{"id":8379,"date":"2018-10-09T11:54:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T10:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skibbley.dreamwidth.org\/659780.html"},"modified":"2018-10-09T11:54:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T10:54:21","slug":"bi-role-modelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2018\/10\/bi-role-modelling\/","title":{"rendered":"Bi Role Modelling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 13th September 2017 I went to the City of London (&#8220;The City&#8221; means the financial bit) for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stonewall.org.uk\/our-work\/blog\/bi-visibility\">Bisexual Role Models<\/a> day organised by Stonewall. <a href=\"https:\/\/grantdenkinson.smugmug.com\/Blogging\/Out-and-About\/i-z44bJvM\/A\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/photos.smugmug.com\/Blogging\/Out-and-About\/i-z44bJvM\/0\/77bbfeb6\/M\/21740651_10155007326387339_8908384548843436566_n-M.jpg\" alt=\"Sunny view out of a window of London&#39;s financial district\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d heard of previous LGBT Role Models days and a colleague (one day I&#8217;ll spell &#8220;colleague&#8221; without correction) recommended it highly. Work paid, which I was pleasantly surprised by. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sceptical of anything involving &#8220;leadership&#8221; and it worked well for me that we talked about role models as visible rather than perfect folks. We had a mix of industries represented, with two bi folks being from the same large company and not previously being aware of one another. <\/p>\n<p>This became rather a theme for me, that most people in the room had never been in a room with more than one or two other bisexuals. I wondered why. Had they looked for bi events, gatherings and the like and not found them, didn&#8217;t think to look because why look for something you don&#8217;t think exists, or did they not feel bi gatherings were for them? That I still don&#8217;t know. <\/p>\n<p>We spent some time thinking about who our personal role models are, and then some problem solving about how we might bring ourselves to more visibility at work.<\/p>\n<p>I thought, as often isolated bi people within our workplaces, that folks that day might have wanted to keep in touch. I asked Stonewall to pass on a message from me, and when nobody who got back to me expressed a preference I set up a Slack channel. Today, having been over a year with not a single message from anyone on the bi role models day apart from a few OKs to be added to a channel, I&#8217;ll close it down. I feel sad to lose the opportunity for connection for myself and for other bi folks who are far more isolated than me.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still me and still being bi at work with larger or smaller visibility and sometimes activism has a longer timeframe or different rhythms to the one I&#8217;m drawn to dance to.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dreamwidth.org\/tools\/commentcount?user=skibbley&#038;ditemid=659780\" width=\"30\" height=\"12\" alt=\"comment count unavailable\" style=\"vertical-align: middle;\"\/> comments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 13th September 2017 I went to the City of London (&#8220;The City&#8221; means the financial bit) for a Bisexual Role Models day organised by Stonewall. I&#8217;d heard of previous LGBT Role Models days and a colleague (one day I&#8217;ll spell &#8220;colleague&#8221; without correcti&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bisexual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8379","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8379"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8380,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8379\/revisions\/8380"}],"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=8379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}