Monthly Archives: July 2013

Censored

Imagine that last week you’d read a blog post. It was post about porn blocking, and how there are other things we as a society should focus on if, say, we wanted to prevent child sexual abuse. It was a post about porn blocking from an abuse survivor.
One of the many people you follow on Twitter or are friends with on Facebook posted the link, and you followed it. You read the post, maybe you thought the author had made a good point or two, then you closed the tab, and that was that. Then a couple of days later you found yourself discussing porn blocking with a colleague, or a friend, and you thought, “Damn, I should link them to that post. Wonder how I find it again.”
It was a post about porn blocking from an abuse survivor. What search terms might you give Google to help you find it? The top ten search terms to hit my blog this month are (and they’re not pretty):

  • abuse porn
  • porn abuse
  • milena popova
  • survivor porn
  • abused porn
  • market failure examples 2011[1]
  • bi threesomes[2]
  • child sex porn
  • abuse porn.
  • milena porn

Now, something you might have missed what with the royal baby hype is that David Cameron’s speech actually proposed three completely unrelated measures, and that everyone has been conflating them ever since. They are

  • default-on filters at ISP level targeting pornography “and also perhaps self-harming sites”, where you would actively have to notify your ISP if you wanted the filter disabled;
  • getting the major search engines not to return any results for search terms associated with child sexual abuse;
  • and banning possession of pornography depicting simulated rape.

That’s right. Under that second proposal, nearly a quarter of people who googled for a specific post on my blog this month would have had no search results returned to them. Is there a chance that one or two of these people were actually searching for child abuse images? Yeah, perhaps. Were the vast majority of them genuinely looking for my blog post, using the search terms most likely to find it? Yep.
David Cameron’s proposals would silence me when I speak out about child abuse and porn blocking. They would silence many others, too. Next time someone tells you they spoke to the man from Google [~21mins in] and it’ll all be fine really, do remind them that they are conflating three separate measures, all of which are highly likely to be ineffective in actually protecting children, and some of which are indeed equivalent to censorship.
Oh and do sign the Open Rights Group petition against porn blocking.

[1] A variation on this seems to make the Top 10 every month. I’m guessing this post has somehow made it onto a first-year economics reading list.

[2] Remember, just because someone is bisexual doesn’t mean they want a threesome with you.

