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  Marcus Morgan 11:35 am on May 14, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Nonmonosexuality 

  Recently I was up in Sheffield delivering some bisexuality awareness training at the university there. I tried out a new exercise I'd only just thought up.
  
  One of the problems with explaining bisexuality to people who aren't bisexual is that to a bisexual person their sexuality most likely seems simple and uncomplicated, and the reasons why it is confusing to others don't seem to make sense. I'd started to think that maybe bisexuality isn't about who you're attracted to, so much as heterosexuality and homosexuality are about who you are not attracted to.
  
  I divided the page of the flipchart into two columns, one topped with a tick and one with a cross. What things, I asked, turned people on or off about others? Not you personally, of course - that'd be awfully intrusive, but what things in general, or what things your friends have told you that they (and of course not you) find positive and negative about others.
  
  I started the chart off with a few suggestions, like "good teeth" and "snoring" and as the columns filled some things went in both columns, like "arrogance" and "sense of humour". When we got to the bottom of the sheet I turned to the room, and asked if they could tell me what was missing?
  
  Blank looks.
  
  What, I said with a grin, given the subject of this session and the undoubtedly ulterior motives I have for asking the question of what goes in which column, might be missing?
  
  I could see a couple of people's eyes widen and heads tilt, but no-one would say it aloud. So I wrote "gender" on the sheet, at the bottom.
  
  In the "negatives" column.
  
  Isn't it interesting, I said slowly, that in a room of mostly gay and straight people, no-one has said that a person's gender is a reason they wouldn't fancy them?
  
  Someone protested. I was being unfair, after all I'd asked for qualities or attributes about people that others might find attractive or not attractive and gender wasn't one of those it was um, er, ah, oh....
  
  I thanked them and said, yes exactly! Gender, to people who are only attracted to one, is such a big turn off that it's hard to spot. It's too close to the observer and so it's like it's out of focus. By the time you find out that Lee is into football and tickling and martinis it's too late - the fact that within seconds of meeting Lee your brain categorised them as male means they were out of the running. This is why society finds androgyny a threat - some people don't want to start fancying the lead singer of Hansen and then only later find out he's not female. Slipping past the big exclusion startles people.
  
  A straight guy, or a lesbian woman wouldn't find all women attractive. A gay guy or a straight woman wouldn't find all men attractive. Of course not - they'll all have some things that turn them on and other things they don't care about. But having a gender turn-off is perhaps what makes them not bisexual. Bisexuality isn't about what we find attractive, because that's going to be different with every bisexual person (and sometimes will be based on preferences around anatomy or gender presentation, sure) but perhaps it is about not having a blanket turn-off based on the big two genders.
  
  Bisexuals don't find everyone attractive. Have you met everyone? They're just not that attractive! But although you see Chloe leaving her girlfriend for a man, she sees herself as going from one person who shares her interests to another, possibly another who isn't cheating on her.
  
  Heads were nodding and clues were being taken in, and the rest of the session went very well, especially when they realised that I really did mean it about answering absolutely any questions. I got to recount my coming-out-to-my-parents story (recently reprised for the recording of a show on Radio 4) and other useful anecdotes. It's handy not to need to preface with "some people have said that when they..." because a lot of it has happened to me personally.
  
  Sheffield was a lot of train travel for only a short workshop in terms of time, but I think we all learned a valuable lesson. They got clued up about bisexuality and I found another way to rearrange the explanation to help people get it, and came home feeling very rewarded by the smiles, thank yous and eurekas.
  
  Even if we wanted to (and I don't personally), I think it's too late to rename our sexuality. But I'm definitely going to re-use this exercise, and I heartily recommend it if you find yourself struggling to explain just how amazingly simple bisexuality really is.
   

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  Marcus Morgan 11:47 am on February 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Friends, Let’s Get Better Together? 

