The Ministry of Education has apologised for leaving out the bisexual community in a release that is meant to highlight the Ministry’s inclusion and support of LGBTI students. Last weeks release, originally titled “Including gay, lesbian and transgender students” has now been changed to reflect more of the LGBTI community. Sandra Dickson of the Wellington Bisexual Women's Group says although she is pleased the Ministry made a swift change, she believes “leaving out bisexual people’s specific experiences of biphobia when you are discussing vulnerabilities for sex, sexuality and gender diverse students is biphobic.” She goes on to say that “the other issues with their work continue… and this speaks to the wider invisibility of bisexual people in policy, planning, and too often, support systems.” “Bisexual people, and all people attracted to more than one gender, get left out often – along with trans people, intersex people, takataapui, and all our Pacifica identities of course,” says Dickson. “But when you’re seeing “gay, lesbian and transgender” as an attempt to capture everyone, what we’re really dealing with is pure biphobia.” Katrina Casey, Deputy Secretary, Sector Enablement and Support says “We apologise for any offence that may have been caused. Leaving bisexual students out of the release was an oversight, which we corrected as soon as we were told about it. “We know that bisexual young people are among those who find themselves bullied at school. That’s why we included a new section on bullying in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning (LGBTIQ) students in the current version of our bullying prevention guide. Bisexual students are included in the acronym, and throughout the guide.” Dickson says she is aware that at least 30 bisexual people contacted the Ministry to alert them to the problem with the text on Thursday. “The fact is the Youth 2000 research that asked secondary school students questions about sexuality and gender found that “both-sex” attracted – their binary language, not mine – students were the biggest group of all.,” she says. “So 0.7% of students said they were same-sex attracted, 3% said they were “both-sex” attracted, and 1.7% said they were trans. No questions about intersex status sadly. Just in terms of numbers, for the Ministry of Education to blatantly leave “bisexual” out of their page for schools is ridiculous. “But then when you think about what that means for people attracted to more than one gender in real life – that’s the stuff that really makes me mad. Because we find it much harder to find places to belong, because of this kind of invisibility. And that impacts on our mental health, our experiences of violence, when and how and whether we come out…all of these things are worse for bisexual people than other sexualities. It’s infuriating.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 23rd May 2016 - 3:01pm