Coming out bisexual

The first of January, the beginning of a new year, means a new start. Resolutions, if you like. And for some, the idea of new beginnings means coming out.

I spend quite a lot of time on Twitter these days, and various retweets – or repostings by others, if you don’t know about Twitter – are from or about people who’ve decided they are finally going to tell other people they are bisexual.

Coming out as bi can be complicated, mainly because you have to tell people over and over again. People you don’t know will assume that you are either gay or heterosexual, depending on whether your partner is a man or a woman. If you are single, or dating several people, or poly – that can be easier.

There’s no bisexual “look”, in many places there’s no bi scene, the fact that other bisexuals seem hard to find (other than on the internet)... all these things can be annoying if you are looking for support.

But telling the world you are bi is important, really important.

Most of the world thinks that there is no such thing as bisexuality, that bi people are straight people playing at being gay (bi women) or gay people running away from their real sexuality (bi men). You know that it’s not like that – for you and for many others. The more of us who come out, the easier it is for those people who are not out yet.

And there are many people who cannot be out yet, because it is too difficult. They are too unsure of their feelings, their religion says it is wrong, it is illegal in their country, everyone around them thinks it is wicked, their family actually would beat them up and throw them out. They need to know there are people in the world who can support them, however far away they are or whether or not they know them personally.

So coming out is a public service.

It’s also something to do for yourself. Telling people you are bi, especially potentially tricky ones like parents and partners, means you are telling the truth about yourself. You don’t have to lie about a significant part of yourself. Yes, it will be difficult sometimes, but you may also be surprised by the people who will help and support you.

A bi man I once interviewed - deep in the closet, with a conventional life that felt he couldn’t threaten - said that he longed to “live out loud, like other people”. Coming out is the first step to doing that.

Happy New Year. And good luck!

Bisexual blog, Bisexual Pride

It’s five years tomorrow since I started this bisexual blog. I don’t update it regularly any more, but it has been very important to me as an outlet for my ideas on bisexuality when other outlets have seemed a bit sparse. And, as hundreds of thousands of people have visited it, it must have been of some interest and importance to a few other people too.

Below, I’m going to post a link to the entry with which I opened this blog. I wrote about EuroPride, held in London that year. Tomorrow is the Pride march in London too. I had a great time at EuroPride in 2006, but in general I find the lack of politics at Pride in London combined with vacuous celebration a bit wearing and tedious. And believe me, I LOVE celebrations in general.

I think the purpose of Pride should be political as well as celebratory – just as a quick for instance, there are homophobic attacks in the UK, and essential solidarity with people in countries where same-sex is illegal and strictly punished. There are tremendous queer activists, such as David Kato in Uganda who was murdered this year, to honour.

In the Pride press pack, their Love Without Borders campaign is one of the things they do talk about. But if you saw the Pride poster (seen on the London underground, but nowhere that I can find on the interwebs), you’d have to search hard to figure out what sort of Pride it was. Smirnoff Pride, perhaps.

There will be a bi stall and bi banner at Pride, London tomorrow and I really wish those attending all the best. It is absolutely essential that bi people are properly visible and there is even an international campaign about it.

Moving on up
Thanks (in a large part) to social media, there seems to be a lot more of a bisexual community than there was back in 2006, in the UK and elsewhere. Twitter and Facebook have put loads of people in touch with each other, and not just virtually. Ideas spin around the world soon as anything.

Also, there are many more bi bloggers than there were in 2006 when I couldn’t find any British ones at all. It’s very hard to keep blogging in the long term and many have opened and closed. But thanks to the Bi Bloggers aggregator site, organised by the ever-efficient Jen Yockney, anyone who’s interested in British bi bloggers can see that there’s quite a lot of it about. And of course there are many other bi bloggers around the world (particularly North America). If a bi celebrity comes out, or a prominent queer columnist such as Dan Savage opines on bisexuality, there are plenty of other people who can write about it. There are other aspects of bisexuality that people don’t write about, though, and when I write here in the future that’s what I’ll be covering.

Anyway, as anyone who knows a smidgeon of blogging theory can tell you, less is most definitely more. So happy bisexual birthday and Pride – whether it’s been or still to come where you are – and be happy that things really can and do get better.

Here’s what I wrote in 2006.

Ten Reasons You Need This Bisexual Blog 2010

www.bigfoto.com

This post, originally from September 2006, is by far the most read and commented on thing I have written on this blog - so I thought it was worth a reprint. And what I say about myself in point 10 - still true now. Things just aren't changing quickly enough.


So why do we still need this bisexual blog?

1. Because almost everyone thinks almost everyone is really gay or straight. Or more probably straight or gay. There is no bisexuality.
2. Except among female celebrities, where there may be bisexuality... of a kind.
3. And although there are a lot of sex sites where bisexual people get together, there's nowhere at all dedicated to the discussion of bisexuality. If you have a blog that does just this, for God's sake get in touch and I'll buy you a drink. A big one. What we have to discuss will take a while.
4. In any case, there are hardly any British blogs that discuss sexuality at all. If they do, it's about bloggers' own personal experiences. See post below.
5. The blogs that do talk about sex are from the US. Come on now, fellow Brits. Let's get talking.
6. And whenever bisexuality is mentioned in public, people still curl their lips, as if to say "oh yeah?"
7. So hardly anyone comes out.
8. Making everyone else think that bisexuality doesn't exist; and bi individuals that they are the only one ever.
9. Especially if they are men.
10. In any case, I need to write this blog. I do. Because it bugs the hell out of me that still, in the 21st century, what seems self-evident to me - that many people, men as well as women, desire, or love, or have sex with, men and women - seems so hard to grasp for so many people. I know I'm not the only one who thinks they need to wise up.

Bisexuals at work

Offices of the Metropolitan Life Ins Co, New York, 1896

It’s nearly the end of January, thank the lords, which signals the end of all those media articles about how this is the most miserable day of the year. In the northern hemisphere the days are also slightly longer and lighter than they were a month ago, which makes getting up for work slightly easier.

Ah yes, work.

I had been thinking about posting on this earlier but got waylaid, and this seems like a good time to do it.

Stonewall report
According to a recent report from the British LGBT equality organisation Stonewall, bisexual people experience prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping at work which stops them/us achieving their/our full potential.

The good practice guide, downloadable here, is a practical resource geared at employers who want to enable bisexual employees to make the most of their potential at work. They garnered this information by asking bisexuals what their experiences were, what stopped them doing as well as they might have, and how they felt their workplaces could be improved.

