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!

That was 2019

The annual year roundup that I write for Bi Community News:

That was 2019. Three dates for Brexit came and went, the EU elections swung to the extremes of isolationist and internationalist politics, America impeached a President, and a handful of Brits chose a new Prime Minister and then 14 million voters endorsed the decision in time for Christmas. In queer life, we marked twentyone years of the bisexual flag and fifty years since the Stonewall riots in the USA. The year saw more Prides than ever before including London adding itself to the roster of Trans Prides around the country and a Bi Pride that broke records for a bisexual event in the UK.
Both our bi+ communities and bi+ representation are growing year on year – reflected not least in three separate lists of ‘best bi books’ that we reported on: the bi categories in the Lambda awards and in the Rainbow book awards and then the Bi Book Awards.

Here’s our month by month round up of the main points of the year in bi life:

In January one of the UK’s bi MPs declared that Brexit couldn’t come too soon – even though many LGBT people and campaigners were most worried at what its consequences might be for equality.

The ONS had figures showing more people identifying as bi or gay – in line with recent trends. And upskirting became illegal in the UK. BiCamp announced its 2019 date, and we got some bi TV to look forward to in Crazy Ex Girlfriend and Gotham.

February was LGBT History Month, with bi talks and bisexual community history archive displays.
The Oscars were especially memorable for bi representation, while the UK Prime Minister’s daily Points of Light awards honoured Marcus Morgan of Bisexual Index.
With over 100 Pride festivals due in 2019, Manchester Pride announced a hike in its ticket prices from £16 to as much as £70, with a rival festival launching in response. There’s a wider debate around the ‘commercialisation’ of Prides, which we reflected on in BCN magazine later in the year.

March saw a growing tide of rejection of transphobia in the LGB community with the hashtags and campaigns GwiththeT, LwiththeT and BwiththeT gaining momentum as well as banners on Pride marches and the like.

In a parallel development a host of LGBT organisations came together to press for better sex and relationship education. But one MP managed to delay it just that bit longer.

We got fresh research showing bisexuality on the rise in the USA in April. London saw a day-long BiFest once more. The House of Lords agreed to an improved sex education curriculum to include more about relationships. And the first of a trio of bi groups shared in £400,000 of government funding for LGBT projects in the UK through the year.

In May, Liberty announced they were taking up the case of a bisexual serviceman stripped of his medals twenty years ago. That case would take til the end of the year to be won. Big Bi Fun Day returned to Leicester.

There was tough research news from the TUC about working life for bi people. In the USA, Abby’s, a TV comedy with a bi lead got canned after just ten episodes.  Over here there was Blind Date’s bisexual awkwardness and the Eurovision Song Contest had an openly bi winner.

In June the National Union of Students presented research on experience of harassment and violence at our universities and colleges. It wasn’t good news about bi life. There was important news too about rates of gonorrhea and syphilis in the UK. Finally in research there was fun news: bis are more filled with wonder at the universe than are other people. In part these things are a legacy of past LGBTphobia: the APA apologised for its role in stigmatising bisexuality, homosexuality and transgender identity.
Ecuador legalised same-sex marriage. And the government admitted their plans to censor porn online in the UK still weren’t quite workable.

We saw new stats from YouGov suggest more people are identifying as bi in July. Parliament gave politicians in Northern Ireland a final warning over having neither same-sex marriage nor a functioning government, declaring they had til November to pick one.

We got a new Prime Minister and a new Equalities Minister, Penny Mordaunt, to replace Amber Rudd. Mordaunt would just weeks later be replaced in the role by Liz Truss. Over in the USA, the national Sexual Health Conference had a pre-conference Bisexual Health Summit. And on bi TV, Lucifer got a final run of sixteen episodes.

In August there was a BiCon in Lancaster, Prides in a host of cities, and for the first time Belfast city hall flew the rainbow flag. On telly, The 100 got a final lease of life, while Orange Is The New Black used the “b” word at last. And in the USA, politician Kate Brown was laid into for doing what she said she would do if she got elected. There’s no pleasing some voters.

