Bisexuals Of Colour Collection

Bi’s of Colour was formed at BiCon London in 2010 – a year after a racist incident took place at BiCon 2009, perpetrated by one of the organisers of the conference. There were discussions that year about what it would look like to have a safer space for the minority within a minority at the longest running bisexual event in the world. In 2009, there had only been a handful of bisexuals of colour attending BiCon, but numbers had grown by the following year.

Bi’s of colour was a response to the double erasure of Black and POC bisexuals in Britain, both erased in studies about Black people and erased from studies about LGBT+ people: “When I co-founded Bisexuals of Colour in 2010, it was an act of defiance; against bisexual people who thought it was all right to make racist and Islamophobic remarks to others. As a British, Black, bisexual mostly-woman, there was nothing I could obtain that represented anyone remotely like me. The only two books I could find on Black sexuality in the U.K was on the subject of Black gay men and lesbians. The occasional book on bisexuality hardly mentioned People of Colour at all.” Jacq Applebee (co-founder of Bi’s of Colour)

Bi’s of Colour spent the next decade bringing the world information about Black and POC bisexual lives; providing practical support to its members and having stalls at LGBT+ events, where racism and biphobia persisted. In 2015, Jacq Applebee produced the Bi’s of Colour History report; the first of its kind to look in detail at the lives of Black and POC Bisexuals in Britain: https://bisexualresearch.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/bis-of-colour-survey-report.pdf

The group disbanded in 2021.