As far as I know, this is the first report on bisexual people at work to be published anywhere, ever, and the fact that Stonewall has produced it is very very welcome.

Stonewall was often criticised for being anti-bi in the past, or for saying lesbian, gay and bisexual when they were simply incorporating B into the L and G, and this is report obviously step in the right direction.

So what does it say? That bi people have experiences and challenges which are not the same as lesbians and gay men. They/we encounter prejudices and stereotypes not met by lesbians or gay men In particular, the support networks of the latter often excluding us. That there is a lack of awareness of bi issues, and that bi people’s sexuality is often dismissed. As one woman says:

Bisexuality is something that you can still poke fun at, partly because people don’t think it’s as serious as homosexuality.

There’s more but you get the drift – it’s the usual panoply of spite, insecurity and confusion directed against us.

Out at work
The report considers the extent to which bi people feel able to be out at work and not many are.

As far as my own experience is concerned, anyone I have worked with consistently since the late 1980s has known I was bi. Personally think it important to be out anywhere. To me, being out is not about talking about your sex life; it’s not even talking about your romantic/sexual/dating experiences necessarily – it’s being able to be honest where relevant. For instance, when I discuss “girlfriends”, people know I’m not talking about female companions with whom I drink cocktails and moan about useless men.

However, despite this I have never met another out bi at work. Ever. The nearest I got was when I exchanged emails with one woman who outed herself to me - with the request that I kept this information to myself.

I have, though, worked with some lesbians and quite a few gay men. One of the latter (an arrogant-shit type editor of mine) was absolutely convinced that bisexuality didn’t exist because he “didn’t know any and he had met thousands of people”. My own experience of interviewing hundreds of people and meeting many more was, of course, irrelevant.

However things are changing in some quarters: when I left my job recently and I filled in an exit form, the first box to tick in the sexual orientation section of the monitoring box was “bisexual”. I felt a strange mixture of pride and being almost sorry that I was going.

And in
While I am a big fan of being out when possible, as for so many people it really isn’t possible, and I believe in bisexual visibility helping all of us, it’s not necessarily a good idea to be out all the time in all circumstances.

In recent years, I have been lucky enough to travel a fair bit for work – often to countries where homosexuality is at least frowned upon, and often illegal. Clearly being out there would have been wrong/insensitive/foolish/dangerous for the people I was with.

But this has often made me feel awkward as I did think that I am hiding, that a significant part of me – not just in the sense of who I choose to have relationships with, but in terms of my history, politics, and a substantial part of my “work” - was hidden and they would feel cheated in some sense if they had found out.

I feel a bit similar in not having a religion, travelling in places where faith is extremely important ... but that leads more to reactions of pity and bafflement, rather than disgust.

Anyway, when you are travelling to a developing country as a journalist, it really isn't about you.

Everyone has to weigh up the extent to which they can face the discrimination/endless explaining they may have to do if they are out as bi. But ultimately hiding significant parts of yourself, or pretending to be something you’re not, is not going to help you be happy or productive at work – or anywhere else.

Bisexual woman to be deported to Nigeria

Gay people who have sought asylum in the UK because of their sexuality (most recently this young Iranian man whose lover was murdered by the state) often have to fight really hard to convince the authorities of their need for sanctuary. Thank God he was eventually allowed to stay; often they are sent back to – at the very least – danger.

Jane Okojie’s case in Canada – as reported below on the queer Canadian website Xtra – is the first time I have heard of a bisexual person seeking asylum. Perhaps it will make those people who think bisexuality is a doddle think again. Sadly, in the UK at least, even imminent risk of death doesn't always mean you are safe.

Time is running out for a bisexual woman who has been denied refugee status in Canada. Jane Okojie is scheduled to be deported to Nigeria on Thu, Jul 10 where she says she and her two children will face persecution because of her bisexuality.

"I don't know what to do," says Okojie. "I am more afraid for my children than for myself. There are so many things going on in my head, I cannot think properly."

"She's very scared," says Nastaran Roushan of the immigrant and refugee rights group No One Is Illegal, which is holding a rally in support of Okojie on Tue, Jul 8 at 11am in front of the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Toronto, 50 St Clair Ave E). "She fears for her life. If she goes back with her children, she has no one there. Her family has shunned her because she is bisexual. She doesn't have any money and nowhere to go. If she's arrested [her children] will be without a mother. They'll already face extreme discrimination because they were both born out of wedlock, and in fact, Samuel has already endured a lot of harassment while growing up there."

A victim of sexual violence and domestic abuse in her home country, Okojie says she fled Nigeria after being beaten by locals in her village and detained in prison after it was discovered she was bisexual.

"In Nigeria things are very bad for lesbians and gay people," says Okojie. "If you are a bisexual or lesbian or gay you can be stoned to death and you can be sentenced to prison for many many years. The government doesn't care."

There’s more here:

Good luck Jane. Nigeria sounds a tough place to be queer. Will someone let me know how she has got on?

Women not-loving women

Someone commented somewhere on this blog that one of the things they liked about it was that I wasn’t a “cheerleader” for bisexuality. True. I’m not really a cheerleadery type of person – sceptic, I think is about right, although common sense, or down to earth probably covers it. Some people, including me, are bi. Here are a few things we might find important / interesting / relevant, and here are some other ways in which people aren't giving us our due. And that's about it.

However, I wish, I wish, I wish, that so much of the writing on bisex I am sent through my Google Alerts wasn’t from young bi women getting a tough deal from lesbians. It makes me wonder what has changed since the 80s. Well, obviously, a lot has changed but it seems not enough.

These days I get no personal flack at all from lesbians, but then I am 51 and very much out. I have been bi for so long that no one is going to tell me I can’t be, or that I’m really a lesbian, or that anything I do is for the benefit of men. I'd probably burst out laughing. Any argument they throw at me, I can throw back at them. But anyway, any new lesbians I meet are usually interested, rather than hostile. Of course, that wasn't always the case, and I have had my fair share of blanking / looks of disgust / losing friends / not getting lovers / horrible comments as I hear about now.

(Just to make things clear, I know that lesbians do get a raw deal in society at large. What's more, if I were (and when I have been) after a committed relationship with a woman I would be really unhappy if she were to treat it as something trivial. But what about taking people as you find them? Not judging them before you even meet? Imagining that it might be possible for lesbians to treat bi women badly as well as the other way round?)

For myself, I would go along with a woman I interviewed once who said: "Why on earth would I be interested in them, if they aren't interested in me?" Dr Sue says best leave anti-bi lesbians to their own devices when it comes to being friends/lovers, and find some nice bi women instead.

