There also seems to be this ridiculous misunderstanding that those who identify as bisexual can’t or won’t be monogamous. They like both after all! So that means that they have to have both at once! :rolleyes:
Jesus fucking Christ.
Any other straight people want to explain to me why I shouldn’t find this insulting? I mean, y’all are the subject matter experts, here, right?
It’s like all those people who drive in the middle lane on the highway. Fer chrissakes, pick one!
Exactly.
Walking pansexual Pan blues
As I walked down the street, I thought I saw I man
But it was the god Pan
I was shocked and surprised, and nearly fainted
But he said, chill out, bro, and let’s get acquainted
Haven’t you ever met a god before?
While blowing on his panpipes
He asked where I was going, and I told him, well,
I’m going through kind of a lonely spell,
So I’m heading downtown to where the girls dance
To see if I can find some sweet romance
He said, great idea
There are girls downtown, and boys there, too
Women and men, who are as lonely as you,
And some who don’t fit into either description,
Which makes it more fun, with fewer restrictions
I bet they’ll love to help out a nice boy like you
And he gave me a thumbs-up
I said, hold it a second, it’s not as simple as that
See, I have some specific partners in mind
I like young ladies who wear short dresses
I only go for certain kinds of caresses
He said, bro, I think you’re restricting yourself
I could introduce you to a hermaphrodite,
He told me, while thinking and blowing on his pipes
Or maybe some shape-shifting creatures I know,
Who’ll give you the best of both girls and boys
All in one package
That’s how we gods do it in ancient Greece
I said, I think you’ve opened my eyes
But at the same time, you’ve also freaked me right out
I think I’ll be off, but if you’re so inclined
Give me your number, and I’ll call you some time
He said, we gods don’t have phones
I never saw him again after that,
Even though I looked for him all over town
Maybe it was only a strange dream of some kind
But a thought is now forever stuck in my mind:
I bet he gets laid more than me
(harmonica solo)
Ok, I’m back. Sorry if my post was misleading. I said there are SOME people who use “bi” in order to deny their homosexuality. I wasn’t denying that genuine bisexuality exists. In fact, I believe that the vast majority of people, if they were truly self-aware, are to some degree bisexual. In fact, I think life would be a lot easier if we all were.
My husband identifies as pansexual. It means he can find a given sweater beautiful, regardless of its color or style or material, etc. He’s had prior experience, not merely with red and green sweaters, but with other colors or combination of colors or styles. He’s even had experiences wearing multiple sweaters at the same time, regardless of their colors. But ultimately he found this slightly worn blue sweater that he really fell in love with, and decided to wear it forever.
I, on the other hand, have only worn sweaters of one color - his. I admit, I’m boring that way.
Tutti frutti.
My husband and I both recognize attractive men and women. The difference is that he understands that I’m only sexually attracted to the men, whereas my attraction to the women is entirely aesthetic.
Thanks for the clarification, panache. Sorry for getting defensive over it.
(I assume that anyone mentioning a big group hug is gonna get it, right? 
)
To the OP, I don’t think that the ratio is a big deal. I got the impression that the comment meant that, by being more or less bi, they weren’t absolutely locked in the sights of the homophobic relative. There was a reasonable chance of finding a partner without causing family conflict, but they were still offended by the cousin’s homophobia.
It’s bad enough that anyone would have to pick a spouse based on the gender/orientation preferences of their relatives (You know, they’re going to hear the opinions about who they picked for a long time.) It’s worse that the cousin is ready to unload on them if they show that they aren’t Peggy Hill straight*, and the cousin is also saying that they hate her friends.
*Boy, I really need to update my cultural references…
It means they are sorta straight maybe sorta gay but definitely mostly bisexual. Probably a 3/7/90 split. What’s so hard to understand about that?
The thing is that unless you’re in the middle of having sex, your sexuality is a matter of what options you’re potentially open to.
So a man can be in a committed relationship with a woman and never plan to have sex with any other person. But he’s attracted to other women and other men. Is that person a heterosexual or a bisexual?
Suppose this man has had five sexual partners during his life and they all happened to be women. It wasn’t a choice he made; it was just due to the circumstances of who he met in his life. Is he still considered a bisexual because he was open to the possibility of a relationship with another men even though he never was in one?
Suppose this man made a conscious choice that he would only enter relationships with women. But he’s attracted to men and he enjoys watching gay porn. Is he still a bisexual even though he has no desire to ever have actual sex with another man?
