Dates for 2015 Pub Socials
Posted inBiTopia Events

Dates for 2015 Pub Socials

8th Jan 12th Feb 12th March 9th April 14th May 11th June 9th July 13th Aug 10th Sept 8th Oct 12th Nov 10th Dec In addition there is usually the Big Bi Fun Day (family friendly picnic type event in Leicester) one weekend towards the beginning of May and BiCon is usually one weekend towards […]
Bisexuality and ageing
Posted inAgeing Bi Community Events Invisibility research

Bisexuality and ageing

Hello to everyone reading this blog


It has been a long time since I last posted here, longer still since I updated it regularly. There's a whole range of reasons for that - pressures of work and time, new forms of social media that make blogger look positively 20th century - but I've decided to give it another go.

There are many billions of words now online, even more are being written while you are reading this. There is too much out there to keep up with anything that doesn't really hit the mark for an individual reader. Or for an individual writer, particularly when she makes a living contributing to those too-many words, which is why I am changing the focus of this blog.

Who are you?

Looking at the stats for this site, most people come here for information about coming out. Next on the list is celebrities who may or may not be bisexual, or who may have said something about it.

I have nothing at all new to say about coming out, because I did that so long ago. (Even the repeated coming out that all out bi people deal with is simply part of my life.) In any case, the world people come out into now is too different for my initial experiences to be relevant.

So for information about coming out and celebrities, I recomment Twitter. Twitter works very well for responding to (for example) biphobia, homophobia, the various doings of various celebrities, etc. I can't keep up with celebrity doings, and really don't care what they do. But I can see that they are important for many, particularly young, people. If idiots post stupid things about bisexuality, then various bi people will point out the error of their ways far more quickly and forcefully than I would be able to do. And Twitter is also a great place for finding out about things too. 


Ageing
But I am interested now in bisexuality and older people. For the sake of drawing the line somewhere, I'm calling "older people" anyone over 50. 

I am now in my 50s  myself, and what I have to offer the world of bisexuality (and what could possibly be called bisexual theory) is not necessarily what people coming to this blog are after. Nevertheless, blogs are for the writer as much as for the reader - unless you are specifically blogging for money - a way of clearing our thoughts, perhaps, and getting unmonetisable ideas out there.


My thoughts on bisexuality and middle-age/ageing/getting older are what I'll be writing about on this blog from now on. As you will see from the previous post, I did a talk at the University of Nottingham about my experiences of being an “older” bisexual. The site for that event, including the text of my talk, is here. My talk is 4,700 words long, so I'm not posting it in full as a blog post. It's a general talk (not giving away anything hugely personal!) and was designed to be heard in conjunction with Rebecca Jones' presentation on research into bisexuality and ageing. In brief: there isn't much of it.

I have recorded it on Soundcloud, in case you want to listen to my dulcet tones. It's about 25 minutes long and you can find it here.

I did interview - both on email and on Skype - some other bi identifying people over 50 and - surprise - they covered a range of different behaviours, feelings, and so on. But they pretty much all felt invisible, and that's not surprising because they are. 

There are actually many things that haven't really been discussed about sexuality of any sort and ageing, and I think about them more and more these days. I'll write about some of them here. I'll also write in more depth about the issues I addressed in my talk (so you don't need to read it/listen to it) if you don't want to!

But if you are a person of 50+ to whom the concept of bisexuality is personally important - however you identify sexually, as well as if you don't - then I'd love to hear from you. I know there are a lot more of us than we think!






Bisexuality and depression
Posted inEvents identity Invisibility mental health research work

Bisexuality and depression


For long as I’ve been writing this blog, one of the main ways new people find it is by searching for “bisexuality and depression”. I find that really sad, but nothing like as sad as the statistics about bisexuality and mental health.

  • A major Canadian study found bisexual men 6.3 times more likely, and bi women 5.9 times more likely, to report having been suicidal than heterosexual people
  •  A large Australian study found rates of mental health problems among bi people to be higher than those among lesbians, gay men, or heterosexuals.
  •  The UK Mind report on the mental health and wellbeing of LGB people found that bi men and women were less at ease about their sexuality than lesbians or gay men, and less likely to be out.
Bisexuality and mental health is currently a big issue in the bi community. This summer’s BiReCon (the British conference that looks at current research on bisexuality) had bisexuality and mental health as its theme.

At the conference, the speakers focused on what research is currently being done by (bi) psychologists and (bi) activists and considered how mental health professionals could better serve the needs of bi people.

The Bisexuality Report,  which came out earlier this year, also looked at the bad health – mental and physical – experienced by bisexual people. It collated a lot of existing research, including that listed at the top of this post.