These days if I get any bad responses they are from heterosexuals (although not a lot of them really – most I meet are nice!). And it is those respectable, polite, middle-class people whose look of disgust and response of silence gives away their real feelings.

It's heterosexual society, not individual lesbians, who have power over bi women. Individual lesbians can make your life miserable, sure, but they can't take away your kids.

Divide and rule

A landmark report by Stonewall was in the Guardian newspaper, (including online) and quite possibly other serious UK papers yesterday. It’s a depressing report, concluding that most lesbians and gay men expect to experience homophobia in all/most aspects of their daily lives.

For the majority of my readers who don’t live in the UK, Stonewall is a “professional lobbying group” which “put the case for equality on the mainstream political agenda by winning support within all the main political parties”.

Now, what I have to say in the following post is in no way to lessen the fact that this report is important, or that lesbians and gay men have a tough time. They do. The idea, for instance, that gay teenagers (and those who aren’t gay at all but are “different”, or don’t fit in to gender stereotypes) suffer more homophobia (much more, it seems) than they used to, is frankly terrible. That we are all (yes, bi people too) meant to sit back and take random homophobic comments from all and sundry. It ought to be enough to make queer people want to act. Do something like, oh I don’t know, join Stonewall…

That notwithstanding, the attitude Stonewall seems to have drives me up the wall. As a campaigning organisation, it says it promotes equality and justice for Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals. Huh. If they have ever done anything for bi people, except when they couldn’t avoid it because of our same-sex behaviour, I’ll be mighty surprised.


The mystery of the vanishing bisexual
Everything this report says about lesbians and gay men is true for bisexuals too. And, as they apparently asked 1,658 lesbians, gay men AND BISEXUALS then surely some of their findings must apply to bi people too. Except that we don’t know. The word bisexual only appears three times in this report (ie “The last five years have seen a catalogue of legal changes benefiting lesbian, gay and bisexual people”; “In 2007 Stonewall commissioned YouGov to survey a sample of 1,658 lesbian, gay and bisexual people across Britain.” Plus once in the conclusion in a similar fashion.) Elsewhere, we are noticeably absent. For instance: one in five lesbian and gay people expect to be treated worse by police than a heterosexual…. Nine in ten would expect to face barriers to becoming foster parents because they are lesbian or gay. Etc.

Now, if they had separated out the bisexual responses, or put bi responses in with the lesbian and gay ones, fair enough. But they didn’t. “Bisexual” is simply a word here, put in as a sop to us, a token that means absolutely nothing. Really, they mean lesbian and gay, and people who are having same-sex at the moment who they count as really lesbian or gay.

Do they not realise that, if a doctor, MP, schoolchild, panel of foster-parent approvers, etc etc etc knows someone is bisexual they very probably think a) they are lying to us/or themselves and are really gay; b) they are oversexed and highly promiscuous, therefore dangerous to society and children in particular. Therefore, bisexuals are considered at least as bad as someone who is in a committed same-sex relationship and quite possibly very much worse.

For myself, I remember going to the doctor and being grilled about why I didn’t need any contraception, didn’t I want a boyfriend… etc. Pretty much the same as a lesbian would be grilled I suppose – but I wasn’t one. I imagine (probably correctly) that if I said I was bisexual they would have been even keener that I take a contraceptive pill!

Mind survey
I wonder if the people who wrote up this research have ever read the Mind survey that shows bi people having worse mental health than lesbians, gay men, or certainly heterosexuals? That they were extremely unlikely to tell health care providers they were bisexual, had little support from friends and family, were poorer and so on. I wrote about it on this post.

This survey took place in Britain about British attitudes, but I think much of it is likely to be true for you too, wherever in the world you live.

Cool kids

I’ve been a bit absent from this blog, as you might have spotted, due to a serious onset of brain fog. You know – no concentration, no thoughts worth thinking, a general d’uh-ness.

Still, today a gentle breeze of positivity and cheer has whisked the clouds away. I’m going to Brighton (the English Brighton, not the New York beach) tonight to see my son graduate from university. A sense of pride is in order!

But anyway, back to bisexuality and I started thinking about telling your kids you are bisexual.

It was easy for me. In 1993, when Women and Bisexuality was published, A was eight. He was very proud of my writing and was inclined to tell people when I had a book coming out. I knew that he had to be protected from other people’s negativity, so I told him very clearly that I could love men, or love women, and that many people didn’t like that. (I mentioned a few who might object). I told him that I had written a book about it, and he should be careful about telling people. He said, very matter-of-factly, “Well Mum, you know what they say: each one to their own”.
Of course, he spent a lot of his childhood, from the age of 0 upwards, hanging out with a big old bunch of queers, but I thought his reaction was terrific. And I still do.

Ms Melancholy, in a recent (and lovely) post, talked about how her own son, of a similar age, asked if two men could get married. When told that, in many places, they couldn’t, his reaction was “that’s not fair”. And it isn’t.

What wasn’t easy for me were other people’s reactions – that I was a promiscuous, bad mother, who was obviously too dazed by my wanton lusts to be able to concentrate on parenting. “He’s going to be so confused,” some said. I mean, it wasn’t as if these people really knew me at all – they just heard the word “bisexual” and their brains lit up. Or switched off, perhaps. I know that these same people are baffled by the charming and generally together man that he has become.

Ironically, of course, while my son knew, in theory, that I could “love men, or love women”, in practice, I hardly dated anyone when he was little and on the rare occasions when I did it was when he was staying overnight with other family members. When I started seeing the man who is now my partner, A was 12 and they didn’t meet until I knew our relationship was a serious one. (Although we had been friends for a long while… but that’s another story.)

So much for the revolving door theory – that I would have so many lovers coming in and out of my life that A wouldn’t know if he was coming or going. In reality, after I split up with A’s father, it was The Wilderness Years for me.

What about you?
In general, other bi people with kids have three ways of handling it. A) “They don’t need to know”. This is usually from people who have a long-term partner/spouse, and see their bisexuality as something purely sexual. B) “I’d like to tell them but I’m afraid of the consequences” or C)“Of course they have to know, how could they not”.
Because so many people think that bisexuality is necessarily temporary, a phase, something that will go away when you “settle down”, nothing of any importance, how precisely to manage coming out to your children is not something that is discussed.
I have been lucky; some people have found their children’s reactions have not been what they hoped. But if they have always known bi / progressive / queer / unconventional people, it’s probably a lot easier.