[TW: child sexual abuse] Porn blocking – a survivor’s perspective

I am a survivor: when I was a teenager, I was sexually abused by an uncle. So when David Cameron proposes a raft of measures which amount to censorship of the internet, all in the name of protecting “our children and their innocence”, I find that deeply offensive.
I am not going to tell you about the potential harmful side effects of these measures, or why none of them are actually going to work. Other people can do this far better than me.
Instead, I want to move on this debate. I want to tell you about some of the factors in my environment that made my abuse possible, because maybe that will give Mr Cameron some idea of the real issues he needs to tackle if he wants to protect children [1].
Like many kids today, I grew up in an environment where parents were deeply uncomfortable talking about bodies, or sex and sexuality. When I got my first period, my mother gave me the most boring textbook in the universe to read. It covered basic anatomy and mechanics of sex, but I must admit I didn’t get very far into it. A year or so later she arranged for me to have a chat with her gynaecologist, who was a friend of the family. What I would have learned from that chat, had I not had access to other materials on sex and relationships, was that oral sex is dirty and horrible and not something one should ever engage in. What I actually learned from the whole experience was that my parents were not willing to discuss issues of sex and sexuality with me. So when the abuse happened, when I would have needed to discuss those things with them and get help, I didn’t feel able to do so.
Now, I appreciate the argument that simply saying “leave child protection exclusively to parents” is middle class privilege. However many parents, middle class and otherwise, would greatly benefit from some help and advice on how to approach difficult issues like sex, sexuality and relationships with their children, and how to create a safe space where children can raise concerns and ask questions without fear of being judged or getting into trouble.
Like many girls today, I also grew up in an environment where a woman’s sense of self-worth was directly proportional to how liked she was by others, particularly men. That translated into being conditioned to be less confrontational, always having to be polite, being told I needed to keep the peace regardless of personal cost. This is not a great way to learn to establish and enforce personal boundaries. When the man who harassed me on the way to school told me it wasn’t very nice to tell him to fuck off, I felt guilty.
Here’s the thing: You know what the most insidious part of our culture is that sends precisely those hugely damaging messages to girls and women? No, it’s not porn. It’s romantic comedies. The idea that behaviour which amounts to stalking and sexual assault is romantic is deeply ingrained in the genre; and trust me – many more kids have access to romantic comedies from a much earlier age than they do to porn. If you want to talk about normalising the idea of violence against women, it’s there that I’d start, not at rape porn. Of course this doesn’t mean I want to ban romantic comedies. However, helping both parents at teachers look critically at the damaging parts of our mainstream culture and discuss them with children would protect many more children than filtering pornography.
Like many kids today, I received sex education that was patchy, focused on the mechanics and on avoiding pregnancy and STIs. Oh, and some of it was distinctly anti-abortion – talk about personal boundaries and bodily autonomy elsewhere. At no point was pleasure discussed. At no point did we ever talk about consent. At not point did a teacher make me feel like I could ask questions, express concerns or confide in them. I knew all about the mechanics of sex. I had a very good idea of what was happening to me when I was being abused. I had no idea how to stop it.
This is the biggest bone I have to pick with the government on this subject. David Cameron has the audacity to tell us that the solution to children viewing pornography is both “about access and (…) about education”. Yet the kind of education he means is not sex and relationships education – it’s education about “online safety”. At the same time his Education Secretary can’t even utter the words “sex and relationship education” without sniggering like a 12-year-old behind the bike sheds. His party (and the LibDems) almost unanimously voted against an amendment to the Children and Families Bill which would have created a statutory provision for sex and relationship education in the national curriculum.
Pornography (extreme or otherwise) and images of child sexual abuse (vile though they are) played absolutely no role in my abuse. I am not going to argue that they play no role at all in anyone’s abuse, or that without the proper context they can’t be damaging to children and young people. What David Cameron is doing, however, is lulling us all into a false sense of security while actively working against measures which would genuinely protect children and young people. This is not a man who is well-intentioned and ill-advised. This is a man who is deeply cynical and hypocritical; a man – and a government – incapable of doing the right thing, and only capable of doing the easy, wrong thing which will gain them votes. This is a man who should hang his head in shame.
As an abuse survivor, I find the measures outlined by the Prime Minister today objectionable, offensive and disgusting. As an abuse survivor, I demand that this government face the facts and either admit that they have no intention whatsoever of protecting children or actually put measures on the table which will do so. As an abuse survivor, I hold my head high today – but I don’t think David Cameron should.

[1] While I do believe children need protection from some things, I find the talk of protecting their “innocence” deeply squicky and disturbing. Kids do not become guilty once they find out about sex.

Let me vote: a public service announcement

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog since 2010 will probably know this, but it struck me this week that many of you don’t. So here is a public service announcement on the intersection between democracy and being an immigrant.
I appreciate that my origin and citizenship status are somewhat murky, not helped by the fact that I self-identify as European. I was born in Bulgaria, I left there when I was 10 and at the age of 16 I was granted Austrian citizenship. I have lived in the UK for 14 years now, longer than in any other country. I am still legally Austrian, and only Austrian. Austria is somewhat particular about dual nationality (basically, if you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, you’re allowed it; if you’re me the hoops are not worth jumping through). I would technically qualify for UK citizenship but I have good reasons – none of them sentimental – to hang on to my Austrian passport.
I am registered to vote in the UK, but as an EU citizen, I can only do so in local and European Parliament elections – not general elections. I can vote in general elections in Austria but I never have. By the time the first elections after my 18th birthday [1] came around I had left the country and was reasonably sure I wasn’t going back.
Here’s what I am allowed to do in the UK: I’m allowed to pay tax. Quite a lot of it. [2] I am, in all fairness, allowed to be mouthy and obnoxious about being an immigrant, sometimes even in the national press. I am allowed to ruin a good pair of shoes in aid of a national referendum campaign. But I’m not allowed to vote in said referendum. I am allowed to be blamed for every single failure of this government. But I don’t have a say in who forms the next one.
This is where Let Me Vote comes in. Let Me Vote is a European Citizens’ Initiative – if it manages to collect 1,000,000 signatures from EU citizens, the European Commission will at least have to think about putting forward legislation to allow EU citizens resident in other EU countries to vote in their country of residence. It would remove one more of the millions of barriers to the free movement of people within the Union. It would mean that we would no longer be second-class people the minute we set foot outside our country of citizenship – at least politically. It would mean that when your Mum and Dad retire to Spain or Bulgaria, they would have a political say in what happens around them.
If you’re worried about immigrants voting in your country, remember that Commonwealth citizens are already allowed to vote in general elections in the UK. Also remember that lots of British people move abroad, and after 15 years they lose the right to vote in the UK, leaving them in a strange kind of political purgatory where there is nowhere for them to exercise their democratic rights. Remember that even if you reduce the European Union to its economic basics, the Common Market is still about the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
So head over to Let Me Vote and sign the ECI.