  On Wednesday I was at the "Speaker's/Signer's Corner" event organised by Kairos. I'd not heard of the event before they invited me to speak there, and very much enjoyed the evening. The format is that there are presentations followed by discussions around the tables, a sort of cross between the usual set of speeches form and a workshop model. Everyone seemed to be very positive and interested in what I had to say and it was interesting to go on only second and then listen to the subsequent presenters fall into some of the traps I'd hope I was pointing out.
  
  Because they had so many speakers, they wanted me to stick to five minutes and had someone timing us with cards to hold up to show when we were about to get the gong. Here's what I said:

  The instructions sent out included the address and "We would appreciate it if you would raise a specific provocation you would like the other participants to think about."
  
  This time next week, I'm going to be at the launch of a new report about Bisexuality and the integration of the B in LGBT equality work. It's the first report of its kind to be published in the UK, and as my group, The Bisexual Index, is one of the contributors we're very proud of the finished document.
  
  But first, as it's LGBT History Month, a quick flashback...
  
  Forty years ago, in 1972, the attendees at a Quaker conference in the US found they had enough interest to run an impromptu session about sexuality. Out of that session came a set of four questions, since called the Ithaca Statement. Quakers often use queries to prompt thoughts, and these were provocative ones. They each start with the words "Are Friends...?" because they're addressed to fellow members of The Religious Society of Friends. Two of the four are:
  
  Are Friends open to examining in our Meetings facets of sexuality, including bisexuality, with openness and loving understanding?
  
  Are Friends aware of their own tendency to falsely assume that any interest in the same sex necessarily indicates an exclusively homosexual orientation; and to further falsely assume that interest in the opposite sex necessarily indicates an exclusively heterosexual orientation?
  
  Forty years later, the bi activists of today, we're still beating our heads against that last request.
  
  For example, describing marriage as either gay or straight. I'm a bisexual man, with a bisexual partner. We went to the register office to get ourselves hitched and at no point did anyone ask us our sexualities so they could make sure we got the right union - marriage or civil partnership. I doubt the possibility even crossed their minds - we're an opposite sex couple. Yet if when you say "Gay" you mean "LGBT" then we're both gay.
  
  This is the thing I want to bring to you today, to ask you to reflect on:
  
  Are you, my Friends in LGBT activism, aware that when you say your group, or organisation, or fight is an "LGBT" one that bisexual people are excluded because our needs and issues are assumed to be exclusively homosexual ones?
  
  As a t-shirt might say: Some LGBT people aren't gay, get over it.
  
  The Bisexual Index contacted Peter Tatchell from the Equal Love campaign and pointed out that some opposite-sex couples are LGBT too and asked him why, unlike the Equal Love website, he was insisting on using "gay couples" and "straight couples" in his statements, emails, speeches and opinion pieces and newspaper columns on the issue. He replied telling us "the public don't understand the terms same-sex and opposite-sex", so he has to say "gay and straight" and that we shouldn't worry - bisexual and trans people would still benefit from the law being changed.
  
  We kinda knew that last bit there. But our pretty little heads still fume when bisexuality is erased. People talk about "Bisexual Invisibility" like it's something we're actively doing - but we're not really invisible. Fried breakfasts have certainly contributed to my visibility.
  
  But all around us in the street, or on the tube, or even at your LGBT event - the reason we don't spot the bisexuals is because people's minds don't go "Oh, what a cute couple of gay or bisexual women, or some combination thereof..." It's repeatedly drilled into us that if people aren't gay they're straight, if they aren't straight they're gay.
  
  We're not standing up and waving flags or wearing bisexual t-shirts. And so people assume we're not here. Or even that we don't exist.
  
  We do exist. Surveys repeatedly suggest that people who have been attracted to more than one gender outnumber the L and the G.
  
  But the lie about it being either/or reaches our ears too, from an early age. We assume we're alone. Or not welcome if we are honest and come out. Or not "real bisexuals".
  
  You really do have bisexual members, or colleagues, or service users, or attendees.
  
  And I'm not here today to tell you what they want.
  
