Today is Bisexual Visibility Day, a day to celebrate bisexual people and raise awareness of the particular problems that they face.
In an article on Pink News today, Lois Shearing highlights the effects of the discrimination that bi people face – and this can come from within the LGBT+ community:
Despite the prevalence of biphobia, it’s common to read or hear comments about bisexual people having privilege or not facing any real oppression. But this is provably false: it is well documented that bi people face higher rates of mental illness, due in part to biphobia and double discrimination. Bi+ men are less likely to get tested for HIV due to social stigma and biphobia within healthcare settings. Bi+ people are also more likely to suffer from addiction or abuse drugs and alcohol. Yet bi people are still seen as deserving targets of cruel jokes or comments.
Labour MP Rosie Duffield, added biphobia to her transphobia on national radio earlier this week, when she accused bisexual men who are married to women of “appropriating gay culture.”
There’s a real culture change from government, too. Silence from Liz Truss, the Women and Equalities Minister, in contrast to a previous holder of that office:
In contrast, not a peep from Liz Truss this year.
Which is both invisibility and phew, she's not trying to pass herself off as any kind of ally to LGBT folk today any more than the rest of the year. https://t.co/hvGUCeNxGy— Jen Yockney 🦄🦓 MBE 💗💜💙 (@jenyockney) September 23, 2021
Jo said then:
I welcome Bi Visibility Day which helps to raise awareness of the issues that bisexual people can face and provides an opportunity to celebrate diversity and focus on the B in LGB&T.
The Party marked the day with a tweet:
A happy Bi Visibility Day from the Liberal Democrats.
It is vital that just as with all LGBT+ discrimination, we speak out against biphobia and challenge bisexual erasure wherever we find it. #BiVisibilityDay pic.twitter.com/Rxc0Mb72Y7
— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) September 23, 2021
Federal Board member April Preston made a thread of famous bisexuals:
https://twitter.com/AprilPreston_/status/1440999594985406464?s=20
And Jennie wryly observes:
https://twitter.com/miss_s_b/status/1440931326337724416?s=20
Let’s not forget about bi people for the next 364 days.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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6 Comments
Rosie Duffield didn’t say anything about bisexual people – the word she referred to was queer – that word which many gay men still consider a slur but which seems to have no fixed meaning. Nor is she transphobic. Understanding female anatomy isn’t transphobic.
From the Times:
“Duffield, 50, liked a tweet by Kurtis Tripp, an American rapper, accusing trans people of “colonising gay culture” and saying they were “mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay”. ”
That looks transphobic to me.
I believe that she has also said words to the effect that “‘only women have a cervix” – trans men mostly do too. So that’s transphobic.
She’s quite at liberty to have and state these hateful views, but cannot expect not to be called to account for them.
Also see this article in Pink news https://tinyurl.com/3pm6fdbx
@Jenny Barnes: Kurtis Tripp’s Twitter account is currently suspended, making it hard to piece together what was actually said. However, there’s a screenshot of what appears to be the offending tweet on the daily mail, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9832829/Labour-MP-Rosie-Duffield-investigated-party-liking-tweet.html. You can judge the screenshot for yourself, but the words in it most definitely DO NOT say that most trans people are heterosexuals. Rather, it claims that most of the people who are trying to reclaim the word ‘queer’ are heterosexuals. (Maybe there’s some context I can’t see that changes things?)
“ believe that she has also said words to the effect that “‘only women have a cervix” – trans men mostly do too” – IF she has said that, that would mean that she’s incorrect. Being incorrect does not necessarily mean phobic, it may mean simply having a poor understanding, or having said something that came out a bit wrong. That’s important because, accusing someone of being transphobic (or biphobic, or really, any kind of -phobic) is a pretty nasty accusation, so if you’re going to accuse someone of it, you need to have some very solid evidence that they actually are what you’re claiming. It seems to me that, at the moment, far too many people are throwing around accusations of things like transphobia on the flimsiest of evidence. That’s really not helping the debate.
Jenny Barnes ref. your link to ‘Pink News’.. It reminded me of how, welcoming Phillip Lee into this party as an MP, caused a number of LGBT+ members to quit due to his voting history regarding LGBT+ rights….
I would point out that saying one of Rosie Duffield’s staff quit because of her trans views is a factual inaccuracy. We need to ensure that this debate is conducted in a spirit of accurate information.
Two of Rosie Duffield’s staff quit because of her trans views 🙂
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/14/rosie-duffield-mp-labour-transphobia-row-staffer-quits-resignation-canterbury/
🙂
Absolutely agree with you about the exceptionally low bar to qualify as ‘transphobic’ or ‘hate’ at the moment, Simon.