Much Ado About Bisexuality

In My Humble Opinion
1

I want to talk about the ambiguities of bisexual identity. Right off the bat, I’d like to say that I am not asserting any of the following:

  • In order to truthfully declare oneself bisexual, the qualitative aspects of one’s attraction to both genders must be roughly the same.

  • In order to truthfully declare oneself bisexual, one’s level of attraction to both sexes must be (almost) exactly even.

  • People who say they’re bisexual are almost always closeted homosexuals.

I don’t believe any of these things. But there are some sneaking suspicions that I’ve had for years, and there may be a piece of (not strong, but not totally worthless) evidence that my personal experiences are related to broader reality. I want to engage in an open discussion on these suspicions. I’d like to hear both general scientific/philosophical arguments and statements of personal experience.

I am not asserting that these suspicions of mine are correct, nor am I trying to provide a knock-down argument in favor of them. If I were, I would be writing this in GD. I am instead asking what others think of these ideas in an open-ended way.

What are these suspicions of mine?

1 ) Some notable proportion of people who self-identify as bisexual do not want to admit, either to themselves or to others, that they’re homosexual.

This is probably the most justifiable of my assertions. Few would deny that there are many reasons one might wish to downplay one’s homosexuality, even in liberal western societies.

2 ) Some notable proportion of people who self-identify as bisexual are heterosexual, but like to think that they are more sexually adventurous than they really are.

Many people like to think of themselves as adventurous; whether or not they actually are, they like the idea that they’re into trying new things. They like to believe that they’re up for all sorts of different activities, and there’s nothing they wouldn’t do unless they thought it was morally wrong. Such people may try to fool themselves that they’re bisexual in order to foster this self-image.

3 ) Some people may have minute or fleeting sexual attractions to one gender and overblow their significance within their mind.

I certainly believe that it’s possible for an individual to be mostly attracted to one gender but have minute, fleeting, or highly selective attractions to members of the other gender. But I suspect that some such people may, in their mind, believe that these attractions suggest more than they do. They might falsely believe that this means they could have a sexual partnership with a member of that sex when they could not.

4 ) Some people may confuse an emotional or intellectual orientation for a sexual one.

Since women tend to have more holistic notions of attraction than men do–saying things like “he’s even cuter because he plays guitar” or “I’m attracted to his personality”–I suspect that this may be common among women. While it’s not wrong to be experience greater lust because of how you think or feel of somebody, you do not have a general attraction to one of the two sexes unless you are actually visually into that gender’s gendered physical traits. If a woman connects more with men intellectually and emotionally–and even tends to like them more because of that–but fantasizes about having sex with women (and women only) while masturbating, she’s a lesbian.

So why do I suspect that these things are even remotely common? Mostly personal experience. But also, the creators of OkCupid–Harvard Math majors–often post results from their own analyses of their dating service. What did they recently find? Most supposed bisexuals on OkCupid only contact one gender. Note that over 3/4 of the active stated bisexuals on OkCupid have never contacted one of the two genders. Not even one with a particularly amazing profile. Not even that one guy who seems really mature and who you can tell isn’t a creep. Nobody. Now, I know that this is not an academic publication and we’re only talking about a dating web site, but while this does not count for everything, it definitely counts for something–especially because many people take online dating quite seriously.

So what are your opinions on the meaning of bisexual identification?

2

I’d be interested in how/why you’ve come up with these questions. I may be making some unwarranted assumptions about where you’re coming from. I’ve got no scientific evidence, just opinions based on my experience. [Disclaimer: most of my experience is pretty old, from when I was college-aged myself. Since then, I just don’t commonly sit around discussing sexuality with very many people. Funny how life works.]

[On preview: I somehow missed your link in my first reading. Now I see where you’re coming from. While very interesting, I somehow don’t find it at all surprising that the majority of people on a dating website lie about themselves. I think these pretty much fall into your categories 1 & 2. I have some other thoughts on that, but I’ll have to mull on them a bit more to see if they’re worth posting.]

1 ) Some notable proportion of people who self-identify as bisexual do not want to admit, either to themselves or to others, that they’re homosexual.

I agree that there are some “bisexuals” who are actually homosexuals in denial. Not very good denial, but whatever. But most of the ones who really can’t deal with being gay are going to totally deny it, because they think bi is just as bad.

