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• 

  Jen 5:44 pm on April 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  "LGB" charity Stonewall fails us… yet again 

  By Lesbian, Gay, Bi & Trans 'sector' standards, Stonewall is a great big organisation with a turnover in the millions of pounds. It proclaims its mission as equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and attracts flak from a number of directions: not least for being almost entirely focused on lesbians and gay men, and only remembering the existence of bisexuals now and then. Usually, they remember the bis when there is the prospect of money involved.
  
  This has been going on a long time; when I first dipped my toe into queer activist circles in the early 1990s, I fast learned why Stonewall were widely and rightly seen as a joke among bisexual people and activists. They never mentioned the "b word" on their materials except when it came to the bit asking you to donate, when suddenly, bis were very welcome too.
  
  In 2003, when Ben Summerskill took over the helm, my first conversation with him was about bisexual inclusion. A change at the top could be a good opportunity for cultural change throughout the organisation. Alas, it was not to be.
  
  Report after report, press release after press release, soundbite after soundbite, Stonewall 'forgets' bisexuals. Oddly it's the only one of the LGB strands they miss out: I've yet to see them issue a correction to a press statement where they, say, mentioned lesbians and bisexual people and completely forget to refer to gay men. Come to that, they have yet to issue corrections for the times they miss out the bis.
  
  There is a notable exception: their report on the experience of bisexuals in the workplace. When commissioned to do specifically bi work, they remember us. Just as on those donation appeals in the 90s, where there's brass...
  
  And so, as the government's consultation on how to implement same-sex marriage rolls out, Stonewall publishes its response. To one of the questions they say...
  

  Question 8: The Government is not considering opening up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Do you agree or disagree with this proposal?
  Stonewall's Answer: This is a matter for heterosexual couples and Stonewall would recommend that the Government consults with them and stakeholder organisations representing them.

  The thing is, lots of people who are in mixed-sex couples are not heterosexual. Perpetuating the myth that your relationship defines your sexuality helps perpetuate bisexual invisibility: it is a classic piece of bisexual erasure as identified in The Bisexuality Report (pub. 2012 Open University, endorsers including... Stonewall... talking the talk but not walking the walk). 
  
  Now, I can imagine some voices at the back suggesting that maybe this was a bit of a slip-up: that anyone can read a question, fail to spot a certain angle, and so miss something. Most of us at some point have done that in an exam and got back a mark noticeably lower than we thought we were going to get. Didn't Stonewall just make a bit of a boo-boo and we should let them off?
  
  Fair question. But on this one... no. As long ago as last August, Stonewall published their draft of what they would have to say when the marriage consultation began. That ran with the same "being in a mixed sex couple means you're heterosexual" line.
  
  I challenged Stonewall over their bisexual erasure then, here.
  
  What I said then still applies now:
  

  Newsflash, Stonewall: bisexual people get married. Bisexual people get civil partnerships. Some of the bis who do the one would like to do the other, in either direction, but the law won't let them.
  
  A charity claiming to give voice to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, really ought to be listening to and giving voice to those bisexual people too - even when it does make the answer on a form a little more complicated.
  
  Come on. A campaigning group that was working for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights, would be able to remember bisexuals existed all the time rather than just now and then.
  
  And the most frustrating thing is, in discussing the marriage / civil partnership divide that currently exists, bisexuals are a brilliant case to cite for what's so broken. Ten years ago, bisexual people found their relationships were treated differently in law based on the genders of themselves and their partners: today, after so much equality campaigning and the introduction of civil partnerships, that situation is exactly the same.
  
  Bi people get into relationships with lesbians, gays, straight people and other bis.  Gay and lesbian people get into relationships with bis.  We are your queer family.  And LGB equality is only worthy of the name if we break down the barriers around civil partnerships as well as marriage: campaigning and lobbying for anything less puts the lie to a claim to be campaigning for equality for lesbians, gays and bisexuals. 

  Now, I know from comments elsewhere that the relevant people at Stonewall read that. If this were an accidental oversight last summer, that defence no longer applies. It seems to me that this can only be read as a deliberate and premediated pretence that there is no such thing as bisexuality from an organisation that soaks up the lion's share of funding for LGB work in the UK.
  
  If you're thinking of donating to an LGB cause any time soon, I suggest there are far better alternatives. And if you haven't responded to the marriage consultation, please make sure you do so. And make your submission better than Stonewall's.

