it eats up but let's cross that bridge when we get there.
Over to you bi-blogging kids... nominate a blog or two?
I did talk about doing it 2 years ago, but just didn't have the tech-savvy to make it work. But nowadays there is a lot more stuff off-the-shelf you can use, so a little work and I have the first mockup of the site running. Yay open source things that plug into one another and just damn work.
It remains to be seen if I can get enough bloggers to make it feel like a conversation space, but I'd like it to be. There's one for left/centreleft bloggers that works really well for me. There is the question of how much bandwidth it eats up but let's cross that bridge when we get there.
Over to you bi-blogging kids... nominate a blog or two?
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