Let's see how 'bi' is used on the oh-so-important recently published 'Pride Power List 2019'.
Well, it's in the opening line saying what it's supposed to be: "Celebrating the achievements of influential lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in our amazing community."
But apart from that..
homophobic/homophobia – 6 uses
Bisi Alimi – 4 uses
lesbian – 3 uses
disability – 2 uses
transphobia – 2 uses
Bill (as in Parliament) – 2 uses
Showbiz – 2 uses
And it's one each for
biggest
lez/bi chat show (in the section on Saara Aalto, who has been in relationships with men as well as women and currently identifies as lesbian)
celesbian
Hobbit (in the section on Sir Ian McKellan)
visibilty
Birmingham
exhibited
cabinet
and just one each for bisexual (Dolly-Rose Campbell, the only one labelled as bisexual) and biphobia
Not labelled as bisexual: Munroe Bergdorf, Nicola Adams (and the comment about her being the "first openly LGBTQI person to win an Olympic gold medal in 2012" is wrong – Carl Hester won one in Team Dressage two days earlier*), Paris Lees, or Adele Roberts, despite the latter being described as "openly bisexual" in the 2018 version.**
Adele was the only person said to be currently bisexual in that 2018 list – despite Munroe, Nicola and Paris were also being in it.
Perhaps only one in a hundred in a list like this is allowed to identify as bisexual?
Or is it none? The 2017 version has literally no-one described as 'bisexual': the only three uses are in that opening line and in 'alleged genocide of gay and bisexual men in Chechnya' – the two co-chairs of Pride in London wrote a letter about. (They're against it, just in case you wondered.) And yes, Munroe and Paris are in the list.
Call me a teeny bit oversensitive about all this, but isn't it interesting that Dolly-Rose Campbell is specifically noted as coming out in February this year after becoming an ambassador for Manchester Pride?
The original source for her coming out talks about her attending Pride for over a decade, and compare to "came out in 1988" (Ian McKellan) or "out .. for over a decade" (Alan Carr) or "came out in the BBC’s staff magazine just under a decade ago" (Jane Hill) or "throughout his career" (Evan Davies) or "was the first MP to come out in 1997" (Angela Eagle, only possibly true if you're talking just about 1997!) or "one of the first actors to come out" (Sophie Ward) and how relatively recently Ryan Atkins came out isn't mentioned.
Also see the way that in the 2018 list, Duncan James "came out as bisexual in 2009, and later came out as gay" and "Ollie Locke .. has spoken out about the 'difficulty' of coming out as gay and the backlash he faced for originally coming out as bisexual."
Anyway, this is what erasure looks like.
* Speaking of mistakes, "Baroness Barker came out as lesbian during a powerful speech in the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill debate" – Liz Barker has been out for at least 35 years, certainly from the very early 1980s during her time in the Union of Liberal Students.
There's also one big spelling mistake in the Russell T Davis entry (down at 92), where 'LGBTQI dramas, Queer as Folk, Cucumber, Tofu and Banana' should of course read 'GGGGL dramas..'.
** I strongly suspect there are going to be other people in the list who identify as bisexual, but these are just the obvious omissions.
