Bi Activists Do It In Birmingham

There’s been another bi activist away weekend, this time in Birmingham and hosted by the local bi women’s group. A participant reports...

The second bi activism weekend was a great success as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t residential this time, so we missed the ‘pyjama party’ feel of the last one and all the communal cooking, but we got a lot accomplished in a short time and really moved things on from the idea stage which we reached last time to some concrete plans. Here I’m going to write about a few of the ideas that came out of the meeting which I’d like to see us take forward.

Bi Media
Ange had dug out all the recent mentions of bisexuality in the newspapers and we spent some time discussing the David Beckham / Rebecca Loos reporting, much of which has centred around Loos being bi. We considered whether we, as a group, should be responding to this kind of media coverage and came up with the idea of putting together a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) about bisexuality, particularly the kinds of questions the media generally asks. This could be sent out to any journalist who contacts us. It’d save different individuals having to come up with their own answers each time they are asked, and also give us readily prepared answers to tricky questions. We thought the answers could be in the form of quotes from those of us who are happy to be named, giving journalists some ‘off the shelf’ quotes to use if they’re close to a deadline. The FAQ sheet could also be sent to journalists who’ve written about bi without asking any bi people for comment.

We could also include a list of contact details of those of us who would be happy to be approached for an interview. Grant mentioned that those people could join the BBC diversity database. In addition, we could run a workshop at the next bi activism weekend on the dos and don’ts of talking to the media so that we feel more prepared.

The way forward for this is for our group to generate all the FAQs that we want answers for and then to divide these up between us to do any necessary research and give quotable answers. It’d be good if there were two or three answers to each question. For example, the question of how many bi people there are in the UK could be answered with one quote about attendance at BiCon, subscribers to BCN, hits on websites, etc. There could be another quote about the difficulties of definition (identity, behaviour or thought), and one about biphobia and the invisibility of bi (people identifying as straight in opposite sex relationships and gay in same sex ones).

The FAQ sheet could also go on the bi.org website so we could send people links and could be incorporated into an edition of BCN, perhaps an updated ‘all you need to know’ special edition.

Bi Online
A team are now sorting out bi.org. The bi activism group were keen to be updated on progress and to know who is involved in this and what the plans are. A few things that we’d like to see online were: up to date lists of resources and groups, the FAQs mentioned above, a calendar that we could update with relevant events, a Wikki like the BiCon one from last year, and a database of ideas that we’ve come up with that no-one has taken up yet.

Bi Academics
Over lunch a few of us talked about the bi academic network and where we wanted that to go. This linked in quite well with the bi media stuff above since part of our role could be researching the answers to the FAQs, keeping up with academic work on bisexuality, and providing ‘expert’ quotes from those of us who research in the area. Other aims of the bi group were to come up with a central list of resources (again, perhaps on a website), which we could add to so we’d have an extensive list of all of the academic books and articles on bisexuality and preferably brief summaries of these so that we can decide whether they’ll be useful to us in or research and writing or not. It’d be good to also have a calendar of up coming relevant academic conferences, calls for papers, etc. We thought that those in the network could help each other by feeding back about conferences we’ve been to, reading each others’ work, and perhaps collaborating on papers and funding bids.

We’d like to start conducting some research online and at BiCon about people who identify as bi, those who have changed their identity from or to bi, and those who behave as bi but don’t identify as such. We had a good discussion about myths around bi promiscuity and potential responses emphasising responsibility and/or sex positivity, as well as fluidity and openness. We thought it would also be useful to collect statistics from mental health surveys (like MIND and the recent Australian study) and to come up with quotes about issues around bisexuality and mental health provision.

Bi Awareness
At the last weekend we talked a lot about increasing awareness of bisexuality through workshops, etc. Following on from that we decided that we would like to run a training event at the next bi activism weekend on how to run bi awareness workshops. Those of us who have already run such events will bring our materials and give tips on presentation skills and exercises. We will put together a standard handout and set of exercises which we can all use, to decrease individual work. And we will come up with a list of people who are prepared to put on training workshops in each area of the UK. Then we will create a list of groups who we would like to offer such training to, including LG groups, phonelines, counselling services, HE institutions, LEAs, health authorities, GUM clinics, police, etc. We can then go ahead and contact these groups. Jenni suggested that this would be an excellent project to put forward a funding bid for and she’s going to look into this.

We also considered the possibilities of exploring cultural barriers that may keep bi groups so predominantly white. It was proposed that we could run a workshop on ethnic/cultural/religious diversity within the bi community at BiCon, and explore issues about being ‘bi and’ a member of a particular group in the BCN column.

BiCon
We heard from the organisers about this year’s BiCon which we all got very excited about. Some ideas to link in with those I’ve written about here were about raising money (for Euro BiCon and/or bi awareness training). There will be an art auction and a pub quiz at this BiCon and any other ideas for raising money should be put forward to the BiCon team as soon as possible.

So...
In order to put some of these ideas into practice it would be great if one or two individuals could take on management of each of the projects proposed. Then we can start coming up with our FAQ list and quotes, our bi awareness training handout and list of exercises, our academic resources website, etc.