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:

UK Government Minister backs Bi Visibility Day

It was all a bit too hectic here for me to blog about it at the time, but let's have a belated cheer for the Women & Equality Minister Jo Swinson MP (Lib Dem, East Dunbartonshire), who was the first government figure in the UK to give their support to Bi Visibility Day. 

In a statement last month on September 23rd she said,

“Absolutely no-one should face prejudice and discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“The UK is leading the way in LGB&T equality and we can be proud of the real progress that has been made in recent years. But we know there is more to do which is why this autumn we will launch a new Call for Evidence, to explore what the next steps need to be to improve the lives of LGB&T people.

“I welcome Bi Visibility Day which helps to raise awareness of the issues that bisexual people can face and provides an opportunity to celebrate diversity and focus on the B in LGB&T.”

We've been waiting a long time for that from a minister of any stripe.

On the same day, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport also gave a supporting tweet from its departmental account, linking to the international Bi Visibility Day listings website.

A Decade On: Bi Life in Manchester

The conference where the "Bisexual Life in Manchester" report was launched was held on 29th September 2003.  Ten years ago today.

This was the first bit of 'proper' research on bi needs that I did with BiPhoria, as part of a broader LGB&T project for the local Local Strategic Partnership. This was qualitative focus group interview palaver, with an enormous amount of transcribing (I'd never done that before) and only a loosely formatted Word document and a set of Powerpoint slides in time for the launch rather than the prettified edition that's on the BiPhoria website.

It planted some of the seeds of The Bisexuality Report, by breaking its findings on bi life and bi needs down into policy areas - youth provision, mental health, employment, housing and so on. Something I'd forgotten over the years was that, like The Bisexuality Report, it included a section of positives about bisexual experience to give some respite from the 'list of problems' style that research findings on LGBT life can become. As I recall, this was reinvented afresh when the team devised The Bisexuality Report.

The report had little immediate impact, though, as in line with Manchester City Council policy in 2003, the overarching Local Strategic Partnership ruled bisexuality to not exist: we in the LGBT LSP kept sending in documents marked "LGBT" and they kept coming back marked "LG". Though it's shifted a little in recent years, Manchester City Council worked damn hard to earn a reputation for biphobia.

Getting Bi On Film

One of the "I'll get around to it" things on my to-do list this year was to take Getting Bi In A Gay/Straight World and make it into an mp3, so people who find sound easier than vision could get the benefit of its distilled bisexual wisdom.

But mp3 hosting is even more of a mystery to me than video hosting, so with the aid of Holly aka Bisexual Wombat, here is a video version, with the images from the booklet and an audio track.
Getting Bi in a Gay / Straight World from Bi Community News on Vimeo.

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)

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 ;)

Back in the army

A few years ago - gosh, it must be about five years now - local bi group BiPhoria dressed up in bad camo print and waved a banner for the Bisexual Recruitment Army as our Manchester LGBT Pride presence.

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.

How LGBT is your LGBT Pride?

About ten to fifteen years ago, there was a trend of "lesbian and gay" organisations and events in the UK shuffling over to  calling themselves LGBT, or "lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender".

London L&G Pride and the L&G wing of the Lib Dems were the first I noticed make this change, around 1996. Slowly other Prides and LG(B)(T) organisations around the country followed suit. We've advanced to the point that now, fifteen years on, it looks a little peculiar when you see something that is, at least on the label, LG rather than LGB or LGBT.

But changing the label on the tin is one thing, how far have we changed what's in the tin?

This came back into my mind as I was bumbling around the Manchester Pride website this week. I'd never noticed their Pride Surveys before, but here were some remarkable results.

At the 2008 and 2010 Manchester LGBT Prides, they conducted some kind of survey of attendees.  Each time the best part of 1000 people were interviewed, so you would imagine there was some degree of statistical validity to the findings.

I'm going to put trans/cis matters to one side for a moment and ask: what did they show on sexuality?

Lesbians and gay men form the lion's share - 80%+ - of those attending. The next largest sexuality grouping is heterosexual people. Bisexuals only make up about 7% of those attending - a tenth of the attendance by gay and lesbian people.

