A little UK bi history timeline from “Getting Bi in a Gay / Straight World”, which you can get as real live inky bi booklet from BiPhoria
May the 4th be with you!
Good to see this one getting picked back up and recycled for star wars day…
I admit it, I rofl-ed and then had to explain it to my housemate!
:D
The idea for the graphic came out of talking to a friend who plays the Star Wars MMO game online, where you pick to play Jedi or Sith at the start but then can make ‘jedi’ or ‘sith’ type decisions as you go along. I asked what happens if you, say, pick to play Jedi but keep doing Sith things, and was told you are still assumed to be a Jedi, but people get a bit nervous and untrusting around you…
Getting from there to the bi analogy took about 0,0004 seconds :)
BCN, Britain’s best-selling bisexual magazine… April 2013 issue.
We have so few bi mags to choose between… BCN, BiJou, Bi Women, er….
Bisexual People PLEASE Stop Donating your $$’s and Time to Gay Groups that Don’t Have Time or Programs For You! For example, HRC even has a Section and Special Programs for Straight Allies but NONE for Bisexual People.
Since they continually demonstrate that they do not care about you, why should you care about them?
Instead PLEASE consider redirecting your donation of volunteer hours and $$’s to Groups that actually Support you. For example:
- Bi Community News
- Bi Media
- American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB)
- BiNet USA
- Bisexual Resource Center (BRC)
and your own national, regional and local Bisexual Groups.
Even their coming out page about bisexuality starts with a questionable “People who are attracted to both men and women” definition and later says that ” Although some bisexual people do describe themselves as “50-50”” despite the fact that almost no bisexuals describe ourselves that way.
The HRC is a good idea that is stuck in the notion that we need to worry about LG before we do anything for the BT.
It is SO unfortunate not to mention downright puzzling that so many Schools, Universities & Groups (Straight as well as Gay and Lesbian) absolutely insist on making up weird and misleading definitions of Bisexual. This is a thing that they would NEVER do to other groups but they become positively indigent over their right to do this to the Bisexual Community … I’m telling you it’s as if they all have various sorts of creepy sexual fantasies they’ve labeled “bisexual” and we ruin it for them when we stand up and announce “we are here, we are queer and we aren’t just a pretend sexual fetish for you to drool over.”
Is this the problem with the people at HRC? Have the gai-bois who run (most of) the place all been pretending the word “Bisexual” means Blond-headed, Blue-eyed, Straight Acting Toppy Dudes from a their favorite Porn Flick and they REALLY don’t want to know that (some of us) are really kind of effeminate, african-american men who (truth be told) could stand to loose a few pounds? And that others of us are *gasp shock* non-binary female-identified people? And others of us are even *oh the horror* over 30 and not ‘conventionally’ attractive? We’ll probably never know.
But what we DO know is that the Bisexual Community Is Here 4 You in a way they Most Definitively Are Not! So PLEASE everyone Support BISEXUAL GROUPS Instead!HEY EVERYONE. SO THE HRC GIVES NO SHITS ABT BIS EITHER. GOOD STUFF.
yesterday, i attended my first support group and had the longest conversation that i’ve ever had, out loud, with other humans about bisexual identity. i felt unguarded because i didn’t have to worry about someone saying FUCKED UP BIPHOBIC shit to me about what label i use, my sex life, my dating life, or my existence.
(Source: alwaysmovement)
Probably not the final title of Star Wars VII…
On this day, 1994: UK House of Commons lowers the age of consent for sex between men to 18 & legalises anal sex between men and women
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From @bisexualhistory twitter feed, 21 Feb 2013:
https://twitter.com/BisexualHistory/status/304515837732216832
So what would your opinion be on using the term "pansexual" if bisexuality could be that open ended? If that's the case should "pansexual" even be considered a word or its own category?
Anonymous
Pan is to bi as lesbian is to gay woman. People prefer different words for all sorts of reasons, but they are the same concept, there’s no dividing line you can draw between them.
Bisexual isn’t about there being only “two sexes”
Some people get hung up on the ‘bi’ and protest that gender isn’t binary. They claim that identifying as bisexual is tantamount to saying trans people don’t exist, or that you’re not attracted to them, or that you’re only into masculine men and feminine women. However many people using the identity “bisexual” disagree.
Something I seem to be seeing a lot of at the moment is people either insisting that bisexuals are all transphobic because “bi = 2” and we’re only attracted to cis people, or that all bisexuals are attracted to all gender presentations.
I happen to ID as bisexual. I also, broadly speaking, happen to be most sexually attracted to feminine female-ID’d people and masculine male-ID’d people. I am more likely to be sexually attracted to people who fit the gender binary than people who don’t — and because I am a sexual person, sexual attraction plays a key role in the rest of it.