  
   

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• 

  ssica3003 8:20 pm on April 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Ok, now it really is meet-up day :-) 

  Thursday, two days from now, 7pm, in our favourite co-op cafe. New people: this means you! Not new people: don’t forget to check the last post on the blog and bring your homework! I’ll try to remember to print out the questions for the consultation.

  Just to rile you up a bit, here is a section from Stonewall’s response:

  Question 8: The Government is not considering opening up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Do you agree or disagree with this proposal?

  This is a matter for heterosexual couples and Stonewall would recommend that the Government consults with them and stakeholder organisations representing them.

  What the actual f ?

  See you there.

  
  Tagged: bi, bifurious, meets

  Jen is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    Jen 9:09 pm on April 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply

    Stonewall’ve been told about this one. Indeed, they’ve been told quite some time ago… so we can be fairly sure that this isn’t an accidental bit of bi-erasure…

• 

  Jen 11:48 pm on April 7, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Marriage and Civil Partnerships: Not Quite The Same Thing 

  With a hat-tip to the Neue Politik blog, this is a good succinct video about some of the differences for people in the UK between marriage and our system of Civil Partnerships. The talk's all about lesbians and gay men, but of course this is an issue that affects a hell of a lot of bisexual people too: there're trans, genderqueer, nonbinary angles as well.
  
  I'll be writing more on this subject here quite soon ;)
  
  

  
   
• 

  ssica3003 1:04 pm on April 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Bi Homework 

  Hello all, my co-chair and I were completely convinced it was Bivisible Bristol tomorrow, but according to the 2nd and 4th rule, our next official meeting is not until next week. So, in lieu of a real meeting I have a bi-related task for you.

  You may have heard the government is consulting on equal marriage – ie extending ‘marriage’ to same-sex partners rather than using the current system of civil partnerships for same sex couples and marriage for different sex couples.

  You can read about the consultation and respond to it online here.

  Organisations and individuals can respond to the consultation which ends in June.

  Bi activist Jen (who edits Bi Community News) is putting together a response on behalf of bisexual organisations in the UK, similar to Stonewall’s organisational response.

  So, your homework is to have a look at the consultation (it’s long and once you’ve read the pre-amble you can just skip to Annex B which has the set of questions the government want people to respond to. I would suggest also reading Stonewall’s response (much shorter!) so that you can see the kinds of thoughts that equalities groups might have to the questions.

  When we next meet, we’ll be having a chat about all of your thoughts as bi people regarding the prospect of marriage for same sex couples (and civil partnerships for opposite sex couples?)

  So, would anybody like to have an ‘extra’ meeting tomorrow to begin this conversation and then we can be very welcoming to the hundreds of new people that are coming to the group on the 12th? Let’s meet at Cafe Kino, then we could move up the road to The Social for a drink at 8pm. Let me know your thoughts in the comments or drop me an email or message the Facebook group.

  See you soon!

  
  Tagged: bi, homework, officialdom
   
• 

  ssica3003 9:32 pm on March 28, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Bisexuality Awareness Training 

  What would you include?

  I am looking to put together a package of training (most likely quite short e.g two hours) for non-bisexual people interested in improving their bisexual offer/services/practices.

  So, what would you include so that the non-bis are more aware of bi lives, experiences and problems. Love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

  
  Tagged: bi
   
• 

  TSB 12:25 pm on March 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  “It does get better” ~ The L Project wins award for contribution to LGBT community 

   

  The L Project is run by Sofia Antonia Milone and Georgey Payne of Greymatter. It’s aims are to raise awareness about the effects of LGBT bullying, to give hope to those suffering from it, and to raise money to help combat it.

  The project has produced an anti-LGBT-bullying song called It Does Get Better.

  “Back in October of 2011 The L Project, initiated by singer-songwriter Georgey Payne, brought together a group of UK music artists with the intention of recording a song she had penned. That song was It Does Get Better and it was initially written by Georgey in an attempt to cheer up a young friend who had confided in her that he had been the subject of homophobic bullying in school. Georgey quickly realised that the positive message of hope that her song conveyed was one that people all over the world could benefit from whether LGBT or not. Simply put, this song is for anyone who experiences the struggles that can come with being different, and the message is clear ‘It Does Get Better’, do not give up hope.

  
  Nowhere is that more evident than in the growing online community that have turned out to support the project since the release of the song on February 11th 2012. The facebook page for the project is littered with wonderful messages from around the globe, from those who have been brought back from the brink of desperation, to those who have been spurred to action by the pure drive and tenacity the project coordinators have shown in their unending devotion to spreading the ‘L’.