September is always a frantic bi month with Bi Visibility Day and its offshoots, Bi Week and #BiMonth. Speaking of which, Bi Week finally settled on a regular date – it will henceforth run from 16 to 22 September. Bi Visibility Day was huge again.

Bi Pride broke records with over 1,000 attendees at a bi event.  In wider culture we saw the Emmy awards celebrate a host of bi content including programmes like Fleabag. The Last Night Of The Proms had a spectacular bi and queer dimension.

October saw the US lose prominent bi politician Katie Hill, but good news here as the porn registry plan was dropped by the government. A new expanded and rewritten edition of Getting Bi offered fresh advice on coming out and staying out as bisexual.

In November, a last-ditch attempt by the DUP to block same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland foundered. Fascinating research from New Zealand suggested a gap in how many people identify as bi that is growing among young people rather than shrinking. The Anderton Park school protests in theory came to an end when the courts ruled against them. On telly Atypical brought more bi representation.

December was dominated by the snap election where both out bi MPs held their seats though we lost some champions of bi and LGBT liberation.
We learned that the changes in the rules on blood donation haven’t affected the quality of the blood supply. But perhaps the most important news was that Northern Ireland at last had to join the rest of the country in recognising same-sex marriage.

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Let It Snow

So I've been sinking into Christmas films by way of cooling down to the festive season.  It's gonna be strange, like any Christmas where someone important is missing for the first time and you're trying not to mention the heartache. Regular readers of my proper blog will know all about that so I'll not waste space on it here.

Amongst the films distracting me is Let It Snow, a rare Christmas film with queer representation.  I loved the effusion of this bit:

Have you ever been with someone and you stay up until, like, 4am, just talking about everything, like how you're both super scared of getting old, and what it felt like the first time you saw The Goblet of Fire, and you're just like, "I can't believe I get to exist at the same time as you!"

It might not be where my mind is now, but the times I have helter-skeltered my way into love have been so very much Just That.  Both requited and unrequited: there is a place in Castlefield that warms my heart every time I pass it just a little for the love and hope I felt there one summer, even though it was for someone who would never feel the same about me.

Fighting to lose

There are many things to be said of Tony Blair, and by now I imagine all of them have been said repeatedly.

His government deliberately delayed progress on LGB rights, and was the only government to ever legislate away the hard-won human rights of transgender people. It gave the NHS a short-term fix that was consciously designed to bankrupt the organisation in the long term, relying on Labour being out of power by the time the chickens came home to roost. It brought in a - most welcome - minimum wage that the Liberals were attacked for critiquing by the unions and then a decade later the unions started attacking it using the self-same lines as the Liberals had used. It delivered partial devolution of power but kept in the hands of the PM the valuable power to appoint peers as a way of bribing people to toe the party line. There was a spending boom off the back of a bubble that the government totally screwed up and nearly wrecked the economy. There was then another spending boom off the back of a different bubble that the government totally screwed up and really wrecked the economy. Iraq. The trans tax. And so on. You know the score.

However, what Blair did that no other Labour leader has managed in my life, was to properly win. As a general rule of thumb no matter how good or worthy or wicked or cruel your plans, no matter how well you have spun them this way or that, if you don't get in then it is unlikely to come to pass. Very occasionally you get your plans into action regardless: the NHS was implemented, albeit somewhat botched, despite the party behind it not getting into power in 1945; phase 2 of the Bedroom Tax was rolled out similarly in 2010 despite its architects having been shown the door.

What Blair realised - and maybe it needed losing four times in a row to give the vision painful clarity - was that for all the theoretical and philosophical stuff, in practice there are seats Labour can win from the Tories, and there are seats the Liberals can win from the Tories. There is a small amount of drift, perhaps 1% a year, in each seat on this but the general lesson is that there are places where for example the least Labour can get is 5% and the most is 30%: either way they lose, but a couple of thousand people's decisions about whether to vote Labour decides whether the seat goes Conservative or not.