  I'm here today to ask that we remember to fight that tendency to assume everyone's either gay, straight or lying.
  
  Because if you want to be really LGBT, rather than just fight for the Gay rights of LGBT people, then show people that it's worth coming out as bi. Show us we'll be welcomed, supported, and believed.
  
  So if you want to know what your bisexual people want - ask them. If no-one comes forward, ask yourselves what prevents your people being open with you about this facet of themselves - not congratulate yourselves that you did try but everyone you have is either gay or straight.
  
  The report comes out next Wednesday and it'll be on our website that evening.
  
  Friends, please read it, and do keep trying. It's been long enough.

  And people liked it. The feedback from the discussions was that it had given people a lot to think about.
  
  Of course, I was followed by "we want to help LGBT parents because children with same-sex parents get bullied" and a fair bit of "gay marriage", but I did see clue dawning in many eyes and went and spoke to the parenting group people and who accepted that some LGBT parents are in opposite-sex couples (and some in triples, and some single) and offered to help with their language. They were pleased to make the contact.
  
  I'm aware that this is very much me banging the same old drum of course. But that's kind of the reason why I included the history lesson - we need people to get past that first hurdle. And I was very entertained to, after making the point that you need to empower your local bi people to come out, the main topic afterwards was "Yes, we can't find anyone to talk about bi issues at our [network/group/forum] either - would you be able to come to that?
  
  Well, yes, yes I would but I'll be doing so to make this point to them too. Hopefully it'll inspire some of the bisexuals in the room to come out when it happens.
  
  We'll see.
   
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  Marcus Morgan 11:41 am on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  A Tale Of Three Cities. Made Of Cola. 

  On the train into work, I asked my wife suddenly "What's the third cola?"
  
  I explained that I was trying to come up with an analogy for bisexual invisibility. Some people assume everyone they see is straight, unless they look gay. Others would look around the carriage and think "Straight, gay, straight straight, gay, gay, god knows". But few people look at a stranger and when they think "Straight" or "Gay" actually mentally add "or bisexual", especially not to both cases.
  
  It's like Coke and Pepsi, I said. The big two are so well marketed that everyone assumes there isn't a third.
  
  She pulled a face then. "Don't use that as an analogy for bisexuality! Other colas are disgusting - no-one likes them! You thinking of supermarket colas, right? Weird stuff."
  
  I laughed and suggested Tab. Coke and Pepsi are so popular that people forget there are other brand names, that have followings, have fans, thousands and thousands of them.
  
  But this is the thing - people forget to list them. Worse, it doesn't occur to them that it's a list, or that the list can be longer than two. If it's not Coke, it's Pepsi, and if it's not Pepsi it's Coke. It's the same with sexuality - people aren't forgetting the third (and fourth and so on) from the list because they've been brought up to not think of it as a list. It's a pair. It's one or the other.
  
  

  Brokeback Mountain Dew?

  Female partners are ignored if a man has a male lover. If a prominent politician is suspected of having a same-sex affair, the question "Is he gay" is deflected with "He and his wife have always seemed a perfectly happy couple." It's not that people are deliberately not asking "Is he bisexual?" - the question doesn't occur to them at all. You'd rather have Dr. Pepper?
  
  Media tropes feed into this - 'the gay man who gets married in order to hide his sexuality'. It's like changing the label on the cola - it's still one of the two.
  
  Much later, still wondering if it'd make a good analogy, I looked up online the cola wars. Turns out the big two are actually now Coke and Diet Coke. Pepsi is the third cola.
  
  But I think I'd shy away from suggesting the big two sexualities were Straight and Diet-Straight, or even Gay and Diet-Gay.
  
  So maybe I won't make a soda analogy, I'll just post about how I'm not going to.
   
• 

  Marcus Morgan 3:22 pm on August 30, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  LGF’s Homo Heroes – will we get a bi winner? 

  Following on from my previous post, the nominations were counted and voting is now underway for the Homo Heroes [here].
  
