It is September 23rd and I see our politicians have been engaging with Bi Visibility Day right across the political spectrum this year.
For the Liberals, Jo Swinson had read up on bisexuality and did a detailed message of support about bisexuality, biphobia and bi erasure.
For Labour, Jeremy Corbyn had read up on bisexuality and sat on a fence over Brexit as a sign of solidarity with people who can't make up their minds.
For the Conservatives, Boris Johnson had read up on bisexuality and spent the day being a cheat and a liar in solidarity with all those bis we know you can't trust.
And for the SNP... nothing. In solidarity with all that bi invisibility.
Non-pisstake version: actually during the course of the day I looked at social media from all the parties, their leaders and their LGBT groups. There was a lot from the Lib Dems including from Swinson; there was a panicked last-minute nod from a couple of Tory, Green and Labour accounts; from Plaid and the Nats, nowt.
Monday, 23 September 2019
Saturday, 31 August 2019
More Bis In Photos
And so - following on from yesterday's photo roundup - to this years BiCon photo, which is also out on the Bi Community News website ahead of its proper schedule date by way of celebrating the opening of bookings for BiCon 2020 tomorrow.
Subscribe to Britain's bi magazine BCN sharpish and get a nice big colour print of the photo in the mail when the September-October edition lands on doormats in two weeks' time!
Subscribe to Britain's bi magazine BCN sharpish and get a nice big colour print of the photo in the mail when the September-October edition lands on doormats in two weeks' time!
Friday, 30 August 2019
Bis In Photos
The past few years I've frequently been part of the BiCon annual photo for Bi Community News magazine - but I'm almost never in the picture cos most years I'm behind the camera.
It can feel a bit weird sorting the photo out each year but never being seen, like bisexual invisibility turned up to eleven.
For anyone who has been wondering what a large group of bisexuals (and allies) looks like or what kind of people go to BiCon, here are a few of the more recent photos:
This was 2015, in Nottingham. People gathered indoors in an atrium area and I leant off a balcony a few floors above them to get everyone in on this shot:
2016, Preston. Indoor group shots have the benefit of slightly fewer people wandering into shot so they take less time. We did two versions of this one - the other had the Co-Op banner in shot to please them as sponsors for the event. I think I was yelling directions while L wrangled the camera.
2017, this time in Leeds. The "can everyone kindly hang about outside a building while Jen leans out of an upstairs window" model.
2018, Salford. This one's actually taken by Ludy - I had left BiCon early to go and help organise the bis at Leeds Pride. I went on a special site visit a few days before BiCon happened to
It can feel a bit weird sorting the photo out each year but never being seen, like bisexual invisibility turned up to eleven.
For anyone who has been wondering what a large group of bisexuals (and allies) looks like or what kind of people go to BiCon, here are a few of the more recent photos:
This was 2015, in Nottingham. People gathered indoors in an atrium area and I leant off a balcony a few floors above them to get everyone in on this shot:
2016, Preston. Indoor group shots have the benefit of slightly fewer people wandering into shot so they take less time. We did two versions of this one - the other had the Co-Op banner in shot to please them as sponsors for the event. I think I was yelling directions while L wrangled the camera.
2017, this time in Leeds. The "can everyone kindly hang about outside a building while Jen leans out of an upstairs window" model.
2018, Salford. This one's actually taken by Ludy - I had left BiCon early to go and help organise the bis at Leeds Pride. I went on a special site visit a few days before BiCon happened to
Thursday, 25 July 2019
Ally Challenge
I got chatting to someone the other afternoon about bisexuals and
allies. In part it was prompted by being at Sparkle and seeing some
publications offering tip for allies on how to be supportive to your
trans friends, family, workmates and partners.
There have been similar things for lesbians and gay men and from within the diversity and equality campaigner bubble it feels like cishet allies more or less know what they should do and what they should look out for.
Is it different for bis? After all we were historically thought of in LGBT community discourse as kind of "gay lite", with therefore just a smaller level of the same support as you might give to gay friends and family members needed.
Except in recent years it has turned out that no: bisexual experience is, as the bisexuals were saying unheeded all along, qualititavely different from gay life. And it has turned out that, in the statistics, bi experience is not "gay lite" but a kind of "homophobia plus".
Up til now it has been hard for allies to help tackle biphobia because of our own invisibility and because of the lack of differentiation between gay and bi life experience in research and anecdote, and so willing allies simply didn't know enough about our challenges: about what biphobia looks like and what it does. It feels like we are in a time where that changes. At last!
There have been similar things for lesbians and gay men and from within the diversity and equality campaigner bubble it feels like cishet allies more or less know what they should do and what they should look out for.
Is it different for bis? After all we were historically thought of in LGBT community discourse as kind of "gay lite", with therefore just a smaller level of the same support as you might give to gay friends and family members needed.
Except in recent years it has turned out that no: bisexual experience is, as the bisexuals were saying unheeded all along, qualititavely different from gay life. And it has turned out that, in the statistics, bi experience is not "gay lite" but a kind of "homophobia plus".