  What started out as a song, has become a community, a bigger force than either of the co-ordinators could have foreseen. ‘The response we've had is just tremendous, and we have decided the release of this song is just the first of many projects to come’, says Sofia Antonia Milone.”

   

  

   

  And on Friday, 23 March 2012, the L Project received the Outstanding Contribution to the LGBT Community Award at The Pride Ball.

   

  

   

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• 

  TSB 10:35 pm on March 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  “Bisexual Invisibility Has Dangerous Consequences” by Emily Dievendorf 

   

  Emily Dievendorf, Director of Policy at Equality Michigan, writes in the Huffington Post:

  “The first time I was called "greedy" it was by a drag queen at the Michigan Pride Festival. She wasn't talking to me directly. She was calling out audience members in the unapologetic, hilarious, and crass way only a drag queen can, asking one attendee if she was a lesbian. The woman said, "No, I'm bi." The drag queen responded, "Oh, you're GREEEDY." Everyone laughed, myself included. But I also left thinking, "So that's how it is."

  I could never be "greedy." I have terrible luck with women. But I probably wouldn't date you, male or female, regardless of luck. I'm very particular, maybe to the point of delusion, and my interest rarely has to do with physical attraction above all else. You would need to be funny, clever, overly literate, cultured, and committed to social justice. I'm also a serial monogamist and loyal to a fault, unable to focus on more than one person at a time. I'm not your stereotype, but few of us are.

  I believe sexuality, as a continuum with no easy boxes to fit into, is the most logical explanation for the variations we see in human sexuality. Labels are vile and unrealistic to me, an attempt to satisfy others' need for simplicity when life just isn't so. I have struggled with how I would explain myself, resentful that I had to at all. My partners have always known me to be fluid and I hadn't considered it anybody else's business. At a certain point I decided that I had to claim my place in the community because my own invisibility would be part of the perpetuation of others pretending I don't even exist. I wrote 'bi' across my forehead and wore it proudly….

  The stigma, or biphobia, that comes with being bisexual has serious consequences. Bisexuals have higher incidences of depression, suicidal thoughts and attempts, alcohol and drug abuse, and poor physical health in general than their heterosexual, gay and lesbian counterparts. Bisexuals most often don't come out to their health provider and as a result receive incomplete information regarding their sexual health. Bisexual women with monosexual partners have an increased rate of domestic violence compared to every other female demographic. Compared to lesbians, bisexual women are twice as likely to live in poverty. Discrimination against bisexuals is greater in the workforce. While lesbians earn 2.7% less than straight men, bisexual women earn nearly 11% less.

  There is an acute stress that comes from feeling like you are not a legitimate member of a community. In nonurban areas lesbians and bisexual women experience comparable levels of frequent mental distress, but in urban areas distress decreases for lesbians and nearly doubles for bisexual women. Resources and support are more likely to be available for lesbians in urban areas, and still likely to be nowhere to be found for bisexuals. Regardless of established need, projects addressing issues related to bisexuality are the least funded among programs for the lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender communities….”

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emily-dievendorf/bisexual-invisibility-has_b_1370079.html 

   

  
   
• 

  Carefully, Correctly Wrong 2:52 pm on March 15, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Government Consultation on Equal Civil Marriages 

  Originally posted by strange_complex at Government Consultation on Equal Civil Marriages

  In favour of equal civil marriages? Then it's ACTION TIME! The government's consultation on introducing them opens today, and it's very important for positive voices to be heard. This is not a foregone conclusion, and if we want it, we need to say so loudly and clearly.
  
  It's About Time gives information on the consultation, tips on what sorts of things supporters might say, and a link to where to go to say them (click on 'Take Part'). Please take the time to speak up if you support this proposal. This is not just another online petition, but a direct government consultation where you can really have an influence.
  
  
   
• 

  Holly 1:09 am on March 14, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  People have sexualities; relationships don’t 

  There’s a lot of talk about marriage lately.  The government making progress on implementing equality in civil marriage is, predictably, bringing a lot of homophobes out of the woodwork.  While some religious people and institutions are in favor of marriage equality, of course a lot aren’t too.

