Janelle Monáe was recipient of the ‘Spirit Of Soul’ award at last night’s “Soul Train Awards” 2023. The award show renamed its iconic ‘Lady of Soul’ category to reflect this year’s recipient. An outspoken bi champion for the wider LGBTQIA+ community and advocate for mental health awareness, Janelle Monáe. That’s all it took. No big soul-searching (no pun intended). Just: this is who should get the award, this is how we recognise their gender. Inclusion can be incredibly simple when you want to do it. Receiving the honour, Monáe quoted Prince: “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am somethi ..read more

We mostly cover the “big stuff” in BCN – like bi events, changes to law that particularly affect bi people, new research and so forth. But a lot of bi news is not “real news” but gossip or social media comments from people in the public eye. Those don’t change laws but they do, albeit not as often as we might like, change hearts and minds. Big Brother is a thing again and PinkNews reported on a bisexual love triangle… well, love vee, consisting of three guys. The apex of the vee, Jordan, has declared he wants to be with neither Henry not Matty. It’s kinda nice to have a bi love triangle on TV ..read more

Netflix has another bi true(ish) story for us. This is the story of Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug baron whose career spanned the 1970s to 2000s. Born during the second world war, she made her way to the US illegally in 1964 and settled in New York. A decade later her drug career brought her a share of a $80m a month business, until her arrest in 1985 leading to a 15 year sentence. By 1998 she was back in court to plead guilty on multiple murder charges, leading to a further 20 year sentence. In her youth, her lethal blend of unsuspected savagery and charm helped her expertly navigate betwe ..read more

The House of Lords’ Private Members Bill to outlaw so-called conversion therapy has been introduced, passing its first reading. The bill is being brought by Lib Dem peer Baroness Lorely Burt in response to several years of the government failing to deliver on its promises to legislate on the issue. Symbolically it has been introduced on Trans Day of Remembrance, given the government’s flip-flopping on whether such legislation should cover gender identity or only sexual orientation. The bill as it stands reads: A bill to Prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity conversion therapy; and f ..read more

20 years ago today Section 28 was at last laid to rest. The clause was a rallying point for lesbian and gay – and sometimes the rest of the acronym – activism for a generation. It sowed the seeds of its own destruction by inspiring untold thousands of people to rally and campaign for years and years.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Bisexual History (@bisexualhistory) Introduced in 1988, it was scrapped in Scotland in 2000 and in Wales and England in 2003, on 18th November. You can read more about it here. The post 20 years gone: section 28 first appeared on Bi Co ..read more

It looks like it’s all over for bi god Loki. The trickster’s story in the Marvel universe has probably come to an end, to judge from a recent interview with actor Tom Hiddleston on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Tom explained where he feels at the end of the second season of the TV series. “It’s the conclusion to seasons one and two, and it’s also the conclusion to 6 films, 12 episodes and 14 years of my life. He emphasised. “14 years. I was 29 when I was cast, I’m 42 now. It’s been a journey.” To be fair that’s a third of his life. If Tom walks away the show is largely done for, tho ..read more

The House of Lords might be about to save us from the government’s inaction on ‘conversion therapy’. Opposition peer Baroness Burt came top of the ballot for Private Members Bills in the House of Lords this week. She is choosing to bring forward the “Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill”. Lorely Burt was Lib Dem MP for Solihull for ten years before recieving a peerage in 2015. The full text is not expected to be published until November 20th but that sounds promisingly comprehensive. Whether from the Commons or the Lords, few Private Members Bills become ..read more

The parliament of Latvia has voted to back a civil partnership style system of couple recognition. Around two thirds of legislators backed the legislation in each of a series of votes today, with around a third of the 100 members opposing it at each division, though the closest vote went 48-41. Latvia’s parliament only has one house (as opposed to for example our Commons and Lords) so there is no other chamber to review the legislation. The system will be open to couples regardless of gender, but in a country that has constitutionally defined marriage as between one man and one woman, the bigg ..read more

New statistics from the ONS show bisexuals are less likely to be in work. The 2021 census figures for Wales and England show that on average, 3.5% of the population reported being unemployed on census day. That included 3.3% of respondents who identified as straight, and 4.9% of gays and lesbians. But among bis that figure is 7.8% For ‘other’ labels – pansexual, asexual etc – 7.1% report being unemployed. Some of this is likely due to the age variations in unemployment, given people from younger age groups are much more likely to report identifying as bi. Other UK research has shown that when ..read more

The ONS has revised its figures on the number of pansexual people in the UK – and for once, there’s a fall. We are so used to numbers inexorably rising in such statistics this one might be a little bit of a surprise; but due to a tpying errer, the UK’s Office for National Statistics has admitted it over-counted pan people in a release. They announced today that, “(s)ome responses to the sexual orientation question that should have been coded to “All other sexual orientations” in the detailed classification were incorrectly coded to “Pansexual”.” They explained that “(t)his error did not affect ..read more