I don’t know about a “notable proportion”, though. I don’t think this is actually that common, except maybe as a brief phase on the way to being out. I have known a fair number of people that briefly called themselves bisexual before deciding they were gay. OTOH, in mostly-gay peer groups, I have also seen people calling themselves gay who actually seemed to be bi.

I will admit that this one gets mightily on my nerves due to personal experiences, so I may be downplaying it. (Back when I was spending a lot of time in the “gay community”, I heard this a LOT. No one was bisexual, they were just in the closet. That was a long time ago, maybe it’s gotten better since then.)

2 ) Some notable proportion of people who self-identify as bisexual are heterosexual, but like to think that they are more sexually adventurous than they really are.

This I would have to agree with, especially in the high-school and college crowd, e.g., “lesbian until graduation”. Sometimes they’re experimenting and figuring out what they like, sometimes they’re just trying to be cool (in their own mind or for others).

3 ) Some people may have minute or fleeting sexual attractions to one gender and overblow their significance within their mind.

Again, definitely true. Not a whole lot, but I’ve seen this sort of thing happen. IME, this is more common in people that are somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality. When they have some isolated experience of being seriously attracted in some way to a same-sex person for whatever reason, they blow it up into OMG I’M BI/GAY!! They usually get over it fairly quickly though. At least if they have someone sane and sensible to talk them out of it. :stuck_out_tongue:

OTOH, if you’re sexually attracted to someone of the same sex, that pretty much qualifies you as bisexual, doesn’t it? Some men really only find small Asian women attractive - does that mean they’re not truly heterosexual?

4 ) Some people may confuse an emotional or intellectual orientation for a sexual one.

I don’t think I buy this. There can be a lot of different reasons to find a particular individual attractive. I’ve been sexually attracted to people for many reasons other than just their physical appearance. I don’t think many people have that much trouble differentiating between friends (even close friends) in whom they’re not sexually interested and those in whom they are. There’s a fair number of people who get love and lust crossed up, IMHO, but that’s got nothing to do with orientation.

One thing that I think may be confusing you is that IME, levels of attraction can change. I’ve had time periods when I was primarily attracted to women, and other times when I was primarily attracted to men. I’ve had time periods in which I wasn’t really interested in one or the other. AFAICT, I’m still bisexual even if I’m currently not actively pursuing relationships with a particular gender.

3

This.

I cannot tell you how many times I have had to explain to someone how I can be bisexual (for reals) and be married to a man. Most people still don’t actually understand after I explain.

4

I’m not sure I understand #1… Bisexuality has pretty much the same stigma in our society as exclusive homosexuality. Or more, even, from the crowd that thinks “gay” just means “really horny, and can’t control themselves”. Why would you deny being gay, just to claim something that’s just as bad? Much more plausible, I think, for bisexuals to identify as straight.

On number 4, I’m not really sure why you specified visually into. Heterosexual means you want to have sex with someone of the opposite sex, and homosexual means you want to have sex with someone of the same sex. You can have sex with someone without looking at them, and you can certainly look at someone without having sex with them. I can even conceive, hypothetically, of (for instance) a man who wants to have sex with women, but doesn’t like looking at women, and I would have no problem categorizing such a man as heterosexual.
EDIT: Oh, and evilbeth, what is there not to get about that? Do people just assume that because you’re bi, you must necessarily be polygamous, in a three-way with a man and a woman, or something?

5

Lots of people think that “bi” means “will fuck anything that moves, or better yet, anything that stays still for half a minute; can’t see any difference between Halle Berry gussied up and Charles Chaplin in his deathbed.” Same as many people think gay men will have sex with anything with a dick, only in this case “anything with a dick” gets widened (for some reason, lesbians get less of a rap of being sluts).

The idea that it means “finds some females attractive (but, same as anybody else, not all) and some males attractive (but, same as anybody else, not all)” can take a lot of explaining. And then you still have to get to the part about being monogamous. I usually explain both by asking the person in question about their own behavior: “after you got married, did you ever see a man that you found attractive and who wasn’t your husband?” “well, yeah” “did you fuck him?” “hell no!” “ok, so why do you think someone who’s bisexual would have? do you think they value their long-term relationship less than you value yours?” “ah… uh… ah… uh… hrm.”

6

Of course there will be some. However, I will posit the opposite view - that many people who identify as solely homosexual - particularly men - are probably bisexual, but feel like they need to put a ‘black/white’ tag on themselves. I think sexuality is much greyer than that for a lot of people.

