This whole Brand/Ross thing going on at the moment. Peter Tatchell's response to it:

"It is not as if Baille is some innocent convent girl. She admits she slept with Brand and she works as a "burlesque dancer" in a group called Satanic Sluts. Yet she claims Brand's jokes have damaged her public image and hurt her feelings. Oh please!"

Oh please, yourself. So because she had sex she's fair game? Fuck off Tatchell. Racism and homophobia is bad but sexism is ok, is that it?

Also check out The F Word's more sensible take on this.

Magazines and messages

Diva magazine is a UK magazine for lesbians and allegedly bisexuals. When you search for it in google the tagline reads 'Diva Magazine - Lesbian Bisexual Lifestyle'.

Now I really like Diva, it's my link to the gay community and is a really refreshing feminist friendly magazine that deals with a lot of issues and never ever criticizes women for being too fat or not trendy enough, like the straight media does EVERY SINGLE ISSUE. For the November issue that did a naked cover shoot of 60 of their women readers. When they put an ad out for it I thought that looks interesting, I could do that.

Well I'm quite glad I didn't now, the editorial comment on the cover said it was 60 naked lesbians. Despite the fact that one of the women who took part described herself as bisexual.
So, obviously as a bisexual I wouldn't have fitted in. I am not included and I am not welcome among their readership.

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were other magazines catering for bisexuals, but there is NOTHING. So Diva really could and should make more of an effort. The odd token article or 'bisexuals are welcome' piece doesn't really cut it when the rest of the magazines ignores us.
Yet what can I do? As I've found it rather difficult to find UK based bisexual blogs and news feeds, it's the only link I've got to UK non straight culture.

On a happier note, I bought Company magazine the other month and was pleased to find a straight feminist magazine. No articles promoting changing or loathing your body. No diet plans. Nothing on how to improve yourself to get a man. Instead there are articles on:
Contraceptive options and how the UK health service is failing women
Cyber bullying
Enterprising women
Celebrities views on 'should you dress for your man' (Peter Andre says no, Katie price says yes), Eating disorders
How a widowed woman is moving on with her life
Interviews with 7 female cabinet members on their partying years
Date rape danger
And the usual articles on the hot new fashions - but without the criticism.

I was stunned and very impressed. My only criticism is that there weren't enough pictures of clothes. I'd like Company's editorial policy with Glamour's pages and pages of clothes.

Also, it is apparently national blog month. I shall therefore attempt to post at least daily, or if I miss a day, to post extra stuff the next day.

More homophobia from the church

Quelle surprise.
The vatican wants to use psychological testing to weed out gay priests. From the news story on the internet (emphasis mine):
"Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Catholic Education Congregation, said that a celibate candidate with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should be barred "not because he commits a sin, but because homosexuality is a deviation, an irregularity, a wound" that would prevent him from fulfilling his duties.
The guidelines, approved by Pope Benedict XVI, are designed to prevent the sort of sex scandals involving paedophile priests"

GAY DOES NOT EQUAL PAEDOPHILE. HETEROSEXUALS AND BISEXUALS CAN BE PAEDOPHILES TOO.

Deep seated homosexual tendencies? Are there shallow tendencies? I guess this comes from the same line of thinking that insists that gayness can be cured.
For cured, read repressed, quashed, tricked and led into a lifetime of unhappiness and dishonesty.
Also, homosexuality isn't a deviation, an irregularity or a wound. It's normal, it's not a sin, it's not morally wrong, it's just a way of being.
Where do the bisexuals come into this? Yet again, we're ignored. We can pass as straight if we want, so I guess that's OK huh? Or is it that bisexuals don't have 'deep seated' homosexual tendencies? Guess I'm back to being invisible, again.

To be fair to the newspaper, the online article does state that:
"The decree appears to ignore the consensus among sex abuse experts that homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals."
This is a damn site more than I expected from the Daily Torygraph and is in stark contrast to the physical newspaper version of the story which reads as follows:

"Trainee priests suspected of being homosexual should be weeded out by psychologists and banned from joining the catholic church, the vatican has said.
Homosexuality was a "deviation" that must be rooted out in would-be-clergy early on in order to prevent "tragedies", it decreed in the new guidelines.
The guidelines are designed to prevent the sort of sex scandals involving paedophile priests that have rocked the catholic church in recent years."

I refuse to give vatican, catholic or church capital letters. They don't deserve the distinction. The problems with the dead tree version of this story:

• The use of psychologists implies that homosexuality is a mental illness. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
• The description of homosexuality as a deviation.
• The implication that only gay people cause tragedies or are paedophiles
  
• The lack of a rebuttal to the above implication, as included in the online version. By not including the rebuttal it infers (implies?) that the church's views are correct, and that gay people are indeed the only ones who rape children. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Abuse is not about sex, it's not about hitting on someone you crush on, it's about power. It's the same whether the victim is adult or child, male or female.

I can see why deviation is in quotation marks, as the assertion that being gay is a deviation is incorrect, but why is tragedies in quotation marks?

Why isn't the church concentrating on weeding out paedophiles? Or unstable aggressive morally corrupt individuals who are potential attackers? Why aren't they seeking to help the victims more? Or even listen to the victims?

Fuckers. Ignorant, homophobic, hate filled morally bankrupt fuckers.