Just that really. I'm a lesbian, one of a number seeking to rebuild new lesbian and LGB networks after our established communities and events and hang-outs and culture have been trashed by the TQIA+ brigade.
Lesbians and gay men are feeling really beleaguered. We've seen almost every sphere of gay and lesbian life infiltrated by 'queer', trans and spicy straight people all using the events and groups we've founded for their own purposes — mainly of validation. Pride has been taken over by the T. Our cafes, pubs, bars, all gone.
I think a significant number of gay and lesbian activists are finding it increasingly difficult to work out where bisexuality fits into all this. I'm in a number of different LGB groups and this issue has started to crop up in them. People who join describing themselves as bisexual and wanting to get involved in helping rebuild their local LGB communities turn out to be in long-term, stable heterosexual relationships. Some of them for 20+ years. Some bi people in such relationships want to involve their straight partners on the basis that although the partner is straight, they are in relationship with a bi person who isn't — but who, to the outside world, looks straight.
Does it matter? Well, if you're in a heterosexual relationship you're unlikely to experience the everyday (usually minor) moments that most of us who are out still encounter. Things like the need to come out regularly to people who assume that we're in straight relationships, the slight but still palpable 'othering' that sometimes comes when people realise they're talking to someone who isn't just like them. Sometimes it's much more pointed. And if we hold, say, an LGB club night, so that LGB people can associate without the straight gaze, should we allow bisexuals to bring their straight partners? Doesn't that negate the intention of the event?
Bisexual people who are living in a heterosexual relationship have the security of being undercover. They may not see it like that, of course, but they pass as straight. I'm pretty sure that one of the bi women who's involved in one of the groups I'm in is a straight woman who bases her bisexual identity on the fact that she had a relationship with a woman while at university, many years ago.
I don't know if there's a solution to this. I think lesbians and gay men are much more cautious around the dangers of self-ID and identity politics than they ever were. How are other groups handling this?