  I'm stunned I made it through, though note with some amusement I'm up against Sir Ian McKellern. I doubt I'll win that fight!
  
  Other bi nominations that made it through include Natalya Dell from the BiCon 2011 team, Jen Yockney (editor of Bi Community News) and Bi Community News.
  
  Please do go vote!
   
• 

  Marcus Morgan 1:00 pm on June 29, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  We should chase each other out of the closets, apparently 

  When someone says "I'm not xxx but" you know it's not going to end well. Here's Dan Savage trying to atone for his past misdeeds:

  "I'm not bi-phobic - in fact, I love bisexual people so much, I wish there were more of them."

  Anyone else got that sinking feeling?
  
  In his latest piece about bisexuals at The Stranger, Dan makes a few good points:

  • If more people (especially those in opposite-sex relationships) were out about being bi then bisexual invisibility would be less of a problem.
  • People who aren't bisexual using it as a cover for their homosexuality lead to people thinking all bisexuality is a phase.
  • There's probably more bisexual people than there are gay and lesbian people.

  Sadly, and perhaps predictably, he misses the clue on a few things.

  "I don't berate bi-identified teenage boys, I don't tell them they're not really bi, and I don't cruise around bi neighbourhoods looking for young bi guys to beat up. But I do know that a bi-identified 36-year-old is likelier to be bisexual than a bi-identified 16-year-old, and I resent being asked to pretend not to know it."

  Which misses the point that he's telling them in the column that he thinks they're not bi. Regardless of how they'd identify in twenty years time:

  • If you take them seriously then they'll know you respect them.
  • If you don't take them seriously then they'll know you didn't respect them.

  What does more damage here, faith or doubt? And who decides the difference between "says they're bisexual" and "is bisexual"? I think it should be them, not us. Not Dan.
  
  He goes on:

  "Most adult bisexuals, for whatever reason, wind up in opposite-sex relationships. And most comfortably disappear into presumed heterosexuality (including all three of my biggest bisexual antagonists—what are the odds?!)."

  He thinks people want him to keep quiet on this like he's uncovered a secret conspiracy or some sort of seedy truth about the true nature of bisexuality. But it's not - it's simply maths about the dating pool; there's more "looking for opposite sex" people out there. He does this despite using figures in the same article that claim 1.7% of the US population is LG, to 1.8% B. So, with over 96% of the population uninterested in dating someone of the same sex it's not surprising that the people attracted to more than one gender find that the people attracted to them are usually of the opposite gender. What are the odds indeed!
  
  Disappearing into presumed heterosexuality isn't their fault, either. Society's assumption is that any mixed-sex couple is straight. I suspect Dan's assumption is that every same-sex couple he sees on the scene is gay. I do agree that if more people were out then this would be less of an issue, but being "incidentally out" about being bi is incredibly hard. The weight of the assumptions is immense, and just as not all gay people want to wear rainbows and triangles all the time, bisexual people shouldn't have to either.
  
  This leads to the other point he (perhaps wilfully) misses:

  "Bisexual activists like to complain that they're the most oppressed because (1) it's a contest, and (2) it's a good excuse. If they can argue—and unfortunately, they can—that lots of gay people are mean to them (some gay people don't want to date them, some gay people doubt they exist) and straight people are mean to them (some straight people don't want to date them, some straight people doubt they exist), then bisexual people aren't to blame for the bisexual closet. Everyone else is.
  
  And they have a point—but it's a self-serving, self-defeating point. Yes, lots of people judge and condemn and fear bisexuals. If those were good reasons to stay closeted, no gay or lesbian person would ever come out"

  He's right that gay and lesbian people face fear, condemnation and judgement too. And he's right that more of them come out than bisexuals. But is that surprising when the gay community supports and encourages them, offers safe spaces, even careers to them? When I rang the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard (way back when) to ask about bisexual groups, I was met with "Are you sure you're not gay? Bisexuality is normally just a phase!"
  
