50 shades of gay

A fascinating Ted talk arguing that most people are somewhere between completely gay and completely straight. Good to hear the Kinsey idea given some new energy.

Bifuriosity in the Huffington Post

There’s a great article today by Matt Stanley and Lauren Connors in the Huffington Post responding to a recent belittling piece they published about bisexuality. Nice mention for The Bisexuality Report too. Thanks Matt and Lauren!

Bisexuals – its seemingly okay for belittling blogs questioning our identity (or even if we exist) to not only be granted a voice, but to remain largely unchallenged. This fact has been uncomfortably highlighted by Daniel Warner’s recent exercise in hackery, creatively entitled ‘Bisexuality: Is It Fun, Non Committal or Just Plain Greedy?’.

We hope Daniel realises how short this falls from the mark for groundbreaking, or even ‘edgy’ writing. Being bisexuals ourselves, we can assure you that being called ‘greedy’ happens to us with a tedious frequency – imagine, if you will, the number of times a day you might have to read an irritating phrase like ‘float my boat’ or ‘cut the mustard’. Lazy writing aside, we thought we could take this opportunity to explain (for those of you who are ‘confused’ or can’t make up your minds) what bisexuality is and is not. Read more…

Bisexual sports star tops Independent Pink List!

It was great to see Nicola Adams leap right into the number one spot of the Independent on Sunday‘s annual Pink List. A fantastic occasion for bi visibility!

1 (new entry) Nicola Adams

Olympian

Nicola Adams punched her way into the history books this year, becoming the first woman ever to win an Olympic medal in boxing. Since the 30-year-old flyweight from Leeds floored China’s Ren Cancan to win the gold she has become an inspiring role model for young people in Britain and around the world. Rarely seen without the smile that is now emblazoned on billboards and buses around the country, Adams is modest, hard-working and friendly. Everything, in short, that you would hope from a sporting hero. Adams, who is bisexual, persevered with the sport for more than a decade when representing her country — let alone getting an Olympic medal — was not an option for girls. This year, her talent and charm have won over many of the chauvinists who queued up before the Games to say that putting a woman in the ring was “unnatural”. “It’s amazing to be on top of a list of such inspiring and influential people,” Adams said. “Thanks to everyone for their continued support.” Read more…

Bis of Colour Mythbusting

There’s some great mythbusting going on over on Bis of Colour: usefully raising awareness of intersecting prejudices, oppressions and exclusions that impact bisexual people of colour.

BiNet wins google battle

After a campaign by BiNet USA and bisexuals worldwide, Google has removed “bisexual” from its list of banned words.

BiNet USA is pleased to confirm that Google Inc. has unblocked the term “bisexual” from its search algorithm. Now that “bisexual” is allowed, terms such as “bisexual quotes”, “bisexual rights”, and “bisexual parenting” are automatically suggested to Google users.

“It’s not every day one of the biggest companies in the world changes its mind, but we are thankful that Google now sees bisexual people just like everyone else,” said BiNet USA President Faith Cheltenham. “It will take time for bisexual search terms to be ranked as they were before the ban, but now bisexual people and their allies have a fighting chance to be seen, heard, and understood.”

Read more…

Myths about bisexuality

Two great posts on myths about bisexuality:

In the first post, Samantha Joel summarises the scientific research which challenges the common myths that bisexuality doesn’t exist, that bisexuality is just a phase, and that bisexual people are unfaithful to their partners.

Bisexuality myths Debunked by science - Science of Relationships

Bisexuality is the tendency to be sexually attracted to both men and women. This may sound like a superpower to some – double the romantic options means double the romantic odds, right? But in reality, bisexuality can be a bit of an awkward identity to have. Bisexual people are not “straight”, which can make it difficult to feel like a part of the sexual majority. On the other hand, bisexual people can often pass as straight, particularly when they have an opposite-sex partner, which can sometimes make it difficult to feel connected to the LGBT community.

Most importantly, bisexuality tends to be quite misunderstood. Myths and stereotypes about bisexuality abound, some of which even contradict one another. Straight and LGBT people alike can hold these stereotypes, which compounds the difficulties that bisexual people can have fitting into either group. Luckily, an increasing number of researchers have become interested in bisexuality in recent years, and with research, our understanding of bisexuality is improving. Here are three examples of how science has worked to combat the many misconceptions about bisexuality:  Read more…

In the second post, Shiri Eisner asks whether we should be defensively debunking the myths about bisexuality (as so many bisexual community websites do) or whether there is an argument for not busting the myths because many of them are about trying to prove that bisexual folk meet standards of normativity that actually might be worth challenging.

The Myth of Myth-busting – Radical Bi

In a recent blog post, The Suburban Bi dedicated a paragraph to what she referred to as the “obligatory myth-busting post that pretty much every blog on bisexuality provides”. And indeed, it seems near-impossible to encounter any English-language text about bisexuality without seeing these same myths countered in this same way. I thought I would take this opportunity to explore what this myth-busting and these myths mean, politically, and for us as a community.

Quoth The Suburban Bi:

• Existence.Yes – we do.
• Monogamy. Yes – we can.
• Fidelity. Yes – we can. And – we do.
• HIV & AIDS. No – it’s notall our fault.
• Confusion. No – we’re really not.
• Indecision. No – that’s not what fluidity means.
• Greed. Yes, we can have just one piece of cake.
• Pants. Yes – we’re as capable as anyone else of keeping our various bits in them.
• Choice. No – we cannot choose to be straight; we cannot choose to be gay; we did not choose our sexual orientation in some thoughtlessly frivolous moment of rapacious abandon. Who does?

