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!

Should magazine editions have special launch do's?

The third issue of queer/race forum magazine Race Revolt came out last month. It's a very fine thing and I commend it to any readers I may have here, but what I wanted to note here about it is that there was a launch party for it. Indeed there were two - one in London-upon-Thames and one here in civilised parts. A few titles seem to do that: Canadian bi mag The Fence has launch parties for each edition, even the prim and proper Journal of Bisexuality is having some kind of a launch event for their next edition which is a double issue marking 60 years since the Kinsey report into human sexuality came out. And a few LGBT titles seem to do the same too.

We never make a big song and dance about a new issue of BCN, partly because after 93 issues it no longer feels like a great surprise that we're publishing. Further, we produce 6 or 7 issues a year rather than two or three, and there are only so many launch receptions you can get people along to. But perhaps we should. Or perhaps we* could work harder on the 'BCN Annual' and make more of it as a collection of the best bi journalism of the year, and hold a launch reception for that at BiCon each summer. I'd like that.



* and in practical terms that would probably be "me" not "we", I know...

Because they say these things come in threes...

This month I've learned that both Bi Tribune and North Bi North West have folded. This is quite downheartening, since there are only a small smattering of regular printed bi magazines and journals and to lose two of them means we've lost maybe a fifth of the titles that are out there. North Bi North West had been running for something like twenty years, and though Bi Tribune was a relative newcomer it did have a great mix of material and was more colourful and interactive than some bi magazines. I hope that despite losing it, we can learn from its example.

But for the record, having lost two of our cousins and for all that it's not as frequent as we might like it to be, BCN is still going!

More students

Another night being interviewed by a student with a bisexual project under their belt - this time a drama student working on a play about being bi and finding a sense of community. It is quite scary how long I can dish out anecdotes and dubious wisdom, including that the Woody Allen line about bisexuals having twice the chance of a date on Friday night can fall down both where twice nothing is still nothing, and at the other extreme on account of the fact that bisexuals don't have twice as many Friday nights as the rest of the world.

Still, it'll be good if it helps there to be another one-woman-theatre type of a play about being bi. The Speed of Dating is very well and good but we could do with there being at least one thing like that a year to look forward to, rather than one in a blue moon.

bis get a bumrap

There is an unfortunately growing trend among the ill-informed and the ill-intending to mislabel bisexual as being somehow binarist, meaning that people are only interested in (cis) men and women and no other genders.  

Now and then I do worry if I caused it myself, as in about 1996 I did make a remark about being "bisexual, I just haven't worked out which two yet", and who knows who may have been listening and failing to have any clue about humour.  But I'm sure the same wrong silly notion can be thought of in many places at once: after all, just look at the number of Earth-creating gods we have. 

Now, the slightest examination of the bi movement over the last twenty years or whatever would lay this silly binarist notion to rest, but the old adage about a lie being round the world before the truth has finished fastening its bootlaces holds painfully true in the internet age, where copypasta means that the lie can cite itself as its own reference a dozen times over.

Fervent messiahs of internet falsehood explain that pansexual good, bisexual bad, while never touching on how homosexual and heterosexual fit in to this model - despite those being the identities with the strength and power.  As their work dissipates so much attracted-to-more-than-one-gender activist energy, one might ask whose agenda the trumpeters of "bi-is-binary" are serving; alas, they don't seem to think that bit through themselves.  I have yet to find, though will be in a way pleased to, b-word-bashers who are as vigorous and challenging, pro-rata, of the monolithic powers of the Big Two in sexuality identity.

I'm one of the people the binarism supposedly inherent in 'bisexual' oppresses. When the spelling of bisexual is even in the top ten things that cause me trouble in this life, I will be living in such a utopian bliss I won't even bitch about it then.

In the meanwhile, I think I need to get some pin badges made. BUMRAP: the Bisexual Umbrella Movement to Rebut Antagonistic Panevangelists, perhaps?

Tonight's the night

Tonight we - I - have a Celebrate Bisexuality Day event-ette to put on. In past years I've organised a variety of larger local events, with workshops, films, stalls and speakers in 2001, 2002 and 2006.

But tonight will be smaller; I've been busy with party conference season amongst other things. A smaller event is no bad thing - if we had 20 similar local gatherings going on instead of the two or three that are happening this year, how much stronger the bi scene as a whole would be. Maybe that's a chicken and egg problem. If you'd like to try and change these things next year, it's not as though it takes that much doing; but it's worth BCN doing a simple "how-to" guide perhaps.

Either way next year I'd like to be more ambitious with the Manchester event: not just a quiz but a raffle or tombola or somesuch. Donations of, or ideas for, prizes very welcome as comments!

Probed about Pride

Today I was interviewed by a student from a university down South who is looking into the interaction over the past 18 years between diverse communities, community groups, and Manchester LGBT Pride / Mardi Gras / GayFest.

It's a hot potato in some circles, both between moderate pragmatists who wonder whether the event can evolve to become less commercial in its image, and right-wing anarchoqueer hardliners. The former group are only just starting to more visibly seek reform; the latter have such a commitment to conformity that they would rather have no LGBT event in the city than keep the one we have, so they work to disrupt and undermine it rather than contribute and engage in constructive change.

Over here in the B corner, of course, we long ago noticed how excluded from 'LGBT' events we can be and got ourselves organised to create BiCon as an alternative: it's been going rather longer than Manchester Pride.

There is a Pratchett book which starts several times to emphasise that where a story begins is a matter of perspective of the teller, and that's an important factor here. In telling the tale of Little Red Riding Hood would you start when she meets the wolf, when she sets off into the woods, or go back to when grandma first wound up living all alone in a cottage in the middle of the woods away from everyone else.

If you've come to the city or become aware of local LGBT politics since 2003,and have chosen not to get educated about the past, it looks one way. There's a big monolithic Pride organisation which bankrolls lots of money into a couple of big organisations and smaller sums into a plethora of small projects. It's deeply enmeshed with the city council, and hard to see the borderlines where the council, LGF and GHT end and where the separate Pride organisation begins. And they've made the odd mistake along the way, though the main howler (charging individual people for marching on the parade) was retracted after being tried the once. It's very commercial, very much a showcase for big business emphasising its 'gay-friendly' credentials, and the focus is very very L/G, with much less T and practically nothing B.

However, if you remember back before EuroPride in 2003, it looks rather different. I'll come back and say more about that another time, but for now it would help greatly if in debating Manchester Pride's present and future, we could keep in mind its past, and not conflate LGBT pride the concept with LGBT Pride the Manchester event.