the state of 'left' discourse....

I know Labour don't have a working majority, but given what's sauce for the goose... Labour have BETRAYED US ALL by not being in government any more, they LIED because Gordon is no longer prime minister, and worst of all they have already U-TURNED on their promises of increasing VAT, implementing the Browne report, holding a referendum on AV, slashing housing benefit... the FIBBING ROTTERS!

The BiReCon Files 5: How Civil Partners Meet

Another BiReCon video transcript for you. Anna Einarsdottir - How Civil Partners meet

Thank you very much Meg.

So actually this project is entitled "Just like marriage: a young couple civil partnership".  And I work side by side with Dr Graham (??) who unfortunately isn't here and Professor Carol Smart.  Now, we've been doing this project for the last two years and so I'm really really grateful for the opportunity to come here, I really appreciate that.

So my focus for today will primarily be about how civil partners meet.  What kind of stories people tell about this exciting part of the relationship
and then their intentions, what are their intentions when they start to set out.  What I must say is that they're not necessarily looking for a long-term relationship, it's more like just go and see,
how it, you know, take it with the flow kind of thing.

[.fade out/fade back in.]

Slightly different circumstances.  While most men meet online, women meet through their existing social network - through work, through friends, through church.

What about the process from casual dating to a relationship? Well to begin with the importance of transparency and honesty were stressed by many. Which included not playing games or getting into merry-go-round situations such as "I'm not texting you because she isn't" or "I've rung him so he must ring me" or "I will leave it for two days" or "she doesn't think I'm too keen".  You know, and perhaps this can be interpreted as a sign of how few if any dating rules apply to same-sex relationships as opposed to opposite-sex relationships.  And finally what I would like to say is something about how people transition from a relationship to a committed relationship. 

Now the future of a relationship is often determined by critical moments, such as hospitalisation, death in the family, or one party moving away.  It's the reaction that matters and how partners handle the situations, these difficult situations, which win people over largely because they feel they are cared for - but also to think that they are able to handle the responsibility of the future,  They don't run away or panic: in other words, for our participants, they become CP material.

 I found this one a really interesting talk in the gendered divide it highlighted - it was about LGB people rather than just bi in its research, looking at same-gendered couples, and so there was a lot the chimed with my own non-academic observations about the human geography of queer space and life.

Rose... actors speak out on how "It Gets Better"

It's great to see that there are now more "It Gets Better" videos being made aimed at supporting bisexual young people who are being bullied.  Actors Stephanie Riebel, Fay Wolf, and Kristen Howe from web mini-series "Rose by any other name" have got back together to film one - with the help of filmmaker Kyle Schickner and the American Institute of Bisexuality.  Here's what they have to say:

Bi Telly day?

Yes, I do want to have my televisual cake and eat it

Coming to this a little late - back on August 1st, over in the USA the Logo channel ran a “bisexual marathon,” airing a series of bi related films and documentaries: Imagine Me and You, Bi the Way, Can’t Bi Me Love, Bisexual Girls, and Three of Hearts.

I wonder when we might see TV over here do that, and without adding a sensationalist "now let's look at one or two very specific bi experiences and pretend they're all bis are about" show or three to the roster.  Anyone got a friendly ear at Channel Four?

Though as I think about it - surely Channel Four would probably decide it should be the Top One Hundred Bisexual Characters On Television Night.  Good luck researching that...

The BiReCon Files 4: Why We Need To Get Bi

Another transcript from the BiReCon videos for you: here is Robyn Ochs -- part of her talk on why we need to 'Get Bi', which looked rather like this:

Robyn says:

Isn't this exciting?  Hehe!  I am so happy to be here.  Wow.  So quick audience survey - how many people are here from outside of the UK? 

Wow.  If you're from outside of the UK and you're in the first row where are you from? 

[audience: Germany, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Netherlands, US, Israel... fade out]

We love binaries.  And when you think of how sexual orientation is constructed in most places by most people, it's constructed as having two boxes.  Gay, and its opposite, straight, right. 

And of course in this binary construction we have one box that is more valuable and more honoured than the other - culturally, right, the straight box is more valuable - not by us, by them.

The straight box is considered you know a much better box and a bigger box and the gay box is considered a subordinated box

And in betwen those two boxes.  It's like the boxes
they have walls.  They have solid steel walls, right, and lids to keep the people in.  And in this kind of social construction they are separated by this big void.  Like they are opposite sexualities.  We even use terms like opposite - like "straight is the opposite of gay" - and they are separated by the void, the void of nothingness

I think that is another challenge to understanding bisexuality, is that people don't - they have a hard time imagining any space between the two.

The only time people can imagine something between straight and gay is when it's a transitory thing, when someone might be sliding from one to the other.

But it's seen as a temporary place, as an unstable location that isn't real because it's in the void

And this is something that is a big challenge for us and one thing that helped me not be so frustrated by this is that we do this with a lot of different things.  We like to put everything into binaries. 

The BiReCon Files 3: Finnish Bisexuals in 1999 and 2009

Another transcribing of the YouTube shorts from BiReCon. Jenny Kangasvuo - "Comparing the Experiences of Finnish Bisexuals in 1999 and 2009".

What does this increased visibility of bisexuality mean for people who identify as bisexual? What kind of contradictions do bisexuals meet when tackling with everyday life? And what kind of meanings does the concept of bisexuality get in their lives?