[1] Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007.

[2] Note that I don’t think my tax payer status entitles me to anything. But with the amount of immigrant scapegoating in British political rhetoric, it’s become a reflex to point it out.

[@TWkLGBTQ] What I learned from curating @TWkLGBTQ

I applied to curate @TwkLGBTQ on a whim. I found out about the account from a Twitterstorm caused by one curator questioning whether bisexual people existed. In all fairness, they handled the conversation reasonably well, but I figured this was a debate I had something to contribute to, so I applied. I must admit I expected the waiting list to be months long – but in the end it only took four weeks from applying to being given the password and responsibility.
When I applied I had a vague idea that I wanted to talk mostly about bisexual issues. Slowly, and in conversation with others, that idea started to crystallise. I brainstormed a bunch of topics which I thought might be interesting. I wanted to introduce each topic and then ask the follower community to share their thoughts, views and experiences. I wanted to facilitate a discussion more than I wanted a soap box for myself.
With about two days to go, it hit me quite how much work I was setting myself up for. I had settled on 13 topics – two per day, with the exception of the one day I knew I was going to be mostly afk at an all-day meeting of the Broken Rainbow board of trustees. I was originally going to introduce each topic with a few tweets, but found the need to say slightly more than that, so short(ish) blog posts it was.
There was a fair amount of content I could recycle. Old blog posts or chunks thereof, stuff that I’d written for other people that hadn’t got published, etc. But there was also the need to create quite a lot of original content. Even with the recycled content, I reckon prep took between 10 and 15 hours of solid work.
I produced a lot of writing for and during the week. Final word count excluding tweets and this post was around 10,000 words. It is not my most polished writing (I’m still fixing typos everywhere!), and I was deliberately trying to keep most of the items short. Both of these are well outside my writing comfort zone. I like long, philosophically consistent, polished arguments. I like setting out my assumptions and facts, analysing them, reaching a conclusion. I didn’t have time to do all that, plus at two topics a day I don’t think my audience could have coped with much more content than I already produced. What did help was that I was talking to an audience who didn’t need QUILTBAG101 explained to them. One thing I hadn’t foreseen was that I would feel the need to write up summaries of the discussions. With the richness of the engagement and insight I got from the community, it became apparent halfway through Day 1 that summaries would add value – definitely for me and possibly for others. That upped both the word count and the amount of work I had to get done during the week significantly.
One of the things I learned through the week was to fine-tune my language better. I already knew that marriage wasn’t “gay”, it was “same-sex” – because some of us are bi. By the end of the week, relationships weren’t “opposite-sex”, they were “different-sex” – because some people are “they”. Deal with it. I’m a big believer in the power of language, and what you call things matters. I will probably continue fine-tuning my language as I get my head around new concepts and gain new insights.
Something else I learned is that there’s a fine line between facilitating a discussion and dealing with trolls. As I said earlier, one of my main aims for the week was to facilitate a discussion and allow a plurality of views and experiences to be represented. I RTed almost indiscriminately, regardless of whether I agreed with a particular point of view or not. As long as tweets were vaguely on topic (where on topic was defined as fitting within anything I was planning to or had talked about within the week), they pretty much got RTed. People shared deeply personal views and stories, talked about how their biphobic views had changed, talked about how they fit some of the biphobic stereotypes around, and questioned each other’s views and attitudes. Largely this was done extremely respectfully and generated insights and better understanding. I used the phrase “Tread carefully” on a couple of occasions where discussions got slightly more personal, and that seemed to work. One of the things I loved the most about curating the account for the week was that people were talking to each other. All I had to do was ask a couple of questions, and off we went.