  The gay community is slowly trying to live up to its new name "the LGBT community" but the fact remains that few people working in it think gays don't exist, or that all lesbians are lying. Coming out as gay or lesbian is still much more supported than coming out as bi. This is one very big reason bisexuals don't do it. It's not about wanting to win at oppression.
  
  Dan ends, with condemnation and/or judgement, ironically:

  "I'm sorry, bisexual activists, but you're doing it all wrong. Instead of berating me for my alleged bi-phobia—and if I'm the enemy, you're in real trouble—berate your closeted compatriots. If they all came out tomorrow, you could put an end to bi-phobia, take over the LGBT movement, and kick my ass out of it."

  I don't think Dan is the enemy. His "It Gets Better" campaign is a force for good. And I do think he makes some good points, but he does also say some biphobic things even in this column about how he's not biphobic.
  
  If we all came out tomorrow we could take over the LGBT movement (why would we want to?) and we could kick Dan Savage out of it (though we'd prefer he was just less wrong). But "if we all did X tomorrow" is a redundant exercise. We don't. No-one does.
  
  Each person who comes out does so as an individual, not as part of a tide. The reception we face is based on the people around us, the support and respect we receive is based on that too. While events like BiCon can provide a sense of community, I think it's exceedingly unfair to suggest that it's our all own fault the gay community looks down on us while expecting us to rush to come out.
  
  
  

  ---

  Dan's full article, with extensive comments section is here: The Stranger
   
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  Marcus Morgan 4:22 pm on January 27, 2011 Permalink  

  It’s More About Hearts Than Parts! 

  One of the things we're constantly trying to do when we talk about combating bisexual invisibility is breaking the rigid mindset that says there's only two options. There's more possibilities than just gay and straight.
  
  It's not always intentional - if you google "both gay and straight" you'll see there's plenty of people trying to unite us all but not realising that their categories don't cover everyone. So, when we see that a local initiative wants to appeal to "both gay and straight people" or is aimed at "both gay and straight couples" it's best to be gentle as we point out to them that there's other people, and other couples, that they might not realise they're putting off.
  
  The usual argument that counters this is that "gay and straight" implies inclusion for bisexuals. But this feels false to me.
  
  Imagine I'm a greengrocer. Go on, I'll wait. I've got apples, pears and bananas on my stall. If you wander up and say "I'll have an apple and a pear " then I'll put those in a (recyclable) bag for you, and I might say to you "and a banana?" because I don't think your list has necessarily ended and I may want to sell more bananas (there's a recession on, let's say). But if you said "I'll have both an apple and a pear" then I probably wouldn't bother - you seem to know your mind. "Both" ends the list at two. It might be that you like or dislike bananas, but you certainly aren't including them.
  
  Bananas are about as "inbetween" apples and pears as bisexuals are with "straight" and "gay". We're not a mishmash. We're something else.
  
  This can be a problem when we define bisexuality as well. When I first started going to BiCons in the early nineties, the standard definition of bisexuality that most bi groups used was "sexually attracted to both men and women". This has become steadily less popular as the language around gender issues has evolved. Although some individuals may well only be attracted to people of easily categorizable genders, and not to anyone genderqueer, it's fair to say that describing bisexuality in terms of "men and women" collaborates society's rigidity on the scope of gender. And "both" is again a list ender.
  
  Phrasing it with the full scope of gender takes too much time, and becomes highly individual depending on what the person is attracted to (Two I have encountered: "I like men, or women, or trans people who have shaved heads and like leather" and "I like women including trans women, but not trans men or men" [sic]) - we need a central definition to be more blanket-like. This is why over at the Bisexual Index, the definition that is given for bisexuality is quite brief: Attraction to more than one gender¹
  
  This works well for a number of reasons:

  • People who haven't the faintest idea that there's a wider range of gender than "man/woman" could read "more than one" to mean "two".
  • People who consider themselves, or those they are attracted to, to be outside the "gender binary" could (hopefully) read "more than one" to mean "two or more".
  • And, often overlooked, people who aren't attracted to as many as two, but still to more than one gender can feel included because it's not "at least two".

