Mmm, IKEA Furniture.
I don’t know what memories of capabilities means.
I’m not confident that you have a substantial basis for this opinion. But no big deal and we can leave it there.
I doubt if many people - if any - consciously decide who to be attracted to, but I don’t know if it’s all about the reasons you give either.
There’s a big social component in people’s personalities and preferences. At some point, boys begin getting into girls and vice versa, and it’s possible that people who would inherently have the possibility of erotic attraction to either gender go in one direction rather than the other because that’s the direction that society around them is going. So when boys begin talking and joking about girls in an erotic manner etc. etc., other boys subconsciously focus their own emerging sexuality in that direction as well.
Ads? Tell me you’re seeing ads, here. 
It’s from this quote:
I agree–and my second reason was perhaps phrased too snarkily, but I kind of meant to suggest this. It’s totally conceivable that someone would think, even in an inchoate prepubescent manner, that the social costs of homosexuality were too great, and that they wanted to be heterosexual in order to go with the flow. Rather than showing up in the Gender Studies 101 language I used, that thought would probably be something like, “I’m a guy, I’m supposed to like girls, so I guess I’ll like girls.”
I could buy that. I would also probably consider that person’s sexuality to be fairly different from mainstream heterosexuality. Compare the person who is born again because Jesus spoke to them to the person who goes to church because their neighbors expect them to.
It’s possible, but this is not what I was suggesting. I wasn’t talking about someone deciding to like girls because of the social costs. I was talking about the subconscious influence of society.
It’s like that with all tastes - clothing, food, etc. All these things go in and out of style and there’s no doubt that people are influenced by what people around them like. But no one consciously thinks “I think I’ll like the taste of chocolate/look of facial hair etc. so as to fit in with the crowd”. They think they like it because they like it, because it tastes better or looks cooler or whatever. But really it’s the subconscious influence of society.
Personally I suspect that virtually all heterosexuality is of the nature that I described, and that the vast majority of straight people are repressed bisexuals, though mostly at the lower end of the Kinsey Scale. (Homosexuals, by contrast, are going in the face of societal influence, and the above would not apply much, if at all.)
If it’s subconscious, I wouldn’t expect it to be experienced as a decision.
Do you have a reason for this suspicion? It seems unlikely to me, but I could be persuaded.
I agree. It wouldn’t be. I’m not defending the “choice” position here.
Looking at various cultures and time periods. ISTM that the capability for bisexuality has been largely culture-driven.
I’m getting rather sick of all the haggisphobia on this board.
Ah, gotcha. Misunderstood what you were saying :).
Yeah, that makes sense. I confess I really don’t understand how sexuality is derived well enough to say, but it definitely looks to me as though it manifests differently in different cultures.
I think you’re largely correct on this issue, but I’d quibble over the use of “bisexual” in this context. Absent a strong anti-homosexuality stigma (or, in many cultures, a definition of sexuality that only stigmatizes the receptive partner in homosexual sex) a lot of straight men seem to be willing to engage in opportunistic homosexuality. But I wouldn’t classify such men as “bisexual,” in that their primary sexual attraction is still to women. If a guy fantasizes exclusively about women, dates women exclusively, has romantic feelings that are exclusively about women, but is willing to let a guy he met in a bar suck his dick while he fantasizes about Megan Fox, I don’t think that guy is “bisexual” in any meaningful way. I prefer bisexual be reserved for people who are attracted to both genders in a roughly equal proportion, and is willing to entertain the idea of long term, romantic relationships with either gender.
Oh yeah, I would’ve chose IKEA furniture in the 7th grade. Alas, I was born without a hex-penis.
Why hold bisexuals to a more involved standard than hetero- or homosexual folk? Plenty of the latter groups do not really “entertain the idea of long term, romantic relationships.”
I think I have a good idea of what I’m capable of feeling now, based on my assessment of my desires, what I’ve felt in the past, etc. And I think I have a good memory of those qualities from my past, such that I think I can evaluate what I would have been capable of feeling in the past. I even remember asking myself these sorts of questions – “would I ever be capable of desiring sex with a man” (and others) – and answering these questions, and I remember those answers.
But sexuality isn’t about your actions. By that rationale, do you consider a man who’s attracted to men but never ever acts on it or talks about it to be straight?
Similarly, is a late blooming straight person asexual until they finally make out with or have sex with a member of the opposite sex? I didn’t lose my virginity until later, but I knew well before then that I was straight.
Does anybody else remember when this thread was about Urbanredneck?
Who?
Are you genuinely unclear about the standard I was trying to describe, or are you just nitpicking for the fuck of it?
¯_(ツ)_/¯