Posted on by Ian

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.
Posted on by Ian

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

Posted on by Ian

Boys and girls come out to play (The Independent, 1997)

The research on behaviourally bisexual men commissioned by Health Education Authority in 1994, completed in 1995, and eventually published in 1996, was largely ignored.

In part, that's because the HEA leaked the findings – there are a lot of bisexual men! – months earlier, so by the time it was properly published, it was no longer 'news'.

But at least one paper noticed enough to refer to it a year later…

.. even if they didn't read it properly. The estimate of 12% of men being behaviourally bisexual – that is, being sexual with more than one gender – is informed largely by a 1982 survey of Playboy readers in the US[1]Unlike most other large surveys done for magazines, it looks like all of the over 60,000 responses from men were actually analysed! and..

While exact rates are impossible accurately to quantify it seems reasonable to assert that the lifetime figure lies somewhere in the region of 5-15%. Our best guess would be closer to the 12% of Lever et al. (1989; 1992) than the 3-7% of Johnson et al. (1994). However, with little direct evidence, estimates of the proportion of adult men that have had sex with both males and females in the last five years are too hazardous to even attempt.

The "in the last five years" came from the predictions of the person who commissioned it that they'd find hardly any bisexual men and so they needed to make the criteria for being included fairly broad. In fact, it turned out that the average number of partners was three men and three women per year.[2]The people who did the research were struck that the average number of partners per year for gay men in their other surveys was also six.

The article was prompted by an episode on bisexuality that was part of Channel 4's Seven Sins series, entitled 'Greed', sigh. Read more

Notes

Notes
↑1Unlike most other large surveys done for magazines, it looks like all of the over 60,000 responses from men were actually analysed!
↑2The people who did the research were struck that the average number of partners per year for gay men in their other surveys was also six.
Posted on by Ian

AIDS Spectre for Women: The Bisexual Man (New York Times 1987)

A three line history of bisexual men in the news:

1987 – There are "7 to 10 million" bisexual men in the USA

2005 – "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited"

2020 – .. we've looked again at that study, and bisexual men do exist!

What's particularly interesting about the first one is that at least three of the men quoted – Richard Isay, Bruce Voeller, and Laud Humphreys – were all married to women for years, with all having children with their wives. Clearly, they were all bisexual by behaviour and to at least some degree by attraction, before deciding to identify as gay.

What won't be surprising to anyone who was a bisexual man in the 1980s is the 'bisexual men give women Aids' angle… Read more

Posted on by Ian

Outright #43 article on BiCon 11

Outright was a free community newspaper in the East Midlands – it started life in February 1990 as 'Outright: Gay Freesheet for the East Midlands', and became '.. For Gays and Lesbians in Central England' by November 1992.

By issue 43 in November 1993, it was '.. For Gays Lesbians and Bisexuals in Central England' and in the same issue carried the following story about the recent BiCon 11 in Nottingham: Read more

Posted on by Ian

Bay Area Reporter on first US national bisexual conference

The mention of the Revolting Sexologists from Hell in Bi-Issues #1 got me doing a search for them. Before today, Google knew of one usage, in a Bay Area Reporter[1]Founded in 1971, the BAR is the USA's the oldest continually published LGBT newspaper. The article on the conference was just after two pages of obituaries, almost all as a result of Aids:

Obituaries in the Bay Area Reporter 5th July 1990 1

Obituaries in the Bay Area Reporter 5th July 1990 2 article on the first US 'national bisexual conference' in 1990. (And it should have been the 'Radical Revolting Sexologists from Hell'!)

I didn't go to the conference – too poor, amongst other things – but several people from the UK did. I do have a couple of the brochures from it – one as a result of Robyn bringing some to the 1990 BiCon two months later, and one from being married to someone who did go.

That BiCon is probably where I got one of the event's t-shirts from… Read more

Notes

Notes
↑1Founded in 1971, the BAR is the USA's the oldest continually published LGBT newspaper. The article on the conference was just after two pages of obituaries, almost all as a result of Aids:

Obituaries in the Bay Area Reporter 5th July 1990 1

Obituaries in the Bay Area Reporter 5th July 1990 2