Bivisible Bristol at Pride and its support from Manchester’s BiPhoria group from 2010-2016

Political backlash

BiVisible Bristol made its presence known at Bristol’s Pride in July 2012 despite the bisexual erasure seen in UK government policies. In 2010, the UK Government launched the LGBT Action Plan to outline the marginalisation that LGBT communities across the UK were facing and their future plans to resolve this. However, it was noticeable that this policy paper was far from inclusive of bisexual people. They erased bisexual people from their discussion of national statistics on homophobic hate crime and lumped bisexual women and lesbians together when discussing LGBT health disparities. This prompted frustration from bisexual activists and researchers, leading to the creation of the Bisexuality Report in 2012 by BiUK, in partnership with Jen Yockney from Bi Community News and Marcus Morgan from Bisexual index. This was made accessible to the public and highlighted the diverse trajectory of bisexual experiences and how these are impacted by biphobia (defined as the prejudice towards bisexual people). This report was transformative in beginning to plug the gap of bisexual invisibility within governmental policy and society more broadly.

Transformative outreach for Bristol’s Bisexual community

The backlash to the 2010 Government plan and publication of the Bisexuality Report led to greater efforts by the Bristol city council to recognize and include BiVisible Bristol within Bristol Pride. Nate, the co-organiser for BiVisible Bristol alongside Joanna and others in 2013 managed to ensure BiVisible walked in the Pride parade, later securing their own stall in 2014. He acknowledged that Bristol pride were “increasingly eager to have the bi quite prominent” within their event, suggesting greater institutional support for Bristol’s bisexual community in response to activism against the biphobic political climate. Robert, the current organiser for BiVisible Bristol commented on the power of Pride in transforming BiVisible’s visibility within Bristol’s existing queer spaces and events – “Having lots of people who were delighted we existed was really heartening”. He explained that Bristol Pride has encouraged a significant increase in numbers in BiVisible’s membership historically, leading to larger groups of people representing BiVisible as the years progressed.

BiVisible’s Pride ephemera

From2014 ,BiVisible Bristol secured a stall at Bristol Pride located in Castle Park and went above and beyond to ensure they had a diverse range of resources to hand out to people. From flyers to business cards, BiVisible had various print resources which detailed the purpose of the group and their contact information. Their inclusion of up to date issues on their table of the national bisexual magazine Bi Community News that has been running since 1995 was really encouraging. This demonstrated BiVisible’s dedication in the 2010s of distributing both local and national bisexual resources that made bisexual people feel represented beyond Bristol. Joanna recalled that BiVisible hosted a t-shirt making social in preparation of Bristol Pride with one of their members “crocheting purple, blue and pink hearts that got turned into little badges” using their badge press. BiVisible’s material visibility at Pride didn’t stop there as Joanna went on to explain that they designed a BiVisible flag that was used during the pride marches throughout this period. BiVisible’s ability to collectively curate all sorts of ephemera for Bristol pride and expand their community despite their lack of funding was truly inspiring. They managed to gain substantial recognition when they later won the 2016 Bristol pride award for ‘Best Community Stall’.

The support of Manchester’s BiPhoria group in its print distribution

 

Having spoken to Jen Yockney, the leading organiser for Manchester’s BiPhoria group since December 1994, Biphoria contributed to BiVisible’s ephemera collection at Pride. BiPhoria published a pocket guide called ‘Getting Bi in a Gay/ Straight World’ in 2011. This covered a diverse range of topics from coming out and bisexual history to listing various online bisexual community platforms. Jen explained that of the 11,500 copies that were printed of this guide, 300 were sent to BiVisible Bristol to add to their Pride stall. She emphasised “it was the first full colour bisexual resource that anyone had done in Britain, so it was really exciting to have them to be able to turn around to other groups and say, yeah, have a big wedge of these”. This challenges assumptions that BiVisible Bristol didn’t collaborate with other regional bisexual groups due to the absence of this evidence within archival records. While regional collaboration for BiVisible was often a difficult reality due to financial barriers, the distribution of these guides at Bristol Pride was a great way in which BiVisible could feel supported by BiPhoria who were strongly positioned within the wider bisexual network and activist scene in the UK.

 

All of the pictures have been provided to me with consent from the personal archives of BiVisible members, feel free to click on the images to expand them to full view.

Further resources

March 2011 Report in response to the UK Government’s LGBT Action plan: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7903dee5274a2acd18b8c1/lgbt-action-plan.pdf 
Bisexuality Report published in 2012: https://docslib.org/doc/7875048/the-bisexuality-report-bisexual-inclusion-in-lgbt-equality-and-diversity
2011 Getting Bi in a Gay/Straight World guide: https://biphoria.org.uk/gettingbi/
Short 2017 blog on BiVisible Bristol winning the 2016 Bristol Pride award: https://bicommunitynews.co.uk/2017/01/07/bristol-takes-pride-prize/

 

Listen below to Nate discussing BiVisible securing a stall at Pride and the various ephemera they used:

 

Listen below to Robert discussing Bristol Pride as his personal highlight of BiVisible Bristol:

 

Lucy Marshall, 2025