Words by Caroline Matthews
Try it for yourself – try typing ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, or any other term you may want support with. Google then makes suggestions, like ‘lesbian fiction’ or ‘gay pride’, thus highlighting possible areas of interest. Not so for ‘bisexual’. It’s about signposting to support services and relevant topics, including those you might not have been aware of. By leaving out this Auto-complete information for the word ‘bisexual’, they are suggesting that others haven’t been making similar searches – further marginalising a significant but often ostracised group. Yet if we have a look at Google Trends we can see that lots of people actually are making searches with the word ‘bisexual’. It’s just you don’t get to see them.
This is something that The Lesbian and Gay Foundation, and Manchester’s very own bi support group, BiPhoria, have been working to raise awareness of. For despite the much publicised bisexuality of celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga in recent years, the average bisexual still has to battle with living in a world where bisexual erasure is commonplace – ranging from being ignored, to actual denial of the existence of their sexuality. Jen Yockney from BiPhoria
explained,
http://www.change.org/petitions/google-inc-unblock-the-word-bisexual-from-autocomplete
Caroline Matthews is a Mancunian, wife, mother, student and writer.
You can follow her on Twitter @CarolBMatthews
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