I was lucky that throughout the entire week I only had one troll who sought to deliberately challenge, silence and erase people gender identities. He started with what could have been an honest question which I RTed and engaged with but it went downhill pretty quickly from there. A few people engaged with him. Here’s the fine line I decided to walk: I stopped RTing his comments pretty quickly as they were transphobic and I didn’t want to give him a platform. I mostly let other people challenge him if they wanted, but backed them on a couple of occasions – sometimes when you’re dealing with a troll it can be extremely helpful to get a few supportive comments so you don’t start doubting your own sanity. Eventually everyone lost interest and that thread went quiet.
Both preparing the content for the week, and throughout the week, I had a lot of help. A couple of people, most notably Charlie Hale and @drcabl3 helped me bounce ideas and wrote additional content which I could reference. The two of them and @geek_manager also participated very actively in the discussions – and it was nice for me to know there were some friendly faces there who would have my back (about anything other than Joss Whedon) should I manage to get myself into trouble. The good friend who acts as sysadmin for my blog put up with me breaking the stylesheet four times a day for the first half of this week and found a permanent fix in the end. My partner, who is infinitely patient, put up with hardly seeing me for the week, with my bone-deep exhaustion when he did see me, and he made sure I ate real food, didn’t disappear under a pile of washing-up and didn’t end up with a laundry crisis on my hands. Finally, I found the entire community extremely helpful. I was touched by the experiences people shared, by the richness of the discussion and the insights, by the number of people who reached out privately to me via email, DMs etc. to share their views and stories. I’m very grateful to everyone for making it such a fantastic experience!
There are a few things that with hindsight I would do differently, mostly logistically. I haven’t got numbers behind this but it felt like the morning discussions got more engagement than the afternoon discussions. I think I could have worked out time zones a bit better to manage that, and timed the start of the afternoon discussions better – though to an extent that had to fit around my working day too. I RTed most of the discussion to my own Twitter feed – partly to have a record of it, partly to get more people engaged. The feedback I got on that was overwhelmingly positive, even though I did spam people’s feeds a few times a day. There are probably better ways to do this though. There were a few specific people I tried to engage with some of the discussions – film makers, writers, community leaders, one politician. Most of them were incredibly gracious to join in as and when I took their name in vain. If I were to do this again I would probably try to identify such people up front and give them a heads-up on what I was planning, but the magic of Twitter is such that a lot of it did work very well on an ad-hoc basis. One last thing I would do differently if I ever did something like this again: take the week off work. It’s been a fun and exciting week, but dear gods to I need some sleep now!
I learned a few things about myself and many many things about bisexuality, pansexuality and how other people experienced their sexuality similarly or differently to me. Mostly I think these are already documented in other posts here. One thing that I both expected and didn’t was how much of a chord an openly bisexual woman in a different-sex relationship talking in-depth about bisexuality, biphobia, bi invisibility and bi erasure struck with people. Within seconds of posting my introduction I had people asking “Hang on, really? There’s a bi person curating @TwkLGBTQ?” And most of those people were bi themselves. I hope I did right by them.
Finally, here’s what I hope others will take away from my week on @TwkLGBTQ:

  1. Bisexuality, biphobia, bi invisibility and bi erasure are real things. They have a real impact on people’s day to day lives. Whether you are bi yourself or know bi people or think you know about bi people, these things have an impact on you.
  2. QUILTBAG is not a perfect acronym for our community (for a start it lacks a P for pansexual and possibly for polyamorous), but it’s the most inclusive one we’ve got. And yes, it might be a bit twee, but I think that’s actually a strength as it engages people. Use it.
  3. Between us, I think we’ve created a whole bunch of interesting reference resources. I’ve tried to sum up as much for the views and experiences shared, the role models and fictional bisexuals we came up with, and the books and articles people linked to as humanly possible in my blog posts. I hope people find them useful and share them further.