Up til now it has been hard for allies to help tackle biphobia because of our own invisibility and because of the lack of differentiation between gay and bi life experience in research and anecdote, and so willing allies simply didn't know enough about our challenges: about what biphobia looks like and what it does. It feels like we are in a time where that changes. At last!
Sunday, 9 June 2019
In Their Prime
Here's an uplifting photo: the first joint meeting of the seventeen Lib Dem and Alliance party MEPs elected two weeks ago. Coalicious, as they used to say.
They're going to be in place to some point between October 31 2019 and June 30 2024. Can't wait to find out who's going to be leading on which issues and sitting on what intergroups...
(Pic: Catherine Bearder's twitter)
They're going to be in place to some point between October 31 2019 and June 30 2024. Can't wait to find out who's going to be leading on which issues and sitting on what intergroups...
(Pic: Catherine Bearder's twitter)
Friday, 7 June 2019
Denmark votes...
With 28 member states there are lots of elections around the EU beside the headline-grabbing European Parliament election last month.
For example, the results of the General Election in Denmark are in and they suggest Denmark might be having a Liberal moment of its own akin to the resurgence here in the UK.
They have a more effective voting system than we do for reflecting the will of the voters - and with 179 seats to elect* their two counterparts to the Lib Dems both have lots to smile about. Venstre (think of the right wing of the Lib Dems - so to the left of Blair but more freemarket than I am) emerge as the second biggest party by a whisker on 43 seats up 9.
Meanwhile Radikale (more my kind of people, D66ey lefties) find themselves on 16 seats, up 8. The other notable changes are an increase for a Socialist group and a huge seat loss for a Socialist-anti-Muslim party (think of it in terms of Lexiteer logic).
Thanks to the shifts in power between the other political groupings this sees Venstre leave government (as lead party) and Radikale enter it (as a junior coalition partner) so sadly that's one fewer Liberal prime minister across the EU, but across Denmark a step up for the combined forces of the anti-fash.
* - Borgen fans will remember all that "counting to 90" stuff.
For example, the results of the General Election in Denmark are in and they suggest Denmark might be having a Liberal moment of its own akin to the resurgence here in the UK.
They have a more effective voting system than we do for reflecting the will of the voters - and with 179 seats to elect* their two counterparts to the Lib Dems both have lots to smile about. Venstre (think of the right wing of the Lib Dems - so to the left of Blair but more freemarket than I am) emerge as the second biggest party by a whisker on 43 seats up 9.
Meanwhile Radikale (more my kind of people, D66ey lefties) find themselves on 16 seats, up 8. The other notable changes are an increase for a Socialist group and a huge seat loss for a Socialist-anti-Muslim party (think of it in terms of Lexiteer logic).
Thanks to the shifts in power between the other political groupings this sees Venstre leave government (as lead party) and Radikale enter it (as a junior coalition partner) so sadly that's one fewer Liberal prime minister across the EU, but across Denmark a step up for the combined forces of the anti-fash.
* - Borgen fans will remember all that "counting to 90" stuff.
Monday, 29 April 2019
Meanwhile in Spain
There are lots of media reports about the Spanish general election all over my newsfeeds today. Which is great: we should know more about elections in other countries that are not the USA.
Here's how they all go:
...what none of these stories mention is that the Citizens party jumped from 32 to 57 seats - also doubling its parliamentary representation and moving from fourth party to third party. Indeed they nearly took second place what with the outgoing government being reduced to 66 seats.
It's another reminder that our UKanian media are super eager to report neon-nazis and hate admitting there is anything or anyone pulling in the opposite direction.
Indeed if you ignore the small group of far-right MPs, which has upset the press by not being as great an incursion as they had been talking up, most of the Spanish election looks a lot like the UK's in 1997: Labour doubling its seats, the Tories halving theirs, and the Liberals doubling their representation - but the reportage being all about the reds and the blues.
Here's how they all go:
- The Socialists are forming a government!
- The Conservatives lost half their seats!
- The Fascists are in parliament again!
- No-one got elected for the Stop Bullfighting party!
...what none of these stories mention is that the Citizens party jumped from 32 to 57 seats - also doubling its parliamentary representation and moving from fourth party to third party. Indeed they nearly took second place what with the outgoing government being reduced to 66 seats.
It's another reminder that our UKanian media are super eager to report neon-nazis and hate admitting there is anything or anyone pulling in the opposite direction.
Indeed if you ignore the small group of far-right MPs, which has upset the press by not being as great an incursion as they had been talking up, most of the Spanish election looks a lot like the UK's in 1997: Labour doubling its seats, the Tories halving theirs, and the Liberals doubling their representation - but the reportage being all about the reds and the blues.
Thursday, 11 April 2019
2011 and all that
I got to thinking about the 2011 AV referendum. Post-2016, it would be "the referendum we've all forgotten" if that title weren't held by the 2011 Welsh referendum. No, really, there was one - look it up on google, it's seven pages in.
