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 in London – or, as some of us go on calling it, Gay Pride.
Ah, the never-ending gift that's white gay cis male privilege.
I must have been going to it for nearly 30 years now.
.. by the mid-80s, it had been 'Lesbian and Gay Pride' for years.
It turns out that his first was in 1990 – "nearly 30" is clearly rather flexible – and it wasn't until 1996 that it became 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride', but while most of the communities moved on, some never did accept that, did they Philip?
After reminiscing about the old days, including proving that he does know the word 'lesbian', he talks about some of the legal changes since then, and complains about the trend to a more corporate Pride. Well, we've all been there for the last one, even if not all of us remember the behaviour of drunken gay men quite so fondly as he does, having been one.
The reason that, until very late on, there were going to be no bisexual groups in the Pride in London parade this year is that all the slots had been filled before the announced deadline for applications, primarily by companies and organisations outside the LGBT community. It made the news in all sorts of places, including the Metro.
What's upset Philip isn't that, but how..
unaffiliated gay men and lesbians, free to walk along and shout whatever irreverent nonsense they feel like, have been excluded. But what has crowded them out is companies, employers and official bodies keen to show they are in tune with gay and lesbian customers and employees, rather than nutty Christians. It’s a development, I suppose.
It's two examples of erasure in three sentences, actually.
But we see his agenda when, after going on about "ordinary gay men and lesbians", and the legal remedies now available for overt discrimination, he asks
But what about the act of subtle denigration from someone who, when challenged, responds with the phrase "I'm not homophobic!" as if awareness of the category of insult equals incapacity to commit it?
.. before blaming it all on the bisexuals in an act of denigration immediately before saying "I'm not biphobic!":
The rainbow coalition of sexual identities has sometimes appeared to evict lesbians and gay men from the spaces they created. Of course we understand the issues faced by people who identify as bisexual.
He's no Bindel when it comes to transphobia – not a word complaining about the T – but he has her biphobia.
And what have bisexuals done to upset him? Kiss and dance. It's beyond parody, really.
But how should we react when – a recent experience – a dozen mixed-sex couples invade a tiny dance floor in a long-standing London gay bar snogging and flailing and, when challenged about their aggressive behaviour, explain that they are "queer"?
In the middle of it all, he says..
It is not just a case of hardened bigots insisting on their rights to hatred.
Sometimes it is, Philip, sometimes it is.
This is what biphobia looks like.