Until now, most research on sexuality and mental health has lumped research on lesbian, gay and bisexual people into one queer mass.

What the Bisexuality Report did was to look at how bisexual people (as distinct from lesbians and gay men) experience discrimination and prejudice. It’s fair to say that this discrimination and prejudice has a strongly negative impact on everyone who don’t simply identify as straight or gay.

This includes:

Bisexual exclusion, erasure, invisibility

  • Many people, even now, know of no one in their daily lives who is bisexual. 
  • When people at large, or organisations, say lesbian, gay and bisexual, they really mean lesbian and gay. Or sometimes just gay.
  • Everyone is considered either gay or straight. Really. And if you aren’t now, you are either frightened (really gay) or experimenting (really straight). 
  • The concerns of bi people are ignored, trivialised, demonised, laughed at. For instance, when people say things like:

Everyone's bisexual
Men can’t be bisexual
You must be really into sex
Can I watch?
But you’re involved with X person now – that means you’re straight/gay
You’re just confused
Bi people have things really easy

And, connected with that:

Biphobia – in all its many guises

Such as:

  • Rejection by the wider queer/lesbian and gay community, whether individuals or groups 
  • At the same time as you experience rejection from friends/ family/the wider society for not being straight. A similar sort of homophobia to that experienced by lesbians and gay men, but with added extras 
  •  People saying things like: 
  • You’re too old/attractive/ugly/straight-looking/queer-looking/monogamous to be bisexual 
  • You’re young – you’ll grow out of it! 
  • Bisexuals are greedy/disgusting/can’t be trusted


 I could go on… but I’m only depressing myself!

With all that, is it any surprise that so many bi people feel they don’t belong anywhere, that you will never find a lover/s who will truly accept you? That, if you are told that bi people don’t and can’t exist, and if they do there is something wrong with them, that it might lead to lack of self-belief, and ultimately self-hatred?

Difficult circumstances and depression aren’t necessarily linked, of course, but a lack of support can make a bad time so much worse.

So, lovely readers, some questions for you.

Why do you think bi people report so much depression and other forms of mental ill-health. And what do you think we – as individuals and as a community – can do to help ourselves and others?

For more things to think about, I’ve written other posts on bisexuality and mental health here 

Glad to be bi 
My next post (to be published on 7th September) is going to be specifically on being a happy bisexual. It would be terrible if everyone thought that bi people were only miserable when, for many of us, bisexuality is great, something that has added and continued to add to their lives. And for others, their bisexuality is something that just is. A part of them that needs no more explanation than that.

As Tom Robinson sang Glad to be Gay in the 1970s, so we need a (non-religious) Blessed to be Bi for the 2010s.

We need to spell out the reasons it’s great to be bi – even when, especially when, others think it really isn’t.

Which leads on to some more questions for you: What do you love being bisexual? And, if you didn’t always feel that way, how have you made things better? Let me know.
Bisexuality and depression
Posted inEvents identity Invisibility mental health research work

Bisexuality and depression


For long as I’ve been writing this blog, one of the main ways new people find it is by searching for “bisexuality and depression”. I find that really sad, but nothing like as sad as the statistics about bisexuality and mental health.

  • A major Canadian study found bisexual men 6.3 times more likely, and bi women 5.9 times more likely, to report having been suicidal than heterosexual people
  •  A large Australian study found rates of mental health problems among bi people to be higher than those among lesbians, gay men, or heterosexuals.
  •  The UK Mind report on the mental health and wellbeing of LGB people found that bi men and women were less at ease about their sexuality than lesbians or gay men, and less likely to be out.
Bisexuality and mental health is currently a big issue in the bi community. This summer’s BiReCon (the British conference that looks at current research on bisexuality) had bisexuality and mental health as its theme.

At the conference, the speakers focused on what research is currently being done by (bi) psychologists and (bi) activists and considered how mental health professionals could better serve the needs of bi people.

The Bisexuality Report,  which came out earlier this year, also looked at the bad health – mental and physical – experienced by bisexual people. It collated a lot of existing research, including that listed at the top of this post.

Until now, most research on sexuality and mental health has lumped research on lesbian, gay and bisexual people into one queer mass.

What the Bisexuality Report did was to look at how bisexual people (as distinct from lesbians and gay men) experience discrimination and prejudice. It’s fair to say that this discrimination and prejudice has a strongly negative impact on everyone who don’t simply identify as straight or gay.