In 1997 Labour and its activists engaged in a pincer movement with their counterparts in the  Liberals. To be broad brush and so slightly misleading about it, Blue-Gold seats got hammered by the Liberals and Labour stayed quiet or went elsewhere; in Blue-Reds the Liberals sat on their hands while Labour went to work.  Tories found they were fighting on two fronts against an enemy that has declared more-or-less a truce on its own internal battle front.  Result: a stonking Labour majority and a big Liberal bloc with the Tories out of power for a decade.

Contrast to 2010, 2015, 2017 and - on the YouGov poll last night though it ain't over etc etc - 2019. Labour keep setting off on a battle plan involving taking out two enemies at once, despite having seen time and again before how that is a strategy entitled How To Get Second Place But Not Win.

General Melchett would be proud of them.

Manifestos Lack Surprises

In this year's second season of I'm A Voter Get Me Out Of Here we are on to week three and the party manifestos.

The Liberals have gone with the idea of a Britain that is in the 21st century and feels kinda hopeful and outward looking and has friends who are a bit different from us but we love them anyway. And revoking Article 50 or having a People's Vote with the options "Stay" or "Go".

Labour have gone for the idea of a Britain that is more 1970s-ey. Nationalised industries, not liking queers or immigrants.  And having a People's Vote, with a ballot paper offering the options "Leave" and "?".

The Greens gave everyone a chuckle by starting their manifesto launch with the words, "we are different. We offer a People's Vote." You can get away with that if you're first but when you're third in the line it doesn't quite have the oomph. If only they could come up with a different pair of options.

Plaid have, remarkably, said they will be putting Wales first. This is a big departure from their 2017 manifesto, "Sod Wales, What About Uruguay?" - amazing they've never thought of that one before.

The Tory manifesto has yet to be launched but seems to be pretty much Labour's manifesto with "owned by the state" crossed out and "owned by one of our friends" written in with a crayon. There'll be some racism to keep up with Labour, and they have expunged the MPs who liked the queers so don't hold your breath on that front.

Their unique selling point will be a manifesto containing no People's Vote. On Johnson's record, that makes the Tories the people most likely to deliver one: it's always what isn't in the manifesto that makes all the difference, like when Labour didn't put in killing a quarter of a million civilians in an illegal war because it's not a big thing.

So if you've got shares in Stubby Pencil On A Bit Of String PLC, vote Liberal, Labour, Green or Nationalist. And if you've had enough of voting there's the Liberals if you are amenable to foreigners and the Tories if you aren't.

Flashback to 2010

Most of us remember life under Labour last time - but there has been so much political turmoil since.

If you need a reminder, here is the 2010 General Election as told by Doctor Who and the Pet Shop Boys. Stars David Tennant in the role of Nick Clegg.

The tragic plot twist was that while the Doctor was busy saving us from the Cybermen, elsewhere the Daleks were massing - and we spent the next five years with the Doctor and Davros locked in a room. People always seem to gravitate to the Cybermen to save them from the Daleks or the Daleks to save them from the Cybermen: I do wish they'd try humanity instead. Ah well.

From here to December 12th

So, we have a General Election. Crack out the Spitting Image Election 87 Special and that episode of Blackadder III.

Tomorrow belongs to me; Baldrick, put down "fraud and sexual deviance"...

This might actually be the end of Groundhog Day and the start of Something Happening. Could be for the better, could be for the worse. But hey. At last we get a slightly different show on TV for six weeks.

Even if it is immediately followed by another looping rerun of Groundhog Day...

Mathematical Operators

A small thought.  The thing about "LGBT+" as a term is that it needs a counterpart.

Specifically "LGBT-", for where you say LGBT on the tin but you really mean a slightly smaller list.

(I want to carry on to other maths operators here but the next obvious one is multiplication, and the * has been appropriated for other purposes already, and the one after that is division and if you haven't already heard about divisions within LGBT you're never gonna learn and frankly it's our own private set of internal battles!)