See my answer to Q 1. I think many people are capable of enjoying sexual experiences with both genders, but most people just don’t go there through societal pressure to conform.

Or perhaps they’re just being honest with themselves.

This strikes me as a very male perspective on attraction. You have defined ‘real’ attraction as visual. Many many women would disagree with you.

In fact, I think most of your post reveals a very male attitude to sexuality: Attraction is visual, most people are either gay or straight. I think you’re wrong.

I identify as lesbian, for the record, but have enjoyed sexual relations with men in the past. I think sexuality can be grey and fluid.

7

Just to let you know, I’m coming to this as a bisexual-identified guy who’s hung around very B-heavy parts of the LGBT community.

Some of them, sure. I’m not sure that I’d agree that a ‘notable proportion’ are, though.

If they’re sexually attracted, even fleetingly, to members of the same sex, then they’re clearly not solely and completely 100% hetero. Unless you’re saying that they’re faking being attracted for, I dunno, bi street cred? :dubious:

I think this is a lot more likely than heterosexuals consciously or subconsciously shamming being bi. Our ways of talking about sexuality don’t leave much room for shades of grey.

I call myself bi, for instance, even though my primary attraction is to men. It would be a lot more accurate for me to say “I’m a Kinsey 5” or “I’m homoflexible” than “I’m bisexual”, but you get a lot of raised eyebrows and very little comprehension if you say that. Someone who admits not being solely attracted to one sex is called bisexual, even if they’re 98% attracted to one sex and 2% to the other.

I don’t think you can pick those apart so easily. What do would you call, say, a woman who has a primary sexual attraction to men, with an emotional attraction solely to women, and an intellectual attraction to both? If she only dates women but enjoys sex with men, is she…what, hetero? Lesbian? I think bisexual covers it all right, even though it’s not exactly accurate, but when we’re putting our orientation on dating sites there’s not exactly room for fine detail. Something like a Klein grid gives a better picture, but unless sexology turns you on you’re not going to be handing them out to potential dates.

Just like heterosexual or homosexual indentification, it’s a lot more complex and multifaceted than it seems at first glance. It’s a shorthand, not a full description.

8

Basically, yes. For some reason, many people just cannot understand that how if you are attracted to both men and women you can choose to spend your life with only one.

People don’t think it is odd for a heterosexual woman to choose just one man to be with for life but when they think bisexual, they think, I guess, that you have to be with both to be happy. Like if you marry a man, you will always be missing being in a relationship with women or vice-versa.

I guess to them being happily married and “just looking” at other folks you find attractive is sufficient but bisexuals just can’t be satisfied with that because they have so many more options.

It doesn’t make any sense to me but then a lot of people’s ideas about sexual identity don’t make any sense to me.

9

i’ve posted this before, but i’ve been identified by my friends as bisexual, and have answered to it once or twice, but don’t feel I necessarily am.

I like playing with women, find some of them very attractive, and would/have pursued encounters with some of them with mixed results.

But I’ve only ever dated men and could only really see myself in a relationship with a man. If there was a ratio, I’d say the 80/20 rule applies here.

10

There was a whole thread here recently asking bisexuals in monogamous relationships whether their partners were open to them, basically, satisfying their cravings for sex with whichever sex their partner wasn’t. Like being bisexual means you require sex with both men and women or else you get cravings. Like a vampire. Heehee.

11

I think this is true, although there are also plenty of largely straight men who’ve experimentedwith their own sex but distance themselves from a bisexual orientation. (I think Christopher Hitchens did this, too.)

There are certain environments where plenty of otherwise straight men discover that their sexuality is not rigid (boarding schools…) through experimentation. A lot of these men will go onto identify as straight, and no doubt a lot of them do prefer girls 99% of the time. But the male bisexual identity is relatively rare to the degree that I think men do face pressure to pick a side and I’m sceptical that identifying as bi is so much easier than identifying as gay.

12

It may help to make an analogy-- “look, just because you’re currently dating a person with blond hair and blue eyes doesn’t mean you are ONLY attracted to blond-haired, blue-eyed people from now on.”

Seriously. I mean, what am I allowed to date that would evidence my bisexuality? Transsexuals only? :rolleyes:

13

A better analogy to what most of these people are questioning me about is to say, “You like guys with blond hair and blue eyes but you also like guys with black hair and brown eyes. So, how can you ever marry a guy with blond hair and blue eyes? Wouldn’t you always be wanting a black-haired, brown-eyed guy?”

