For many people who know me the idea of me not being a bisexual activist is a little hard to picture – I’ve been one for as long we’ve been friends, and many of them I’ve met through the UK bisexual community. But once I wasn’t a bisexual activist, and I thought I’d share the moment I became one. It was a while ago…<\/p>\n
When I was a teenager, and then a student, I had been solely attracted to men. I had not felt any attraction to other genders, and so was identifying as “gay” (apart from those teenage years when I had decided I should have been born a girl, but that’s a different story for another day). All this changed when I found myself getting very close to a flatmate I had at the time, who was a lesbian, and very patient with me when I’d get drunk and confess my hopeless attraction to her.<\/p>\n
By the time I was 21 I’d dropped out of polytechnic, got a job selling car insurance and joined what we’d now call “the local LGBT group”, the Wimbledon Area Gay Society, WAGS. Of course, what we now call LGBT groups, weren’t always that way.<\/p>\n
WAGS met at the William Morris building on the corner of the Broadway in Wimbledon, an easy walk from where I was living at the time, and much more convenient than any of the nearest gay pubs (Wimbledon didn’t have one, so it was Putney or Clapham). It wasn’t especially sociable, or welcoming, being mainly middle-aged white men playing cards and complaining about how society treated them. But, importantly to me, it was right there. I was also the sort of person they wanted to encourage to come along – I was young, having just crossed the age-of-consent line. So they were nice to me, supportive. Was it because they wanted an influx of fresh blood to revitalise their group, or because they wanted into my knickers? I don’t know.<\/p>\n
Anyway, they produced a newsletter, which various people contributed pages to – handing in bits of A5 to the editor to collate and photocopy, and I’ve always liked writing that sort of thing so I did a puzzle page with some jokes on it. I can’t remember what the jokes were.<\/p>\n
When the newsletter came out, I saw they’d not used it. It was clear that they’d been short of material, so I asked why. “Oh, well its for people who are actually paid members, not just who attend the meetings”. I took this at face value and paid my subs on the spot.<\/p>\n
The summer edition, still not in. A very apologetic editor sheepishly handed me back the page. The committee had had a think about it, and as I’d used the word “bisexual” on the page, they didn’t want to use it. This is a gay group, for gay people. And that includes lesbians (or else the one woman who came would kill them all, I’d guess) but not bisexuals. And the page gave the impression that they’d be welcome.<\/p>\n
I’m bisexual, I said. Give me back my subs then, and I’ll fuck off.<\/p>\n
They did. I told the assembled and bemused gathering what I thought of them, and their attitude towards bisexuals, and walked out. Proud.<\/p>\n
And that was it. I was a bisexual activist. It’s not the organising groups, or making websites, or writing newsletters that makes us activists, it’s the confronting biphobia and bi invisibility in some way no matter how small. Get up close to those mighty oaks, and you’ll see they’re just artfully arranged piles of little acorns. A couple of months later I’d gotten my courage back and went to my first meeting of the London Bisexual Group. The rest, as they say, is history (by which I mean, all this happened in 1991!)<\/small><\/p>\n