Sticking on some more labels

To carry on from where I left off last week...

“Why," asks my correspondent "is the fact that the gender one is attracted to of such importance in our conceptions of sex and not, say, the fact that we have such a conception in the first place?”

Indeed. And in a different kind of world it wouldn’t have anything like such importance. At the moment, though, for society at large, the biological sex of your sexual partners is by far the most important thing. Not whether you only like people who are older or younger (unless this is by many years); a difference race to you or the same; always blondes or never blondes; short or tall; kind or cruel. All these are seen as behaviour choices, rather than as saying something profound. They are things that can be changed not innate. Sexual orientation, on the other hand, is meant to be innate – although I personally believe it is far more complicated than that.

And as you say, there is certainly no concern over whether I have a partner I never have sex with, always dump them after six months, want sex three times a day, don’t ever really want sex with anyone, like it swinging from the chandeliers or standing on my head. Etc.

To my mind, that’s because the whole way society is organised is predicated on straight good/gay bad. Bisexuality, or in anyway refusing to accept that dichotomous view of sexuality, blurs the boundaries too much. Straight men in particular need to know that the man they are dealing with is definitely straight or definitely gay in order that they know how to deal with him. In addition, the appearance of monogamy is important to the maintenance of the nuclear family. But it’s only an appearance. For probably most people of every sexuality, at least in 2007, long-term monogamy is a goal that they can never quite attain. Bisexuality throws that into question, even if the individuals concerned are 150% faithful.

To those involved though, as distinct from the concerns of mainstream society, other sorts of sexual identities can be at least as compelling. I’m thinking here of people I’ve interviewed and who I have found through predominantly bisexual forums. It seems to become an identity if they feel it is something they are oppressed over and which is fundamental to their sense of self. For instance, to my surprise actually, many of them identified as poly at least as much as they identified as bi. Polyamory – loving more than one person – is increasingly something its adherents are public and vocal about. To me personally, relationships are “poly” rather than people are “poly”. It is me, on the other hand, rather than my relationships, that is bisexual.

Sticking a label on it

I was inspired to write this particular post by an email from another reader, and it's all about identity.

Is it, he asks, that "sexual identity is at the forefront of what it means to have an identity at all". Yes and no. For me personally, regarding my own identity, that's true. Identifying as bisexual is very important to me because it is so very invisible/misunderstood/stereotyped and so I have a vested interest in putting the record straight. But having a sexual identity is absolutely irrelevant to many/most people – as long as they are either completely het or are so casually bi that their same-sex behaviour can be written off as a bit of drunken fumbling that says nothing about them.

Then of course there is the philosophical issue of what actually "identity" means. In the way we use it today, it’s generally speaking about oppression. Another identity that used to be very important to me – "mother" – is not, now that my son is an adult and not in need of my day-to-day care. I am not oppressed as the mother of a 23-year-old! Being the mother of a 3 or 13 year old is an entirely different matter. "Mother" as an identity has changed into “mother” purely as describing a relationship.

In many ways, of course, the whole issue of identity as we see it at all is very historically, geographically and culturally specific. As far as I can tell, most people, most of the time, see and saw themselves as identifying with a tribe, a family, a group, a class – differentiating themselves from people who weren’t part of that group.

Identity is about differentiating yourself from those around you and this applies to all sorts of identity. Therefore I don't need to identify as bisexual when I am in, say, a bi conference. But when everyone assumes I am straight (or at times in the past when they I assumed I was a lesbian) I need to speak the truth about myself. Similarly, if I am abroad I will say I am British whereas here no one would think I was anything else. But I might say I was a Londoner if I was in Scotland, or indeed that I am half-Welsh if the subject comes up.

In the USA, compared to all other countries, identity in general is spectacularly important. As anyone observing that culture knows, people are always hyphenated (Italian-American, Irish-American, African-American and so forth) in a way I don’t think happens anywhere else. Perhaps this is partly why sexual identity is so important there too (apart from the fact that great swaths of the country express levels of homophobia and fundamentalist moral fervour that would only be laughed at in the UK, of course!)

I have rather belatedly been reading Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs. Among many other very interesting things she talks about the way sexual identity has changed there. “Lesbian” for instance used to be a political label, a rallying cry, whereas now, she says, identity has become a “behaviour-descriptor”. It describes what you do, not what you think or feel. Many women now say things like: “I’m a butch top” etc. While that might help them get the sort of sex they want, it doesn’t really do much for anybody’s liberation.


More on this in the next post...

International day against homophobia

Apparently it's international day against homophobia today (17th May). God knows, the world needs it - and you can find out more from the link in the title of this post.

From Amnesty International, for instance, whose LGBT mailing list I am on, I give you this information about Poland:

Pride Marches
"On Saturday 16 November 2006 the Equality March took place in Poznañ, where about 450 people went out on the street to celebrate the International Day of Tolerance. The March was guarded by around 500 policemen with shields, helmets and dogs. There were about 150 counter-demonstrators who chanted anti-LGBT slogans and the police detained one of them. There were no serious incidents due to the police presence. The next marches will be the March of Tolerance which will take place in Krakow on 21 April 2007 and the Warsaw Equality Parade on 19 May 2007.
Homophobic language
Political figures, including government officials, responsible for public statements such as 'If deviants begin to demonstrate, they should be hit with batons.' and 'LGBT organizations are sending transsexuals to kindergartens and asking children to change their sex' have continued to use openly homophobic language. On 20 February 2007, while on a three-day state visit to Ireland, President Lech Kaczyñski attacked what he called “the homosexual culture” and suggested that widespread homosexuality would lead to the disappearance of the human race. Speaking at a Forum of Europe meeting in Dublin Castle, Mr Kaczyñski said: 'If that kind of approach to sexual life were to be promoted on a grand scale, the human race would disappear”. He also stood by his decision to ban a gay rights march in Warsaw while mayor of the city in 2004.
Roman Giertych, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, openly expressed his wish to implement a pan-European ban on 'homosexual propaganda' during a meeting of European Ministers of Education in Heidelberg, Germany, on 2 March 2007. 'The propaganda of homosexuality is reaching ever younger children' Giertych said in the speech released to the Polish media on 3 March. He also continued to promote his controversial proposal to include a ban on rights for homosexuals in any possible future European constitution while the Polish goverment continues to press for references to 'god'."

Shall I put in some witty comments here? No - I shall let this antedilevian twaddle speak for itself.

And that's just Poland. There's some 191 other countries in the world and in at least half a dozen of them, sex really can = death.