A remarkable statistic, that hugely underlines the need for bi work and bi visibility at that event, given every study of sexuality worth reading finds more bisexuals - especially when it comes to women - than gay and lesbian people.  It is on a par with the stats from Kairos' London LGBT Almanac, which suggested that of all LGBT service users in London, only about 6% were bi. 

It would seem we have a long way to go yet before the label "LGBT" really means it.

Oh, Stonewall....

an opinion piece for BiMedia:

The UK's leading "lesbian, gay and bisexual" (according to its Christmas cards) charity Stonewall has published its response to the government consultation on reforms to marriage and civil partnership legislation. It seems that bisexuals have dropped off the Stonewall radar once again.

Stonewall have published their draft submission to the Coalition Government's review of the restrictions on marriage and civil partnership.  The submission form first asks for comments about marriage reform to open it up to same-sex couples, and then goes on to the subject of civil partnerships and whether those should be open to mixed-sex couples.  In the UK at present civil partnerships are only open to same-sex couples, and marriage only open to mixed-sex couples.

Stonewall's submission begins:

Stonewall seeks to secure marriage for gay people as a civil vehicle on the same basis as heterosexual marriage, available in a registry office but without a mandate on religious organisations to celebrate it. We seek to retain civil partnerships for lesbian and gay people recognising their special and unique status.

And it carries on in that vein. Indeed, after talking only and quite explicitly about lesbians and gay men over marriage reform, the Stonewall submission then responds to a question on Civil Partnership by declaring that as this only affects heterosexual people, it's a matter for them of which Stonewall therefore has no opinion, thus:

This is a matter for heterosexual people and Stonewall would recommend consulting with them and stakeholder organisations representing them.

And, er, that's that.

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.

We agreed, no leaders!

When I first got talking to people about the bi scene beyond my home city, I kept coming up against a quote from the film Time Bandits:

We agreed: No leader!

For a long time I didn't realise this was a quote and - as you do when you find yourself around people who've been doing something longer than you have - assumed it was the distilled wisdom of bisexual activists who had gone before.  We shall have no leaders, no-one shall be a spokesperson or able to claim to be giving a bisexual voice.

Well, it turned out the full quote is

Randall: do you want to be leader of this gang?
Strutter: No, we agreed: No leader!
Randall: Right. So shut up and do as I say.

Which is more of an amusing analysis of how formal and informal power structures work.

Til I found that out, the turn of phrase troubled me as I thought it was a recipe for floundering and getting nowhere fast.  Leaders of any social strata community are by definition a bit mis-representatitive, but when one compares how far gay and lesbian liberation / equality / visibility / callitwhatyouwant has gone in the last twenty years with the leaders they've had, and compare it to bi progress in our ostentatiously leaderless (un)structures... well, leadership sometimes looks like it might have been a clever plan. There's lots we might find ourselves at odds with in how LG things have shaped up, and lots of things that I might argue the bi movement has done better thanks to the way our projects and groups have worked, but on balance, and at the risk of deviating from the party line our non-existent leaders don't issue: we had better parties but the other lot got further along toward an arbitrary set of goals.

Leaders are divisive, sure. Anyone having an opinion and holding it up in public is divisive, mind. So long as you have several voices, there's room for additional or replacement voices, and the people involved disagree reasonably on a reasonable amount of turf, leaders are probably a good tactic. Since Bisexual Index formed, for instance, you'll find Bisexual Index voices get quoted in bits of the press and even invited on TV and radio to put a bi viewpoint.  To a lesser degree, the same thing has happened with BiPhoria (the longest-running bi group we have now) and Bi Community News.

Having high profile figures connected to the community gives people outside the bisexual community whirl someone to connect to, a way "in" or a voice to draw into their own conversations.  A person to invite as a speaker.  A person to call for a quote.  A person to ask when you need signposting.

I think that's a good thing.  Not that I'll always agree with whoever that person is on whatever they're talking about - damn boring life would be if I did, even if I am mellowing into pragmatism in my middle age - but then one hell of a lot of gay people have disagreen with Angela Mason, Ben Summerskill and Peter Tatchell down the years.  The fact that a Ben or an Angela or a Peter was there was still mostly a good thing, even if I might have liked to swap someone else into that role.