  
  
  It's not only the people who go beyond the "both" that the old definition can exclude, it's those who don't feel have reached it. There's a lot of people out there who are still coming to terms with their sexuality, or who are only attracted to a gender under very specific circumstances who can't rally under a banner of certainty. This is why BiCon last year did two things - advertised itself as being for people who were "bisexual, bicurious and allies" and secondly deliberately didn't provide what would have been seen as 'official' definitions of those terms.
  
  If everyone who arrived at BiCon, or a BiFest, already agreed what the words meant then I feel we'd be missing out on about half the best conversations!
  
  

  ---

  ¹ I don't think "attraction to more than one gender" is perfect but it's a compromise of scope and number of words. I also have to point out it's not all my own work - it came out of the bi activists weekends and has been further pruned down since following feedback.
   
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  Marcus Morgan 5:03 pm on January 7, 2011 Permalink  

  20th Century Bi – it’s a year of anniversaries! 

  Thirty one years ago there was no bi scene as such in the UK. There were people who identified as bisexual, but they weren't getting together and arguing about what the word meant. Thirty years ago that changed, when the London Bisexual Group was founded. The regular meetings gave birth to another bi event - called "The Politics of Bisexuality" - a little one day conference that had 40 attendees. That became a regular occurrence, and changed its name to "BiCon".
  
  The rest is history, yes, and it's time we celebrated that. This year's BiCon is, we are told, going to have a 30th Anniversary theme, and the ball starts rolling next month with the "20th Century Bi" event for LGBT History Month.
  
  I'm extremely pleased to announce this, because of a number of reasons - I've been the bisexual speaker at LGBT History Month events in the past, and it's good to see them support an entire bisexual event. I'm also an ex-organiser of BiCon, and it's good to see people recognise what a backbone to the UK bi scene it provides.
  
  But most of all, I'm extremely pleased that the London Bisexual Group gets the credit for kickstarting BiCon. The LBG was the first bi group I ever went to, and was the first bi group I was involved with as an organiser, though it was twenty years ago I first went, not thirty!
  
  I still have friends today I first met at the LBG back in the 90s. It's hard to realise these days just how radical the idea of a bisexual group was. Back then there was no "LGBT", there was "Gay" and if you were lucky "Lesbian and Gay". Such groups felt it completely normal to exclude bisexuals, doubt our existence, smear us. And sure - there's some of that today, but thanks to the proliferation of "LGBT" as the acronym for "who is the gay scene", far far less. Here was a chance, every week, to actually meet people who wouldn't sneer, or doubt. In the days before the social internet it was an amazing lifeline, a rock to many many people.
  
  Time passed, technologies grew, and by the early 21st century the LBG was fading. The same old faces came back, but no-one new stayed. Maybe the web killed it off in the end - people no longer seemed to need to wait until Friday to have someone affirm their sexuality face to face over a cup of instant coffee.
  
  But my fond memories remained. In September 2001 we organised a party for the LBG's 20th birthday - the group itself was still going at that point. It was a great chance for many of us old-timers to get together and swap stories. The event was such a success that in December of that year some friends and I refashioned the format into a regular London pub meet for bisexuals. The next step on from the LBG, born out of nostalgia for it - The Bisexual Underground.
  
  The Bisexual Underground is still going strong - it's 10 years old this year.
  
  If you do want to know more about our community's history - please do come to 20th Century Bi on the 12th of February!
  
  Bisexuality, and bisexual activism, is evidently not just a phase.
   
• 

  Marcus Morgan 4:27 pm on December 23, 2010 Permalink  

  It’s okay to say you’re lying, it gives you a chance to say you’re not! 

  Over at Project Q Atlanta, the old canard "Bi Men Aren't Real" has reared its head again. I'm not going to waste any time telling you (many of whom are bisexual men) why it's false, (see the comments via the link for that) but I do want to look at something else.
  