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[@TwkLGBTQ] Bisexuals and gender

I’ve known for a while that bisexuals’ experiences vary markedly by gender. There’s a certain social acceptability around bi women that has its roots in thoroughly biphobic and misogynist concepts like “gay till graduation” and the assumption of availability. Throughout the week I’ve had maybe twice as many bi women share their experiences with me on Twitter as men, and considerably more men than women have done so in private (DM, email, etc.). A lot of bi men seemed to feel that their orientation was something incredibly private that they didn’t want to share with the world, that it didn’t matter in the wider context of their lives. There were some women who shared this view, but a much higher proportion were much more open about their identity and experiences. And of course, being genderqueer and bi brings a whole different set of challenges too, one that we probably don’t understand terribly well at all.
At the same time, if you look at public figures out as bisexual, a slightly different picture emerges. Based on a few sources I’ve leafed through this week (the Guardian’s World Pride Power List, last year’s Independent on Sunday Pink List, Stonewall’s role models booklet) and on highly unstatistical numbers, openly bisexual women tend to be found in entertainment – singer Jessie J and boxer Nicola Adams being the two most prominent examples. There are no openly bi women in politics. On the other hand, we have three openly bi male politicians: Simon Hughes (who in all fairness was forced into the open), Patrick Harvie, and Edward Lord, as well as a reasonably high-profile lawyer and journalist in David Allen Green. (For the sake of completeness, Craig Revel Horwood is openly bi and in the entertainment industry. And I don’t know of any genderqueer bisexuals in the public eye.)
To me this looks like an interesting object lesson in intersectionality. I think the same things that make bi women slightly more accepted (albeit in a sleazy sort of way) in everyday life are the things that stop them from being out in public life outside of the entertainment industry. Our Prime Minister already feels it’s okay to tell female MPs to “calm down dear” – imagine the field day he would have with an openly bisexual female politician.
ETA
This discussion went all sorts of interesting places, particularly because I also threw in a question on how sexual orientation impacts gender presentation. We touched on everything from body hair to men in skirts and the right/wrong kind of pink.
A couple of genderqueer people shared their experiences:
From Charlie Hale: (In that I’m still seen as a guy. Just about.) I did feel less comfortable coming out as bi. Maybe because it’s seen as more overtly sexual? I don’t really know. if I understood my feelings on gender I’d be much less confused 😛
And from anonymous: I’m out in terms of sexuality but not genderqueer, and only to my mother. Pansexuality was hard to explain to her, and I expect genderqueer will be harder. Publicly coming out will be easier, I think, because I can do it all at once with both, because the people who matter will know already.
We talked a lot about femininity, and different ways to appear feminine or otherwise (make-up, removing body hair, wearing frilly sleeveless tops to proudly show off your armpit hair and the reaction that tends to get). We touched on gender presentation within the goth community. Some insights from @nanayasleeps:

I don’t think so, but goth interpretation of gender & sexuality is different anyway. I think it’s more about: what is high femme elsewhere is the base state for goths, as a very rough rule. That pony-tailed guy in t-shirt, skinny jeans & eyeliner? He’s the blokey one. Lacy cravat/cuffs dude? Middle-of-the-road. And a long-haired woman in lacy/pirate shirts, jeans, winkelpickers and eyeliner is actively butch. But only here.

