LGBT History Month is here!

In February 2005, the UK marked its first LGBT History Month.

I loved the notion: although looking back over old correspondence it seems that the organisers were perhaps collaborating on something to be marked in the more progressive schools around the country, the wider LGBT community heard about it and picked up the idea and ran with it.  So while there were no doubt a bunch of schools events (at thirtyish I wasn't really the demographic to hear about them!) there were a host of other things besides too around the country aimed at the LGBT community in general or anyone LGBT friendly in wider society.

But it was quite lesbian-and-gay despite the name.

Lots of bi and trans people felt left out and some of us decided to do things about it; but to be honest, it was much more something that got picked up within the trans community than the bi community.  So the next few years there were a host of trans events, and a slight downturn in the amount of gay and lesbian stuff - the second and third years of things often see a bit of a downturn as people who had one idea struggle to work out what to do the second time around - but there wasn't much for bis.

In Manchester we had a talk about interpretations of bisexuality in history over the past 3,000 years.  The odd person or group here and there did a talk that didn't really have much to do with history but was perhaps their latest bi research being presented, but it felt very much an LGbT History Month.
By 2013 I'd had an idea.  There has been lots of bisexual stuff that has gone on over the years, and a growing number of high profile openly bi people or depicitions of bis on TV and in film.

There have also been a lot of erased bisexual contributions to our LGBT history, When the story of the decriminalisation of sex between men in Wales and England is told, for instance, we all hear about Labour MP Leo Abse and Conservative MP Humphrey Berkeley, but there is far less mention of Tory peer Lord Montagu or Roy Jenkins (later leader of the SDP) and the role they played as bisexual men without whom the law would likely have taken many more years to change.  If we rely on the sources of the gay and lesbian press we'll never remember the stories of things like BiCon or the bi ban at London Lesbian & Gay Switchboard. 

And so I built bisexualhistory on twitter and its facebook twin bihistory - each sharing in so far as I can manage at least one thing every day about bi history.  "On this day in..." they go - they are all anniversaries or birthdays or the like.  Usually with a link to a news article or wikipedia page so you can read more on the thing in question.

As well as reminding (or teaching!) you of a little dollop of our bisexual history each day, they give an easy way to remind other people about your bisexuality - retweeting about famous bis or bi events is a subtle reminder but one no-one can accuse you of "ramming it down their throat" over, you're just retweeting a happy birthday message to Anna Paquin or Sara Ramirez or what have you. And for allies it's a really easy way of gently showing support through the year.

I'd love people to submit more dates for the calendar. Maybe you know a few or would like to help out by researching some.

And meanwhile the Month has grown like topsy the last few years with a host of events including the big "Hub" events around the UK - more than a dozen big LGBT history festivals at museums around the country and even with a couple overseas joining in.


So happy LGBT History Month. Even if it's not LGBTHM wherever in the world you are!

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 :)

Our LGBT History and the People's History Museum

There are a lot of things I meant to blog about in 2013 but the raw doing things that need doing of tackling the most pressing problem got in the way. In the winter months I hope to write up a few of these, having made a start this week with the review of the year and writeup of the Charles Dickens talk at LGF. Today I'm going to look back to August 2013 and the Manchester People's History Museum LGBT Exhibition for Manchester Pride 2013.  This one will be decorated with photos as I was being a bit snap-happy with my camera at the time.



In March 2013, when planning the People's History Museum's summer events programme, it seems the suggestion came forward to run an LGBT history tour, to coincide with Manchester Pride at the August bank holiday weekend. The people's history of Manchester, after all, includes a whole series of stories of our place as a key city in the country's LGBT history.

But as a social history it is fleeting and ephemeral, with some of the tales of bars and battles captured by the rainbow plaques on our city streets and many more missing, let alone how they piece into the jigsaw of the battle for liberation and equality on a wider level. If you didn't live through it all back then, then in a 2013 where one of the six parliamentary divisions on same-sex marriage didn't even go to a vote because well it's obviously going to pass why bother, it's hard to imagine how things were for queers of all stripes twenty or forty years ago. It's something that didn't hit home to me until I had the good fortune to meet and spend time with Bernard Greaves, a magnificent gay (and later LGBT) rights activist who has been fighting the proverbial good fight longer than I've been alive.