  I emailed the editor and said, hey c'mon now are you an LGBT organisation or not? Why is someone on your staff saying we don't exist?
  
  I got back no defence of the position (which was the argument I was expecting) and no "Oh, sorry - no-one checked it before it went out" (which was my fondest hope) but instead was told that

  • the columnist often writes things that provoke comments, which is good
  • the comments from bi people are sufficient to show other readers that some people disagree with the columnist's views,
  • the existence of those comments is enough balance.

  
  I'm shocked that the existence of bisexuality is still something it's okay for an LGBT organisation to agree to disagree on. The idea that "all bi men are liars" is an opinion that someone touted as an advice columnist in the LGBT press can hold, and it's okay because others disagree! If you're an LGBT organisation, your policy (nevermind your opinion) should be that bi people exist!
  
  Hello! My existence isn't a matter of your opinion! And telling an entire subcategory of your community they're liars isn't something balanced by waiting for them to disagree with you. To do so would involve coming out, for starters. And who wants to do that when to say "I am a bisexual man" is to be branded a liar?
  
  Bigotry doesn't provoke debate, it stifles honesty. It promotes the exact climate that keeps us from debating, and keeps the topic hateful.
  
  (Interesting to note, it's not the bi guy writing in, it's a gay friend who "only sees him in gay bars". I wonder how many non-gay bars that friends goes too, but I'm still sad that people feel we need to prove our bisexuality)
   
• 

  Marcus Morgan 12:02 pm on November 3, 2010 Permalink  

  Everything’s Better In Stereo? 

  Time and time again when reading the blogs and reports coming out of the US bi scene, I find myself wincing. It's because of one word - monosexual.
  
  I don't like it. I'm sure someone somewhere will suggest there's really good reasons to use it (maybe even on bi bloggers!) but I thought I'd set out why I don't like it here. (all of this is personal opinion)
  
  First off, already some of the people reading this will be wondering what the word means. To people on the bi scene it might be self-evident, but I've heard bisexuals ask what exactly is meant by it. Does it mean 'heterosexuals and homosexuals' or is there more to it? If you really feel the need to band together everyone who isn't bisexual there's a simpler way to do it, say "non-bisexual".
  
  For data analysis, is it really useful to compare "all bisexuals" with "all non-bisexuals" anyway? Even if you break it down by gender, you're still combining groups I'd rather that you didn't. I'd much prefer to be able to compare "bi men" with "gay men" and "straight men" (with certain provisos re gender) than "bisexuals" and "monosexuals" or even "monosexual men". Simply knowing that bis do something more or less or earlier or later than non-bisexuals isn't as interesting as knowing how we compare with lesbian and gay people and straight people.
  
  Conceptually monosexuality encourages us to think of two groups - and that's bad for drawing lines or conclusions. When bisexual results don't fall neatly between gay and straight, that's the gold mine. We miss that if we use 'monosexual'.
  
  Lines don't just get drawn on graphs: "Oh, well you're only a monosexual!" Perhaps you haven't heard anyone actually say that - in the UK bi community the word fell out of use as realisation of the implied superiority spread. That was about ten years ago, if my memory serves me correct.
  
  And it does smack of superiority, of claiming to be "more evolved" or in touch with "both" sides of your psyche in a way that "mere monosexuals" aren't. One true way-ism, enlightenment, all that rot. How very useful, in getting along with people! How tactful to say to the majority - "please be nicer to us, we're better at sexuality than you".
  
  Monosexuality is a big jar of people who aren't bi, mixing in the LG people with the straight people. It's great for generalisations, though. But is that a good thing? After all, one of the things we've come to realise is that all categories have fuzzy edges. This is why many LGBT organisations or groups include "and allies" in their remit - so that people who don't want to claim the label (yet or ever) can be involved and feel welcomed without having to out themselves.
  