This then led into a discussion of pink as a feminine and/or goth colour and @drcabl3’s wonderful chart of the right and wrong kinds of pink.
We had a couple of book recommendations in this area: Alternative Femininities and Brazen Femme. As well as this wonderful feminist make-up tutorial.
@drcabl3 and I got into an interesting discussion on femme as a gender presentation vs. gender identity. The identity side of this is something neither of us know a huge amount about, and neither of us feel comfortable speaking for other people and their identities but we’d love to hear from people for whom femme is a gender identity and how that relates to their gender presentation.
We also talked about the effect gender presentation has on how people perceive you. @geek_manager who’s a fairly butch lesbian with a strong interest in sports, motorbikes and shooting things tends to be seen by men as “one of the guys”. My own gender presentation tends to be androgynous in an “a bit of both” sort of way. (Or as I said on Twitter, my gender presentation is “jeans and t-shirt” or “business casual” with a side helping of “no sense of style”.) And while my gender identity is female, I’m not especially strongly attached to it. I find I don’t fit in terribly well with either very masculine men or very feminine women.
We touched a little bit on why there are four out bisexual men in British politics and no women. @geek_manager had a theory:

Some bi men are camp. Camp men get hounded to admit/come out, even if with women? More incentive to be open? Whereas I think the bias against bisexual women is strong in the lesbian community. So many if in SSR “pass as lesbian”. And bi women in diff sex relationships certainly end up passing or having to Educate The Whole Damn World Daily?

Edward Lord joined in this discussion too as he’d been interviewed on Radio 4 about Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski coming out as bi earlier this week. Here’s his blog post about it.
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[@TwkLGBTQ] Domestic abuse in the LGBT community

The power of domestic abuse is in the fact that it happens in secret and often goes unacknowledged by society, which in turn means victims can feel ashamed, isolated, and unable to seek help. Shining a light into this dark corner of our society is therefore vital.
One type of domestic abuse that remains broadly unacknowledged is that of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. While domestic abuse is just as prevalent in the LGBT community as in society in general, it is often difficult for LGBT victims to name the abuse they are suffering because their experiences do not fit within the common stereotypes we associate with the issue. A violent partner of the same sex; the threat by an opposite-sex partner to out a bisexual victim; the power a transgender person’s spouse holds over their ability to gain legal recognition of their gender: these are all forms of abuse which plague the LGBT community yet get very little recognition in the public eye.
This is further exacerbated by the lack of understanding of LGBT domestic abuse among key stakeholders, from the police and GPs to refuges and other service providers. Trans women are often turned away from refuges; police record incidents as hate crime rather than domestic abuse; GPs and other healthcare professionals refuse to acknowledge that the perpetrator is of the same gender.
In the UK, the charity Broken Rainbow provides a national helpline for LGBT people experiencing domestic violence and abuse and works to raise awareness of the issues and challenges the LGBT community faces in this area.
ETA
Some people on Twitter were surprised that domestic abuse was an issue for the LGBT community. In a same-sex relationship, the argument goes, you’d expect more empathy and thus less violence. Of course not all LGBT people are in same-sex relationships. Some of us are bi, some of us are trans, some of us suffer domestic abuse from other family members; and same-sex relationships really aren’t immune to domestic violence and abuse.
One in four LGBT people experience domestic abuse in the UK – that’s the same rate as heterosexual women. People are people, and there are a multitude of factors at play here. The Bisexuality Report also found that bisexuals in same-sex relationships are at higher risk of domestic violence than other groups. I haven’t seen the full research, but I would imagine the biphobia we’ve been talking about all week may have something to do with this.
If you are LGBT, in the UK and experiencing domestic abuse – or if you’re worried that you might be abusing your partner – you can contact Broken Rainbow here:
Helpline: 0300 999 5428 Monday & Thursday 10am – 8pm, Tue & Wed 10am – 5pm help@brokenrainbow.org.uk
You can support Broken Rainbow’s work by donating or fundraising.
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[@TwkLGBTQ] Intersectionality

