I am very honoured to be asked to do a the first ever Ted talks for bi sexuals owing to my exstremely positive outlook look and happy and go lucky nature.
Only I notice that there aren’t any cameras and there doesn’t seem to be a red spot. And to be quite honestly bisexuals have been doing perfectly well with no inspiration for centuries.
or I’ve rebranded Det talks. Debt being a word most bisexuals are very familiar with.
There are some triggers mainly bi phobia , bullying mental health AIDs epidcmic , and a mild reference to death to hamsters which is in no way advocating or condoning the killing of such animals even if they have somewhat dubious morality.
Today I want to look at language and how it forms possibilities and how meaning changes in with society’s reaction to the word.
I want to take you back in time a long Long , long time ago when I was a teenager .I lived in a very small seaside town which if you’ve never lived in a seaside town imagine being stuck in a Pro Trump march every single moment of your life.
I wasn’t very popular mainly because I could read and did art. I spent a lot of time being miserable at school I spent my spare time going to church and being told I would go to hell.
I didn’t at the time have a concept of any sexuality because to have any sexual thoughts were evil and more importantly could result in my being ridiculded .
It wasn’t until I went to art school at a bigger more glamours seaside town of Worthing that I discovered that the word bisexual , mainly though listening to David Bowie.
The word opened up possibilities which were alarm
Before then I didn’t know it was possible to be attached to more than one gender. Before then I didn’t allow myself to be attrached to any gender .
I had three chooces on to keep repressing any sexual feelings for the next 60 years , two to admit I had sexual feelings and only act on hetro sexual feelings on my wedding night to a nice Methodist, or three to hope that if there was a god that they would not be merciful with me when I died. There was no internet and its hard to believe but there was very little mention of bisexuality in films or TV and if it was done it was all through subtext. I know times he only idea of what a bisexual was like was through looking subtext in films gosh how times have changed
There was no contact with other bisexuals and I knew that the only way was to leave the small seaside town and enter London the a metropolis of understanding and sexual freedom. Whree I would find love and acceptance
Things did not work out quite to plan. Getting to London the next six years studying art in small towns or very dull cities.
] I was an art student and bisexuality was very fashionable in a 1920s Berlineques way, most of my peers would say that they were bisexual or had tendancies as it was seens as exciting and exotic. Which was great lots of people from all genders would flirt with me or public kiss me . but since they were playing at the consept of bisexuality rather than the reality they didn’t really want me to get too emotionally or physically close. Or if we did get emotionally or physically attracted it needed to be done in a way that was more an intellectual experipement and never ever talked about. I kept a lot of people’s secretes because noboady wanted to have been seen as a relationship with me because to actually Bisexual was luducous.
even in hetro and same sex relationships I dating me was something that was shameful.
In the late 80s Bisexuality was no longer seen as fashionable. with both this rise of AIDs and HIV and Mrs Ts clause 22 .Suddenly the word Bisexual have a completely negative meaning .
Media at the time portrayed bisexuals as evil socialpaths.
The Bisexual community were blamed for spreading AIDs and HIV to the straight community And people who had previously said they were bisexual became straight.
. Gay men and Lesbians became more closed also wanted to separate from the bi community
. It was also a time when gay men Hopeing for equality were bisexual seen as an embarrassment who seemed to reveal they had a choose to be straight condeemed by straight people for not being straight enough and condemmed by gay men and lesbians for being gay trippers or pink tourists not having the commintment .
There was a genuine fear of bisexual
Some people were now happy to date me but did want me as long as I never said that I was bisexual in front of their friend.s or family. There was a fear that bi sexuals were imorral
At the time I felt I had to be impeccable in my behaviour in any relationship because if I did anything wrong my behaviour would be typical of a bisexual.
One woman I dated would repeatedly tell me that I really wanted to be with a man and was only sleeping with her because I couldn’t find one. Which is a huge turn off during sex.
We were seen as highly promiscuous and risk takers in a time becoming more closed about sexuality. It could be useful , when a man said that he didn’t like using condoms I said
“I’m bisexual , I slept with other bisexuals. All of a sudden he had no problem using a condom.
As the word Bisexual became contaminated with fear and anger I became more involved with social justice . was labled as a Marxists which was generally cool as they hung out in cafes drinking tea and talking about Palestine . I never really knew if I was really a Marxist or if I am really a Marxist.
Because a lot of Marxist literature is very difficult to read so I started reading
As far as I got probably about page 34 Capitalism is bad ,
it is based on Medieval feudalism which was super bad and we need to redistrupt wealth. And at that point I started to think about Robin hood , how Richard Armitatage makes a good Guy of guiborne especially in tight leather
My concern it that there might be something in the later parts of Marxist philospy that is fundamentally wrong
Like chaphter 6 all symbols of capilatism by killing and eating a hamster. Hampsters are notorious capitalist creatures they hord food , don’t share terrority they go round and round in circles producing nothing but shit. … but it doesn’t mean I want to eat them .
And being labled as a Marxist I would constantly being told that I was a hyprocrt for buying something or
You don’t get that with the right wing you don’t get Rees mogg being labled a commie for buying fair trade coffee , whats next Rees mog going to aks for fair decent wages for the children who sew the buttons on his imitation designer suits.