Why Michael Bailey is still so very wrong

Yep, it had to come sooner or later – my angry launch into some of the work done by Professor Michael J Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern university, USA. You know, that research heralded in the New York Times with the headline "Gay, Straight or Lying". The research that allegedly showed that true male bisexuality doesn't exist. That men either fancied men, or women, but not both, even if they said they were bisexual. I know that this research came out in 2005, but I wasn't blogging then. I know, too, that the best response to a lot of this twaddle is simply to ignore it and hope it fades away, but unfortunately this research hasn't. Indeed, a commenter on my blog has cited it within the past month.

Where the blood flows
Michael Bailey and his researchers measured "genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women". Apparently, even those men who identified as bi (although it's more complicated than that, see below) were only – or near as dammit – attracted to one sex or the other, usually men. They assessed this genital arousal using a plethysmograph – which measures blood flow to the penis and is apparently not admissable as evidence in US courts (although the mind boggles as to what it would be needed for).

So, why does this research have more holes in it than a leaky sieve:
* He used a tiny number of men – 104, of whom only 33 identified as bi. Only 22 of the 33 whom had "sufficient genital arousal for analyses"
* Although it's hard to figure out exactly what happened – without reading the extensive report - it seems that their self-identity wasn't used after the recruitment process. Instead, the researchers rated men as gay, straight or bi according to answers they gave to questions about their sexual desires
* Not everyone, even male everyones, is turned on by porn, particularly not in lab conditions. A third of all his research subjects (however they identified) were not aroused at all. So does that mean they are really asexual? Excuse me while I roll my eyes. What about the fact that (many? some?) lesbians like gay men's porn? What would that make them in his eyes? Or bi porn for that matter. And some people don't like some sorts of porn/some scenarios / some physical types, all of which might turn them off. Apparently, the bi men's subjective response – whether they thought they were turned on – did tally with their stated orientation. There is far more to sexuality, sexual identity, orientation and desire than simply physiological response. Surely this is common sense. Not in this study, however.
* An important element of sexuality is emotion, which isn't even alluded to here. What about all those men who are strongly sexually interested in men, but only fall in love with women?
* "I'm not denying that bisexual behavior exists," quoth The Man "but I am saying that in men there's no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation." Erm, why? Seems like a leap over a huge great gulf to me. I would have thought that the differences in number between men saying they were bi and their penises saying something else precisely showed that arousal did not equal orientation. If you even buy that measuring blood flow to the penis really tells you anything useful.

Proof of what, exactly?
However, this flawed research is still currently cited and re-cited as "proof" that bi men don't exist. It's so popular because it says what people want it to say. Huge swaths of society seem to have a vested interest in implying that no men are really bisexual and all women are. Society (specifically, but not exclusively, straight men) is frightened of bi men – who are a bit too much like them - but they can push gay men over to one side and think of them as "other". They can even allow them a few rights now and then.
On the other hand, the daft idea that women are much more likely to be bisexual - to be specific, have "bisexual arousal patterns" - was allegedly demonstrated by the same team of researchers. Not in my experience, they don't, unless of course I have come across the world's largest collection of biphobic prudes.
Of course, Bailey doesn't even attempt to address the social factors making bi men differ from bi women. It is very much harder (in the West, in 2007, although not in other times or places) to be a bi man than to be a bi woman. It's also self-fulfilling: if you are a young man told you can't be bi because all bi men are really gay, chances are you will go along with that. If you are a young woman told all women are bi, you might well think your affectionate responses to your female friends should be more sexual than they are. Simple result: more women than men say they are bi.

What the papers say
While the mainstream press gave the original research a lot of favourable press coverage when it was published, the queer press was more – and sometimes highly – sceptical. It was comprehensively trounced on this blog post. In fact, this blogger has plenty of other information about why Bailey and his research shouldn't be trusted (his appalling work on transsexuals, to start with), along with some great comments. He also links to this fact sheet from the Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation which says a lot of what I have covered in this post, but better and with footnotes.
Ron Jackson Suresha, who co-edited Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way, writes here about some of the political reasons why the media likes anti-bi research, and ignores pro-bi information. And Mark Simpson wrote a brilliant – and funny - dissection of this research on his blog back in April. It's a long post, but it shows that – in his experience as a gay man sleeping with bi men – that there are a lot of men who will enthusiastically sleep with other men without having the remotest interest in making it a full-time job.

You can't have one without the other...?

Love and
It's a special anniversary in the UK today - exactly a year since the Civil Partnership Act came into force, and lesbian and gay couples could get hitched. Lots of them have, too - 15,672 up till the end of September. Many congratulations to those - like Elton John and David Furnish - whose first anniversary it is today.
I think it's fair to say that the move has been wholly popular. No mainstream political party has uttered so much as a squeak of disapproval in recent years. When Elton John and David Furnish got married, even the notoriously homophobic Sun newspaper was celebratory in its reports and the streets of Windsor were thronged with people wanting to wish them well.
Even the gay couple in the Archers (an extremely popular BBC radio soap set in a middle-England farming community) - Ian and Adam - got married without a huge amount of disapproval. Their cross and annoying fathers came round, sort of, and the only person who expressed overt homophobia was given short shrift.
The idea seems to be that to not allow stable gay couples equal rights in terms of inheritance tax, pension rights, next-of-kin arrangements and so forth is against human rights. Which it is.
Nevertheless, the media is looking for the downside, in particular gay couples who are now getting divorced. Darryl Bullock and Mark Godfrey, one of the first couples to get hitched last year, have split up but are delaying their divorce, not wanting to go down in history for being the first to do so.

Marriage
But civil partnership isn't exactly the same as marriage, something that's both good (the history of women being owned by men, for instance) and bad (not the same symbolism or gravitas). One of the main reasons for not calling them "weddings" or "marriage" is to appease people or institutions whose religion tells them that marriage is between a man and a woman only - and mainly for the purpose of having children.
There is also a whole rubbish-heap full of nefarious doings in the notion of "marriage". The historic idea of a woman being owned by one man (her father) and passed to another (her husband) - which is still overt in many parts of the world and persists everywhere in the way that most women change their names. The idea of penetrative sex defining marriage: you have to have sex or the marriage can be annulled. I don't know if that's true everywhere, but certainly in the UK it is. You must not have sex with anyone else and you can divorce on the grounds of adultery. Presumably all that's to do with procreation and the need to know who is the father of a particular child. Then there's also the symbolism of two complementary (male and female) beings becoming one - the unit, the couple, headed by him. And Him - God. In civil partnerships, whether or not you are actually having sex is irrelevant.

