Happily coinciding with the first day of our first terrestrial conference since the Ice Age, today is the 25th anniversary of Bi Visibility Day, also known as “Does this thing open from the inside?” Day.
Over on Stonewall’s website, their digital officer, George Alabaster, has answered the question “Why do we need Bi Visibility Day?”:
Bi people are often the forgotten part of the LGBTQ+ community. Our experiences are commonly assumed to be the same as lesbian and gay experiences, and our identities are frequently made invisible or dismissed as something that doesn’t exist, by people both inside and outside of this community.
We face a number of negative stereotypes, the primary ones being that we’re greedy, manipulative, incapable of monogamy and unable to make our minds up – the last of which is the same as saying who we are isn’t real.
George includes this stunning statistic:
Stonewall research has exposed that for many the problem is worse than what I experienced: almost half of bi men (46 per cent) and a quarter of bi women (26 per cent) aren’t open about their sexual orientation to anyone in their family, compared to 10 per cent of gay men and just five per cent of lesbians.
This means a huge proportion of bi people are facing the harmful effects of biphobia in their daily lives – the stereotypes, the invisibility, the lack of belief that bi people exist – without the benefit of support, reassurance and acceptance from their parents, grandparents and siblings.
You can read George’s full article here.
The photo above is by Ted Eytan on Flickr CCL
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