Agreed, for the most part. I don’t care what these girls’ proclivities are, but I think it would be interesting to see how they feel in ten years. I’m not trying to argue anything, really–the OP asked a question, and I tried to give an answer (albeit second-hand).
When you’re dealing with younger people in a counselor/therapist role, there’s bound to be a lot of confusion about their own identity vs. other people’s expectations. I’d guess that getting to the bottom of what are their true feelings and what’s a guise is an important part of helping them.
That’s consistent with what I’ve seen asserted multiple times on this board.
Yeah,I’ve seen a whole lot of stuff asserted on this board.
Did I say it never happens? No. That is not what I said. What I said was very clear.
As long as the same questioning is applied to those who claim to be straight, no problem. However, I seriously doubt it is.
Yeah, that’d be my immediate guess. GLBT teens are a lot more likely, statistically, to be homeless or in bad circumstances, usually because their parents kick them out. I’m not sure about drug use, but queer teens are significantly more likely to smoke cigarettes, which might well go along with drug use.
This reply would make a bit more sense if I had been responding to you. However, as you’ll note, I wasn’t:)
The second part of my reply wasn’t directed at you, btw, but Antonir. But anyway I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this. But I do not. Surely you can’ t be saying that on this discussion board we are only to address comments directed at us, right?
There’s been a change over the years of just what the definitions are. The consensus was that a person who has ever had a sexual experience with somebody of the same sex was homosexual, or if they also had sex with the other sex, bisexual. This made for a lot of guilt among boys and girls who had experimented with same-sex amusements.
The new consensus among sex researchers and psychiatrists is to base the label, if you must have a label, on the overall preference rather than the “one shot and you’re gay” theory.
**Phlosphr **, are you familiar with Borderline Personality Disorder?
This seems like it would be a major contributor to what you’re seeing. Has anyone ever checked to see how many kids retain their sexual identities, say five years later?
Ah. See, you quoted me, then didn’t acknowledge anyone else, so I was a little confused:)
Most of that element of it was based off the idea that the entirety of your comment was directed at me, though I am a little put off by the tone of your “Yeah, a lot of stuff gets asserted on this board” comment. All we have is what people say here, as you yourself indicated. What, indeed, is the use of questioning the validity of one person saying that a particular behavior has been observed a nontrivial number of times in her or his circle of humanoid life forms? Hell, I have friends who’ve done just as fachverwirrt and Antinor01 attested to.
Interesting point. I wonder if there is a percentage of girls who like boys, but “experimented” once, and are now convinced that they must be bi, despite no real attraction to other girls.
That was my mistake, I apologize.
Well, a lot of stuff does get asserted on this board. You can’t seriously offer that fact alone as a point of evidence. Asserted by whom, under what circumstances, in what way, all these things matter a whole lot. “Some guys said that’s true” is sort of pointless, especially when any schmuck with a credit card can post. I didn’t mean to be excessively offensive, though, merely a little sardonic. I meant it in a light-hearted way, because I know of course you personally probably have better information than “some guys said” for yourself. You just didn’t provide it for me, so I’m left with “some guys said”. I’m not even really criticizing you for this, just explaining.
Like I said above, I wasn’t questioning your assertion, but it was less than helpful to those who have not seen what you’ve seen.
I was one of these troubled homeless gay teens, and I’ve known many others, male and female. None were just faking it to shock people, and most went on to retain their queer identity as a major factor in their lives, whether bisexual or not. I would wager that many of these legendary teenage bisexual girls will go on to partner with men, but so what? I would also bet they’d go on saying they were bisexual if anybody asked them.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for some people to believe that maybe they really are at least to some degree bisexual, and are finding mutual support for their feelings rather than just somehow inventing the fad out of whole cloth to impress boys. It’s possible that they enjoy fooling around with the same sex but would prefer to partner with the opposite sex. That sounds like bisexual to me, not a repudiation of their self-reporting.