Which takes me back to the original point of this posting this blog post, which has been a little bit meandery.  You know I was talking about this Health Summit the other day?  On the same weekend, also in Cardiff as part of an entwined conference series, there is one on LGBT Leadership.  A networkingy trainingy event to skill up, empower, develop and all those kind of shiny words, lesbian, gay, bi and trans leaders in activist circles, business circles, political circles, etc.

And on the weekend when the UK's most committed bi political and community activists - bi being probably in this country the least vocally represented of the four strands - are all tied up elsewhere.

Grrrr!

Sigh.  Maybe it'll happen again next year.

Let's not be healthy then

As BiMedia reports, this year's LGBT Health Summit has been announced for the first two days in September. It'll be in Cardiff, having previously gone to places like Newcastle, Manchester and Bristol: I think this is the first time it's been in Wales.

Chances are, dear reader, that you've never been to these conferences, so I shall observe that these are quite useful events with a lot of interesting research shared and best practice (and bad practice) highlighted.  From an individual queer activist perspective it's a brilliant opportunity to meet people doing all kinds of work and to learn about what's going on out there, bringing so many strands together in one place.  I've gone to quite a lot of LGBT 'sector' things and the Health Summit is toward the top of the usefulness puddle.


However, the first two days in September are also when BiCon falls this year. For the small strand of the LGBT communities who are engaged in bi activism or want to connect to bi issues and community, that's a damn hard clash. For a lot of us, it's a decision that will naturally fall down on the side of being in a properly bi-welcoming space for the few days of the year when that's an option.

It's not the first time these two have been up against each other: when the summit came to Manchester in 2007, it overlapped with BiCon that year too. That conference was one of my Activist Regrets: at the very end of the conference, I was scheduled to talk.  I went with the speech I'd prepared rather than do what my instincts told me which was to do one more off-the-cuff about what I had seen in the part of the Health Summit I had been able to attend. I really should have gone with the impromptu one about the things that weren't being talked about, primarily bisexuality but also genderqueer matters. That year at least - I've not been able to go since - it was remarkably centred on lesbian and gay experience and the small-c conservative end of transgender. By the time I and the keynote speaker on trans matters were lined up to talk, most attendees had already left. 

There are many many queer events every summer and a lot of them have to overlap. It's blooming frustrating though, especially when from what I can make out the Health Summit has been inching toward being more bi positive / inclusive.  If you're just not cut out for BiCon and make it along to the Summit, I'd love to know how it goes.

Three weeks to Bi Day!

http://september23.bi.org/ hosts information about Bi Visibility Day events in the UK. We already have two things lined up in Manchester!

Please do add your local events (by emailing the BCN people).

Fools seldom differ...

Or is it great minds thinking alike? I was just about to post here a request to readers who ponder the nuances of sexual identity, when I find that a rather similar point has just been made over on Bisexual Index.

I was going to say:

Can you point me at or offer me a meaningful differentiation between pan and bi, that isn't just about noodling the linguistics of the "b" words? Better yet something that doesn't need to justify pan by holding it up it against a negative, warped interpretation of bi?

I've read plenty of explanations that set up the straw man of "two-ness" in "bi", which - as well as being at best a peculiar interpretation of the B word - never seem to follow through on the implications of homo- or hetero- sexuality. I'm sure it can't all be about people dodging the bullet of biphobia through inventing a new word...

When I notice that Bisexual Index have just added a new entry to their FAQ on what seems very much the same point:

Bisexual isn't about there being only "two sexes"

Some people get hung up on the 'bi' and protest that gender isn't binary. In traditional dictionaries:

• Homosexual is defined as "attracted to the same sex"
• Heterosexual is defined as "attracted to the opposite sex"

So why then dismiss bisexuality as being about "men and women" when the definitions of hetero- and homo- don't mention those? In this modern age with a wider understanding of gender some would re-state those as:

• Homosexual means "attracted to people of broadly the same gender"
• Heterosexual means "attracted to people of broadly a different gender"

In fact many people say there's more than two genders, but if two options are either "the same as me" or "different to me" then we think it's clear that "both" can refer to those two options rather than two perceived sexes.

Bisexuality isn't an attempt to pigeonhole gender, it's the freedom to feel attraction without blinkers!

Well, quite.