WhiteGeeksBingo
I came across the “Hanging out with white geeky folks bingo card” on Jacqueline Applebee’s tumblr the other day when someone put her up as a bi role model in the #AwesomelyBi discussion. I loved it.
I am a white geeky person. In my short reign over on @TwkLGBTQ this week, I have referenced multiple Guardian articles, we’ve discussed Doctor Who extensively, and I’ve made a Mornington Crescent joke. There’s at least one Cthulhu plushie in my house, I have a number of friends who do the real ale thing, and I will happily hold forth on Apple vs Linux for hours. And while I am friends with quite a few people of colour, I can count on one hand the social situations I’ve been in where white people like me have been in the minority. This bingo card is basically my life, and to me that is completely normal.
What I love about it is how it allows me to see myself and the community I’m part of from a completely new angle. It makes me very aware that there are people out there with very different experiences from very different backgrounds to whom this white geeky shared headspace looks ever so slightly strange. There are people with whom I share part of my identity, who have some similar experiences to me, who nonetheless have other identities and different needs to me, even in the areas where we overlap. And that’s a damn good thing to be reminded of.
We’ve spent a lot of this week on @TwkLGBTQ talking about the experiences bisexual people share: invisibility, erasure, biphobia. What we haven’t quite paid enough attention to is how our experiences differ based on the multiple identities we call our own. How does race or class or disability, gender identity, religion or immigration status affect the way we experience our sexuality and the way others perceive or treat us?
Personally, I find being a bisexual immigrant allows me to make bad jokes about stealing your jobs and your women. Less flippantly, I find those identities collide most not here in the UK but back in Bulgaria where there’s no way I could start challenging biphobia because of the amount of homophobia I have wade through first.
To me, intersectionality matters hugely. We don’t live in a single pigeon hole, and it’s vital to remember that not all our experiences are the same. Different parts of our community have different needs, and the best way to be mindful of that is to learn about them. So I’d love to hear more about other people’s intersectional experiences with bisexuality.
ETA
@applewriter kindly joined the discussion this evening to share some of the assumptions she faces from the white QUILTBAG community. Here’s what she said:

I made the bingo card as a way to not get sad by feeling like a constant outsider. The bi communities are not diverse at all… I find the casual racism, and the persistent assumptions many bi & trans people make depressing. A few: that we have English as a 1st language & are all good w academic-speak, that we have time & money to spare. Another big one: that communities of colour are automatically bi & trans phobic. That whites are our saviours. And lastly that bi & trans people of colour are happy to spend their time explaining racism to white queers. I’m happy to explain a bit now, but its often used as a derailing tactic by racist folks. Plus I’m not that busy.

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[@TwkLGBTQ] You’re bi? Threesomes!

Perhaps one of the most insidious stereotypes about bisexuality is the assumption of availability. “You’re bi? Wanna have a threesome with me and my girlfriend?” It’s kind of the natural extension of other stereotypes – the fickle and indecisive bisexual and the promiscuous bisexual; but it’s also worse. It’s worse because the fickle, indecisive, promiscuous bisexual still has some agency to choose who they want to sleep with. The assumption of availability, the suggestion that just because I don’t discriminate on the basis of gender in who I’m attracted to I must automatically be attracted to everyone is insulting and downright creepy.
I don’t know if this is something bi men experience in the same way or as much as bi women (something to talk about later in the week). But society’s general attitude to women as sex objects is magnified and intensified when it comes to bisexual women. This is a particularly damaging attitude in the case of bisexual survivors of rape and sexual assault. It’s yet another victim-blaming stick to beat women with.
So if a friend ever comes out as bi to you, do them the common courtesy of not assuming they must automatically be attracted to you. And if you’ve ever asked a bi friend if they want to have a threesome with you and your girlfriend, please do apologise.
ETA
Some key points from the discussion on @TwkLGBTQ:
As Charlie Hale points out, some bisexuals will want threesomes – but that’s not because their bisexual. It’s the distinction between bisexuality and polyamory that’s important – they are different things, independent of each other. They are neither always found together nor mutually exclusive.
@inkiebird pointed out that she didn’t mind people who actually understood polyamory assuming she was poly. It was the assumption that the bisexuality equalled dishonesty and cheating that was the most damaging. The other interesting insight she shared was that she had her sexuality questioned a lot less when she rejected men than when she rejected women.
One of the things I struggle with in some more uptight settings is explaining that bi != poly without throwing poly people under the bus. Some spaces are so closed that even saying something like “You know what, some bisexuals are polyamorous, so are some monosexuals, and that’s perfectly fine. I myself am monogamous.” will get you judged. I’ve had to work on my language a few times to make sure I was addressing stereotypes about bisexuality in a way that left a non-judgmental space for poly folks.
Apparently one way to get propositioned for a threesome is to be asked “Do you have a friend?” Well, let me tell you, I have many dear and good friends. *points at collection of tall, looming, grumpy-looking goths*
A couple of people pointed out that gays and lesbians suffer from similar assumptions. Female same-sex couples often get propositioned by random men, regardless of orientation. And there’s a homophobic assumption that all gay people must automatically be attracted to all members of the same sex.
We also briefly touched on the question whether polyamory is an orientation or a practice. The answer is apparently both, at least for some people.
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[@TwkLGBTQ] Bi at work