  I’m not a religious person so I don’t feel qualified to talk about that (though I will say it’s unfair to ban religious groups from having anything to do with same-sex weddings, although this is starting to change now that civil partnership ceremonies are allowed in religious settings, but there’s still the “separate but not equal” issue to be sorted out, because marriage is currently only for mixed-sex couples and civil partnerships only for same-sex couples).

  What I wanted to say, though, is that all this discussion has reminded me of one of my pet peeves.

  A lot of people know this issue as “gay marriage,” and this sort of illustrates my problem; it’s not just about gay people.  Restrictions on who can currently get married have implications for bi and trans people too (a huge range of issues for trans folk, which I am not qualified to get into and which are outside the scope of this blog, but even what I know is, like so many things about dealing with legal recognition of anything other than happiness with the gender one was assigned at birth, intimidating, complex and unfair), and calling it “gay marriage” erases us and our unique issues.

  But we’re used to that.  That happens every time people say “LGBT” to mean “gay.”  It happens when market stalls selling biphobic t-shirts and main-stage MCs making fun of bisexual people are part of a Pride festival that supposedly celebrations LGBT life.  It happens when that great LGB charity, Stonewall, answer the question  of whether civil partnerships should be extended to opposite-sex couples  with “This is a matter for heterosexual people and Stonewall would recommend consulting with them and stakeholder organisations representing them.”  This is bad enough.

  Something else, though, bothers me about all this talk of “gay marriage” and “heterosexual civil partnerships” and “homosexual relationships” and “straight relationships.” I really dislike labeling relationships as straight or gay…or anything really.

  For one thing, this contributes to bisexual erasure too.  When (say) a married male public figure is suspected of or discovered to be having an affair or some dodgy sex or whatever with another man, the press unfailingly reports this as a “gay encounter,” a “gay affair,” a “gay relationship.”  The man’s “straight” marriage is negated by this gayness.  (Now when the story is about cheating, we might be glad of the potential bi erasure, because we are — wrongly! — assumed to be incapable of fidelity quite often enough already, thank you very much.  But seriously, this kind of “straight until proven gay” rhetoric is no good for anyone, of any sexuality.)  I actually wrote about this in the now-defunct version of this blog, when a politician faced “gay rumors” that led to him feeling he had to justify his childless marriage by giving details of his wife’s miscarriages.  “The implicit reasoning,” I said, “goes something like ‘If Hague’s shagged this young man, that means he’s gay.  And if he’s gay, that means his marriage must be at best in tatters and at worst a lie all along.’”

  This is just one of the ways that the labeling of relationships, rather than people, with a sexuality can, if carried to its logical conclusion, be very illogical indeed.  And needlessly unfair on lots of people.

  Take, for instance, my non-bi different-gender partner.  We’re married.  Do we have a “straight marriage”?  I don’t like to think so; it rankles on me.  I already dislike how much I “pass” for straight, even as I take advantage of it to, for instance, not cause friction amidst my homophobic family.  But we certainly don’t have a “bi marriage”; that’d be unfair on him, give most people ideas of threesomes or group marriages, and anyway it just sounds ludicrous.  (I hear about gay marriages and straight marriages all the time, but bi marriage is something my brain trips over and has trouble parsing as a meaningful phrase.)

  Again this is something where the tendency of bi people to be in relationships with people who aren’t bi goes ignored.  Most people, I’m sure, don’t think twice about saying “gay marriage” or “heterosexual relationship,” because it’s assumed that the sexual identity applies to both the people in it.

  It’s not something I tend to bring up, because there are always bigger points to be made.  If someone is speaking in favor of “gay marriage,” does it benefit anyone for me to spikily insist that they say “same-sex marriage” or “equal marriage’ instead?  Possibly — I have said that a lot — but I pick my battles.  Mostly I’m happy that someone’s on the right side, and I don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Similarly, while I may (for example) feel vaguely disappointed when someone I know from bi contexts talks about the “lesbian sex” she’s having, because I don’t understand how it’s lesbian if she isn’t, I’m reluctant to get churlish about word-choice at a time when it’d be such a buzzkill.

  But I do think about it.

  
  
   
• 

  Holly 5:59 pm on March 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

  Relationships with non-bis (or Do You Have an Ally-Bi?) 

  Like a lot of bi people in relationships, I’m in a relationship with someone of a different gender to my own.

  Why are a lot of bi people in mixed-gender relationships?  This can make the whole bi activist thing seem a bit silly: if we’re so indistinguishable from straight people, why don’t we just shut up, right?

