Bisexual people should count for more in the LGBT team | Letters

Philip Hensher’s article about LGBT Pride (How the straight majority still silences gay people, 22 July) could have been a thoughtful discourse on how queer voices are so often unheard because of the dominance of heteronormativity.

Instead, he attacked not just straight people but others whose experience of gender and sexuality is different from the cultural ideal.

It is also incorrect – it was not illegal in 1990 for two men to hold hands or kiss in public. Telling the uncomfortable truth about oppression of people with same-sex attraction needs to be done accurately.

Most painful is the bitterness with which he talks about “the rainbow coalition of sexual identities” evicting “lesbians and gay men from the spaces they created”.

The world’s first Pride was organised by a bisexual woman, Brenda Howard. It commemorated the Stonewall riots, sparked by a police raid on a bar for lesbians and gay men, and also many trans people, sex workers and others who lived their lives outside sexual or gender normativity.

Howard, like many bi and trans people, was a passionate advocate for lesbian and gay rights. And yet, because she had a male partner, Hensher would have us believe that she wasn’t part of his community.

According to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, “self-identified bisexuals make up the largest single population within the LGBT community” and even larger numbers of people exhibit bi behaviours or are attracted to more than one gender (more than 40% of young people, according to a recent YouGov survey). Despite this, bi people continue to be marginalised within LGBT communities, report abuse at Pride events, and tolerate gay celebrities saying we should “pick a team”.

No wonder every published study concludes that bi people suffer worse mental health than lesbians and gay men when their identity and role in LGBT communities is erased.

Despite this, I and many other bi people will continue to march at Pride alongside our lesbian, gay and trans friends, challenging discrimination and fighting for equality and acceptance for all.
Edward Lord
Deputy chair, Pride in London community advisory board; board member, BiUK

• Philip Hensher makes some good points, so it’s particularly disappointing that he implies that mixed-sex bisexual couples don’t belong in gay clubs. We don’t belong in straight clubs, either – so, in the absence of a viable financial model to provide bisexual-only bars across the UK, where does he suggest we go? I would have hoped to find a warm welcome in gay clubs and a sympathetic ally in Hensher, but by purporting to understand our struggles while potentially seeking to exclude us, he enacts precisely the type of silencing that has rendered bisexuals invisible for so long.
Ria Hopkinson
London

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