  Bi groups that advertise they're for "bisexuals, bi-curious people, allies partners and friends" go a long way towards easing people out of the closet. But "monosexual" feels stark, lines are being drawn, sides are being taken. If I'm not Us, I'm Them. Am I sure I'm Us? Will They be welcomed? Dividing the world into us and them isn't great for people in the middle. What's going on when the bi community decides to build a dichotomy?
  
  It causes problems when we get to definition, too. It doesn't seem to be a word anyone is warmly embracing to use as their own label, so the definitions come from outside. People should be free to label themselves, but whenever we start labelling others with words we wouldn't want applied to us, then we get friction.
  
  And speaking of warmly embracing, and I guess friction - at least one website has it for a synonym for masturbation.
  
  Perhaps that's the same thing - "monosexual" feels a lot like linguistic wanking. It's a word the bi community mutters to itself while telling itself that we're gorgeous, we deserve better than monosexuals, we're the best.
  
  Please stop doing it in public, okay?
  
  Every time from now on I hear someone use it in conversation, perhaps I should ask "Do you mean 'wanking'?"
   
• 

  Marcus Morgan 3:54 pm on October 27, 2010 Permalink  

  I’ve had a Gay Marriage, according to some… 

  Whenever I rant about bisexual erasure, the first thing I hear is "When we say 'Gay', of course we mean to include bisexuals. Stop being silly."
  
  This often comes up. It doesn't matter if we bisexuals don't include ourselves in the blanket term, other people do and we should be grateful they do without continually moaning that our special word isn't in the title, or acronym, or mission statement.
  
  But the idea that "gay" means "LGBT" is fundamentally flawed. Here's just one reason why
  
  

  "We seek to secure marriage for gay people as a civil vehicle on the same basis as heterosexual marriage, available in a registry office but without a mandate on religious organisations to celebrate it."

  ("Lesbian and Gay Charity" Stonewall there, according to the Pink Paper. Oddly Stonewall never seems to ask the LGBT press to remember they're an LGB charity)
  
  You know what? You can't have it both ways. And perhaps that's an odd thing to hear coming from a bisexual activist, but there it is.
  
  I recently got married. At no point in the process did anyone ask me, or my wife-to-be, what our sexualities were. I'm gay, if gay means LGBT - and now married.
  
  Saying "gay marriage" when you mean "same sex marriage" is insulting to people's intelligence. What, they won't understand "same sex"? It's also ridiculously inaccurate.
  
  Gay people have been getting married for centuries. And no, I don't just mean bi and trans people.
  
  Being married doesn't stop someone being gay, being gay doesn't stop someone getting married. The two aren't somehow somehow magically mutually exclusive.
  
  And there's no lying involved. If a gay man and a lesbian who are old friends decided to get married to shut both their families up then no-one would notice. The registrar doesn't ask "and are you two heterosexuals? And do you love each other, you know, physically?"
  
  I am in favour of marriage equality. I think that same sex couples should be allowed to marry, and that opposite sex couples should be allowed to have civil partnerships.
  
  But calling it "gay marriage" and "straight civil partnership" isn't just bisexual erasure, it makes people look foolish.
  
  How foolish? Recently at a conference I heard someone say the law should be changed to allow LGBT marriage, specifically because "currently gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people can't legally marry".
  
  The amount of unwitting ignorance that showed left me speechless. Not just because bisexuals are perfectly capable of being in opposite sex relationships (which, even if it's two bisexuals of differing sex can sometimes still get called "straight relationships" - insulting and even more confusing, as that'd be 'gay' people in a 'straight' relationship)
  
  But also because it shows no awareness of how the current legal situation without marriage equality is horrifically cruel to trans people. The Gender Recognition Act doesn't allow married people to get a Gender Reassignment Certificate. Instead they are permitted an "interim" certificate provided they annul their marriage. And because a civil partnership is not permitted for an opposite sex couple, the reverse can happen too. This is simply because otherwise there'd be two people of the same sex married, or of the opposite sex civil-partnered.
  
  We don't need "gay marriage", or "straight civil partnerships". We need marriage equality across all genders.