Tag Archives: language

Gold medal gay?

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When the Guardian says, in its subheading of a story called The LGBT athletes making history at the 2018 Winter Olympics that "Eric Radford has made history as the [Winter Olympic] Games' first openly gay gold medalist", what is the reader to think? Especially when the lead paragraph is.. Pyeongchang's Olympics have seen athletes more open and public about their… Read more »

Another day, another problematic Guardian article

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Today's article in the Life in Sex series is 'Graduating from women to men wasn’t a big deal' and is written by an anonymous bisexual man. Unfortunately, they picked a bisexual man who doesn't understand the definition of bisexuality: I feel as if I may as well leave aside the part of me that’s interested in women; I’m only confusing… Read more »

Tipping the Velvet quickie

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Sarah Waters writes about creating her book Tipping the Velvet in the Guardian. Given that both the main characters in the book are sexual with more than one gender, what do you think the language of the article is? Yep. [] Gay: 5 uses, including in the title [] Lesbian: 9 uses, including one 'Lesbian Avengers' [] Lesbian and gay:… Read more »

A well spent five minutes

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When asked for Purple Prose, my suggestion for some bit of activism in five minutes was 'write something'. Sometimes you can see it have an effect.. Yesterday, I saw the EuroBiCon Twitter account had retweeted something from Diva's: 4 ways to meet #lesbians and #bisexual women – here's where you just might meet the girl of your dreams 💞 https://t.co/49dgTxHsOM… 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 »

Does the gay agenda include bi erasure?

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Following more homophobia from Australian former tennis star Margaret Court complaining about the 'gay agenda', The Guardian published an opinion piece, 'What are the secrets of the ‘gay agenda’ – flag-waving and flannel shirts?' by Arwa Mahdawi. She's apparently a 'writer and brand strategist based in New York' who identifies as homosexual and/or lesbian. You'll never guess how many times… Read more »

Fifty years on, the bi erasure continues

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The Observer have an article on the fiftieth anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of sex between men in 1967. They've called it Glad to be gay: leading figures on 50 years of liberation. Given that the writer of the song referenced there is bisexual you'd think that… ha, of course not. Someone who's made a documentary, Queerama, about LGBT life… Read more »

Two for the price of one

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Combining the b-exclusion of an LGBT history month event and of an earlier article in The Guardian, 'Burnley Buggers' Ball to mark 50th anniversary of Sexual Offences Act' manages to keep up with the language of the others: [] lesbian and gay rights – 2 uses [] gay and lesbian rights – 1 use, as a quote from Russell T… Read more »

Activity, not orientation

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When an article about gay and bisexual men starts with "A pardon for Britain’s persecuted gay men", you know the bisexual erasure is strong with the author. And indeed it is. Looking at the text, we see: [] gay men – 1 use [] gay and bisexual men – 1 use [] straight allies – 1 use [] LGBT people… Read more »

Not asking the right questions 2

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The more I think about it, the more outraged I am that the Scottish Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) would pay to ask fifty questions about discriminatory attitudes in the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) study and not once use the word 'bisexual' in them. Elsewhere in the same survey the Scottish Government also paid to ask… Read more »