As Catherine O'Donnell, one of the exhibition organisers, blogged at the time: "(As a straight woman) I knew that there had been a struggle, however I didn’t realise the lengths that campaigners had gone through to gain rights for something as simple and natural as kissing in public, let alone the repeal of Section 28 and equal marriage."

Most of the 'popup' LGBT history exhibition

Catherine got the plans for an exhibition included in one of LGF's regular circulars and that's where I picked up on it, as it landed the day after I'd had a conversation about archives and the many bi banners BiPhoria has made over the years.  Regular readers will know that I work a mixed week, and Wednesday is normally my day of beavering away at various bi volunteering projects at BCN Towers. By sheer chance the two LGBT history workshop afternoon PHM had planned were on Wednesdays, so I could take part without having to take leave from my paid working week.  If People's History Museum had picked Fridays for this project it would probably have passed me by.

When you only have two afternoons to bring a group of a dozen or so people together, get them to go through museum archives and their own materials from home, understand broadly how to select, label and present the most important things and turn it into a ready to roll exhibition that's a tough call.  While perhaps half of the volunteers contributing history and time to assembling the exhibition already knew one another from a group at LGF that the People's History Museum had done a targeted outreach evening with, the rest of us didn't know one another and there is quite a bit of needing to find a comfort level around strangers and learning to share stories and space. It worked well, though I was always worried I was hogging the floor with stories from twenty years of bi, trans and LGBT activism - or geekily correcting historical references. No, he was bisexual... of course at the time both of them were in the closet... the word dates back to the late 1800s... that's the wrong pronoun... I'll shush now.

Those exchanges of stories highlighted some of the limitations of the rapid recruit - prepare - present cycle. We had, from what I could tell, a skew toward cis lesbians and gay men among the volunteers. That's not to bemoan any of them being there, just that as so often, ideally there would have been more and different voices.  Thanks to my background and extensive if ill-filed bi archives I can hold up the B end well, but I think there was only me and one ally speaking up on trans issues and representation. There was at least some B and T in there though, which was one of the things that made me glad I'd taken part.  Especially seeing this little "bisexual corner" with two of my final three nominated items for the display, one of which reflecting the internal struggles within the LGBT umbrella:

"Dear Stonewall, you say you're LGB but you keep letting bisexuals down..."

It all came together and while it felt a little bit compact-and-bijou compared to a full museum exhibition areas, it was a grand feeling once the frenzy of Pride weekend was over to come in to the museum in September and see it in its polished final form. I got all self-referential and took photos of the projection wall where my own photos were among the rotating display running (many thanks to the kindly front desk people who noticed what I was up to and dimmed the main lights so I could get better snaps!). 

That's a photo of a projection of a photo I took of one of my teeshirts.
This blogpost may eat itself :)

I do hope PHM will run similar exhibits again, Pride week is an obvious date to hang things off, but so are LGBT History Month, IDAHOBBIT or Bi Visibility Day. Having started with a broad LGBT exhibition I naturally gravitate to thoughts of whether in years to come they could focus on areas within LGBT, such as the bi, or trans, or BME LGBT tales of the city.

Much kudos and congratulation to Harriet Richardson and Catherine O'Donnell from the museum's Play Your Part project, who steered the whole thing through to completion. It was great to see the finished exhibit there at the front of the museum to welcome all visitors, to be a part of make it happen. Further it filled me with thoughts of how to go about exhibiting bisexual community history in particular; but that's a story for another blogpost!

Bisexuals and LGBT History Month 2013

As fellow BiBloggers resident EsmeT reminds us in her recent post, it's about to be February and in the UK that's LGBT History Month.