I knew and know people who voted either way on AV, though my social circle was definitely skewed against the national trend (not surprising, I hang out with more lefties than righties) with a majority of people I knew backing AV whether eagerly or on the "half a loaf is better than no bread" basis.
Since 2011 we've had two general elections. Who's profited from the outcome back in 2011?
A little digging found some figures from a fairly reliable source.
In 2015 - the one where David Cameron got a majority government with help from interesting sources like Unite and Unison - it didn't make much of a difference it seems.
ERS reckoned back then:
Two years later the skew went the other way and with a bigger margin:
ERS say:
First, you notice that in a country where it's now nearly fifteen years since anyone won a working majority, AV still delivers one smallish-majority government followed by one almost impossible hung parliament. For people wanting "strong and stable" government, well, we were jiggered under first past the post, we would be jiggered under AV. All those scary stories of how AV would make small parties overly powerful have come unstuck in the age of Blukip.
Second - how frustrating is it that both times these figures only look at the 332 seats outside Northern Ireland. After years and years of STV elections there it's surely the easiest place to guesstimate where the transfers would go? But we'll have to put that to one side.
So if you're a Tory, AV would have made things a bit better at first but in 2017 would have probably made government impossible outside of a 'grand coalition'. Despite Con-Lab being the easiest coalition fit ideologically, the longstanding pretence of difference means it is incredibly unlikely outside of wartime. The Conservatives would be the biggest party but with the DUP not able to get them across that 323 line it's hard to imagine them getting the extra votes anywhere else. Lots of howling in the press if the biggest party doesn't get to form the government, sure, but to little avail.
Meanwhile if you are Labour it was a mild escape in the pummelling of 2015, but come 2017 you have perhaps missed out of kicking the Tories out of office and being in power, albeit needing a working arrangement with the SNP and the Liberals or the SNP and the DUP.
Ironically for Liberals, whose first taste of coalition compromise was "well, it's only AV, and there'll be a referendum on it, but we've the furthest we'll have got with bringing about electoral reform in decades" there really hasn't been enough in it to matter, while for the SNP the "no" vote is an increasingly lucky escape.
And all told, for people who hate our current PM and voted who voted "no" eight years ago: she's only there thanks to you!
I knew and know people who voted either way on AV, though my social circle was definitely skewed against the national trend (not surprising, I hang out with more lefties than righties) with a majority of people I knew backing AV whether eagerly or on the "half a loaf is better than no bread" basis.
Since 2011 we've had two general elections. Who's profited from the outcome back in 2011?
A little digging found some figures from a fairly reliable source.
In 2015 - the one where David Cameron got a majority government with help from interesting sources like Unite and Unison - it didn't make much of a difference it seems.
ERS reckoned back then:
| Party | Seats under AV | Difference from 2015 election seats |
| Conservative | 337 | +6 |
| Labour | 227 | -5 |
| SNP | 54 | -2 |
| Liberal Democrats | 9 | +1 |
| Plaid Cymru | 3 | – |
| UKIP | 1 | – |
| Greens | 1 | – |
Two years later the skew went the other way and with a bigger margin:
ERS say:
| Party | Seats under AV | Difference from 2017 election seats |
| Conservative | 304 | -13 |
| Labour | 286 | +24 |
| SNP | 27 | -8 |
| Liberal Democrats | 11 | -1 |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 | -2 |
| UKIP | 0 | – |
| Greens | 1 | – |
First, you notice that in a country where it's now nearly fifteen years since anyone won a working majority, AV still delivers one smallish-majority government followed by one almost impossible hung parliament. For people wanting "strong and stable" government, well, we were jiggered under first past the post, we would be jiggered under AV. All those scary stories of how AV would make small parties overly powerful have come unstuck in the age of Blukip.
Second - how frustrating is it that both times these figures only look at the 332 seats outside Northern Ireland. After years and years of STV elections there it's surely the easiest place to guesstimate where the transfers would go? But we'll have to put that to one side.
So if you're a Tory, AV would have made things a bit better at first but in 2017 would have probably made government impossible outside of a 'grand coalition'. Despite Con-Lab being the easiest coalition fit ideologically, the longstanding pretence of difference means it is incredibly unlikely outside of wartime. The Conservatives would be the biggest party but with the DUP not able to get them across that 323 line it's hard to imagine them getting the extra votes anywhere else. Lots of howling in the press if the biggest party doesn't get to form the government, sure, but to little avail.
Meanwhile if you are Labour it was a mild escape in the pummelling of 2015, but come 2017 you have perhaps missed out of kicking the Tories out of office and being in power, albeit needing a working arrangement with the SNP and the Liberals or the SNP and the DUP.
Ironically for Liberals, whose first taste of coalition compromise was "well, it's only AV, and there'll be a referendum on it, but we've the furthest we'll have got with bringing about electoral reform in decades" there really hasn't been enough in it to matter, while for the SNP the "no" vote is an increasingly lucky escape.
And all told, for people who hate our current PM and voted who voted "no" eight years ago: she's only there thanks to you!
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