{"id":755,"date":"2013-09-29T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T10:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/?guid=d1a2658a5f5f04e0a8691c0fdb3e3f6d"},"modified":"2013-10-07T23:21:56","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T22:21:56","slug":"a-decade-on-bi-life-in-manchester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2013\/09\/a-decade-on-bi-life-in-manchester\/","title":{"rendered":"A Decade On: Bi Life in Manchester"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-865dXL5a3Gs\/UXf1fapuGZI\/AAAAAAAAAPM\/_1dLRgbMEQE\/s1600\/bilife-cover120.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-865dXL5a3Gs\/UXf1fapuGZI\/AAAAAAAAAPM\/_1dLRgbMEQE\/s1600\/bilife-cover120.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><b>The conference where the &#8220;Bisexual Life in Manchester&#8221; report was launched was held on 29th September 2003.&nbsp; Ten years ago today.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>This was the first bit of &#8216;proper&#8217; research on bi needs that I did with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biphoria.org.uk\/\">BiPhoria<\/a>, as part of a broader LGB&amp;T project for the local Local Strategic Partnership. This was qualitative focus group interview palaver, with an enormous amount of transcribing (I&#8217;d never done that before) and only a loosely formatted Word document and a set of Powerpoint slides in time for the launch rather than the prettified edition that&#8217;s on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biphoria.org.uk\/publications.html\">the BiPhoria website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It planted some of the seeds of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bimedia.org\/bireport\">The Bisexuality Report<\/a>, by breaking its findings on bi life and bi needs down into policy areas &#8211; youth provision, mental health, employment, housing and so on. Something I&#8217;d forgotten over the years was that, like The Bisexuality Report, it included a section of positives about bisexual experience to give some respite from the &#8216;list of problems&#8217; style that research findings on LGBT life can become. As I recall, this was reinvented afresh when the team devised The Bisexuality Report.<\/p>\n<p>The report had little immediate impact, though, as in line with Manchester City Council policy in 2003, the overarching Local Strategic Partnership ruled bisexuality to not exist: we in the LGBT LSP kept sending in documents marked &#8220;LGBT&#8221; and they kept coming back marked &#8220;LG&#8221;. Though it&#8217;s shifted a little in recent years, Manchester City Council worked damn hard to earn a reputation for biphobia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The conference where the &#8220;Bisexual Life in Manchester&#8221; report was launched was held on 29th September 2003.&nbsp; Ten years ago today.This was the first bit of &#8216;proper&#8217; research on bi needs that I did with BiPhoria, as part of a broader LGB&amp;T proje&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,60,9,31,65,71,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bi","category-biphoria","category-bisexual","category-manchester","category-manchester-city-council","category-research","category-researching-bisexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/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=755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}