This includes:

Bisexual exclusion, erasure, invisibility

  • Many people, even now, know of no one in their daily lives who is bisexual. 
  • When people at large, or organisations, say lesbian, gay and bisexual, they really mean lesbian and gay. Or sometimes just gay.
  • Everyone is considered either gay or straight. Really. And if you aren’t now, you are either frightened (really gay) or experimenting (really straight). 
  • The concerns of bi people are ignored, trivialised, demonised, laughed at. For instance, when people say things like:

Everyone's bisexual
Men can’t be bisexual
You must be really into sex
Can I watch?
But you’re involved with X person now – that means you’re straight/gay
You’re just confused
Bi people have things really easy

And, connected with that:

Biphobia – in all its many guises

Such as:

  • Rejection by the wider queer/lesbian and gay community, whether individuals or groups 
  • At the same time as you experience rejection from friends/ family/the wider society for not being straight. A similar sort of homophobia to that experienced by lesbians and gay men, but with added extras 
  •  People saying things like: 
  • You’re too old/attractive/ugly/straight-looking/queer-looking/monogamous to be bisexual 
  • You’re young – you’ll grow out of it! 
  • Bisexuals are greedy/disgusting/can’t be trusted


 I could go on… but I’m only depressing myself!

With all that, is it any surprise that so many bi people feel they don’t belong anywhere, that you will never find a lover/s who will truly accept you? That, if you are told that bi people don’t and can’t exist, and if they do there is something wrong with them, that it might lead to lack of self-belief, and ultimately self-hatred?

Difficult circumstances and depression aren’t necessarily linked, of course, but a lack of support can make a bad time so much worse.

So, lovely readers, some questions for you.

Why do you think bi people report so much depression and other forms of mental ill-health. And what do you think we – as individuals and as a community – can do to help ourselves and others?

For more things to think about, I’ve written other posts on bisexuality and mental health here 

Glad to be bi 
My next post (to be published on 7th September) is going to be specifically on being a happy bisexual. It would be terrible if everyone thought that bi people were only miserable when, for many of us, bisexuality is great, something that has added and continued to add to their lives. And for others, their bisexuality is something that just is. A part of them that needs no more explanation than that.

As Tom Robinson sang Glad to be Gay in the 1970s, so we need a (non-religious) Blessed to be Bi for the 2010s.

We need to spell out the reasons it’s great to be bi – even when, especially when, others think it really isn’t.

Which leads on to some more questions for you: What do you love being bisexual? And, if you didn’t always feel that way, how have you made things better? Let me know.
Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride
Posted inBi Community Events Invisibility politics

Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride




It’s five years tomorrow since I started this bisexual blog. I don’t update it regularly any more, but it has been very important to me as an outlet for my ideas on bisexuality when other outlets have seemed a bit sparse. And, as hundreds of thousands of people have visited it, it must have been of some interest and importance to a few other people too.

Below, I’m going to post a link to the entry with which I opened this blog. I wrote about EuroPride, held in London that year. Tomorrow is the Pride march in London too. I had a great time at EuroPride in 2006, but in general I find the lack of politics at Pride in London combined with vacuous celebration a bit wearing and tedious. And believe me, I LOVE celebrations in general.

I think the purpose of Pride should be political as well as celebratory – just as a quick for instance, there are homophobic attacks in the UK, and essential solidarity with people in countries where same-sex is illegal and strictly punished. There are tremendous queer activists, such as David Kato in Uganda who was murdered this year, to honour.

In the Pride press pack, their Love Without Borders campaign is one of the things they do talk about. But if you saw the Pride poster (seen on the London underground, but nowhere that I can find on the interwebs), you’d have to search hard to figure out what sort of Pride it was. Smirnoff Pride, perhaps.

There will be a bi stall and bi banner at Pride, London tomorrow and I really wish those attending all the best. It is absolutely essential that bi people are properly visible and there is even an international campaign about it.

Moving on up
Thanks (in a large part) to social media, there seems to be a lot more of a bisexual community than there was back in 2006, in the UK and elsewhere. Twitter and Facebook have put loads of people in touch with each other, and not just virtually. Ideas spin around the world soon as anything.

Also, there are many more bi bloggers than there were in 2006 when I couldn’t find any British ones at all. It’s very hard to keep blogging in the long term and many have opened and closed. But thanks to the Bi Bloggers aggregator site, organised by the ever-efficient Jen Yockney, anyone who’s interested in British bi bloggers can see that there’s quite a lot of it about. And of course there are many other bi bloggers around the world (particularly North America). If a bi celebrity comes out, or a prominent queer columnist such as Dan Savage opines on bisexuality, there are plenty of other people who can write about it. There are other aspects of bisexuality that people don’t write about, though, and when I write here in the future that’s what I’ll be covering.

