{"id":2050,"date":"2014-08-04T20:50:29","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T19:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/?p=2050"},"modified":"2015-07-30T11:41:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T10:41:42","slug":"post-bicon-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2014\/08\/post-bicon-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Post BiCon Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>A follow-up anonymous guest post from the writer who contributed the &#8216;jerkbrain&#8217; post last week. We welcome one-off guest posts as well as regular contributors: see the <a href=\"http:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/join-us\/\">join us page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>This was a lovely, chilled, relaxing, introspective BiCon for me.<\/strong> After writing here before BiCon about feeling insecure about shoes\/performing femininity in a way that&#8217;s unusual for me, I ended up wearing skirts a lot and uncomfortable but pretty boots for only a short time :).<\/p>\n<p>A big theme of this BiCon was internalised biphobia and the way that manifests as feeling &#8216;not queer enough&#8217;, especially for people who are in relationships that might be externally perceived as &#8216;straight&#8217;. I got into a discussion about the term &#8216;heteronormative&#8217; on Twitter just before BiCon and a bi woman described her life as heteronormative because she was an invisible bisexual. I argued quite stridently that this was *blaming* invisible\/erased bisexuals for having been erased\/made invisible by a biphobic culture.<\/p>\n<p>My argument felt strident because I struggle to convince myself of this, especially when I acknowledge that being invisible is quite useful while working in a conservative industry. However, this feeling of being &#8216;not queer enough&#8217; and needing to constantly prove your &#8216;queer credentials&#8217; seems to run really deep in the bi community. It&#8217;s even notable as a fear among bi activists, who you would expect to have the best resources to combat this sort of insidious biphobia.<\/p>\n<p>Finally I want to mention the huge relief that simply talking about this stuff can bring. The Biphobia Consciousness Raising workshop was a good example of this. We each talked for 5 minutes without interruption about how biphobia had affected us. We didn&#8217;t try to fix each other&#8217;s problems or try to change our minds. It was such a relief to be able to speak and be truly heard and to hear people expressing the same feelings. The Bi Carers workshop worked in a similar way. Somethings are not fixable but being listened to makes them more bearable.<\/p>\n<p>Wow, this is all very heavy! I mixed this stuff up at BiCon with the silly and fun Giant Pass The Parcel, a very inspiring workshop on Blackout Poetry and lots of relaxing chatting \/ hugging \/ flirting with lovely people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A follow-up anonymous guest post from the writer who contributed the &#8216;jerkbrain&#8217; post last week. We welcome one-off guest posts as well as regular contributors: see the join us page.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}