Each year a host of events around the UK and in the media teach or remind us about our queer history, sometimes with overarching themes that have been deliberately chosen, sometimes with themes that just seem to emerge at a grassroots level. The second year of LGBT HM being marked, if I remember right, there was a groundswell of trans history events in response to the first year being rather L&G. Last year it was all about sport, on account of the Olympics, which is why this year's theme is a bit peculiar in being the 101st anniversary of Alan Turing's birth. 100 years is more usual, but apparently the Olympics just wouldn't take "next year" for an answer.

Some years LGBT HM events with a bi focus happen around the UK during the month: BiPhoria hosted a "3,000 Years Of Bisexuality" history talk about four years ago, I did a "25 Years of Bisexual Manchester" type talk in 2011, and London has had a couple of events of varying shapes.

Beyond those, though, the pickings to date are lean.

It depends on a few factors: either one or more bi folk deciding to make something happen, whether as a one-off or as a specially themed evening at an existing bi meetup group, or a more broadly focused organisation that makes contact with one of many bi projects around the UK which can help with guest speakers (Bi Community News, Bisexual Index, Bothways, BiPhoria, Bi Cymru and suchlike). 

Beside EsmeT's talk with her Church group, which I may be misreading but it sounds more like it's directed at the existing congregation rather than a 'public' audience, so far I haven't heard of any LGBT History Month events going on this year with a bi focus or substantial bi angle. 

So: is there a B in LGBT History Month this year? If so please tell me, as I'd love to know about it!

Almost there...

Oh, the shiny things I shall unleash upon the world!

But first there's a bifest to get out of the way 8)

History Month, part two

As one of the LGBT History Month events, today there was a brief chance to explore some of the LGBT archives at Manchester's Central Library. It was great to see a hugely improved turnout - last time I went along to the equivalent event there were about ten or twelve people present, but this time it was nearer to thirty and you had to do a lot more swapping places with people and waiting your turn to get a look at any particular resource that interested you.

Things I'd not browsed before included:

It's Queer Up North - a document about a dozen pages long that seemed to be the original mission statement for this arts project, circa 1993. Almost entirely 'lesbian and gay' in its language, with just a nod to the concept of a wider sense of queer implying that this is about trans. Gotta love activist plan documents complete with the pencil annotations.

A dissertation by some student from a few years ago, looking at the evolution of the gay village. Throughout it talks about the queer communities, people, etc, and in talking about Manchester's queer population since the 1980s it engages with the ideas of lesbian and gay non-scene spaces... but only those.

And a large-format version the fabulous 90s Manchester city council equal opps policy - the one that was the starting point of the conversation between Bisexual Action and Manchester City Council that led to the declaration by the latter that bis are just a type of a gay.

The notable missing element for me, of course, is a complete lack of any trace of the bisexual community. We've got what is now the longest running bi group in the UK, have been host city to two huge sprawling BiCons, and of course Bi Community News had a "printed in Manchester" line on the credits for over a decade. At one point there were at least four parallel bi projects running in the city with different sets of people behind each.

But it seems the archives say nothing.

Doing something to change that level of invisibility will take time and cash. There are resources out there - or here in my personal collection - documenting at least the period since 1994. BiPhoria flyers, newsletters, BCNs, BiCon advertising, and more. I don't have multiple spares to be able to donate them to places like Manchester Central Library, and I'm not donating my personal copies any time soon.

But with the devotion of some time and cash duplicates could be created, and maybe next year or the year after, one of the displays at LGBT HM might document the love/hate relationship between Manchester's council and gay scene, and the bisexual population. Wouldn't that be good to see?




(Part one has yet to be written - as this week mostly I'm in bed with lurgy!)

History Month, part one

It is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History Month and as ever I think there's not enough going on that is bi or bi-inclusive. If I've got my numbers right, LGBT HM started in 2005 so this is the sixth one - and in that time there have been just three bi-focused events nationwide. One in Manchester, one in London, and this year, one in Rotherham.