It’s not about his actions. If he fantasizes about both men and women, he’s bisexual (or pansexual).
I knew a very outspoken gay man with strong beliefs that no one could possibly be bisexual.
I have to admit that this has been an interesting experience in life; growing up in the 60s and 70s in a uber-religous household where homosexuality was considered to be nothing other than a sin. End of story. Then as time went along, it became easier to accept gays and then simply natural to do so. Tran-sexuality took longer and then it was just easier to accept that everything I learned as a child was so hopelessly outdated it might as well have come from the 14th century.
I have no idea what “mostly bisexual” means.
When I saw that OP, what I thought was “this kid has no idea what bisexual means and he’s actually trying to say something else”. Continuing with that OP, what I figured was that 1) he thinks people who are homophobic aren’t biphobic (yeah right), 2) probably has never heard his idiot cousin rant against bi people, 3) thinks of “bi” as a very distinct group (while homophobes tend to either reject the notion of bisexuality or find it even more repulsive than homosexuality; also, they tend to confuse “bisexual” with “will try to have sex with anything that moves or does not move”).
Gotta love how in either case the person is assumed to be into men. Because apparently nobody can be into women. Uh, except a lot of men. But in their case it’s ok. But not if you’re a woman. Or a man who swings both ways. No, no: if you’re a lesbian you haven’t met the right man yet, and if you swing both ways you’re actually into men.
I figure the sexuality scale is like an inverse bell, considerably off-centre. Most people think of themselves as being in the 90th percentile straight, and gay people mostly in the 10th percentile straight, and then there are people who tend towards the bisexual side of things in a steep slope from there.
The 50th percentile (which due to its off-centredness is probably at the 30th percentile really) is true bisexuality and is a very small group. Most bisexual people, I think, favour one direction or the other. The person the OP references, therefore, favours the homosexual side of the slope.
Did any of what I said make sense?
Disclaimer: I am not an expert. Nor am I gay or on any other spectrum.
Did you just make this up in your head, or do you have any evidence? You seem to be coming close to bi-erasure.
Sweet. This is exactly how I interpreted the post.
** walks away whistling “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” **
I made it up entirely in my head. That’s why I said “I think…” and “I figure…” and added a disclaimer that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m surprised I still have to clarify.
Suppose there were no hypotheticals.
I find it difficult to imagine how who you have sex with is something that just happens.
Regards,
Shodan
I’d generally read “Mostly bisexual” as a play on ‘mostly straight’ or ‘mostly gay’, meaning ‘bisexual but being slightly silly around a bunch of people who will say mostly X instead of bi’. I agree that in the post this is asking about it probably means the poster is figuring out what label to use.
One thing people overlook when talking about ‘percent straight’ and ‘percent gay’ is that the dating pools of ‘people attracted to you’ are not the same size. Someone who’s bisexual but picking their partner’s gender at random is typically going to date overwhelmingly opposite-sex people simply because of the numbers, it doesn’t mean that they’re not ‘really’ bi just because they’ve had 10 partners and 9 of them were opposite sex.
To do a little math: generally surveys show that around 95% of people are straight, and only 5% have some kind of same-sex attraction. To be generous, I’ll use a 10% figure for same-sex attraction, and for simplicity I’ll use two genders and assume that half of the 10% is bi and half gay. With those numbers, if you’re a bisexual man and looking at a pool of 40 potential partners selected at random, you’ll have 19 women who might be attracted to you and only 2 men, while a bisexual woman would find 19 men and 2 women in her dating pool. So it’s really not surprising that their count would skew towards opposite sex dating.
Pansexual means ‘attracted to people regardless of gender’, and explicitly includes non-binary and trans people. Generally the main difference between ‘pansexual’ and bisexual’ is that a pansexual person is trying to explicitly include non-binary people, and often they don’t consider gender important, though that also doesn’t mean ‘bisexual’ explicitly excludes anyone. There’s no hard line between the two other than ‘what someone says they are’. It doesn’t have anything to do with being polyamorous or not. Poly is a completely separate thing that has it’s own department of identity police to argue about, there are plenty of people who identify as pansexual and not poly.
He, mostly straight, but do have poly relationships. People on this board tend to read me as female though, and it’s not something I usually go out of my way to correct unless I was going to respond to the post otherwise. “Pantastic” is actually just a silly play on ‘pants’ and ‘fantastic’, not a reference to bread making or pansexuality, though it’s odd that I never thought of that connection before.