Sharing

A little geeky update for you about some of the bi news intermawebs.

I've added to BiMedia.org a bunch of share icons on each post so people can easily repost / link to news items on twitter, digg, facebook and suchlike. Almost as soon as I do that, I read that they're closing down del.ici.ous

*hacks a bit out of the code*

OK, that's back to looking shiny and with-it :)

The Sekrit Squirrel project of building a new BCN website is coming along nicely, and I now realise that having a similar easily-shared arrangement for material on there would be clever. Yay for content management systems, implementing it on the existing website would take ages!

If as you look around them you have any bright shiny ideas about the bi news sites, let me know: I won't think up everything on my own.

TV: tempting yet dangerous

Every so often we get emails seeking camera-friendly bis to the BCN Towers mailbox: so here comes another one...

OMG! Totally Peaches is a brand new take on a problem show, hosted by Peaches Geldof. With professional advice from experts we will aim to help find a resolution to your problems. The show will revolve around the confessions, compulsions, problems and obsessions of you, the ITV2 viewer.

Dare I pause for a cheap remark about that last sentence, given I only found out there was an ITV2 about three months ago? No... OK, on we go:

If you have a problem and you’d like some help and advice please fill in the attached application form and email it back to problem@itv.com with a photo asap!

We look forward to hearing from you.

It's always a thorny dilemma. You want bi visibility - you perhaps don't want the kind of visibility this show is likely to generate as your preference (or even, in the land of AV, your second or third) - but while this might not represent you, it does represent a slice of bi life.

In the mid 90s the pages of BCN were filled for a couple of issues with the stories of some bi folk who had gone on a popular TV chat show - I could name names or I could just say that at the time the future's bright, the future's being an MEP for three parties in the space of five years. It was apparently sold to them as a chance to raise visibility, but after the event seen as more of a 'sting', with an audience weighted towards biphobia. Then the presenter got in a bit of a pickle and that episode of the show was never broadcast, so we're left guessing about how the balance in the final cut would have gone.

So... do you have a bisexual dilemma that you want to share with the nation, yet salacious enough to tickle an ITV programme maker's fancy - if possible coupled with a desire to meet Peaches*? Will it definitely not muck up your life or the lives of those around you? If so, go for it. See you on the digibox from the safety of my sofa; and ITV2, consider your show plugged.



* I searched the web for pictures and wouldn't blame you on that bit, she looks a bit soft and fruity.

Makes yer proud

I see John Hemming MP says he is now going to vote for the fees proposals after a group of people campaigning against the proposals occupied his office, consciously premeditatedly and deliberately prevented his staff from being able to do their work -- and thus will have affected the vital stuff MPs offices do supporting all sorts of people.

Knowing the kinds of things that go through those offices it's a selfish, wilful, damaging thing to do - often MPs staff are helping people who have gone to them in a state of desparation or last resort. Hardline Thatcher's children that the protesters are, the idea that anyone else might matter is evidently beyond them - there is no such thing as society, only what I want, with the new codicil paid for by someone else, and whenever I want it. The spoilt, arrogant, BNP-think-alike tossers.

Hemming has now said he'll vote in the opposite way to what the demonstrators wanted to pressure him into doing. Genius - I'm not especially convinced either way on this fees vote, but in the circumstances you can't fault his actions - it's what the hashtag #standuptobullying was all about.

The BiReCon Files 6: American Institute of Bisexuality Projects

Another transcript for turning into video subs.

John Sylla - American Institute of Bisexuality Projects

TBA is to be announced - cos we haven't, ah haven't have not considered, because we haven't - well, not considered the scholarliness.

Well, Eric Anderson announced the first one - different cohorts of bi men. We have one on polyamory and hormones in women and its relation to sexual orientation: how do people percieve themselves and what is their hormone level, does it fluctuate?

[audience: what's tba?]

To be announced, not published yet, but well along - funded. Approved by the - already studies underway.

We've got a longitudinal study with a scholar who is working with women over one to two years and they'll be checking in with them every month saying what is your sexual orientation, level, what is going on with you, what are your fantasies and please rub this, spit in this jar, and measure your hormone levels in your saliva. And then another one, a very interesting one, seeing during menstrual cycle, during the times when a woman is more fertile, is her sexual orientation or her fantasy somehow different. And maybe people have experience of this but it's never been academically rigorously studied.

We have another viewing patterns one - coming out of the gate that we approved at a meeting last night.

Here's an interesting one, does the timing of maturing, sexual maturity in puberty does that have some organisational effect, like if you have a late puberty do you have a different sexual orientation on average than if you have an early one or a normal one. Because some people think we have periods of plasticity during which you know maybe it can get reorganised so maybe bisexuals are somehow different that way and they don't grow into being monosexuals.

Body image issues, do bisexual men have different body image concerns than straight men do and gay men do?

And then, ah, Amanda's work the straight identified men who like to have sex with men. More on that in a second. Here I say "tba squared" because tt's not only to be announced, it's to be approved but these are sort of in the pre-pipeline.

Um, Studying the trajectory of development of sexual orientation.

One of the interesting results in this author's proposal is he says, he looks at the data and there's some old work out there that say you'd be happier if you could just be gay and accept the gay identity because men or women who accept the identity then get more mental health.

And his - he says no, that's not it, the problem is that they're not accepted as bi. There's no cultural affirmation, there's no community. And it's the non-acceptance, not the bi label itself that is causing the problem. So it's a society problem not an individual problem. Backed up with real data.

More on learning processes and sexual preferences; and here's one that just came in, it's pre-pipeline. Correlating attention, and that feeling of I can't take my eyes off them, of someone, and how does that correlate with bisexuality? Can you measure that attention [fades out]

Lumme. There is so much research going on out there. I wish they'd damn well write it up for the community press! 8)

It gets better, says Minister for LGBT

I missed it at the time but I see that Lynne Featherstone MP - the Minister for LGBT Equality in the Coalition Government - has made a short YouTube film as part of the It Gets Better... Today campaign. She talks about how remarkable the story of LGBT rights in the last 20 years is: "from legal stigma to legal recognition", "the swiftest and most profound social change that I have witnessed in my lifetime".



It's noticeable how well she keeps talking about LGB&T rather than lapsing into "lesbian and gay". For a moment she talks about homophobic and transphobic bullying, which reminds me the importance of teaching people B-related words as well as "bisexual" itself.

She may be slightly kidding herself that it has got better for everyone, but overwhelmingly she is surely right.

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: