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The feminist movement in the UK has been tearing itself apart recently over questions of intersectionality, with luminaries such as Helen Lewis having to take a break from Twitter over an arguably ill-considered post on "correct language". Amidst all that, it is refreshing to see that some people do actually get it - even in the most unlikely corners of the world.

Allow me to introduce you to Tyler Seguin, a talented, 21-year-old player for the Boston Bruins (that's an ice hockey team for those of you not into North American sports). Last night Seguin posted the following tweet:

Much like when we feminists get our language wrong, that didn't go unchallenged on Twitter, and even drew some attention from the You Can Play Project - a campaign for better inclusion of LGBT athletes with strong links to and support from the National Hockey League.

So what did Tyler do? Get into a massive Twitter fight with his critics, explaining how the homos should cut it out? Declare us all to be the thought police? Flounce off Twitter? Nope. He had the guts to apologise.

You know what feminists? We've been outclassed. Let's try harder.

Put three feminists in a room and chances are you'll get four different definitions of what feminism is. After all, the likes of Louise Mensch and Julie Bindel get to apply the term to themselves. Bindel in particular is a well-known transphobe, and in her latest Huffington Post column she adds biphobia to her credentials.

There isn't much of an argument in between all the vitriol and nonsense, but from what I can gather Ms Bindel would like me to stop sleeping with men. That's in those paragraphs where she isn't questioning my existence in the first place. Yet in the same piece she objects to Camille Paglia telling lesbians to sleep with men, and declares that - while she believes "straight women are missing out on the best sex on the planet" - it is straight women's right to choose to sleep with men. So hang on. Camille Paglia doesn't get to tell lesbians who to sleep with. Julie Bindel oh-so-graciously grants choice and agency to straight women in the matter of who they take to their beds. Yet we poor, possibly-non-existent but definitely misguided bisexuals cannot be left to get on with our lives without this vital guidance from our superior lesbian overlord. Would she spot irony if it bit her in the arse?

Here's the thing: If feminism is about anything, it's about not letting your reproductive organs dictate your role in life and limit your choices. It's about giving choices to people - yes, men and women; and while all our choices are by necessity made within a political context, feminism is about levelling the playing field so that said political context is less restrictive. When you find yourself seeking to limit women's choices and telling them what they should do and how they should behave - in any area of life, let alone sex! - then, Ms Bindel, you have become part of the problem, not the solution.

It's been a good week for misogyny. We had the Archbishop of York presenting the misogynist case against marriage equality. We also saw registration open for RadFem 2012, a "feminist" conference limiting participation to "women born as women living as women". While at first glance it may seem that the issues here are homophobia and transphobia respectively, both are driven by deeply held misogynist beliefs.

John Sentamu's piece is vague by necessity: if he were to actually spell out his arguments, it would become very clear very quickly that rather than "speak the truth in love" as he claims to do, his position is one of deep-seated misogyny and sexism. He argues that men and women are different and "one man, one woman marriage" respects and accommodates those differences in the best possible way - that extending marriage to same-sex couples would somehow undermine this, even if existing marriages of individuals would not, he admits, be negatively affected. Quoth the Archbishop,

The family is designed to meet the different needs of its different members in different ways. It is the model of the just society that responds intelligently to differences rather than treating everyone the same.

Note, first of all the use of the word "family". The church has long claimed ownership of the concept of marriage, but the above is clearly an attempt to also define "family" the way it suits the church - one man, one woman, married to each other. In one sentence, John Sentamu has denied the families of the 1.7 million children growing up with cohabiting parents, the 2.9 million being raised by single mothers and the 300,000 being raised by single fathers. (Source, PDF, Table 2.5) Nevermind those of us cohabiting and childless, for our families too do not live up to the Archbishop's standards.

And what of those "different needs" he speaks of? How exactly are men and women different in a way that is met by the "one man, one woman marriage" set-up, that justifies making that set-up exclusive to heterosexuals? Or is it perhaps that Sentamu wonders, if we let two people of the same sex marry, how he will know which one to chain to the cooker?

But there is another view, based on the complementary nature of men and women. In short, should there be equality between the sexes because a woman can do anything a man can do or because a good society needs the different perspectives of women and men equally?

Here is a revelation for the Archbishop: It is not that men and women are different; it is that individuals are different that matters. Yet in his deeply misogynist world view, Sentamu seeks to define women's - and frankly men's - roles and contributions to "a good society" based solely on their sex. A good society should seek to enable all individuals within it to fulfill their potential. It must not limit what any of them can do (and that includes whom they choose to commit to in a legally recognised relationship if we are to have such things) based on their reproductive organs.

Speaking of reproductive organs, the organisers of RadFem 2012 have really outdone themselves. Originally restricted to "biological women", the phrasing was quickly changed to "women born as women living as women". The words "reproductively female" were also brandished at one point, and I hope I don't need to spell out quite how problematic that is. While I have some limited sympathy for the desire to create a women-only space, let us be clear on one thing: There is nothing radical about buying into the gender binary.

The language used by these so-called radical feminists reminds me of nothing more than this vile piece of hate speech in which Irish right-wing columnist Kevin Myers feels so threatened in his masculinity that he needs to define other people's gender identities for them. Choice quote:

[T]he obstetric revelations about this pseudo-male were accompanied by examples of other "men" who have given birth, beginning with Thomas Beattie of Oregon, who is a serial non-man, having given birth to three children, and Yuval Topper, an Israeli "man" who also had a baby, and Scott Moore -- and here, I'm afraid we truly enter a quite phantasmagorical world -- a Californian who lives with "his husband", and who gave birth to a child in 2010.

Defining people's identities and roles in life by their reproductive organs is what men like Kevin Myers do - it's what the patriarchy does. It is sexism and misogyny of the worst kind and has no place in feminism, radical or otherwise. Here's a radical suggestions for the organisers of RadFem 2012: Step away from biological determinism and the gender binary and treat people as people. We'd all be better off for that.

I find myself in the odd position of responding to government consultations and writing to my MP on an issue that I feel - at best - lukewarm about.

Marriage is not a social institution I feel has any relevance to me (not until I hit the inheritance tax threshold anyway, which is a long way off), and I have for a long time now felt that we're doing the whole thing wrong. I also strongly object to David Cameron and Theresa May taking this opportunity to lecture me about the best possible set-up of my private life and family relationships. Even within the limited context of LGBT rights I believe there are bigger and more important issues than marriage equality.

On the other hand, I understand that marriage is hugely important to a lot of people - both heterosexual and not. It strikes me as a no-brainer that if we have an institution available to one part of the population and not another, this is discriminatory and unjust. So if we have to have marriage in its current form, I do believe that it should be available on an equal basis to all. With that in mind, I have today sent the below letter to Nick Brown, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East. Mr Brown and I don't often see eye to eye, and he has a record of only replying on issues he agrees with me on. Let's hope this is one of those where I get a response.

Dear Nick Brown,

I am writing to you with regards to the government's ongoing consultation to extend civil marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The current set-up which makes civil partnerships available to same-sex couples while reserving marriage only for heterosexual couples is problematic on several levels:

1. It clearly creates a distinction and inequality between heterosexual and LGBT people and the legal recognition of their relationships. This inequality is arbitrary and discriminatory.

2. It is also particularly harsh on transgender people seeking legal recognition of their gender, as under current rules they have to dissolve an existing marriage or civil partnership to obtain such recognition. This is an expensive, bureaucratic process that is extremely emotionally traumatic at an already difficult time in a person's life.

3. Finally, it was only two years ago that there were more countries in the world where homosexuality was punishable with death than countries where same-sex couples could get legal recognition of their relationships in the form of marriage. Yet over the last few years we have seen more and more countries embrace marriage equality, and now there are countries on four continents which do so. It is disappointing that the UK is lagging behind countries perceived as conservative and staunchly Catholic, such as Spain, Portugal and Argentina, on this issue.

While an actual marriage equality bill is some way off, it would be helpful to understand your position on the issue. The Coalition for Equal Marriage is tracking MPs' stance on this at their website and it would be great to see your support reflected there.

Yours sincerely,

Milena Popova

I remember my first Stonewall Workplace Conference, maybe in 2006. We had spent most of the day discussing issues of "lesbians and gays" in the workplace when a woman interrupted one of Ben Summerskill's keynotes to point out that we weren't just "lesbians and gays" - some of us were bisexual. That was the moment I stopped feeling like a fraud for being there.

Despite the huge progress we have made over the past ten years in LGB (and to an extent T) rights in the UK, bisexual invisibility is still a huge issue. The Bisexuality Report found that bisexual invisibility, biphobia and bisexual exclusion have a profound impact on bisexual people's lives in every area from health and crime to school and the workplace.

Fast forward to this year's Stonewall Workplace Conference. There was a strong theme of role modelling going through most of the keynote speeches. Perhaps I am also more sensitive to it, having attended last year's brilliant Stonewall Leadership Programme. One remark in particular, by Beth Brooke from Ernst & Young struck me: "We cannot be what we cannot see." That sentence really rang true for me and reminded me of the woman who stood up at the same conference six years ago and pointed out that some of us were, you know, bisexual. That woman gave me a voice.

At any rate, I was delighted to see that Stonewall have produced a booklet in which they showcase 17 high-profile LGB individuals from across the private, public and third sectors, "Role Models - Being Yourself: Sexual Orientation and the Workplace". I leafed through it on the train home after the conference, and the part of my brain that notices that less than a quarter of people travelling in business class are women, or that there are very few ethnic minority faces at an event, started ticking. When I counted, it turned out that there were eight lesbians, eight gay men, and one bisexual man profiled in the book.

I completely understand the challenges of coming out as bisexual. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you enter into a relationship with someone of a gender different to the people you've previously dated, some of your friends, gay and straight, may feel terribly betrayed. If you do explicitly identify as bisexual regardless of who you're going out with, you'll face reactions ranging from "Why are you flaunting your sexuality?" to "Don't be stupid. You're not bisexual, you're married!" There is also a significant gender difference in how society views bisexual people. Bisexual women are to an extent more "accepted" but also considerably more fetishised than bisexual men. (The answer is no, I don't want to have a threesome with you and your girlfriend.) Certainly in my experience that leads to more out bisexual women than men, but I haven't got hugely scientific data sets on this.

I do have huge respect for Edward Lord OBE who was brave enough to take on the mantle of the one bisexual role model in Stonewall's booklet. He tells a story that may ring true for many of us - how coming out as gay wasn't half as dramatic as coming out as bisexual, how at least one of his friends stopped speaking to him after that, how his second coming-out was necessitated by him entering a relationship with a woman, how before that he had hidden his true sexuality "within the broader gay closet".

It's as good a story as any, but that's the problem with it - it is just a single story. The booklet tells the story of the lesbian mother; the black Welsh gay man; the lesbian disability rights campaigner; the gay head teacher whose Irish Catholic family disowned him when he came out; the lesbian woman who grew up in Singapore where homosexuality is illegal; the gay soldier who with his partner celebrated the first civil partnership in the Household Cavalry's 350-year history; the gay scientist from a northern Methodist mining family; the first openly gay peer ever; the lesbian former vice chair of the Conservative Party.

While sexual orientation is a reasonably significant part of some people's identity (both straight and not, incidentally), it is not our only defining characteristic. Just because someone happens to be of the same sexual orientation as me doesn't mean that their experiences are similar enough for me to be able to build a rapport with them and see them as a role model. Therefore providing a range of people with varying backgrounds and experiences is crucial if lesbian, gay and bisexual people are to find role models among the individuals Stonewall have profiled.

Equally, it is unfair on Edward Lord to cast on him all of the responsibility of being the one person that all bisexual people should look up to. That's a role no one can be expected to play with any level of comfort. So where are the bisexual women? Where are the bisexual people in long-term relationships - the "don't be stupid, you're married!" ones and the "don't be stupid, you have a civil partner" ones? Where are the ethnic minority bisexuals, the bisexuals whose families cast them out, and the bisexuals whose families accepted them? There is more than one bisexual story, and both bisexual people ourselves and those who tell us that we're married/it's just a phase/we're only seeking attention need to hear those stories.

There isn't a simple answer to all of this. For as long bisexuals continue to be invisible and face the potential of double discrimination, few of us will raise our heads above the parapet; yet unless more of us do so, we will continue to be invisible and biphobia will continue to go unchallenged. To an extent it is up to us to fix this by being more open, more visible, more honest about who we are.

Some of the responsibility, however, has also to be shouldered by Stonewall. They claim to speak for all of us - L, G and B. Yet reading the "Role Models" booklet made me feel a bit like I did back at the conference in 2006 - tokenised at best, silenced and invisible at worst. We cannot be what we cannot see.

One of the small tragedies of my teenage life was my unfortunate addiction to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. I have a number of excuses for this. For one, I was reading it in translation, and unlike MZB herself, her German translators could actually string together a grammatically correct sentence. Most importantly, though, I found the books addictive because some of the characters were "people like me", where in this particular context I mean LGBT people.

Growing up in the 1990s in a small town in the Austrian mountains and working out that I was bisexual was an... interesting experience. For a start, Austria's a bit Catholic. Some of the key social issues at the time were whether people who divorced and remarried would be allowed to receive Communion in church (file under "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"), and who the President would take to the Opernball now that he was divorced (file under "Hello magazine"). This was very much not a world in which people like me existed, so I turned to badly written science fiction as my last resort.

Things are better in 2012 in the UK, but not hugely better. The BBC's own research identifies significant opportunities for improving the portrayal of LGBT people in the media. While things are steadily improving, we're still essentially in single story territory. More often than not, we still talk about the gay character, rather than the character who has a full life and just happens to be gay. More often than not, the story is about coming out rather than anything else - and while showcasing a range of coming out stories is still hugely important, so is getting beyond that point and showcasing diverse and authentic characters for whom sexual orientation is only one facet of their life.

This is where Alex Woolfson's Artifice comes in. Artifice bills itself as a "gay sci-fi webcomic" - a label I originally struggled with because I'm not too fond of pigeon holes, but which seems to get the title the kind of exposure and audience it needs. Set in a distant future where a mysterious corporation makes "artificial persons" - androids far stronger and smarter than humans but visually indistinguishable from them - it follows the story of android Deacon as he ends up stranded on a mission in the company of gay teenager Jeff.

As the story's wonderful antagonist, Deacon's "shrink" Dr Maven, tries to figure out what went wrong with the corporation's asset to make him kill several members of the recovery team and assault a guard, Artifice helps us explore what it is to be human. This is of course precisely the kind of question good science fiction should ask, and Alex Woolfson does this well. The comic owes a lot to science fiction's classics - from Dick to Asimov - but adds its own unique touches. Alex is a skilled storyteller, and artist Winona Nelson is great particularly at capturing facial expressions and body language - both absolutely crucial to a story as character-driven as this.

I found Artifice fairly recently so was lucky enough to have a huge chunk of the comic to read in one go before having to obsessively reload the page every Wednesday and Saturday morning. Yet once I got to the weekly update schedule, obsessively refresh I did as the pace of the story speeded up to what looked increasingly like it was going to be a tragic ending. I hope it is not too much of a spoiler to say that page 83 of Artifice is perhaps the single most satisfying page in webcomics. The bottom line is that Alex and Winona have told a story that is intelligent, compassionate, good science fiction which happens to have characters which happen to be gay.

Something else which drew me to Artifice was its funding model. Readers of my writing on digital rights will know that I have an interest in alternative funding models for art. Alex combined an ad-supported model and weekly publishing schedule with a "tip jar". Hitting a donation target of $250 would generate a bonus page in a given week, thus giving readers more of the story faster. It speaks volumes for the quality of Artifice and the kind of community Alex has created with his tireless engagement with fans that for the last six months or so it has pretty much been running on a twice-a-week update schedule as fans have donated $250 every week.

Now that the story of Deacon and Jeff is told, Alex is working on a project to produce a printed version of Artifice. A Kickstarter campaign is already well funded, but any additional money raised will go towards making an even better finished product and generating bonus Artifice content such as poster prints and mini comics - all of which is to be encouraged. After all, with more Artifice in our lives, fewer kids will be forced to read Marion Zimmer Bradley as their last resort.

It's been a good few weeks for a game of homophobia bingo. With this week's launch of the government consultation on same-sex marriage (finally!), every cliché you can think of has been rolled out: from the "slippery slope" argument (great example here from Cristina Odone asking why gay couples should get special treatment when paedophiles don't - classy!) to the Thought for the Day segment taking the "marriage is a sacrament" and "separate but equal" approach. In between all the talk of sacraments, ancient institutions, and life-long commitment, I'd like to propose a different idea: let's do away with marriage as we know it.

Let's first of all recognise that marriage is - above all else - a legal an financial contract. Forget the twue wuv and meringue dresses; as David Allen Green points out, for any other contract of a similar value you'd have the solicitors crawling all over it. The economic realities of marriage become fairly self-evident after even a brief look at the history of the institution. Every time the economic situation changes, this alleged ancient sacrament changes with it. And let's face it, economic circumstances have changed spectacularly over the last century or so. Besides, why is it the state's business anyway who I choose to sleep, or be romantically involved, or share large chunks of my life with? Why aren't all of the "small state" conservatives out there up in arms about this state intrusion into private life and individual choice?

Now, I'll concede that there are certain advantages to be gained from being able to enter into a marriage-like contract with someone. You can settle rights and responsibilities like custody of children, next-of-kin privileges, some property arrangements. Why, however, we should have a one-size-fits-all contract for these is beyond me. No two relationships are the same, so why is the legal framework that governs them all the same? And why do so many of us blindly enter into this huge legal framework, covering everything from inheritance tax to the revoking of existing wills upon marriage, without being fully aware of what it is we're letting ourselves in for? Perhaps if we knew a bit more about marriage, we wouldn't have a 50% divorce rate.

Here's what I propose to tackle both of these problems: Pick'n'mix Marriage. Let's list out all of the rights and obligations and other legal perks and mine fields that go with the current marriage contract: taxes, benefits, next-of-kin issues, the lot. Let's also think of some of the other things that might be useful to include in there while we're redefining the whole thing. Then let everyone entering into a relationship negotiate and choose which parts of this they want to apply to their relationship. Maybe we'd want to make some of them conditional on others: if you want the inheritance tax allowance, you have to agree to be treated jointly for benefits purposes. Maybe we'd want to implement some of them in a non-reciprocal way: you may be your partner's next of kin but they aren't yours - as long as you both agree. Of course with this arrangement it doesn't matter whether your partner happens to be of the same gender as you or a different one. Nor does it, technically speaking, matter how many partners you have - you may choose to share certain rights and responsibilities with one of your partners and another set with another. As your relationship changes, so does the contract.

Is this approach shocking? Immoral? Arbitrary? No more so that calling marriage a "sacrament", than having a two-tier system which discriminates against same-sex couples, than making transgender people get divorced if they want to obtain legal recognition of their gender. It's a more honest, more transparent and more flexible system. And you can still have the big party and the meringue dress if you really want to.

Just in time for LGBT History Month Scottish politics provided the best news headline of the year so far: Opposition party leaders unite over same-sex marriage.

Read more at Scottish Times.

Reading my blog and other online presence, it's pretty difficult to miss that I'm bisexual. It's there on my Facebook profile (and no, not just because I enjoy those lesbian cruises ads so much), it's in my Twitter profile, and it's something I refer to in my blog posts fairly regularly. I spend some of my time in my day job championing LGBT causes in the workplace, and I am a trustee of Broken Rainbow, the UK national LGBT domestic violence charity. I have also been in a committed monogamous relationship with a man for the last ten years. This seems to confuse people.

Every so often someone asks The Question. The Question comes in many guises - "Why do you flaunt your sexuality?", "Why put that on your Twitter profile - is it really such a defining characteristic?", "But you're with Paul, so how does it matter?" Ultimately, though, it's the same question: "Why don't you just shut up and conform?" So here are some thoughts on bisexuality that may go some way towards answering The Question.

Bisexual invisibility

"Why are you involved in the company LGBT network?", a straight colleague asks me. "You're not lesbian, gay or..." The penny drops.

"Why are you involved in the company LGBT network?", a gay colleague asks me. "You're not lesbian, gay or..." The penny drops.

To both straight and gay people, I don't fit, I am invisible. There are common stereotypes about bisexuality. It's just an experimental phase and you'll settle down and be "normal" again eventually. This one's popular with straight people. Alternatively, you're just saying that until you're ready to admit that you're gay really. Unsurprisingly, this one's a favourite of the gay community. Such stereotypes make it easy to dismiss bisexuality, and sometimes bisexual people may find it easier not to correct assumptions of hetero- or homosexuality (depending on the relationship they're currently in). It certainly cuts down on the awkward questions from people who would never presume to ask of a straight friend or colleague that kind of intimate detail. ("Oh, so you've had sex with girls?") It cuts down on the accusations from the gay community that you're just making yourself socially acceptable, more like a straight person.

Finding visible bisexual role models is hard. Portrayal of LGB people in media is not great but improving (with portrayal of trans people being a whole different kettle of fish), though arguably the portrayal of bisexual characters in particular is lagging behind. It is often characterised by stereotypes like the character who's really gay but finds it more socially acceptable to identify as bi, or the "fashionably bi" young woman who's only doing it to get male attention. While we may see bisexual behaviour, few characters openly identify as bisexual, and this in turn fuels the stereotype that bisexuality is what you do rather than who you are.

So one part of my answer to The Question is that if I'm openly and visibly bisexual, I'll get the awkward questions, and I've more or less worked out how to deal with them. Maybe this will save someone else from having to deal with them further down the line. Maybe it will help other people who struggle with the invisibility of their identity.

"Assumed heterosexual" privilege

"My son saw me in a pink shirt this morning," my team leader says at the team meeting, "and said I looked like a right poof." Everyone laughs.

A side effect of bi-invisibility for those of us in "straight" relationships is "assumed heterosexual" privilege. On cursory inspection, we look like a duck and we quack like a duck so we're assumed to be ducks. An interesting consequence of this is that people will not self-censor their homophobia when speaking to us. When I was less visible about my sexual orientation, comments like the one above used to be a frequent occurrence in my environment. They were never directed at me, and that was almost worse. I can deal with being the direct target of discrimination and harassment; but being there in the room as those things were said made me feel complicit. So I started challenging them and started being a lot more visible as a bisexual and member of the LGBT community.

There are other "perks" of assumed heterosexual privilege. While they're not as extensive as the full heterosexual privilege list, they're still significant. I could, theoretically, be engaged and active on LGBT issues while "passing" as a straight ally. In some ways, it would lend me more credibility (see items 31 and 33 on the list). It would also make me feel fraudulent and dishonest. Pretty much all of the causes I'm engaged in, and all my writing, are personal to me in some way. To deny - or omit - my sexual orientation would be to deny part of who I am.

It's easy to forget, ignore and exclude bisexual people - deliberately or accidentally. I remember an instance where even Ben Summerskill, chief exec of Stonewall UK, got told off at a conference for consistently only referring to "lesbian and gay people". Those of us who are out and visible as bisexuals can help remind people that we are all still here, and that we need inclusion too!

I am currently absolutely obsessed with Dragon Age. At this rate, I'm going to have to ask people to pry me off the PS3. The reason this is remarkable is that I am Not A Gamer. I am Not A Gamer to the extent that when I played Devil May Cry, I got two levels in and the game offered me the "You seem to suck at this, here's the extra special easy version for you" option. With an extremely small number of notable exceptions, I never really got past Tetris. So how did I get to the point where you have to pry the PS3 controller from my cold dead hands?

The story starts with No More Lost, an LGBT rights blog I occasionally read. Some time last year, they covered a story about a role-playing game which - *gasp* - allowed same-sex relationships within the game setting. Not only that, but when challenged over this by a self-identified "Straight Male Gamer", BioWare, the company behind the game, took an extremely principled stand in favour of equality, even in gaming. That was the first time I ever heard of Dragon Age. That was all the marketing I ever needed for it. I wanted to give BioWare my money. After checking with Paul that he was interested in playing it (I believe the words were something like "You'll do the fighting and I'll do the gay"), I bought both Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 for Christmas.

What we've found since then is that Dragon Age is that once-in-a-decade game that actually really appeals to me. There is a strong overarching plot, characters you can truly care about, a combat system I can cope with, as well as some truly unique features like the player's choices making a significant difference to the overall plot. Yet, had BioWare not shown that great principled stand on equality issues, I would probably never have found out about their game and certainly never bought it. I am willing to bet that this is the case for a significant number LGB gamers and allies out there. Market research shows that the LGB community is considerably more loyal to brands and companies who take the time to acknowledge we exist than your average consumer. And why not? All things being equal, if I have a choice between two otherwise superb products, of course I'm going to go with the one made by people who care about me.

There is, however, a fine line between engaging with a community and showing them you care and, frankly, taking the piss. Case in point, yet another Facebook privacy controversy. In this particular one, Privacy International alleged that Facebook's targeted advertising had "destroyed" a young man's life. Despite not openly revealing his sexual orientation on the social network, "David" started seeing a lot of adverts targeted at gay men until one day his parents spotted these and kicked him out of the house. Facebook in their eternal wisdom call this a case of "appalling discrimination and unauthorized access to a person's account, not advertising".

Yet here is why this is very much an issue of advertising, and an issue of how Facebook treats its users. (Remember, for Facebook we are not customers - we are the product. Nevertheless some minimum amount of decency and dignity should be expected even in this business model.) There was a time after I told Facebook I was bisexual and before I discovered the wonders of Adblock Plus when I used to see adverts on the site. Pretty much the only thing Facebook ever advertised to me were "lesbian cruises". Which makes me wonder - if Facebook's algorithms can figure out my sexual orientation even without me disclosing it, why can't they figure out that there is more to me as a human being than just my sexual orientation? Why am I reduced to that one characteristic and then mercilessly targeted for it regardless of any other aspect of my life?

Here's what BioWare did right: They created an awesome product and in the process thoughtfully included some options targeted at the LGB community. It's important that Dragon Age isn't about gay characters. It's about characters who have adventures, who just happen to to be gay if the player so chooses. To top it all off, BioWare then stood by that product in the face of criticism, showing they had backbone to go with their amazing creativity. What Facebook does repeatedly wrong, on the other hand, is reducing us to a single characteristic they think they can turn into money and then disavowing responsibility the minute something goes wrong.

Thus ends today's "Marketing to the LGB community" lesson.