Sport?

I'm hoping to get to talk to someone soon about their dissertation project on bisexuality and sport. It's one of those things, like the depths of academia, where I don't have the first clue: I managed the enviable feat of being banned from doing sport in school for almost the whole of my time in secondary education and even the whole vast and varied range of sport has never managed to entice me in since I got out of school.

It's nicely topical at the moment as there are growing stirrings on tackling homophobia (at least...) in football going on. But it's also good to have things I know next to nothing about in BCN: I want a magazine that reflects a good swathe of bi life, not just my own urban activist take.

What doesn't BCN talk about that you wish it did?

Optimism

Saturday I had an excellent meeting with someone who wants to bring a play about bisexuality to Manchester. This was an example of my favourite kind of activism - it involved someone buying me lunch and cider. We had a really good long rambling talk and booked a venue so I now know there will be something bi going on over Pride week this summer which I won't have to take responsibility for organising. Brilliant.

Hope to sort out an interview properly with them for BCN in a month or three.

Sunday I finished stuffing BCN issue 94 into envelopes for mailing. Subscription numbers are up again, which is brilliant but means more stuffing work!

"As long as they were human..."

The attention-grabbing publicity release for the next issue of Diva has been picked up over on PinkNews, with a report that

(Molly from TV's "The L Word") Clementine Ford spoke exclusively to Diva about her sexuality. "The truth is that I’m not technically out yet," she said."There. Put that in your magazine. For me, there’s never been a distinction about anything to do with sexuality, so there was no declaration to be made. My siblings and I would bring home men and women, and as long as they were human it wasn’t a big thing.”

Now, is it just me who thinks there's a word starting with "B" for that one that perhaps just hasn't made it past the press release subedit stage? C'mon Clementine, get on out of the unlabelled closet and try this super-stretchy label for size.

Apparently the Proposition 8 ban on similarly-gendered people marrying helped prompt this declaration. Hmmm. Could it be as provocatively invigorating to queer campaigners over there as the Section 28 was over here?

Ninety four, ninety five

Another BCN hits the presses, remarkably soon after the previous one but we are sort of playing catch-up. It's issue 94; we started on issue zero so we've done 95 editions now. I say "we"; until issue 32 all I did was write the odd piece now and then.

I flatter myself that this is one of the better looking editions: I still feel every square inch of paper should have "content" and have to wrestle my fear of whitespace, but I am at least becoming a bit more playful with layout and headlines. The writer roster is particularly impressive, with many more contributors than in a lot of recent editions.

The website is to my mind looking a little stale, but then I have spent rather a lot of time looking at it compared to any well-adjusted bisexual. It doesn't have any content from the last year or so and it would be good to get that online. The easy way would be to generate PDFs and put those online, but people who are happy being on the cover of the printed magazine and appearing in miniature on the website may be a bit more touchy about having super-hi-res colour versions of themselves their family or work colleagues might download and print. Adding back BCN content as individual pages takes rather longer.

Once this print run are mailed out (we have no mailing volunteer at the moment: anyone in Personchester in a position to stuff envelopes and put stamps and sticky labels on, and get to a post office reliably on an ongoing basis should drop me a note) I'll be spending a few days thinking about left-wing activism rather than bi stuff; but in the meanwhile thoughts on what might be in the next edition very welcome.

Better google ratings

Over on BiMedia.org the pages have until now been described by rather anonymous numbers like http://www.bimedia.org/?p=136. A bit of learning and tweaking and we now have much simpler page addresses like http://www.bimedia.org/136/bicon-makes-pink-paper-best-festival-shortlist-again - which some parts of the internets think will make for higher rankings on search engines like google.

Helping things along

Avid readers might recall a little while ago a student interviewed me about being bi as one of a host of interviewees for a play about bisexuality they were writing. That seems to be coming along well and I've encouraged them to take it to BiCon and/or Manchester Pride this summer. A few eager phone calls and emails this week and they have a meeting lined up to visit a prospective venue for performing here; I now have a weekend lunch date to check out the venue with them and generally catch up on how the project is going.

LGBT History Month

It's about to be LGBT History Month again. The Februaries, they come around so fast.

Last year we put on something to mark the occasion in Manchester, local group BiPhoria hosting a talk about bisexuality and people who might be argued to be bi over the last 3,000 years. Two hours of academic lecture to an audience of 40 or so people, with refreshments and a few community information stalls from the projects that want to reach bi people (BiCon, BCN, local groups from around the country).

It was a great day, but notable that as the only bisexuality-focused event, it was the only LGBT History Month event in the city that Manchester City Council chose not to include in its published lists of events to mark the month. Plus ça change...

This year we won't be putting anything on. Sadly it seems no-one else will be either, though there was talk of something happening in London. Maybe the coming nine months or so could see a bi history resource built up - perhaps even a fun one - so that can change next year?

Getting past the burnout

I knew this was coming and for a year beforehand made sure people knew that I couldn't be relied on to give as much of my time to bi projects as in the last few years: now I've been surfing the crest of the activist burnout wave for the last six months for a variety of reasons. I'm just about the right side of that wave now but bear with me.

Or volunteer your writing, cartooning, photographing, and envelope-stuffing skills to help get projects like BCN motoring faster. Your bisexual activists need you!