And you know what? I can’t help who I am attracted to. I can’t change the fact that I like those sorts of people any more than I can change the fact that I am more attracted to brunettes, or tall people, or people with blue eyes. I refuse to feel guilty about it any more than a heterosexual person should feel guilty about not being attracted to certain gender presentations.
Then again, I am not saying that all bisexuals are like me. It’s now widely agreed that there are more gender presentations than the traditional male and female, and while I personally am strongly attracted to that gender binary, that doesn’t mean all bisexual identified people are. I suspect there are some bisexuals who are attracted more to trans* people than cis, for example. There will be some who are attracted to all gender presentations roughly equally. There will be some for who gender is merely incidental.
✔ Individuals (whatever their sexual orientation/gender identity) are attracted to whomever they are individually attracted to
✔ The bisexual community, as a class, have since the late 1960’s (this is going on 40+ years now people) have defined themselves as people with the innate capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, spiritual and/or emotional attractions to: (1) those of the same gender as themselves (2) those of different genders/gender presentations from themselves. There may be an individual attraction for one gender/gender presentation which can also be fluid and changeable over time.
✔ individuals who are cisgender are included in the above formal definition
✔ individuals who are not cisgender are included in the above formal definition
✔ people to whom gender is important in their individual attraction (which includes those individuals who are only attracted to cisgender people and/or those to whom gender is in some other way important in their individual attractions) are included in the above formal definition
✔ people to whom gender is of little or no great importance in their individual attraction are included in the above formal definitionI am also not saying I will never be attracted to someone who does not fit the traditional gender binary. Back to the hair analogy, while I may be more attracted to brunettes, that doesn’t stop a pretty blonde catching my eye occasionally.
Once again, I keep seeing far too much evidence of people trying to pigeonhole other people into one extreme or the other, while in reality there is a whole spectrum in between.
DEFINITION OF BISEXUALITY: I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted - romantically and/or sexually - to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree
Now back to the scheduled programme ;)
Again people, do NOT mix up “bisexuals as an entire class of people” and “who you want to date as a individual bisexual person”. These are Different Things.
A gay man may be attracted to Bears or Drag Queens and he’s STILL a gay man; a lesbian may be attracted to a butch or a femme and she is STILL a lesbian; a heterosexual person may be attracted to blonds, brunettes or red-heads and they are STILL considered straight.
Bisexual are not some “special case”. We are also allowed to have all sorts of individual preferences and STILL BE BISEXUAL.
(text on shaded coloured background)
“Seven in 10 lesbians (69 per cent) and gay men (70 per cent) felt they could be open about their sexual orientation in the workplace without fear of discrimination or prejudice.
This contrasts sharply with only around two in 10 (23 per cent) bisexual men and three in 10 (30 per cent) bisexual women who felt the same.”
EHRC research 2009
Link on the page clicks through to a Flickr version of the guide (or if you’re in the UK you can get a physical copy for £1!). It’s been a long time since I’ve read through all of this, but from what I recall it is fairly positive. If I remember rightly, there’s a section combatting biphobic myths.
It’s one of the most popular things on bi outreach stalls at Prides and suchlike.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled today that religious beliefs may not justify opposing the rights of same-sex couples. British laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were upheld.
The Strasbourg court examined four cases brought by Christians, including two who argued their beliefs allowed them to refuse a service to same-sex couples.
In the first case, Lillian Ladele was a civil registrar in London. She was dismissed because she refused officiating at civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples after it became legal in 2005. She claimed she was discriminated because of her faith.
The Court ruled there had been no discrimination, and that British courts—who upheld her dismissal—had struck the right balance between her right to freedom of religion, and same-sex couples’ right not to be discriminated.
(more - http://bimedia.org/2665/european-court-religious-beliefs-are-no-reason-to-oppose-rights-of-same-sex-couples/ )
Validation is probably the single most important factor determining whether an achieved bisexual identity can be positive. Validation can occur from within, but few of us are strong enough to establish and maintain a positive sense of identity alone. Validation from others affirms our feelings and recognizes that our experience of loving is what we say it is… When we cannot validate ourselves and when we are also denied validation by others, we may begin to doubt our experience or feel shame about it.
- Ann Fox (Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, p. 35)
There was no more need for explanations, there were no questions, there really wasn’t a need to talk about our sexualities, we are just the same. And it was the first time in my life that I didn’t have to explain anything anymore.
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Bisexual editor/publisher Neal Boulton talking about one of the most appealing aspects of being married to another bisexual person. (via bisexual-community)
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Definitely one of the upsides of visiting or creating bi spaces, you have more chance of *this*!
About Bisexual Activism is FTW