Love and marriage
The UK is by no means alone in legally recognising some kind of gay marriage or partnership: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa (the first being celebrated on 1st December this year) all have same-sex marriage. In many places around the world - mainly Europe, but also parts of Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and others - at least some form of civil union is permitted.
In the US - from where I am frequently sent petitions to sign and organisations to join on this subject - the situation is totally different. There, 26 states have constitutional amendments barring the recognition of same-sex marriages; by contrast, four have legal unions that sound similar to civil partnerships; three recognise unions offering some rights. Only Massachusetts currently recognises gay marriage.
The majority of readers of this blog are Stateside themselves, and I extend my good wishes to them. I don't need to tell them that they have a huge fight on their hands. As an American ex-pat friend said to me recently, "Anyone who lives in the US and doesn't see the profound level of homophobia there is in a state of deep denial". And he used to live in California!
It also seems pertinent to me that the US has higher rates of heterosexual marriage than do most countries in Europe - so not being allowed it marginalises gay people even further.


Go together like a horse and carriage
Personally, I am not married and never have been, although my current relationship - with a man - is now 11.5 years and counting. The idea of changing my name to Mrs Husband and being a subservient appendage used to make me feel faint; there was also the idea that you were selling out, giving in to convention. Not to mention building a great big dividing line between you on one side and the queers on the other. I don't feel either of these so much now, but I'm still not rushing to any register office. I don't think I would if my partner was female, either.
My gay friends in general seem to agree with me; none has tied the knot yet. Like me, they are likely to think that the legal changes in the UK are more to do with the government's agenda: everyone has to be part of Labour's "hard-working families" - gay people as much as anyone. There is plenty of money being made out of "pink weddings" too. Just beware if you are poor (cuts in benefits for same-sex couples to bring them in line with straight ones) or you don't want to couple up with someone. People who don't want stable monogamous relationships, or want to partner with more than one person, or don't have a sexual partner at all, are simply left out. Of course, this has a big impact on those very many bisexuals who believe in polyamory: what are they do to? Then, there is the - to me - very compelling idea that this type of legal partnership should not be confined to people who are in romantic couples. What about two friends, or two siblings? Why shouldn't they gain those legal and financial rights?
Still, whichever way you look at it, having the possibility of civil partnership is a huge, step-change type improvement to not having it.
I will be going to my first civil partnership celebration in January, for a couple who have been together for 25 years. Their stated reasons for doing it are practical, rather than romantic, although I think that there is something very romantic about loving someone for such a long time. It seems so unlikely, so against the odds. But maybe I am just an old cynic.
Many gay people don't agree though: they want to have a ceremony just like their straight counterparts. And that is truly progressive, I think: to see that lesbians and gay men, just like heterosexuals, can be radical, or conventional; or good, bad, indifferent; rich or poor; interesting or ordinary. That actually, sexuality should have nothing to do with whether anyone is accepted into society or not. We have taken a few steps here. But there are very many still to go.

Ages of consent

Something that I am rather uncomfortable about has happened recently. A 16-year-old boy posted on bisexual.com (which has a very explicit over-18s only policy). He posted there asking for people to read his blog as he felt no one was reading it. At the same time, he also said that he knew he'd probably be thrown out for being too young.
Today, though, his post on bisexual.com has completely disappeared. No clue that he ever wrote it.
I caught the blog address before it went, and logged on... His blog is sexually unexplicit, talks about how he feels, his yearnings towards a boy and his ex-girlfriend, and how his father reacted when he said he was bi. It is also very articulate, far more so than most blogs, but perhaps that's down to the fact that he goes to a private school.
What are teenagers meant to do? He needs support, just like people two years older than him do. But they can get it. Of course, young people do need protecting. But they are also sentient beings, raging with hormones, obsessed with sex and love. Dizzy - the boy concerned - is actually full of yearning, rather than "up for it". He hasn't even had sex yet, although intellectually he is certainly mature.
If you are under 18 and want to talk to someone who's not your friend (or presumably those old chestnuts - teachers, priests, parents of your friends) your sexuality has to be mediated by youth workers, part of whose remit is, presumably, to stop you "doing it". Also, I suppose, to protect you from predatory adults. At 17 years and 364 days, young people are seen as innocent flowers who need protecting from dirty-minded adults. But one day later, they can join swinging and hard core porn sites. How is that not daft?

Coming out at 16
I came out to myself- and no one else - when I was 16, so I feel for him. At that time, where I lived anyway, there was no gay scene, no queer people, no feminist movement that might have offered support. But no one thought that 16-year-olds were completely incapable of judging things for themselves either. If I had wanted to write about sex, anonymously or otherwise, being 16 wouldn't have been a problem. The world at large didn't think that 16-year-olds were helpless. I could have gone to adult gay or feminist groups and no one would have stopped me. They would now. And, certainly in the UK, people are infants for longer and longer periods, reliant on their parents for money, support and housing in ways they weren't in the recent past.

But at the same time, bisexual.com have done the only thing they can and banned him - for their protection, as much as his. According to the United Nations, people are children until they are 18, which seems unneccessarily patronising to me but I am sure has its uses in terms of stopping young people being forced into marriage, the army and so on.
Sexual sites of any and every sort, everywhere in the world, have 18 as their lower age limit. I imagine that's because no countries have a heterosexual consent limit higher than that (although homosexual activity may be illegal, or you may have to be married for sex to be legal).
Investigating, I see that the highest age of consent for gay and lesbian sex is South Africa at 19. I wonder what their thinking is? As far as I can tell, all European countries have lower limits: Austria, 14; Denmark, 15; France 15; Germany 14/16; Greece 15/17; UK 16 etc The info is here.
However, I feel that their response Teens, Sex and the Law is very patronising.

But it's no-one else's business. Why do we have these laws?
Although many young people are mature enough to know how to deal with it if someone tries to get them to have sex, some teens are not grown up enough to know what to do. Age of consent laws are there to stop young people from being exploited by adults.

Yes, but... for instance, why would someone be considered not old enough to fight against that exploitation at 15 in the US, but would be in Denmark? What about those differing ages of consent for straight and gay sex? And, while of course people should categorically not be exploited, what about those many people who aren't being? The answer is they will carry on ignoring the law just as people have always done and do more and more these days.
And, of course, one 16 year old can be so much more mature than another. My own son at 16, for instance, had his feet firmly on the ground. He did all the teenage stuff - exactly what is none of your business! - but he always came home, did his homework, and went to school on time. At 22 he is a fine young man.