We started this morning’s discussion on being bi in the workplace with a link to this Guardian article. I asked people if they were out as bi at work, what reactions they got, and what they thought their employers could do to support and proactively include bisexual employees.
One of the things that emerged pretty quickly was that gay-friendly workplaces aren’t necessarily bi-friendly workplaces. Biphobia, bi invisibility and bi erasure can come from lesbian and gay colleagues just as much as from straight ones. Even if colleagues know of past your past relationships with someone of a different gender to the person you are dating now, the assumption that it was “just a phase” is still too prevalent. Certainly in my experience it doesn’t help to have a staff LGBT network that only ever talks about lesbians and gays and that doesn’t even get the basics right (“bisexual”, not “bi-sexual”!).
A common frustration was that to be truly out as bisexual you have to educate people over and over again. In many workplaces now no one would bat an eyelid if you told them you were dating someone of the same sex, but the information that you are not monosexual still takes a while to sink in. You have to educate everyone you meet, and sometimes even educate the same people over and over again. The burden of educating everyone should never be placed on a single individual. An organisation truly supportive of bi employees should cover bi issues as well as other types of invisible diversity in their general diversity and inclusion training.
People felt awkward about the “mechanics” of coming out as bisexual at work, particularly if they were currently in an opposite-sex relationship. Referring to past same-sex relationships can sometimes do the trick – if you have them. Opinions were divided on casual chat, e.g. about “hot” male and female celebrities. Some felt this was sexist and objectifying, others thought it was a good way to break the ice. In my case, most of my colleagues know I’m in an opposite-sex relationship (and have been for longer than I’ve worked for the company), but I am very active in our LGBT network and my desk is covered in LGBT-branded posters, flyers and magnets. This generally does the trick in opening up a space for conversation.
Not being able to be out as bisexual sometimes meant that people were exposed to homophobia and biphobia by colleagues and employers. There were certain settings where people felt they had to pass, e.g. childcare. The overall environment in the company also made a difference to people’s willingness and ability to be out as bisexual – for instance the gender ratio of the work force, whether the company was big enough to have an LGBT employee group or whether you were quite literally the only QUILTBAG person in the village.
Quite a few people felt that their sexuality was private and saw no need to be out at work. Others felt that those able to be out should be, as that improved the environment for everyone. Someone remarked that the conversation made them feel like they should out at work. Ultimately, coming out in any context is a highly personal choice. It is, however, in all our interest for workplaces to be supportive and inclusive and create the kind of environment where we can make that choice freely and safely.
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[@TwkLGBTQ] The privilege of passing, the burden of invisibility

“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. 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. 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!
[Parts of this are taken from another post, ‘Why I “flaunt my sexuality”‘.]
ETA
A couple of points struck me in the discussion on this.
@nanayasleeps said “passing” made her feel “weird as fuck”. “Because I always loathe being misrepresented. I’d rather be disliked as myself than liked as something not-me.” That really rang true for me.
A few people appreciated the peace and quiet of being able to pass at least in some contexts – it’s nice not to be fighting a battle all the time, even if in other areas of their lives they were out and proud. For some, passing was a necessity.
@DrNeevil said her experience growing up where sexuality could get you imprisoned made her more determined to be out and visible even if she does have the option to pass.
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