I will illustrate these questions by telling some of the stories of my informants.

I have three stories to tell and the first of them Ella's story reflects the changes in Finnish legislation regarding sexual minorities.

I will skip the first slide and come back a bit later.

And the first story is an ordinary story.  Ten years ago I made a joint interview with Ella who was born in 1975 and Taro was born in 1978. A young female couple who both defined themselves as bisexual. They described themselves as a lesbian couple that consists of two bisexual women - the word lesbian in their use referred to the form of their monogamous relationship, a relationship with another woman.

Ella also says that they have a lesbian lifestyle - according to her, having a bisexual lifestyle would be possible only for singles or people who have multiple relationships, so lesbian lifestyle means means that well, two women and no extra persons in addition . Most of Ella's and Taro's close friends were lesbian and many of them even contested the term bisexual with which they defined their sexual identity.

And then, in 1999 Taro said, "but I could not be with a man only even if I loved him.  I would need to be involved with women too.  But when I am with a woman I can very well be without seeing any men at all."

So according to Ella they were leaning on lesbianism even if they described themselves as bisexual.

In December 2009 only Ella answers to my request to make a new interview. And her experiences reflect during the last ten years refect the changes in the legislation.

And Ella says that her story is an ordinary story among her reference group, and she herself uses the term reference group referring to lesbians with children so Ella's reference group is lesbians with children.

She says: first everybody married in a hurry when it became possible, and then everybody started having kids while it still was possible and the result is the wave of divorces that is happening now, it is totally terrible.

And now let's get back to those changes.  And there is a list of changes. [slide]

And Ella's life reflects these changes perfectly.  Ella and Taro registered their partnership right after that, right after it became possible, and then Taro gave birth to two children.

And the artificial insemination became judicially available for female couples in 2007 but Taro gave birth to her kids before that.   The lovers became mothers and Ella says sarcastically
that anything else all but being a good mother became superfluous

Ella and Taro were active members in the community of rainbow families - well I don't know if the term [audience murmurs] at least most of the people seem to recognise it - families with children, sexual minority families with children, something like that.

However after the second child Taro became depressed and started abusing prescribed drugs.  So it was quite startling to hear that bisexuals seem to have more mental health problems like Meg told during the first session - I was, my mouth ajar gave when I heard that because it I am not a health researcher but my interviews seemed to reflect the same thing.

Anyway, Ella tried to hold the family together but after a couple of years Taro took the children and left her because of another woman.

They divorced and Ella started to fight to attain the rights to be a judicial parent to her children.  Currently she is in a process to adopt her children since adoption became an option only in 2009.  And these changes had had a profound effect in Ella's and Taro's life.

Taro became pregnant twice within two years, through artificial insemination partly because Ella and Taro feared that the new legislation would deny the treatment from same-sex couples.  So the law passed and artificial insemination is possible for same sex couples or female couples but before that it was a real fear that only married heterosexual couples would get artificial insemination so Taro had to get pregnant as soon as possible for fear of not getting to have any children at all.

BCN editing week

Being a busy / overworked queer activist means that there are weeks in my year marked out for putting together this or that publication. The rest of the time I may choose to pay less attention to that project so I can chug ahead with another plan - this past week for instance has mostly been about considering events to hold in early 2011 rather than about either of the queer magazines I work on or the project to renew BCN's website.

Next week is one of the weeks where I'm putting on the editrix hat to bring together a new edition of BCN. If you're thinking of submitting something, either for next week or another future issue, now's a good time to let me know!

The BiReCon Files 2: Deconstructing Biphobia

Miguel Obradors talk on "Deconstructing Biphobia" is the next video I've chosen to transcribe from the BiReCon talks. Again, this is only a small slice of the presentation, and again here is the video on YouTube before I get down to the words:

Why should we talk about biphobia at BiReCon?

Because here here, we have come here to empower ourselves, to get positive energy to come back to our own countries and to share the knowledge learned.  So this biphobia is always negative.  I think that it's important to talk about biphobia because biphobia is intense in bisexuality in the way we understand ourselves, in the way we relate to other people.
And the problem with bisexuality, with biphobia and so on - those terms have been defined, this discourse, by straight people according to the heteronorm.  So many bisexuals don't feel identified with bisexuality or don't understand what biphobia really entails because biphobia was biphobia was created by analogy from homophobia but they are very different concepts and very different discourses.

So what I'm talking about today is not biphobia in itself, it is the structural oppression that bisexual people experience
in our every day lives.  And this structural oppression
is biphobia, is homophobia and is heterophobia as well.

So about this system of structural oppression - when understanding biphobia, homophobia and heterophobia, you need to take into account that these forces have an effect on bisexual people in a conscious and unconscious way.  You can be aware that we are being oppressed maybe we are not of the fact that we are being oppressed.  This oppression can also be indirect, direct, or symbolic through different aspects.   Also it can be interpersonal as well.  So there are many different factors that overlap each other and can have an influence in this way.

Also as I define myself at the beginning, to say that most of the bisexual people I know they are also polyamourous, or kink, or transgender or genderqueer and so on.  When you don't want to be in a box, you don't want to be in other boxes either.  So I'm saying that because bisexual people experience oppression for being bisexual but also for other lifestyles they have, because of their sexual orientation, because of their subjectivity, and we need to analysse all of this in a holistic way.