But...
Nevertheless, I feel uncomfortable reading Dizzy's blog in a way that I probably wouldn't have done 10 years ago. There is so much - frankly - hysteria about both young people having sex and predatory sex on the internet. Much of what I see about teenagers on the internet in the press is about protecting them from the dangers. I do think that Dizzy has done one thing wrong, though: called his blog Just another British Schoolboy. It's the schoolboy bit I find tricky; that's the bit that might attract weirdos. I think I would probably have been unhappy about my 16 year-old son doing this.
In fact, a lingering sense of unease prevents me linking to his blog. It's not hard to find though. But I do long for an adult discussion on this - one that involves people who are not necessarily legally adults yet.

Celebrate bisexuality day

Celebration time, come on!







Today, 23rd September, is Celebrate Bisexuality Day. From its inception in 1999, it's a day for bisexuals to get together and feel really bloody proud. The link above explains more.

This year, according to the Bi Resource Center in Boston, events are taking place in Toronto, south Florida, Manchester, Boston, and Sydney. And in Sweden, where you can enjoy a whole entire conference. At least, with less than a teaspoonsworth of Swedish, that's what I gather.

So what would I choose? Maybe the Biversity Fur, Fins, Feathers and Flesh dance party in Sydney. That's a city where bisexuals party hard - and what a great place to do it.

Tags bisexual+politics

With his tongue down my throat

Or: 57 varieties of bisexual
1. men who don't kiss men








Picture: Juergen Teller, for Marc Jacobs

There's a very interesting discussion going on at the moment in the forums at bisexual.com. A man is asking why men do (or don't)like kissing as he has found that many gay men assume bi men won't do it. Most of the men on the forum say they do like kissing men, consider it essential to enjoying sex. But some don't like it at all. They don't want to kiss anyone (part from their most significant female other), or they don't want to kiss men.
I have found this very interesting myself, although it was not something I thought about at all before I did research into male bisexuality for this new book. It had never occurred to me that men wouldn't want to kiss each other. But then I'm a woman.
Now please, politically conscious bis, don't be cross with me for looking at this. I know it could be construed as stereotypical, y'know, bi men who might be just looking for sex and not relationships or community. Behavioural bisexuals as HIV prevention workers did or do call them. But they do exist. You know and I know they do. So can we not just take a calm look at what might be going on?
Right then - when it comes to boy on boy action, why do some men keep their mouths below the belt?
Here's a much-edited extract of the relevant section of my book, The Truth about Bisexuality, to be published at some time or other. Really.

"Many men report a great deal of ambivalence about their bisexuality - far more than do women. They seem to want to keep men at a distance, and keep the sex distant too - no kissing, no stroking, no sensuality - simply animalistic.
Here's Jeff:

I am only attracted to men in terms of their genitals, their butts and the unique feeling of pleasure that a penis can give me in my ass.
I never even stare at men on the street like I do with women, but I do sneak looks at naked men in the gym. I guess the clothes must be off. Plus, I have to have chemistry with the right guy. Most men turn me off. I would never kiss a man. Jeff, 42

Some men need a bit of a nudge to understand what's going on. For instance, Steve said,

Ask me to kiss a man I would run a mile. Figure that out if you can.

When I asked him to elaborate, he said:

It's too intimate. I don't want to be that close to a guy. Steve M, 45

So is it all about intimacy, then, closeness? Or rather rejecting it?
As one MTF transsexual (who describes herself as a "she-male", and still lives part of the time as a man) said:

I do not have ANY emotional relationships with men. It's only sex. I cannot imagine even having breakfast with a male partner. As soon as the passion is gone, I look for my things and start to say "goodbye". Cherry, 49

Some of my male interviewees were very ambivalent about having sex with men. They said they only have sexual contact with other men if the situation is right. They do it, then say they won't do it again because they feel sick, but then they do it again anyway. Several men pointed out to me that there is a gradation from gay men to really bi men to men who will have some kinds of sexual contact with other men contingent on all sorts of things and often deny that they really want to do it. For instance, some male swingers will only have sexual contact with each other when women are there too, and claim that there is no desire behind their actions. Their relationships with men do not include affection; or to be precise, if they involved affection (their friends and brothers, for instance) they did not involve sex.
HIV researchers June Crawford, Susan Kippax and Garrett Prestage, working in Australia, found a big difference between bi men who had some involvement with the gay community and those who hadn't.

Evidence suggests that bisexually active men, particularly those who are separated socially from gay communities, distance themselves emotionally from their male partners.

They quote surveys that show that whereas only 60% of such men kissed their male partners, 89% of out gay men did. They used terms like fooling around, and saw themselves as sexual adventurers, having also often done SM, bondage, voyeurism etc. Their sexual practice with men was not central to their lives or who they were." It comes from this book.
The men on bisexual.com have a vast range of identities, politics and lifestyles. They are out and no-not-never-in-a-million years. They are part of bi groups and aren't. But they do go on a site where you are assumed to be bisexual, discussing things to do with bisexuality. To that extent they aren't in the closet. Whatever they are doing, they are doing it consciously.

Girls gone slightly wild
There is another discussion on that site too. A woman says that a female friend of hers has been kissing and cuddling her in a nightclub and she wonders whether the friend is sexually interested; another respondent says that is just what women do in clubs.
So, there is some interesting gender politics stuff going on here - the perceived difference between bi men and bi women. Women having a snog is perhaps the least bi thing they can do, while remaining titillating: Madonna and Britney with their tongues down each others' throats, for instance. Girls in clubs looking round to see who's watching. They are still as straight as a straight thing, if that's what they want. For straight-identified men, kissing is the most bisexual thing they can do. It implies desire, vulnerability, intent. It threatens their masculinity.
While traditional notions of feminity have been largely abandoned, masculinity has changed much less. While David Beckham and metrosexuality mean that men might seem to be in touch with "their feminine side" it only penetrates as deep as their moisturiser. In particular, the fact that men in general look down on femininity and prize masculinity has not changed at all. This is key to the way many bi men see gay men: they equate "gayness" with a lack of masculinity, and this seems to them to be a direct attack on their sense of self.
As one of my interviewees put it:

In succumbing to bisexuality, men are surrendering their masculinity. There's no surrender of identity for [bisexual] women. Clive, 50