When you word it that way, people find it ridiculous but they cannot seem to grasp bisexuality as anything but always having sex with both men and women.

14

Yes, it would seem so, considering how often some people (not bi) advise us trans folks to date bi folks, thinking no het or gay person would truly be attracted to us.
As if being bi meant you find cocks/vaginas/hairs/no-hairs/boobs/flat chest all automatically attractive, whatever the combo is!

15

I used to be an OkCupid member, and based on my experience there I would not assume that OkCupid member behavior reflects that of the general population. First, OkCupid members are not a representative sample of the general population. Second, people’s online dating behavior doesn’t even necessarily reflect their offline dating behavior. And finally how people choose to label themselves on OkCupid may have more to do with the sort of partner they are looking for than how they genuinely perceive themselves or even how they’d identify themselves in real life.

If you actually read the profiles for many bisexual women on OkCupid, or even many of the “lesbians”, they explain that they are already in serious relationships with men and are looking for other women for casual sex or a threesome. (OkCupid is apparently one of the few major dating sites that is welcoming of non-monogamous people, and they seem to make up a fairly large percentage of the membership.) That’s why these women wouldn’t be contacting men on OkCupid – they already have male partners. If you asked them about their actual sexual history then they’d have more experience with men than is indicated by their OkCupid contact history.

There must also be bisexuals of both sexes on OkCupid who are monogamous but figure it’s easy enough to meet straight opposite-sex people IRL and only bother with online dating when they want to meet gay/bi same-sex people. This would be in addition to all the bisexual people who actually do skew strongly one way or the other and whose single-sex focused OkCupid behavior accurately reflects their dating preferences.

16

Another data point:

I am bisexual. I’ve found both women and men attractive ever since I found anyone attractive. I have, however, not seriously dated women in my adult life. Some of this is situational; I don’t have a lot in common with most women, and therefore most of my friends are male. The rest is a choice based upon social convenience; in this society, it’s a lot easier for me to be in a heterosexual relationship. And, since I’m interested in both genders, in my case it’s not really any more limiting than someone saying that they’ll only date someone who’s Catholic or whatever.

Now, it’s not as though, if the woman of my dreams had somehow come along and swept me off my feet, I’d’ve been all ,“Oh, no way.” I just wasn’t really flirting with them, pursuing them, or otherwise looking for them.

Therefore, had I ever registered on a dating site, I would’ve only responded to men. However, I would identify as bisexual in the interest of honesty–it saves you an awkward conversation later on (and, yes; guys can get weird about it. Not every guy is all like, “oh, that’s hot!”). This does’t change the fact that I’m attracted to both.

17

Not long ago I had a brief thing with a bisexual girl with a vampire fetish. That was… interesting.
Back on topic, the OP says that only someone with 50/50 taste is actually bisexual. What does someone who’s about 85% one way count as? In my case, my fantasies always involve women, but on occasion I’ve got with blokes. If pushed to self identify, I’ll usually say “fairly straight” or something like that, but I’ve never really liked that.

18

It just occurred to me that there must also be plenty of OkCupid members who only ever contact a small number of other users. (IIRC, I only initiated contact with three people during the year or more I had an active profile there.) Some of those bisexual members who’d only contacted people of one sex may actually have contacted a grand total of one person before they abandoned the site.

19

IMO - bisexual. I have no idea where this whole “it has to be completely 50/50” idea ever came from with regards to bisexuality. If you’re attracted to both genders, to whatever degree, I would argue that’s bi. Unless of course you don’t think that fits you, like say you’re straight but had one or two encounters with the same gender as part of experimentation but don’t want to do it again and identify as straight. Arguing you’re really bi in such a situation doesn’t make much sense to me.

20

My identification as bisexual is based on having had long-term satisfying sexual relationships with men and a long-term satisfying sexual relationship with a woman (my current partner), plus shorter-term dating of either sex along the way. I am sexually attracted to both men and women, HOWEVER I generally label myself as a lesbian, if asked, because a) I feel more emotionally attached to women (e.g. I might lust after a guy but I would fall in love with a girl), b) if a hot girl and a hot boy walk past my eyes are inevitably drawn unconsciously to her breasts first and only secondarily do I notice that the guy is hot too, and c) being a lesbian is easier to explain than the whole bisexual thing.

Not sure where that puts me on the Kinsey scale.