Author Archives: Ian

'Bi-furious' BiCon 2016 session notes

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As part of finding out what people were furious about, the start of the session involved having two large sheets of paper for the attendees to write on. One was labelled 'shit', the other 'shit we can do something about'. Comments in italics were added by other people then, ones in [brackets] are mine now. Ones on the second sheet… Read more »

It's about biphobia in game writing…

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CW: spoilers and dubious consent, as well as the usual biphobia. The recently released game Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator by Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray is described by its producers as: a game where you play as a Dad and your goal is to meet and romance other hot Dads. You and your daughter have just moved into… Read more »

Erasure at the BBC

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.. and not the good kind. The BBC have been marking the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of sex between men in England and Wales with a season, Gay Britannia, that includes both radio and TV. Given that the subtitle is "Bold and provocative stories exploring how far we’ve come since being gay was a crime", you can guess… Read more »

We are stardust, we are golden

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The very lovely people at the very lovely Biscuit magazine have a new badge: Here you go! https://t.co/7BLBHViqW4 #goldstarbisexual pic.twitter.com/5oCCYjMHmn — 💖💜💙 thisisbiscuit (@Biscuitmag) August 2, 2017 (For those of us with adblockers that stop you seeing images in embedded tweets, it says 'Gold Star Bisexual', around a golden five pointed star.) Part of me – most of me –… Read more »

An epidemic of erasure 2

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After posting An epidemic of erasure, I remembered one of the stories I'd wanted to talk about that it didn't mention at all, despite the way that it features Channel 4 too. Its weekday nightly news programme, Channel 4 News, is one of the UK's flagship news programmes. Along with BBC 2's Newsnight, it tends to ignore the 'popular' stories… Read more »

"Of course we understand the issues faced by people who identify as bisexual"

I am beginning to think biphobia and erasure are in The Guardian's style guide. The worst – not the only, just the worst – example from today is titled, with no noticeable awareness of the irony, How the straight majority still silences gay people. That it'd be bad was obvious from the opening sentence: Two weeks ago it was Pride… Read more »

.. and on the same day

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.. as the article on Andrew Garfield's comments, there's Finally, a gay Blind Date. Apparently, the TV show Blind Date is being rebooted and it was going to have an episode where one woman got to pick from three other women. Hmm, presuming that's how she identified, it'd be better labelled a 'lesbian Blind Date', wouldn't it? Anyway.. this weekend… Read more »

The Guardian does it again again

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A couple of weeks ago, they published an article on actor Andrew Garfield talking about 'playing gay'. "The actor was criticised over comments he made about preparing to play a gay man, joining actors such as James Franco who've toyed with ideas of sexuality" says the subtitle. What he did was say comes down to that he thinks that, as… Read more »

The British Library gets the erasers out

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At the moment, the British Library have a small exhibition called Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty. I see that looking at that page would have prepared me for the reality: "gay men .. gay men and women .. homosexuality .. gay people .. Gay .. homosexuality .. gay". The first thing you see at the actual exhibition is the… Read more »