I’m Claire, the team lead for this years BiCon and I signed up to run BiCon 2019 a few years ago at our Decision Making Plenary – the meeting where all attendees gather to make decisions about future BiCon’s. My first BiCon was Edinburgh in 2012, it was a life changing experience for me.
Luckily for me, I was quite young when I first attended. Fresh faced, still in university, fairly active within LGBT circles. Something never felt quite right when I was in LGBT spaces until I went to BiCon. It was the first time I had been in a space dedicated to bisexuality and the first time I felt like I fit in. There was no trying to be “queer enough”, no proving I deserved to be in that space, no feeling like I was lesser than others who were part of the group – I just belonged with no questions asked and no quizzical looks if I happened to mention a male partner when I’m a cis woman. It made me realise what I had been missing from all the LGBT spaces I had been in until then.
Over the course of that first weekend in Edinburgh I learnt so much. I learnt I was non-monogamous, quite an eye-opener for the baby faced 19 year old that I was! In the 6 years since then, that has probably been the biggest impact that BiCon has had on me. I remember leaving BiCon for the first time, calling my partner at the time and delighting with him about all these amazing things that the weekend had made me discover about myself. Since Edinburgh, I have attended every BiCon and seen how amazing that space is for such a wide variety of people, how freeing it is for most, what a valuable resource it can be. I really value that and I never want that opportunity to go away.
In essence, that is why I chose to volunteer to run BiCon. Running it is a difficult task, it’s time consuming and there are many threads to keep track of to ensure the weekend runs smoothly. But it’s worth it. All that hard work is worth it to ensure that we keep access to this wonderful space that is beneficial for so many people. It may sound cliched, but it’s true…