Bringing bisexual voices together
BiCon is a yearly bisexual convention that takes place for a long weekend every summer in a different city. From Thursday evening to Sunday lunchtime it is jam packed full of social gatherings, gaming and workshops as well as spaces just to chill out and chat or read.
There’s fancy dress ball on the Saturday night with the last few years being based on bisexuals in space, magical forest and favourite fictional characters. It’s great to see all the costumes but they aren’t compulsory with a good portion of people just dressing up or wearing what they’re comfortable in. This year’s theme has just been announced as a “Bisexual Beach Party”.
Founded in 1984 as the Politics of Bisexuality, this is the second time Leeds will host the UK’s largest bisexual gathering. In 2014 the convention was found a home at Trinity University and was attended by over 350 bi+ people and allies. This year will be at the Headingley campus of Leeds Beckett University, Thursday 10th to Sunday 13th August (the weekend after Leeds Pride).
I’ve been attending BiCon since 2012 in Bradford; it is an amazing feeling to be surrounded by others like myself, not having to explain what being bi means. It’s like being in a bisexual bubble with a great, diverse mix of people and friends.
Check out the BiCon 2017 website (http://2017.bicon.org.uk/) for more details and to buy tickets.
Written by Emily @ Leeds Bi Group
Fatness, Race, Class and Gender.
Content note: Swearing. And when I start swearing, you know shit’s bad.
So which one comes first? Are you black or fat first? Are you LGBT+ or fat first? These are questions that need to piss off and die immediately. I cannot seperate myself into palatable components for your digestion. I could draw a Venn diagram of how they all overlap, but sadly the people who ask these sort of things don’t want to learn - they want you prove yourself. Spoiler alert: you will never be worthy to them.
If you discuss fatphobia, but never mention how race affects how you are treated, then what the everlasting fuck are you doing? Fat liberation is blindingly white, cisgender and heterosexual. These are the voices who get heard, whose articles appear in popular media. These are the people who can afford to attend Fat/Body positivity conferences and know they will receive a warm welcome. They will never be the only one of their ethnicity in a group of fat folks.
If you discuss fatphobia, but never mention how fat LGBT+ people (with a few Bear-shaped exceptions) are subject to punishing drives of fat hate; how poverty affects fat LGBT+ people of colour differently than their white counterparts, then take the first exit out of here, you useless cumstain.
I am thoroughly sick of the white, able-bodied cisfemale gaze being the only thing I see in fat liberation. I am tired of their voices as the only ones amplified. And I could happily live the rest of my life without reading another piece on fatphobia that only concentrates of American white women who are at the smaller end of the fatness scale.
I want to read about experiences of disabled fats, LGBT+ fats who are black or brown, fat folks who are elderly and/or poor. Because we are the ones who face multiple oppressions, who can’t afford to shop the latest fat celebrity lines (I’m looking at you, Beth Ditto) to look incredible. We are the ones who get written out of conversations time and again, even though we have been speaking out for decades.
So all you gusset-tickling, wankers can just shut your mouths for one shit-stained minute. The rest of us would like a chance to be heard.
They don’t need to kill us, when we want to kill ourselves
They never think of me when they say LGBT.
They spy young and thin and so, so white
And if their vision widens to invite my body, big and brown,
I will never be named:
I am not one of the queer crowd.
My human shell contains a beating bisexual heart.
But my sound and my shape are scrubbed
Until only a white dream remains,
And bisexuals are left at the back of the Pride parade.
We will never be named.
Whose tears are these? Whose dreams are gone?
Are questions never asked.
Bisexual erased right off this planet
Gay rainbows as a mask.
The very last thing to cross your mind
As darkness and silence puffs out my flame:
My identity is hated first and last;
A terrible mark of your shame.
Who will listen when I am gone,
To discover an echo on the microphone?
A smudge where a human might have sat:
Bisexual and alone.
My old words will form an image of me.
Incline your ear to my remains.
The silence is never ending now.
Marked in stone, yet never named.
