Dear BCN,

I'd like to continue the discussion about the national conference.

Several people that I've spoken to recently have felt that they can't say what they really think at the conference - and these people hold widely different views. It's as if there is a real diversity that is being submerged in a false sense of conformity.

For my part, I agree with Judes' letter back in BCN issue Zero; the conference should do more for new people. It seems to concentrate on people who are already connected to the bisexual community, and I think the current timetable make this worse. To attend the first day of the conference, employed people have to take a day off work. If they are unsure of what to expect, this is a big step (when you have only twenty days holiday a year, you cherish every one). If they wait until the Saturday, the conference is already in full swing.

Perhaps an answer is to devote the Saturday of the conference to first-time attenders. Concentrate on the basics: 'What does it mean to be bisexual', 'Coming out', 'Living with bi/non-bi partners', 'Working/socialising with lesbians and gay men', 'AIDS and safer sex', etc. Advertise this heavily (including outside the bi community), and make it clear that people can turn up just for the day. Encourage all experienced conference-goers to help out in whatever ways they can.

Obviously the conference has to include workshops for the rest of us; and I would hope that many of the people who turn up for the Saturday will return on the Sunday. But focussing on new people for one day might make more of them feel welcome.

The question of diversity vs. conformity is less tangible, and harder to solve. Possibly a day that concentrates on the basics will also be a chance for a wider range of views to be heard. Other than that, perhaps the conference policy should say something about encouraging different opinions, in addition to the current list of unacceptable behaviours? Or perhaps the people who feel that their views are excluded should encourage each other to speak out?

In the classic bisexual tradition, some people have suggested that we can solve these problems by changing the name, from 'conference' to 'convention.' I hate this idea. I already dislike the name BiCon, because it makes the event sound like a science-fiction convention. If people want a snappy media-friendly name, let's have one that doesn't include the word 'con' (and preferably that isn't a pun on 'bi').

Better still, let's devote our time to improving the contents instead.

Dave Berry  

We'll have a major article on BiCon in next month's issue of BCN. Write in now with what you'd like to see this year.

Dear BCN

Steve C's artcile on 'Gay Marriage' was of interest. But disappointing that he didn't query any of the Economist's arguments.

'Married people are happier and healthier' for example, is in conflict with what is actually known: that the happiest and healthiest people are married 'men,' with single women second, single men third, and married women least happy and healthy.

The power of marriage, both legally and emotionally, is on the slide and has been for many years. Hets, brought up on 'when you are married you will...' brainwashing, no longer consider marriage to be for life or to involve the sort of 'married' things stereotyped in these assumptions. Gay people take no notice of this brainwashing and are less likely to consider a marriage certificate an obligation to wash the car on Sundays.

As regards the welfare state, I don't know how many families are claiming Family Credit, but there would be more of them if lesbian families were considered as one economic unit.

A basic flaw in all the articles I've seen about same-sex marriage is that there are wild, wierd homosexuals and normal, family-loving heterosexuals, with no middle ground, and that legal marriage would turn the former into the latter. There are also male/female married couples who are bisexual, polyamorous, role-reversed, or in some other way not the best examples of Conservative Family Values in action.

Don't get me wrong, I am in favour of same-sex marriage, as it is the easiest way of safeguarding your partner's rights and responsibilities in the event of your death or incapacitation. But I think it's more likely to lead to the acceptance of different lifestyles than to make gay people conform.

I'm with Steve C on this question of 'no bisexuals' in the contact ads. It reminds me of the old Spare Rib days, when advertisers couldn't use words like 'pretty', 'blond' because they were stereotypical. An advertiser isn't going to get involved with a bisexual person just because (s)he wasn't allowed to specify that (s)he didn't want one, it's just a waste of everyone postage, time and hope.

Joy Hilbert  

Joy gets lucky this month, as an unexpected shortfall in articles means that we can print nearly her entire letter. Under normal conditions, we would have had to hack both it and others on this page down in size. The moral is, keep letters short and punchy folks, and we'll try to include as much as possible.

Dear BCN

In BCN 6, Ian Watters asks readers to compare BASH's accountability to Nottingham BiCon's.

He says that BASH has invited people to come along, who have then had an equal say and that this leads to BASH not having faults in the area of accountability. I (Judy) have written to BASH for details of meetings on three separate occasions and have only had one reply: even delayed mail via the PO box does not account for getting no reply.

Given that BASH is having recurrent problems with its PO Box, we suggest changing the PO Box. We believe you about the box but we would like to see you doing something about it.

We offered to forward all our minutes for the Nottingham conference, and therefore our decisions, to any group or any individual in return for postage. We also mailed suggestion sheets out to all local bi groups asking exactly what they wanted to see at a conference . We were the first conference to produce a report which included a breakdown of our income and expenditure.

Ian says we had more income than other conferences. He says that some people who ran workshops were paid and that this wasn't mentioned in the program or plenaries. We did, as Ian says, have a bigger budget than other conferences: this was because we did the work and secured four grants, all of which were linked to safer sex information provision. The expenditure to meet this was detailed in our report as 7% of our budget.

As part of this safer sex provision we commissioned workshops on a range of issues which, as we had requested them and as we were funded to provide them, we paid for. This was detailed in our minutes, as mentioned above. Two of the eight workshops were provided as part of the facilitators' paid work and incurred no expenditure. The other six workshops were done at an expenditure of an average of £30 per provider per workshop. Providers had the choice of taking this as registration/accommodation costs, travel costs, or cash. We feel that this was an important resource to provide and was also an appropriate use of the funding we received.

Since Ian was given a limited number of words to answer some specific questions, we feel his time would have been better used to answer those questions, rather than trying to divert attention away from them.

For the Nottingham Bisexual Conference Collective

Judy, Karen Arden, Jo Eadie, Rick Gray  

Am I the only one who's getting very bored with the BASH accountibility debate? Ian Watters comments that he did not intend the answer on Nottingham to appear in the article - a mix-up occurred. Maybe that will stop another article.

Normally this kind of thing would go in our personal ads, but as you've written from so far (and we don't fancy paying the forwarding costs) we'll let you have this one.

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