Across the hills to Sheffield Zinefest

This weekend I dipped my toe in zinesterland for the first time. by going to the Sheffield Zinefest.

It's a bit weird, saying that, as I've been standing on the borders of the place for about 20 years! Whether mine or my flatmate's music zines, the trashy thing for people in my uni department that I sometimes wrote for, the amusing reputation I got in the 90s with the then writer-about-queer-zines for BCN, or a squillion bits and pieces I've written and sometimes drawn for BCN and other bi magazines... it's all been in places of, so to speak, intersectional zine culture. A place where we are all queer and here is a zine about being queer. A place where we are all feminist and here is a distro table of the fine work of grrrl zinesters. I'd never just gone to a place where people who get it about the seductive power of ink and paper congregate.

And there are two things I need to write: the day out, and trying to keep up the little fillip of ink and paper energy it's given me. There's going to be a section heading or two, you know there will... and maybe even a cut-tag. Here they come...

A splendid day out

BCN 117

Well, it's back from the print shop.... yet again they sent it to the wrong place and so it is a couple of weeks behind when it could have been going into the post. I am so not amused you can hardly imagine, but I think if it was raining today then as I walked down the street the raindrops would turn to steam as them met my head. It's almost less that they sent it to somewhere arbitrary instead of the delivery address stated, more how blase they were when challenged about it.

Four alternative print quotes sourced so far. If I can move it for anything like the same print bill, I'm moving. Most other print houses also have tracking on parcels so you can find out if things have been delivered to a randomly chosen stranger.

Future History

Too little was going on for LGBT HM, so I cracked and made a bisexual history thing. It's a twitter feed, and there'll be a page on BiMedia soon to go with it. @bisexualhistory - my aim with it is that one day I'll have a "bi thing from history" for every day of the year.

It may require me to organise the Smallest BiFest Ever one December 25th to complete the calendar...

400 to 175

The first hurdle for the same-sex marriage bill has been passed. I'm not entirely sure, but I think 400 votes in favour is the largest show of support there's been for any LGBT equality measure to date. Yes, 175 against...

I tried to juggle lots of things at once during the debate in the Commons including live-tweeting what was being said on @BiCommunityNews - some contributions good and bad will have been missed while I was on the phone to people, talking to people face-to-face, or moving from here to there, but I'll paste a little timeline below.

Watching the debate you'd've thought there was going to be a much tighter result. One after another MPs stood up to grump about the bill: the trouble for most of them being, they'd decided what they thought of it when they got to the idea "it's about the gays", but now had to concoct some bold excuse as to why they were going to vote no that sounded a bit more high principled than "gays have got cooties and if they can marry we might catch it off a registrar".

As ever, indeed from the moment I got the tip-off that this bill was going to be announced, I am a little bit like a rabbit in headlights: I grew up on 80s tabloid hatred and the coming together of Tories and Labour to foist Section 28 on us all. Somehow just two decades later I wound up living on a different planet from all that stuff, even if it is a world with a lot of confused aliens from 80s-world.

There's still a good long way to go before we can marry, though...

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!

What do you want to read in BCN next year?

Should Bi Community News borrow from the style of other magazines and have themed issues in 2013?

And if it should, what should the themes be?

It's in the post...

The latest issue of BCN is back from the printers, stuffed into envelopes (thanks to the BCN stuffing possee!) stamped, labelled and off into the post.

Overseas ones will have to wait til I'm well enough to make it to a post office though. I do wish overseas mail was easier.

This issue has two major chunks of wordyness: one, the report back from decision making at BiCon 2012; the other, two articles talking about bisexuality and language. These relate to the Bristol bi club "Greedy" whose name flared up into controversy among a few ill-informed defenders of Teh Queer, and the wider question of sloganeering: what can you stick on a banner or flyer that bisexuals will unite around?

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.