Meg Barker updates us on the place of bisexuality in UK Psychology
Over the past year I’ve become involved in the organisation that oversees
psychology in the UK, the British Psychological Society (BPS). I’ve taught and
researched in psychology for nearly a decade now, but previously I didn’t really
think that the BPS had much to offer me, or me it. It seemed a rather
conservative organisation focused on the kind of experimental research that is
of little interest to a queer social researcher like myself. I was aware that
there was a Lesbian and Gay (LG) section of the BPS, but as a bi person I felt
excluded by the name and never really looked into it. I was very pleasantly
surprised last year when I attended a day they organised to find papers talking
about bi and trans issues as well as LG ones. After this I decided to join and
quickly became involved in the committee. I’m now the LG section research rep as
well as being associate editor for their journal, the LG Psychology Review. Here
I want to overview some of the exciting things that are happening within the LG
section at the moment of relevance to bis in the UK.
The first thing is that the LG section is in the process of trying to get its
name changed to encompass bis, as well as other groups. Our aim is to become the
LGBTQ section. At present a working party, including myself, is looking into the
names of other similar organisations (like the LGB section of the American
Psychological Association) and collating UK research so that we can present a
convincing case to the BPS to support our plan. The initial resistance to the
name change came because historically the section was set up by a group of
lesbian feminist psychologists who fought very hard for a section to represent
their interests. Also the BPS is very strict about sections only being set up
around a ‘substantial body of British psychological work’ and there has been
rather a limited amount on bisexuality. However, I intend to argue that much
recent psychological work on non-heterosexual experiences focuses on LGB people
rather than just on lesbians and gay men, and there is certainly a growing body
of interdisciplinary work on bisexual identity and lifestyle in the UK
reflecting the thriving British bi community. If anybody does know of research
specifically focusing on bi experiences that could help in our proposal, do let
me know.
B has already been included in the title of some of the events that the LG
section has organised. On the 7th of May a group of British psychologists,
volunteer workers and activists got together for an event co-organised by the
Consortium of LGB Voluntary and Community Organisations to explore links and
‘build partnerships’ between LGB psychologists and the voluntary sector. I was
the only person there representing the bi community specifically, but there was
a lot of interest in the needs and ideas of UK bis. I was able to feed back some
of the work that the bi activist group have been doing since our first meeting
back in January this year.
Here are some of the useful ideas that came out of the day:
· Psychologists should talk with LGB people and groups about what research
would be useful to them and build on that, rather than continuing to study
‘over-researched’ groups or repeating research that has already been done by
the groups themselves. We shouldn’t arrogantly assume that we know what people
need, but should draw on their own ideas and work towards giving
under-represented people a voice, answering the questions that they pose, and
working with them to come up with useful and relevant information and
accessible reports which give clear implications and recommendations.
· We should build a web resource of people in LGB psychology and
organisations and their interests so that people can access existing knowledge
and expertise. This could also be accessible to the media so they know who to
approach for information about sexuality issues.
· We should run future day sessions and series of workshops to train people
in skills and awareness so that they can take this expertise back to their
organisations and departments. One thing I’d be keen to do would be to get
together key people from LGBT and other organisations (help lines, clinics,
etc.) to train them in bi awareness. They could then run such sessions for
their own employees.
· Psychologists could have more input into policy on LGB issues. We
shouldn’t be afraid of making clear recommendations to governmental bodies or
requesting funding to work with groups on research projects.
We’re currently applying for money to run another of these Building
Partnerships days next year to move some of these ideas forward. Hopefully it’ll
be part of the huge Quinquennial BPS conference in Manchester at the beginning
of April whose theme is ‘relationships’, so it seems appropriate to use it to
continue building relationships between LGBTQ psychology and organisations. The
Manchester venue means that we should hopefully get a more diverse group of
people, not so London focused, and of course it’d be great if some of the
Manchester bi activists could attend. I’m involved in planning the LG section’s
stream of events at the conference and we should also be putting on some
fascinating papers and symposia as well as providing useful workshops for
students in LGBTQ psychology.
Finally, bis are getting into the LG Psychology Review. Bobbie Petford wrote
an excellent article for the July 2003 issue about the marginalisation of
bisexuality in the psychological literature. She suggested that part of the
problem was that bisexuality doesn’t fit into the standard idea that people are
simply heterosexual or homosexual with nothing in between and considered a
potential ‘paradigm shift’ towards seeing it as ‘both/and’ rather than
‘either/or’. She also explored parallels between the experience of bi people and
those with other kinds of ‘mixed’ identity, such as mixed race, examining the
problems of invisibility and feeling like an outsider that this can cause, but
also the potential for accepting diversity and seeing things differently. Bobbie
also reported a recent Australian study which found that bi people scored lower
than LG people on measures of mental health and drew links between this and
bi-phobia/bi-ignorance in the general population and amongst counsellors and
therapists, supporting the need for increased awareness and research in this
area.
As associate editor of the LG Psychology Review I’m now responsible for the
‘focus on activism’ articles, and for the first one I have interviewed bi
activist and BCN editor extraordinaire Jen Yockney! She made some strong points
about the inclusion of bisexuality and suggestions for research which several of
us in the academic contingent of the bi activist group are hoping to take
forward. I’m putting in a joint funding bid to look at LGBT experiences of
higher education, and others are looking to study the importance of BiCon to bi
people and to collate existing bi research so that we have a resource to draw on
in our studies.
Things are certainly moving forward in bi psy. Watch this space…
