Beating the Blues: the B-Word and Brummagem Pride

I don’t usually like Birmingham Pride. I don’t even really like Birmingham that much, though I’m fond of it in a way only possible for us whinging folks of the West Midlands. (Y’see, we like a good moan, it helps keep our accent tuned.) People from Milton Keynes, Swansea and Billingham might also understand the love-hate relationship with a grubby metropolis. Meanwhile, for those of you who never inhale, who wind up the windows against the monoxide midlands air whilst passing Spaghetti Junction with an ‘over-it-and-out-of-here’ attitude, an amusing snapshot of Brummie culture can be found at: www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk .

Birmingham city centre can be anonymous, gutless, decentred, riffy, apathetic, and it certainly isn’t chic, not even with the plastic fantastic new elliptical Selfridges building that looks like a half sucked version of those blue bobbly sweets in Liquorice Allsorts. And that’s how I’ve usually found Birmingham Pride to be, a depressing blend of commercial exploitation and getting pissed to squeaky music, without any real heart, soul or vision. Corporate interests seem to take priority over anything that could foster community spirit or promote change, and the whole event is focussed on young gay men to the exclusion of anyone else. One year the only women’s event, then and since, was cancelled by the bar owners minutes before it was due to start by, and another year I was chucked out of the only pub with a garden because I’d got my kids with me. The thing that really used to get me down about Birmingham Pride was the utter absence of anything to do with bisexuality. I mean I know it must have been there somewhere and other bi people must have been there too, but I was always disappointed at never seeing or hearing the B-word said with pride. I’m sure thousands of people had a whale of a time, but for me it hooked into that ol’ sense of isolation, and once homeward bound on the Metro, I would sink into melancholia seated between a pair of unbroken tramlines….

But this year was a bit different. Different because 2003 saw the formation of the Birmingham Bi Women’s group (BBW). It’s a small group but a growing one, beginning to find ways of being and doing, and after a few months of meetings and a couple of nights out, it seemed a good time to do something for Pride. We considered having a stall but decided it was a bit too pricey and unwieldy for a fledgling group to manage for three whole days. Instead we decided to dress up (a joyful temptation for most bi folk I’ve met) and go to the carnival march instead. Mind you, our costumes weren’t too challenging, just black and more black (again a doddle for most bi people, as we’d discovered in our meetings) with an optional smattering of blue, purple and pink accessories. As our enthusiasm grew, t-shirts got printed, black of course, with the BBW logo in pink on the back, so en masse, we looked like some kind of plumptious fusion of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies.

Meeting up by Symphony Hall in the late afternoon sunshine, there were eleven of us. We were a motley crew, spanning a big age range, with various means of being mobile. We unfurled two beautiful black banners, one with the abiding slogan, ‘assume nothing’ sewn on in pink, and the other with ‘Birmingham Bi Women’ immaculately painted in white. Two of us also wore brocade and net market-trader pinnies, covered in badges for sale. While we were getting ready for the march, one of us was having their top half painted purple, as you do, and we managed to make a security guard, who said he had received a ‘complaint from the public’, blush in a light-hearted discussion of the vagaries of gender, body paint, chests, breasts and public decency. Eventually we squeezed into the parade between Warwick University LGBTQ Society, whose banner also sported ‘assume nothing’, and the acid-yellow lycra clad skinny-boy entourage sponsored by a famous vodka producer.

The parade set off noisily from the Floozy in the Jacuzzi, a nicknamed statue of a women bathing in a fountain, and was routed through city centre shopping areas. The council always sends political marches round the back streets, so this was proof it must be good for business. Our previous invisibility was reinforced when the marchers were supplied with an abundance of placards from Unison, the trade union, which read ‘lesbian and gay pride’ only, (though Unison has recently voted to include the B- and T-words, so it might have changed by next year). The shoppers were generally tolerant and curious. We got one or two catcalls from a few vest-and-quiff lesbians, but also some big cheers and applause from bystanders reading our banners. Lots of people took Bicon and BBW flyers, and our hearts really warmed when a few young women joined us from the pavement for a kilometre or so after reading the banners and deciding that Pride could include them too. The parade wended its way past the Rotunda, through the underpasses to Hurst Street, the gay quarter of Brum shared with the Chinese, and dispersed into the already crowded bars and market stalls. BBW gathered for a few photos and ended up being filmed and interviewed by some art students doing a project on bi culture in Birmingham. They were glad to see us, as it seemed we were it. After a while, aching feet and thirst got the better of us, so we sloped off to join the queues for a few glasses of overpriced pop.

Later, back on the tram and watching the sunset over Handsworth and Wednesbury, I reflected on what we’d achieved. Community can only ever be what you help to make it, I guess, and someone wiser than me once said its importance lies in being somewhere to come in to after coming out. And as someone else’s t-shirt read: ‘there’s no two ways about it’, this year we’d made a bit of bi community for ourselves. And I went home cheerful. Well nearly.

Bobbie (aka Smiler)