  Because the relationships we’re in don’t dictate our identity — just as, for example, a gay person is still gay when they are single.  (Bisexuals in any kind of long-term relationships face a lot of this “you’re gay really”/”you’re straight really” nonsense, which I have never understood.)

  Let’s say that 15% of the population are attracted to people of similar genders.  95% of the population are attracted to people of different genders.  (Yes this already adds up to more than 100% because some people are in both categories; otherwise there’d be no reason for this blog to exist! And it isn’t counting the proportion of people who are attracted to no one, and so on, who are not mentioned here because my list is not exhaustive as I am only using it to make a point to which gender and attraction are relevant.)

  That means that even if I am the “50/50″ bisexual that some people think you have to be in order to label yourself with the B-word, even if I’m equally attracted to men and women, I (a woman) live in a world where a lot more men than women are likely to consider themselves capable of attraction to my gender.  Add to that the heteronormative societal pressures that benefit mixed-gender romance and sex (from marriage law to the ubiquity of cultural signals telling us how romance is supposed to work to having one less thing to get bullied about in school) and the fact that some bi people are just low Kinsey numbers anyway, and you’ve got a lot of bis in mixed-gender relationships.

  And while some of the people we’re in those relationships with will also be attracted to more than one gender — whether they call themselves bi or pansexual or omnisexual or sapiosexual or heteroflexible or homoflexible or queer or “I can’t stand labeling myself at all” or whatever — a lot won’t be.  The majority of people who are attracted to genders different from theirs are only attracted to genders different from theirs (or as they might be more likely to put it, “the opposite sex”).  They’re straight.  A lot of them have never thought about there being more than two, or about the difference between sex and gender.

  I didn’t know or think much about sexual or gender minorities for a long time, because I thought I was straight, and I am cis (not trans, i.e. experiencing no distress based on the gender I’ve been presumed to have since birth), and those things mean you don’t have to think about this stuff because you’re the default; you’re what’s considered “normal,” you’re what you see in ads and TV shows and anniversary cards in the Hallmark store and everything, you’re probably not going to get awkward questions or weird looks based on your sexual or gender identity.

  But it’s an odd thing. If you’re gay or lesbian or straight,  you’re probably used to having romantic/sexual partners who are that too.  Makes sense, right?  But if you’re bi, you can have partners who are any of those things…as well as bi of course. And thus of course not every lesbian, straight or gay person will have a partner who is what they are, but I think it’s assumed that they would, to the extent that in many contexts people remark on a non-bi person who they learn is dating/married to/etc a bi person.  Especially if the non-bi person’s straight; in my experience, lesbian and gay people are much more likely than straight people to have developed strong opinions about bisexuals and bisexuality.  Even though we’ve already demonstrated that a bi person is more likely (all else being equal; of course they may particularly seek out people of similar genders for whatever reason) to end up with a straight person.

  And this is what I have done.  And because he’s a straight cis person, he feels that he doesn’t have anything personally to do with “LGBT” stuff.  He’s extremely aware of the issues and supportive of his friends who are members of sexual or gender minorities…but I think it’s partly for this reason that he is wary of joining in.   “I don’t want to encroach on your spaces with my straight maleness” is something we both know he says tongue-in-cheek, meaning “I don’t fancy going to the pub with you for a bi social” or “I can’t be bothered to march in the Pride parade where you’re marching with the political party we’re both members of.”  Bi-friendly partners, friends and allies are explicitly welcome at all the bi events I ask him go along to, and having straight cis people politically supporting the rights of sexual and gender minorities sends a great message — but also I totally respect his right not to be around crowds, which he finds stressful, or just to make his own choices about what he wants to do.  He has his own activism and leads a busy life as it is.

  While he’s supportive, respectful and kind towards people regardless of whether they share his straight or cis status, he doesn’t feel like my bi stuff and LGBT stuff is about him.  And that’s fair enough, certainly understandable, but it is a little weird for me.   I share so much with him.  And while he certainly listens sympathetically to my woes (annoying e-mails regarding LGBT political activism or the paper cut I suffered while helping get an issue of Bi Community News into envelopes and off to a postbox; it’s a glamorous life, activism), there’s always a sense that it’s separate.

  It’s nothing personal, this isn’t about a flaw in me or my partner; indeed I’m sure this is how it is for a multitude of relationships that comprise one person who only fancies one gender and another who fancies more than one.  But it’s not something I remember ever reading about, so I thought I might write about it.