Although I was and still am not entirely sure if I am a Marxist it was a lot easier to accept the lable that was given to me around my Mental health .When I was in my late 20s I was dianosised with Manic depression after a short spell in pychitrict ward.
My parents were horrified by this ,and told me that I had ruined the reputation of the family. My mum added If my sister who was pregnant was likely to have a miscarriage because of my selfish actions in going to hospital and I would have killed the baby.
I decided that it was probably not time to come out as bisexual. My sister six months later my niece was born in perfect health .
And I had developed a deep seated guilt and shame about my mental illness. It was something that made me believe I could never be loved. And it was something that I covered up for years ,never letting anyone too close incase I destroyed them the way I almost disctorye my family . I was un well or I was just too sensitive
I think maybe I am a oversensitive , I cry everytime time I see the banking advert with the black horses galloping along the beach and the music reassuring me that I am not alone and they will beside me forever which considering I helped bail them out ten years ago and they never paid me back it’s the very least they could do , it would be better of course if they could stop and that they have been laying off their staff and replacing them with articifical intelligence making a lot of people isolated alone and poor,
Which is what happens when medieval fualisim is rebranded as neo liberism and can only be resolved by not thinking of Richard Amtiage in tight leather broading
Manic Depression was rebranded as Bi Polar and had Stephen Fry as as an role model. This rebrand made my illness more acceptable to my family and I became a creative genius which was brilliant news but it didn’t help with my employment prospects .
In the past Employers didn’t want to employ anyone with mental health history in case it exaparated my illness
Of course it exaparates my mentally illness Work is bad for everyone’s mental health.
The myth of doing something you love and you wont have to work a day is so annoying.
it doenst mater if you do something you love , hate or are mutrally indifferent about because its not the actual doing the job that s the problem, it’s the paperwork, the deadlines, the jargon, the KPIs meetings about meettings about meetings , the hard targets , the soft targets , the cuts ,doing more with less , SWOT analysis , the motivational check up , the endless reminders of about cleaning the communical spaces , the staff dynamics , the cliques , collegue who gets angry if you use their cup, the one who insists on smelly food at their desks while working to prove what a productive little worker they are, the one who manages to do no work but still gets praised , the constant fear of redundancy knowing that no matter how hard .you work you will be replaced in a heart beat probably by a machine.
And without adding and general discrimination that a bisexuals face in the work place.
. one Pychitric nurse said” YOU’VE complained about being bullied at work a lot , why does that keep happening to you?”
And I asked myself this question myself
In the 1990s A member of staff once slashed my work bag with a knife and ripped up same sex sexual health posters because I had been flaunting my sexuality it offended them. When I suggested it was to do with being bisexual , my manager said wrong.
“ Adam was gay and nobody had a problem with Adam, infact all the women thought he was cute, I should be more like Adam, as hard as I tried to be twenty years younger and a gay man I still remained very unpopular with my other colleagues , whom would stop talking when I came into a room and find lots of tiny ways of making my life miserable , after three months I signed myself off sick as it became unbearable.
I asked myself what I had done wrong In the Naughties I worked with a collegue who told me that I would go to hell and had passages of the bible highlighted on my desk.
Why me?
Six years ago I had false allegations made about me making a pass at a pregnant member of staff after I had caught her breaking into my office and reading my confidential emails.
And in a year a go It was suggested in an anonymous survey that I should be sacked promoting the LGBT agenda amongst homeless clients.
And each time this happens it hurts and I repeat the question that a pychitrict nurse once asked me “ Why does this keep happening to me? What am I doing wrong?
People are always happy to tell me what I am doing wrong.
I was stood up for myself blend in more, less political I need take things less seriously, I need to work harder, take responsibiIity for my action need to think more positivitly, have thicker skin, just get on with the job, and be more sociable
Nobody has every said this is just Bi phobis
Or the shit you get for being out and Bisexual.
.
Until four years ago when I went to my first Bi con and met other out bi and pansexual I didnt know that Biphobia was a word and that this happened other people I didn’t know .that others went through this every day and
I thought I was unique in this experience.
I thought I would be the only person in Bicon who had a servier mental health issue, there was a roomful , a large room ful of bisexual who had sever mental health issues.
I was wrong I thought I would be the only bisexual who had or who liked rock music assnd sci fi 1950s swing skirts aor any of the factor
And through going to bi con, bi fest and other bisexual safe I started to feel that I belonged.
What struck me even more was that people about sex, relationships intermacy sometimes s using words that I hadn’t heard before and had to ask what they meant in public as if they were any shame attacted to these words . Which there isn’t.
I had been carrying guilt and shame for who I since 1982 that’s longer than a lot of people had been born that’s longer than a life sentence for murder.
All because societys perception of the word bisexual is seeped with negative meaning.
I don’t know whether the word has been so misunderstood whether we need a rebrand such as Pansexual which would acknowledge people from the non binary community
And also annoy my ex girlfriend whose a Terf .
But most importantly we need to change societys need to shame people for who they are.
Which comes to my next word .Bi visiuality. I don’t think Bi visability is really about having to prove that bisexuals exist society knows bisexuals exsit. They’ve always known. we exsit .
We are fighting a much darker battle ,Society doesn’t want us to exsit.
Bi visibility is about saying “You have denied us , mocked us and shamed us for centuries and guess what ? we are still here.
