Social media websites were around before FB. From about 2001, many BiCon attendees used LiveJournal.com and, until recently when its current Russian owners bowed to the anti-LGBT attitude of the country's current rulers, some of us still did. Fortunately, the even better Dreamwidth.org can still be recommended and has a mirror of the old BiCon community on LJ which remains one of the best places to see what other people feel like after attending BiCon.
BiCon has been a life-changing experience for many of us. Going has certainly been one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
So if you are pondering whether or not to come to BiCon, please see here (just after 2002), here (just before and just after 2003), here (2004), here (2005), here (2006), here (2007), here and here (2008), here (2009), and here, here, and here after 2010.
Get the picture? 🙂
Don't end up reading the equivalent posts this year, going 'Oh, I wish I had gone…'
My absolute favourite thing about BiCon has always been the totally accepting atmosphere. This year I really felt I contributed to that acceptance, rather than simply basking in it myself. It is thanks to the efforts of everyone present that I felt so at home, safe, and able to be myself despite being surrounded by strangers with often very different interests and ideologies from my own. The atmosphere somehow engenders the temporary suspension of prejudice and assumption..
"My first BiCon"
My first BiCon was in Edinburgh in 1999… I can't exactly remember how it happened now, but somehow we managed to offer a lift to someone we didn't know.
He turned out to be an excellent introduction to BiCon and put us immensely at ease in the car during the journey. I had been wondering just what we had let ourselves in for – whether we would be the oldest people there, etc. etc. Our guest was able to reassure us that it attracts all ages and varieties of people and that we would fit in just fine.
I remember starting out with an "amber" dot and then swapping it rapidly for a green one and then several green ones … not that I was panicking at all about anything, no, not really, no no no! And going from feeling inadequately dressed and wanting to rush out and buy more outrageous clothes just to fit in to realising by the end of the weekend that I did fit in, exactly how I was, and that all that mattered was being true to myself.
