Bi Visibility Day: What is it and why is it important?

While LGBTQ+ history month takes place in February, there are also plenty of awareness days for each identity within the community.

Bi Visibility Day, which falls annually on 23 September, recognises and celebrates bisexual people and the bisexual community as a whole, as well as to combatting biphobia.

It was created in 1999 by three bisexual activists: Wendy Curry, Michael Page, and Gigi Raven Wilbur.

Page is best-known for designing the bisexual Pride flag. His idea for the design came about after he spoke to many bi men and women who told him they felt “no connection to the rainbow flag”.

He added: “It is my belief that bi people need their own flags and symbols to rally around.”

Elsewhere, Wilbur has said: “Ever since the Stonewall rebellion, the gay and lesbian community has grown in strength and visibility. The bisexual community also has grown in strength but in many ways, we are still invisible.”

Society had conditioned us to view couples in strict binaries, such as straight or gay, depending on the perceived gender of each person, she added – and that did a disservice to bisexual people.

The reason Bi Visibility Day occurs in September is because the activists wanted to pay homage to one of the famous bisexual people in history, Freddie Mercury, whose was born in this month in 1946. Additionally, Wilbur’s birthday is 23 September and it was she who first had the idea.

It was later brought to Britain by UK activist Jen Yockney and aims to raise awareness of bisexual people as a valid sexual identity and to highlight the prejudices bis people both inside and outside the LGBTQ+ community.

While it is not an official holiday, it is recognised by many as being an opportunity to uplift the bisexual community.

In 2012, the city of Berkeley in California became the first to declare the day officially as Bisexual Pride and Bi Visibility Day. A year later, the White House held a meeting with 30 bisexual advocates on the day.

Also in 2013, MP Jo Swinson, who went on to be leader of the Liberal Democrats, issued a statement in which she praised the day for its raising “awareness of the issues that bisexual people can face and [for providing] an opportunity to celebrate diversity and focus on the ‘B’ in LGBT”.

More recently, in the US in 2021, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf became the first governor to officially recognise the day.

On Monday (23 September), a bisexual Pride flag was seen hanging in the courtyard of the Foreign Office, leading foreign secretary David Lammy to be accused of “woke virtue-signalling”.

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