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Women in Revolt!

.. is the title of a touring exhibition from the Tate, with the subtitle 'Art and activism in the UK 1970-1990'.

I saw it in August 2024 at Modern Two, part of Scotland's National Galleries in Edinburgh.

The final room, "No such thing as society",[1]".. and who is society? There is no such thing!", Margaret Thatcher talking to Woman's Own magazine, 1988 contains a large chunk of the queer stuff.

In the online copy of the exhibition guide including the captions for all of the pictures, the word 'bisexual' does not appear once. There are ten uses of 'LGBT's/'LGBTQ..'s seven of which aren't in URLs or collection titles, twenty eight uses of 'gay', and forty two uses of 'lesbian'.

But the room does have a couple of photos where I went 'I recognise them from the bi community!'. Pam Isherwood's Pride march from 1985:

Stephen Holdsworth and Kate Fearnley holding a 'Pinko Commie Queers' banner at 1985's Pride event in London

Holding the banner on the right of the photo is Kate Fearnley

Pinko Commie (bisexual) Queer Kate

The other maker of the banner, Stephen Holdsworth, is on the left.

Apparently, there are photos of Mark Ashton, of 'Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners' fame amongst other causes, holding the banner but this is one of very few showing Kate holding it – and a shot of two men holding a banner probably wouldn't have made it into the exhibition.

In Edinburgh, where Kate has lived and worked for decades, the picture is low down by the floor to the point that you have to bend down to see it, but the Tate's guide reckons it was on the top row there.

The other photo is from Dell LaGrace Volcano, On The Way There, taken on the day of London's Pride event in 1988:

The person in the middle..

Sarah

.. named as 'Sarah' on the label is, unless I am very much mistaken, this Sarah, also seen in the Double Trouble article a couple of years earlier.

Notes

Notes
↑1".. and who is society? There is no such thing!", Margaret Thatcher talking to Woman's Own magazine, 1988
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Job ads for the BASH PEP worker (1995)

There will be much more on this later, but in the mid 1990s Bisexuals' Action on Sexual Health ('BASH')[1]What the 'Bisexual Development Group' that tried to advise the Health Education Authority turned into. won funding from the UK arm of the Red Hot Organization for a part-time worker to run a peer education project in the UK bi community.

I'd been one of the group that put together the application, submitted the finished version, and I ended up as 'chair' of the three or four people who managed the project.

Although I would have been surprised if the person who would eventually be appointed, whoever it was, didn't read Bifrost, the amazingly reliable UK bi community monthly newsletter that ran from 1991 to 1995 or go to a bi group, as part of the funding application we included the cost of advertising outside the community.

So I designed and placed at least four ads about the job and I can currently find three of them… Read more

Notes

Notes
↑1What the 'Bisexual Development Group' that tried to advise the Health Education Authority turned into.
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Double Trouble – The Guardian, 18th February 1986

Published in the paper's 'Open Space' section, this was my reintroduction to the UK's bi community.

At the end of August 1981, I had just arrived as a new student at Reading University for the start of 'freshers week'. Browsing – rather than buying! – a copy of London listings magazine Time Out something[1]Interestingly, writing in 1986 David Burkle thought he'd used Time Out to publicise the group in the months before it started. But looking for the relevant copy in a library, it turns out that no … Continue reading in the Student Union's shop, I noticed that the first meeting of the London Bisexual Group would be at gay nightclub 'Heaven' on Tuesday, 1st September. Read more

Notes

Notes
↑1Interestingly, writing in 1986 David Burkle thought he'd used Time Out to publicise the group in the months before it started. But looking for the relevant copy in a library, it turns out that no issues of Time Out were published in the four months before mid-September that year, thanks to a strike over the magazine abandoning its 'equal pay for everyone' ethos. Some staff quit to start City Limits and keep those principles, but their first issue was in October. It also turns out that Time Out didn't have a 'lesbian and gay' section until after then either.
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Taking care of each other – Dutch postcards (2001)

Although it described itself at the time as for 'homosexual men and lesbian women', the Dutch Schorer Foundation came up with some particularly interesting bisexual postcards in 2001.

One of the things they had realised earlier than many 'lesbian and gay' organisations was that fewer young people identified as either lesbian or gay while at the same time at least as many of them were being sexual with their own sex. Read more

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The first (failed) attempt at some BiCon guidelines

For BiCon 97, someone brought along a small pile of zines – primarily 'ConRunner' – for SF con organisers.

I had a look at them and while much wasn't relevant to us – there are reasons why we don't use hotels or pay for writers to come and speak or have a 'green room' where celebs can escape attendees – one of the things I really liked was the idea of having a document that said what the event was, what distinguished it from other events, so that attendees and organisers could both know what to expect from it.

OK Ian, what makes a BiCon 'a BiCon'? Erm… Read more

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The 'Chronos being Chronos' bi-erasing 1998 Pride questionnaire

Chronos was one of the many names of the company that published lesbian and gay newspapers and magazines such as Boyz and, between buying it from its original founders in the early 90s and later selling it to the 'publishers of Gay Times and owners of an adult shop' Millivres in 2005, the Pink Paper.

After the failure of Pride Events UK, the bunch of chancers that tried to run a commercial Pride event in London in July 1998, Chronos's Kelvin Sollis and possibly its co-owner, David Brindle, did the same maths that PEUK had done and discovered that running a commercial Pride event could be very profitable. Read more