Rotherham, Yorkshire. So first up, top marks to the organisers, who put on a series of events to mark history month and consciously included bisexuality - besting all the other 'queerer' cities. Including the cities with serious and sustained bi presences like Birmingham, Brighton and Edinburgh.

It seems there are three approaches to running an event for LGBT History Month.

* Focus on history
* Focus on current and recent stuff
* Do something entirely tangential

In the first category, the Manchester bi event for LGBT HM looked at 3,000 years of bi history; in the third category, there have been lesbian and gay line dancing sessions hosted at the Town Hall - a great mixer but not that strong on the history I suspect.

Rotherham's event fell into category two, being essentially a blend of "what is bisexuality" and "bisexual identity and community in Britain today".

The first part was much as what I'd do myself - an overview of Kinsey and Klein. It seemed to be they were there to give academic grounding, where I'd use them to simply effect a common language for discussion: for instance it then makes it easier to talk about how I'm a right-up-in-the-high-numbers Kinsey bi, but a bit more wibbly wobbly toward the middle on a Klein index.

Then we came onto bi identity - marginalised and in need of forms of discourse and visibility outside of polyamoury. And the idea of a complete lack of a community: there is a thing called BiCon but there is nothing else out there, and while there are some internet bi spaces, the internet doesn't count.

Which I'd disagree with: there's a smattering of stuff out there and to take BiPhoria as an example, it's had let's say 4 new people encounter it directly each month for 12 meets a year over 15 or more years. Thats 15 x 12 x 4 = 720 people directly affected. Add in partners, family, a friend or three each, and a couple of people who later came out to that person and got a stronger sense of bi-ness. Stir in a host of people who never come to a group like that but who will in conversation tell you that it's important to "know that it is there" in case they ever need it. And the people in other projects and organisations who have been made more aware of bisexuality through encountering magazine articles, outreach speakers or what have you.

And I'd differ on the question of the internet too. The net has surely given many people who were isolated a sense of being less alone, even of virtual community. Someone will be along soon to point out that Second Life has a huge weekly bi meet.

Others may say that the thousands BiPhoria have impacted are a drop in the ocean. But those are arguments in interpretation of data. Which you can do, if you agree there is data there to interpret.

As billed, last night's talk was an academic talking about bisexuality - so it seems reasonable to expect a modicum of academic rigour. But that wasn't on display: now, I may be overly influenced by having just read Bad Science, but I tend to think that the right academic approach is to assemble whatever facts you can and seek to derive a hypothesis, or to start with a hypothesis and see how well the facts concur or undermine it.

There was no academic rigour here, and scant evidence of having done even the most basic research. 

Instead, this was cherry-picking. The 'only' thing even pretending to be a bi space is BiCon - forget the smattering of other dates in the bi calendar. The local groups don't exist and so can have had no impact. And you can assess the whole of what BiCon is by picking a couple of carefully selected workshop titles out of the programme. It's all about polyamoury and BDSM and nothing to do with being a Real Bisexual. Which is strange because I've been to BiCon more than once as a vanilla, monogamous person, chosen other strands in the programme, and got a very rewarding weekend of chatter, dancing, and activist networking out of it. With half-a-dozen things going on at any one time, BiCon is what you choose to take out of it: you have to make a conscious choice to experience it as being about kink and poly.

And that thing that so often grates with activists when we rub up against academics: analysis without action.

Now, I'm open to a sane critique of the UK bi movement. I've done a few in my time and done follow-on work to try to change some of the things I have perceived as needing improvement. There are many things that it might do that it doesn't and things that it is only just doing that it should have done years ago. Equally there are things where it pioneered long ago and the gay / lesbian communities, with their hugely greater resources, are only just starting to catch up. Bi projects in the UK reach far fewer people than I'd like to see be the case and only too often 'lgbt' work fails to fill the gaps.

But that kind of critique has to be grounded in first knowing what there is out there, where it has come from and what it's about, and needs to entwine that knowledge into the analysis. Otherwise, you're misleading your audience, and not doing your homework.