Anyway, as anyone who knows a smidgeon of blogging theory can tell you, less is most definitely more. So happy bisexual birthday and Pride – whether it’s been or still to come where you are – and be happy that things really can and do get better.

Here’s what I wrote in 2006.
Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride
Posted inBi Community Events Invisibility politics

Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride




It’s five years tomorrow since I started this bisexual blog. I don’t update it regularly any more, but it has been very important to me as an outlet for my ideas on bisexuality when other outlets have seemed a bit sparse. And, as hundreds of thousands of people have visited it, it must have been of some interest and importance to a few other people too.

Below, I’m going to post a link to the entry with which I opened this blog. I wrote about EuroPride, held in London that year. Tomorrow is the Pride march in London too. I had a great time at EuroPride in 2006, but in general I find the lack of politics at Pride in London combined with vacuous celebration a bit wearing and tedious. And believe me, I LOVE celebrations in general.

I think the purpose of Pride should be political as well as celebratory – just as a quick for instance, there are homophobic attacks in the UK, and essential solidarity with people in countries where same-sex is illegal and strictly punished. There are tremendous queer activists, such as David Kato in Uganda who was murdered this year, to honour.

In the Pride press pack, their Love Without Borders campaign is one of the things they do talk about. But if you saw the Pride poster (seen on the London underground, but nowhere that I can find on the interwebs), you’d have to search hard to figure out what sort of Pride it was. Smirnoff Pride, perhaps.

There will be a bi stall and bi banner at Pride, London tomorrow and I really wish those attending all the best. It is absolutely essential that bi people are properly visible and there is even an international campaign about it.

Moving on up
Thanks (in a large part) to social media, there seems to be a lot more of a bisexual community than there was back in 2006, in the UK and elsewhere. Twitter and Facebook have put loads of people in touch with each other, and not just virtually. Ideas spin around the world soon as anything.

Also, there are many more bi bloggers than there were in 2006 when I couldn’t find any British ones at all. It’s very hard to keep blogging in the long term and many have opened and closed. But thanks to the Bi Bloggers aggregator site, organised by the ever-efficient Jen Yockney, anyone who’s interested in British bi bloggers can see that there’s quite a lot of it about. And of course there are many other bi bloggers around the world (particularly North America). If a bi celebrity comes out, or a prominent queer columnist such as Dan Savage opines on bisexuality, there are plenty of other people who can write about it. There are other aspects of bisexuality that people don’t write about, though, and when I write here in the future that’s what I’ll be covering.

Anyway, as anyone who knows a smidgeon of blogging theory can tell you, less is most definitely more. So happy bisexual birthday and Pride – whether it’s been or still to come where you are – and be happy that things really can and do get better.

Here’s what I wrote in 2006.
20th Century Bi – Books and Links
Posted inBisexuals I never met books Events History My Life

20th Century Bi – Books and Links

Last Saturday (12th February) about 30 people came to Conway Hall in London for what was a really good bi history event. Sadly, Lindsay River was ill and so didn’t do her talk on creative women of the inter-war period, but Christian Klesse, Ian Watters and I were there. As well as the talk listed in the previous post, I did a personal memoir of the 70s. Nothing too personal...

Anyway, I said to people I would give a few links and notes about my talk Androgynous, Ambisextrous, or "enjoying all life's pleasures" - bisexuality before the sexual revolution - so here we are. I also have audio files of all the talks (from an Olympus voice recorder – won’t play on a Mac without some jiggery-pokery that I don't know about), plus printed versions of the talks that I did. Email me if you’d like them (my address is below my pic, on the right).

Books I mentioned
Queer London, by Matt Houlbrook: a truly excellent book about all sorts of man-man sexual behaviour from 1918-57.
The Secret World of Sex, by Steve Humphries: Oral histories of people in the UK before WW2, to accompany the 80s TV series of the same name.
Sex before the Sexual Revolution, by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher: oral histories, plus analysis, of married couples in Britain who were sexually active before the 1960s. Recently out in paperback.
Fashioning Sapphism, by Laura Doan, looking at androgyny in the 1920s, and how the "masculine" fashions for women in the early part of that decade became connected with lesbianism after The Well of Loneliness prosecution.
Bisexual Love by Wilhelm Stekel. Originally published in 1922, this radical and almost unknown book has been digitally scanned and is available from Amazon!
Passionate Friendships, by Nerina Shute, in which she writes about her bisexuality and her relationships with women and men, was published in 1992. Nevertheless, it almost never appears on abebooks lists, or elsewhere on the second-hand market. I have only ever seen it in the British Library. Currently, there is one copy on Amazon for £29.50
There is more information about her in Shepperton Babylon, by Matthew Sweet – a great book for anyone interested in British cinema, bisexual or not.
20th Century Bi – Books and Links
Posted inBisexuals I never met books Events History My Life

