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

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1What the 'Bisexual Development Group' that tried to advise the Health Education Authority turned into.

It's Prejudice That's Queer campaign – THT 1999

This was a rare example of a THT 'gay and bisexual men' campaign that was designed to been seen by the general population.

One of the reasons that's rare is that advertising on, say, London Underground is considerably more expensive than in a scene magazine or given to workers to hand out at scene venues. (If you did actually want to reach as many gay and bisexual men in London as possible, places like the Underground and the Metro and Evening Standard newspapers is where you'd do it…)

The graphics here aren't particularly good quality, being in a low resolution even in the original PDF from tht.org.uk, despite being intended to be seen on A3 or larger posters.

This is particularly noticeable on the CHAPS logo, which is almost unreadable,[1]Whether someone simply made the mistake of exporting them in a low screen resolution rather than the print one, I don't know. Fortunately, the body text looks to be done properly and it was possible … Continue reading but it means that it was definitely part of a program to reduce HIV infection in gay and bisexual men that got about £1m of funding from the Department of Health every year.

It was recognised by Martin Kirk of the UK Gay Men's Health Network in giving evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AIDS as "an HIV campaign but it is a campaign targeted at prejudice against, in this case, gay men".

As we'll see, this was more correct than it should have been. Read more

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1Whether someone simply made the mistake of exporting them in a low screen resolution rather than the print one, I don't know. Fortunately, the body text looks to be done properly and it was possible to copy and paste it.

More Health Education Authority memories

In 2018, some academics got eleven people who'd worked in the HIV prevention sector in the UK for a two hour discussion[1]Published as Nicholls and Rosengarten (eds.) (2019). Witness Seminar: HIV Prevention and Health Promotion in the UK. Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health … Continue reading on some of the history.

In this extract, they remember the 'hands' ad. Interestingly, the only ones to get much more space are the 'iceberg' and 'monolith' "Don't die of ignorance' ones.

'Ford' is Ford Hickson, part of Sigma Research, responsible for multiple surveys and research projects on gay and bisexual men.

'Lynne' is Lynne Walsh, talking about her time as half of (also known as 'in charge of') the press office for the Health Education Authority (HEA).

'Dominic' is Dominic McVey, talking about having been an HEA researcher. His line elsewhere about "Much of my work involved developing and evaluating the HEA gay and heterosexual public health interventions" accurately shows how much the HEA cared about bisexuals… Read more

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1Published as Nicholls and Rosengarten (eds.) (2019). Witness Seminar: HIV Prevention and Health Promotion in the UK. Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health (EUROPACH).

The Health Education Authority's bisexual and 'definitely not' bisexual ads

Even governments sometimes realise that spending money on health promotion – enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health – can be better than dealing with the consequences of not doing so.

In the UK, the Health Education Council (greatest hit: the 'pregnant man' campaign with its "Would you be more careful if it was you who got pregnant?" strapline[1]Created by the tiny agency that would become the global giant Saatchi & Saatchi, this was such a hit that the agency named its canteen/bar 'The Pregnant Man'. They did some other work for the … Continue reading) ran government campaigns between 1968 and 1987, before a reorganisation (not entirely coincidentally following a row about a politically embarrassing publication about health inequalities) led to its replacement by the Health Education Authority in 1987.

When the UK government decided that Aids was in fact worth doing something serious about (about three years after gay and bisexual men in the UK started dying from it, followed by similar epidemics amongst IV drug users and then haemophiliacs), one of the things that pushed it towards that position was the way that Aids activists had deliberately chosen to emphasise the risks of bisexual men being responsible for the spread of the epidemic into the presumed heterosexual general population.

As mentioned in the BiFurious review of TV series It's A Sin:[2]TL;DR: great acting, direction, lighting etc, but the script is a steaming pile of biphobic and bi-erasing shit.

"It was quickly realised that 'everyone is at risk' was the magic button, 'a powerful weapon against anti-gay prejudice in 1986, and it was the only one that the gay community had with which to protect itself at a time of brutal public attack. .. The THT hierarchy sought to persuade the government that the nation itself was endangered, while not entirely believing it itself.'

"But how on earth could the sector get the government of Mrs Thatcher – sample speech from 1987: 'Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated. [applause from the Tory audience]' – to think that a third of, say, the Tory-voting London borough of Kensington and Chelsea would end up with Aids if they didn't do something quickly? No-one would believe they all took up an injecting drug habit. Or magically developed haemophilia.

"Ah ha! Bisexual men would spread it from the (seen as expendable) gay community into the nice straight one! And it worked, even though it was something bisexual men would never ever win from: if there was a significant spread, it'd be our fault, but if there wasn't, it just shows that there are barely any bisexual men."

The result was the first big 'Don't die of ignorance' campaign by the Department of Health and Social Security – the 'icebergs and monoliths' one – following which the HEA ended up with the responsibility to do national HIV/Aids health promotion work.

Here's are the ads that they did aimed specifically at bisexual men rather than 'gay (oh.. and bisexual) men'. As you will see, there were not very many: the person in charge of HIV work at the HEA bought into the idea that there were barely any bisexual men out there, even after this was proved to be completely wrong. Read more

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1Created by the tiny agency that would become the global giant Saatchi & Saatchi, this was such a hit that the agency named its canteen/bar 'The Pregnant Man'. They did some other work for the HEC, then had to resign when they decided to work for a tobacco company instead.
2TL;DR: great acting, direction, lighting etc, but the script is a steaming pile of biphobic and bi-erasing shit.