Let’s walk through some of those, shall we? No, we’re not promiscuous. No, we don’t sleep around. No, we’re not infectious. No, we don’t choose to be the way we are (SRSLY, why would anyone choose that?). Yes, we’re normal. No, we don’t threaten your sexual identification. Yes, we are just like you. No, you are not in danger of being like us. No, we don’t threaten your beliefs, your society or your safety. Read more…

Google furthers bi invisibility

There’s a very useful article over on The Huffington Post about Google’s block on the word bisexual. Unlike the words lesbian, gay or trans, Google has blocked bisexual from its auto complete and instant search features. This means that if you type the word into a Google search you don’t see the other words which people have commonly searched for alongside bisexual, and you don’t get an instant sense of the million of web pages related to  bisexuality, bisexual communities and bisexual resources.

This has very real impacts, for example the article mentions one man who searched on Google to find out whether anyone was in his situation (by looking to see whether anyone had searched for bisexual and suicide). Finding nothing he assumed he must be alone.

Well done to BiMedia for noticing the blockage of bisexuality a year ago, and to BiNet USA for picking up on it now.

The president of BiNet USA, Faith Cheltenham, writes a fascinating analysis of this situation, in relation to bisexual invisibility, and calls on Google to change their policy. BiUK certainly support this call, and the research summarised in The Bisexuality Report would suggest that this is exactly the kind of area where we need to increase bisexual visibility.

Frank Ocean

Bimagazine.org piece: Ocean’s of Love Letter: Is one black man loving another man the revolutionary act of the 21st Century?

Bifurious!

Great article by Petra Davis in August DIVA magazine about biphobia:

It seems there’s a lot of anger floating around in bi space at the moment. Recent debates over Jessie J’s sexuality have left many bi women feeling bruised at the claim that her bisexuality was an invention to cover up her lesbianism, and Jessie’s angry denial was interpreted by some lesbians as homophobic. The argument raged over social media, reviving ancient debates on bisexuality as privilege, as deception, and as titillation – and when bi people complained that these assumptions were biphobic, they were accused of a victim mentality.

Sound familiar? Here’s more: Staceyann Chin’s recent piece for the Guardian, Why Chasing Straight Women Still Thrills Me, characterised the “not-so-straight”, the “almost-gay”, as frustratingly unable to commit, terrible in bed, selfish and unaware of the politics of our choices. Chin spoke of the “average lesbian gathering” where conversation invariably turns to the trauma done to dykes by women “unwilling to make the dive into lesbian sexuality permanent”, as though women who sleep with women are morally obliged to continue – as though bisexuality is still, somehow, disloyal.

I decide to hold a virtual gathering of my own, a sort of angry online dinner party. My friend Georgina sighs: “I just felt really fatigued when I read that. We’ve had this so many times; the surprise is gone; it’s just bullshit that this continues. It’s exhausting: really, again?”. Read more…

Sex, Politics, and Stereotypes: BiUK’s response to Julie Bindel, June 2012

In a recent article for the Huffington Post, Julie Bindel asks ‘What makes some of us uncomfortable with bisexual women’? She goes on to answer her own question by rehearsing a series of negative stereotypes about bisexual women, suggesting that they are apolitical, hedonistic, trendily transgressive sexual tourists, testing out their fantasies on unsuspecting lesbians and straight men. Interested only in the pursuit of pleasure, they are not to be trusted personally or politically, and indeed may not exist at all. If bisexual women had ‘an ounce of sexual politics’, she asserts, they would stop having sex with men and make a positive choice to identify as lesbians. Instead of this, they hedonistically pursue their sexual desires at the cost of their political integrity.

We would like to make two points in response to this article. First, a growing body of academic research and bisexual activist literature, both online and in print, and including work by Paula Rodríguez-Rust, cited by Bindel in her article, consistently demonstrates that for many people, identifying as bisexual is as much a matter of politics as it is of desire. As one bi activist told us:

Personally, I have definitely made a positive choice to identify as bisexual. I could easily identify as either lesbian or straight, but it’s politically important to me to identify as bi. My identity as a bi woman is grounded in my feminism, my conviction that gender and sexuality are socially constructed, and my commitment to LGBT equality. It’s deeply political- it’s just a different political position from Julie Bindel’s!

(Claire, bisexual activist)

Clearly, while many women who experience attraction towards people of more than one gender choose to identify as bisexual, many others choose to identify as lesbian or straight. All of these are valid choices, which may be made on the basis of deeply-felt political convictions. Bindel’s polemic, however, dismisses all viewpoints other than her own as apolitical, and swiftly resorts to name-calling. Bindel would most likely object, and rightly so, to a critique of radical feminism that relied for its credence on tired old clichés about cropped hair, boiler suits and man-hating, and dismissed lesbian separatism as an apolitical choice based on a failure to engage with the complexities of twenty-first century gender relations. It’s disappointing, then, that she dismisses political bisexuality in such terms.

Our second point is concerned with the impact on bisexual people of the publication of articles such as Bindel’s, which clearly promote biphobia. As we outlined in our recent publication The Bisexuality Report, research has repeatedly shown that bisexual people are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidality than lesbian, gay or heterosexual people, and that this may be linked to the negative stereotypes about bisexuality which circulate in popular culture. These statistics are of great concern to UK bisexual communities and their allies, as well as to mental health practitioners, and for these reasons, bisexuality and mental health is the theme of BiReCon, our biennial conference, in August this year.

By recycling harmful stereotypes about bisexuality in the defence of political lesbianism, Julie Bindel contributes to the biphobic cultural conditions that contribute to high rates of mental distress among bisexuals. By dismissing bisexuals as universally apolitical, she betrays her own ignorance of approaches to contemporary sexual politics other than her own.

Helen Bowes-Catton for BiUK

Read more:

New Statesman response