20th Century Bi – Books and Links

Last Saturday (12th February) about 30 people came to Conway Hall in London for what was a really good bi history event. Sadly, Lindsay River was ill and so didn’t do her talk on creative women of the inter-war period, but Christian Klesse, Ian Watters and I were there. As well as the talk listed in the previous post, I did a personal memoir of the 70s. Nothing too personal...

Anyway, I said to people I would give a few links and notes about my talk Androgynous, Ambisextrous, or "enjoying all life's pleasures" - bisexuality before the sexual revolution - so here we are. I also have audio files of all the talks (from an Olympus voice recorder – won’t play on a Mac without some jiggery-pokery that I don't know about), plus printed versions of the talks that I did. Email me if you’d like them (my address is below my pic, on the right).

Books I mentioned
Queer London, by Matt Houlbrook: a truly excellent book about all sorts of man-man sexual behaviour from 1918-57.
The Secret World of Sex, by Steve Humphries: Oral histories of people in the UK before WW2, to accompany the 80s TV series of the same name.
Sex before the Sexual Revolution, by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher: oral histories, plus analysis, of married couples in Britain who were sexually active before the 1960s. Recently out in paperback.
Fashioning Sapphism, by Laura Doan, looking at androgyny in the 1920s, and how the "masculine" fashions for women in the early part of that decade became connected with lesbianism after The Well of Loneliness prosecution.
Bisexual Love by Wilhelm Stekel. Originally published in 1922, this radical and almost unknown book has been digitally scanned and is available from Amazon!
Passionate Friendships, by Nerina Shute, in which she writes about her bisexuality and her relationships with women and men, was published in 1992. Nevertheless, it almost never appears on abebooks lists, or elsewhere on the second-hand market. I have only ever seen it in the British Library. Currently, there is one copy on Amazon for £29.50
There is more information about her in Shepperton Babylon, by Matthew Sweet – a great book for anyone interested in British cinema, bisexual or not.
20th Century Bi – London’s bisexual history event
Posted inBisexuals I never met Events History

20th Century Bi – London’s bisexual history event




February is LGBT history month in the UK and - as promised last year, and the year before - this year there WILL be a specifically bi history event (I think there may even be two. More details at the end of this post).

So... drum roll ... I am co-organising, and speaking at, an event in London called 20th century bi. (Great title, eh. Not my idea sadly, but that of my co-organiser Lisa Colledge.) Here's the details:

20th Century Bi
To mark the 30th anniversary of the bisexual community in the UK, this event will look at some of the big, bad, bold bis who made the 20th century great. A panel of speakers discusses 20th century bisexuals and bisexuality in Britain, as part of LGBT History Month.

Speakers are:

Sue George: Androgynous, ambisextrous, or “enjoying all life’s pleasures”: being bisexual before and after the sexual revolution

Christian Klesse: 'Re-writing the scripts of Love. The Critique of Monogamy, Polyamory and Bisexual Intimacies in the late 20th Century'

Lindsay River: Lesbian... or bisexual? The (mis)naming of creative women of the early 20th century

Ian Watters: Bisexuals at Pride: The somewhat partial story of bisexual involvement in the annual London Pride celebrations

Our individual talks will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.

Everyone is welcome to this bi-positive event.

Saturday 12 February 2011
2.30 - 4.30 pm

Conway Hall (Bertrand Russell Room)
25 Red Lion Square
London WC1R 4RL
(nearest tube is Holborn)

Tickets £5 (£3 unwaged) from EventElephant here and at the door (all profits to BiCon Helping Hand Fund)

Wheelchair-accessible venue: for Conway Hall access details contact Carina on 0207 242 8032










Manchester

There's also an event in Manchester on Feb 15th. It doesn't sound as specifically historical as ours, but nevertheless good stuff. This information is taken from Biphoria's website.

As part of LGBT History Month 2011, on Tuesday, 15 February we will have a special event to launch our new publication "Getting Bi in a Gay/Straight World". It will be at the Levenshulme Inspire centre, 747 Stockport Road, Levenshulme M19 3AR, from 7pm to 9pm. Come along, and if you have them, share your memories of bisexual Manchester.

Have a great LGBT History Month everyone, and I hope you will go to one of these events - bi or not - to celebrate our history.