First, I am and was not saying it with the weight of a meta-analysis of the New England Journal of Medicine’s articles from the past 20 years:) Second, it’d be just this side of difficult to play with the search engine and get results for something as vaguely defined (and without any “Nobody uses this word unless…”) as this concept without running into a lot of dead-end threads. Third, I said “Yeah, this isn’t the first time someone’s brought that up” not to mean “So it must be 100% scientifically observed as valid” but as a sort of glorified me-too post:)
As someone who is bisexual, it frankly pisses me the ::checks forum:: 8535 off to have straight girls kiss each other to get attention from guys. (Well, part of me gets pissed off. Another part … well.) But I also have been the intended audience of a number of “You’re not really bisexual…” and “Yeah, well I heard most guys who say they’re bi are gay and in denial, and most girls are straight and want attention” and similar comments, and that pisses me off even more. I know a lot of men socially transition from straight to gay by saying they’re bi just to test the waters, and I know a lot of men are or were confused, thought they were bi, then gradually came to the understanding that they were gay. Those experiences shouldn’t tell someone else that all bi men are actually gay any more than I should assume that two girls kissing in public are doing it because some cute guy is close by and watching with his hands down his pants.
If a person says e is bi, so be it. I’m not saying girls who kiss in public are, ipso facto, doing it for attention. What I am sying is that if a person says e was kissing someone of the same sex to get attention, I tend to treat that a bit like Spin the Bottle as opposed to data to be considered in determining that person’s place on the Kinsey Scale.
Fair enough, but all I would want would be, like “asserted by teachers of high school” or whatever. I’m not demanding scientific studies, I just want to know who’s asserting, to start with. Anyhow, I didn’t mean to come off like I was actually annoyed with your post. I just found it sort of funny.
Sure. But people here are saying “these girls who do say they are bisexual are not really, truly bisexual”. Of course if they say they were just doing it for attention they’re not even claiming to be bisexual. My personal point, not directed at you but the conversation in general, was that questioning people’s self-reporting on this issue is pointless when that’s all there is to go by for anyone. A virgin can have a sexual orientation; behavior doesn’t define it. The only thing that does is when someone says “this is what I am”.
My comments were not in the slightest intended to say that no one is bisexual. I was merely looking at the point that out of any group of people 80% being gay or bi would be highly unusual and suggesting some possibilities. Outside a gay bar or a gym in west hollywood of course. 
Fair enough. Various of my friends have admitted to doing it at least once. Various folks on this board have indicated that they, or friends of theirs whom they are pretty sure would be open about their bisexuality if they (the friends) were bisexual, have done it.
I guess the line of sexuality demarcation is here, for me: if the person doing the reporting is not the person whom the story focuses on, grain of salt is taken. if the person doing the reporting is the person whom the story focuses on, grain of salt is used for batch of cookies.
I agree with you in principle, but I think it’s important to remember that a lot of people still (mistakenly, in my view; a friend of mine who is herself bisexual keeps falling back into “But you’ve never been with a man. How do you know?”) operate from that action-determines-sexuality mindset. Someone who is operating from that (again, mistaken as far as I am concerned) mindset does then believe that e is bisexual, which I would expect to lead to nontrivial confusion.
I yearn for the day when dictionaries do not reflect the to-me-backwards idea that someone who is heterosexual must only ever be having sex with someone of the opposite sex. Unless and until, though, the building of the idea that girls kissing girls makes them bisexual is something we gotta fight.
Good thing we’re in the right place for same fight:)
The majority of the female clients I work with are Borderline. And we do have some followup data on their whereabouts and such up to 2 years down the road. If the clients choose to fill out the little questionnairs and if they are honest with them when they do… the data could be very helpful. As it is though, it appears most do not want to followup with us and do not fill out the Q’s we send them.
I can point out my own experience: out of my immediate crowd in high school consisting of 5 girls and 5 guys (we were the gothy troubled crowd), four girls identified bisexual, one as a lesbian. (Currently (AFAIK) two of us bisexuals are now with men, one is still a lesbian, and one identifies herself as bisexual. All of the guys identified as straight at first, but now two of the guys identify as gay, and one was bisexual, although I don’t know what he’s up to now. Also, my sister’s best friend from high school came out a few years ago as well.
Anecdotal evidence, but I am of the opinion that bisexual and gay kids know they are different, and seek out others who are like them.
I find this very true from conversations with the kids.