Life is something that happens to you. I think most of us know in the rational part of our mind that the idea that every person has a soul mate is nonsense.
You meet people in the course of your life. Some of them you’ll be attracted to. Some of them will be attracted to you. Some of them will be single. Some of them will be people you’ll meet when you are single. The Venn Diagram of all this indicates who you have relationships with a lot more that your pre-existing notions of who your ideal mate is.
As for the odds, I think pretty much everyone agrees that heterosexuality is more common than homosexuality. So a bisexual man is likely to meet more women who are attracted to men than men who are attracted to men.
This is how my pansexual husband describes himself, and prior to our meeting he had all kinds of relations, including poly (he was brought out at age 9 by two older girls and a boy).
He has occasionally described “pansexual” as having sex while cooking.
“Some of them want to use you,
Some of them want to get used by you,
Some of them want to abuse you,
Some of them want to be abused.”
It is worth noting that there’s a significant percentage of bisexuals who would fall in the “then who cares? It’s ice cream?” camp. They don’t want to change because they think that all the work in getting exposure and representation for bisexuals shouldn’t be thrown away because someone came up with a slightly more etymologically correct term.
Indeed, and that kind of misconception is probably even worse for a term like pansexual. I suppose it gets confused in some people’s minds with “promiscuous” or “indiscriminate”. I don’t really get why, as even if someone doesn’t discriminate based on gender, they’re still going to be doing it on the basis of physical attractiveness, age, socioeconomic status, personality, fetishistic idiosyncrasies, etc, same as anyone else. And at a certain age, they’ll probably be in a stable monogamous relationship, same as anyone else.
Or, in other words: In a world of pansexuals, I still most likely wouldn’t be able to get a date.
I agree that in a world where there were no stigmas, everyone would be bisexual to some degree.
OK. My husband and I talk about finding other women “doable,” for lack of a less crass term. We frequently agree that we would not kick a woman out of bed for eating crackers. I find it interesting that we like a lot of the same women. Not always, though-- there’s about a 75% overlap. He has no interest whatsoever in discussing that merits of say, Denzel Washington, or Cary Grant.
I am in the “Who cares?” camp, in that, while I am completely monogamous with DH, and have no plans to be otherwise, if I were ever dating again, I would be open to transgendered people, MtF, FtM, pre-op, post-op, none of that matters. Also, non-binary-gendered people, or whatever the term is: intersexed, othersexed, whatever. Doesn’t matter. However, I am into people. Adult people. I’m a little afraid that the term “pansexual” might be misunderstood to include children or animals. It’s just not common enough to have a generally understood meaning. And “pan” does mean “all,” or “everything.” If the word becomes generally used and understood, I might use it.
My my. I’m seeing almost the full range of all the arguments and suggestions I’ve been seeing since I was a kid, and first became aware that there was more than just heterosexual girls and boys.
The only thing that interests ME in all this, are the various motivations people have for arguing about it or calculating it. Especially calculating it. Ten percent this and ninety percent that? Really? Based on what?
Anyway. I have come to suspect that sexuality is THE most complicated subject area for humans of all. Not * just* because we have so many new subgroups to pretend to be scientific about, but because individual sexuality all by itself, involves dozens, maybe hundreds or even thousands of small facets and factors.
Just for myself, for example: I only get hot to trot for females. But what gets me thinking and feeling sexual is a lot of subtle factors, even once all the males are out of the room. How she moves. How she talks. How she smells. These and much more, are all SENSORY elements of experiencing another person, not just idle visual elements. And I am convinced from direct experience, that MOST elements of sexual attraction are NOT determined by psychology. Because actual SEXUAL desire for someone IS entirely different from the mechanics of contact. Shaking hands with one person can be entirely meaningless, while with another it can be electric.
Anyway. before I get to far afield, I mainly wanted to put in my vote with the people who say that when someone says “I’m mostly X,” that it’s NOT them being all scientific, and reporting the results of extensive screening tests. I suspect MOST people, regardless of which label they declare, are really referring to what they want to IMAGINE that they are, and that they want other people to IMAGINE that they are. And in my observational experience, there’s almost never any clear measurable relationship between the intensity of the selected label, and the actual person’s sexuality. Because it’s so complicated. But there IS always a measurable close relationship between the chosen label, and the politics of personal experience the person is going through when they are asked.
Unless you’re a bar person. You go into a straight bar, and what’s the percentage of available men vs. available women? Probably a lot fewer than 50% of the people are available women. But you go into a gay (male) bar, and 100% of the people are men who are attracted to men. And even outside of bars, there are many types of places that provide opportunities for gay men to meet other gay men. So we tend to congregate in places where the odds are better. It’s not entirely random.
Only an anecdote to share, and I suspect that, in most cases, that number is close enough to 100% to be 100%.
When I was in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the '80s, there were several of us (straight boys and girls) who would go to a gay dance club, because it happened to also be the best dance club in the city.
In Dublin, straight boys and girls both go to the main gay bars. And I’ve heard straight boys say they’re actually a good place to pick up girls. Because there’s less competition there, and being chill enough to go to a gay bar as a straight boy automatically makes you more attractive.