He's right. And God knows, surrendering their masculinity is the last thing many men want to do. Patrick Califia, actually writing about transsexual autobiography here (and who is himself FTM transsexual), puts it succinctly:
Such books, he says, "reinforce the vigilance that even the most macho of men are encouraged to feel, lest their precious manhood be swept away in one unguarded moment of tenderness, grief, femininity, or homosexual passion".
Of course, many bi men snog away with each other, fall in love, are part of the gay community, are bi activists out and proud. There are also women - prostitutes but also swingers - who don't kiss their clients or casual sex partners. Probably they want to keep their distance too. But readers, this post is not about them. There are at least 56 varieties of bisexual left. And Be Warned: eventually, I will be writing about all of them too.
Tags bisexual+men gender+politics

Oh those liberals

Swinging all the way www.bigfoto.com


Or, possibly, oh that writer Tim Hames. To quote from this piece from the Times Online (link above):

"Then there is policy. Strange as it might seem to say, what the Liberal Democrats require is more bisexuality. They have to be able to swing both ways. They need a combination of policy stances that would mean that it was not impossible for them to form an administration with either Labour or the Tories. If they were so situated, then they would have the maximum leverage in any post-election bargaining that might occur and much more of their manifesto would be fully implemented."


Yes, strange to say is about right. This is the party that has been most connected to bisexuality with all that Simon Hughes is-he-isn't-he-can-we-say-the-word-bisexual stuff from back in February. He might have lost that election battle, but at least we had a bit of a discussion on that old bisexual thang.
Still, it is good to have the word "bisexuality" used in a positive way for once, as in being able to see both sides, develop a "both/and" perspective, as many bisexuals have said for years.
But still, "gay" is bad, kiddies, as you will know from the playground.

Thanks to Cat from the Yahoo Bi media group for this link.

Ten reasons you need this bisexual blog

www.bigfoto.com

1. Because almost everyone thinks almost everyone is really gay or straight. Or more probably straight or gay. There is no bisexuality.
2. Except among female celebrities, where there may be bisexuality... of a kind.
3. And although there are a lot of sex sites where bisexual people get together, there's nowhere at all dedicated to the discussion of bisexuality. If you have a blog that does just this, for God's sake get in touch and I'll buy you a drink. A big one. What we have to discuss will take a while.
4. In any case, there are hardly any British blogs that discuss sexuality at all. If they do, it's about bloggers' own personal experiences. See post below.
5. The blogs that do talk about sex are from the US. Come on now, fellow Brits. Let's get talking.
6. And whenever bisexuality is mentioned in public, people still curl their lips, as if to say "oh yeah?"
7. So hardly anyone comes out.
8. Making everyone else think that bisexuality doesn't exist; and bi individuals that they are the only one ever.
9. Especially if they are men.
10. In any case, I need to write this blog. I do. Because it bugs the hell out of me that still, in the 21st century, what seems self-evident to me - that many people, men as well as women, desire, or love, or have sex with, men and women - seems so hard to grasp for so many people. I know I'm not the only one who thinks they need to wise up.

Bisexuals at Europride

Yesterday was Europride in London - and what a day it was. The busiest, most crowded, most popular shopping streets in central London were traffic-free while thousands of queers gathered with their whistles and their all-pink union jacks. Any and every group - from the Fire Brigade, to LGBT Muslims, to Battersea Dogs' Home - sent their delegation to march or wave from a lorry. Temperatures in the lower reaches of "hot", a cloudless blue sky and the faintest of welcome breezes; Soho to Trafalgar Square full of revellers and ralliers, poofs and picnickers, friends and lovers; an atmosphere of genuine celebration absent from the city's Prides since they became a focus for corporate sponsors and boybands. It was truly wonderful. I have never experienced anything like it.
It was also 30 years since my first Pride. A day when a few hundred still-brave stragglers, most of them men according to my memory, faced down the appalled and bemused stares of passersby to wander into the park to hear Tom Robinson singing "Glad to Be Gay". It felt dangerous and exciting, particularly if, like me, you were only 19. Homophobia was rife and completely mainstream: 1976 was not just another century but another country for people wanting same-sex relationships. Poland, perhaps, where good Catholics go on the radio and pontificate happily about finishing off the job Hitler started - exterminating the queers.

Where were the bisexuals?
So where was the bisexual presence at Europride? Well, clearly everywhere... and nowhere much. There were London Bisexual Group and Bicon banners with perhaps 20 people marching behind them (Well, maybe there were more banners, but not that I noticed). There were plenty of groups with the letter B in their names... but whether they have actual bisexual members to merit that B... well, I wonder. I know that many bi people think that groups add the B so they don't need to take bisexuals into consideration in any other way.
It's a paradox that while there is more discussion about bisexuality than ever - even if it's to claim that it doesn’t exist - and more and more women say that they are bi - even if it’s just that trivial "look at me with another woman, boys" stuff –that politically organised bisexuality seems to be at a low ebb. (In the UK, that is; in north America, things seem much more lively). There are some tremendously active individuals out there, and some great mailing lists and forums to join, but shouldn't a city like London have gazillions of bisexuals - all ages, races and opinions - willing to march together? I know they are out there somewhere - I mean they advertise for sex partners often enough - but what is it about the bi community that doesn't appeal? We used to say that people didn’t have "access to information". No doubt that's still true for a few, but I think more are actively rejecting it.

Bi community... or not
When I was researching my not-yet/will-it-ever-be published book on bisexuality, some of the people I interviewed (who all called themselves bisexual in one way or another) were vehemently against the bi community. Some didn't think sexuality was political (and so probably wouldn't march anyway); but others couldn't relate to the gender-queer S/M geek look that many bis take on; some felt the bi community was just a talking shop and they found that boring; some allied themselves with the straight or gay community according to the sex of their partner; yet others thought that gathering with people just on the basis of a shared sexuality was daft - they wanted to make friends on the basis of shared tastes, interests or opinions.
Myself, I do feel a part of it - although my involvement is mainly online these days. I rarely go to groups or conferences any more (been there, done that); few of my friends call themselves bisexual (sometimes in the face of the evidence); and I feel conventional, middle-aged and gender-straight in bi-groups (and certainly not outside them)!
Perhaps it's because the idea of there being a bisexual banner - both literal and metaphorical - under which to gather, is extremely important to me. That's because pride, in the sense of self-esteem, is something that far too many bisexuals still don't have about their sexuality. I do have it - in fact I have it in bucketloads - but I wouldn't have developed it without the bi community. The bi community specifically - not lesbian, gay or queer - which helped me realise that bisexuality is not just possible, but wonderful.
So come on then, let's make the bi presence bigger, bolder and brighter. At Prides up and down the UK... and everywhere else. I have just one question.
How?