One of the weirdest things about bisexuality is how some people, both gay/lesbian and straight, want to define us out of existence. I’ve had it ‘splained to me any number of times how bisexuals are “really” closeted gays or lesbians, or “really” heterosexuals who are just dabbling. Sometimes I’ve heard both of those from the same person. Such theories are always built on the premise that there is One Right Way to be bisexual, and if our lived reality doesn’t match that image, then it’s not “really” bisexuality.
I’ll state my bias upfront: I’ve been in love twice in my life. Both times, the emotional and physical attraction were undeniable. One was a man, and the other — the love of my life for 20 years — is a woman. So if I’m being “closeted,” or “dabbling,” I’m not doing it very well.
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In 2005, Northwestern University did a study where men (who variously identified themselves from 0 to 6 on the Kinsey Scale) were shown porn clips with either just men or just women, and their physical arousal was measured. One-third of the men were not aroused; the rest responded sexually to both male and female images. No one, however, used this study to argue that a third of men are asexual, and the rest are bisexual. Instead, the study was trumpeted as proof that bisexuality doesn’t exist. The New York Times used the headline “Straight, Gay or Lying?,” (note the Cavuto question mark), and the gay website Box Turtle Bulletin announced that “Bisexuality Is Bullshit.”
The assumption behind the study, and the articles that followed, was the the One Right Way to be bisexual was an exact 50/50 gender split in one’s attractions. Here’s what the study found:
Instead, about three-quarters of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.
"Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern and the study's lead author.
The split in attractions was 80/20 instead of 50/50, therefore bisexuality was deemed not real. (I’ll skip over the fact that the headlines talked about “bisexuality” rather than “male bisexuality”.) The same NYT article said elsewhere:
The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.
Again, an 80/20 split is not “exclusively.” (And in all the talk about bi men supposedly being closeted gays, no one ever offered an explanation for the quarter of bi-identified men whose 80/20 split favored women.)
Six years later, Northwestern did a similar experiment and found that this time the bi-identified men actually did have a stronger physical reaction to both sexes than either straight or gay men. The difference: the bi participants were recruited from bi-specific forums, and included men who had a history of sexual and romantic relationships with both sexes.
In 2010, OKCupid’s blog ran a piece on the “big lies that people tell in online dating.” After the the standard “no offense” disclaimer that “it’s not our intention here to call into question anyone’s sexual identity ,” they proceeded to question the sexual identity of anyone who didn’t follow their One Right Way to be bisexual. Which was: “real” bisexuals must be messaging both genders on OKCupid. And, naturally, when bisexuals didn’t do it the One Right Way, OKCupid was happy to enlighten us with an explanation:
This suggests that bisexuality is often either a hedge for gay people or a label adopted by straights to appear more sexually adventurous to their (straight) matches.
Please, nobody tell Packrat that I’ve been with her for 20 years in order to “appear more sexually adventurous to my (straight) matches.”
So I got some amusement out of a recent study purporting to define straight women out of existence. It found that 72% of straight women in the study were sexually aroused after being shown attractive images of either gender — but lesbians were far less likely to have any arousal at images of men. It’s entertaining to say that women are all either lesbian or bi — but I don’t seriously believe it. We’re culturally accustomed to seeing women’s bodies as sex objects. If a movie or article wants to quickly signal “sex,” it’s female flesh that will be shown.
With a handful of exceptions (like “straight” politicians who attack LGBT rights while having same-sex encounters in public restrooms), I assume that people are their own experts on their orientation. Some gay or lesbian people have made attempts at sex or relationships with the other gender. Some straight people have experimented with same-sex sexuality and decided it wasn’t for them. And some people don’t find binary gender to be a useful concept at all. Again, there’s no One Right Way.
A quarter-century or so ago, I was at a workshop about bisexuality. As people introduced themselves, the most common phrase was, “I’m not sure if I count.” Almost none of us fit that mythical One Right Way. One woman was mostly attracted to women, but “every ten years” found herself in a relationship with a man. Some of the men liked women for relationships and men for just sex — and one of them men was the other way around. And then there was me: I’d never so much as kissed a woman, but I felt the attraction. By the time we got around the circle, we were all laughing and realizing: We all count. And we defined ourselves into existence.
On to Top Comments!
From leu2500:
T Maysle came up with this little ditty on the DK5 experience.
Mouse wheel keep on turnin’
Eyeballs keep on burnin’
Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ on the river
From bbwatch:
In Electablog's diary, many trolls were summoned and began bleating about a strawman... "it's not OK to silence them for their speech". Kossack atheistcanuck has a short comment that should help to dispel their confusion imho:
"You have the freedom to speak, and sensible people have the freedom to tell you you are full of shit. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism."
From belinda ridgewood:
We missed last night's TC, so it'll be too late to rec, but I just have to recognize this perfect explanation by Thomasina for a GOP debate photo posted byslksfca. In my Tuesday Kitchen Table Kibitzing diary.
From Hammerhand:
An accurate and irreverent account of the God of Abraham, from Vayle.
From your humble (if antisocial) diarist:
Tigerdog caught this funny comment (I guess I can’t say “flagged” anymore, since it now means the opposite. BFSkinner asked If your life could be summed up by 1 cartoon character, which would it be? And dangoch replied:
I always liked Wile E. Coyote. As far as I'm concerned, it wasn't his fault he failed all the time, it was all the Acme products that didn't work properly. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. For all the money Wile spent on contraptions, he could have gone to a grocery store and got a lot of rotisserie chickens and screw the Road Runner. Beep beep, my ass!
In Laura Clawson’s front-page diary, Carly Fiorina stands firm: General who retired in 2003 was somehow forced out by Obama, there was much discussion of Obama’s sinister time-travel skills, plus this comment from kovie:
It’s like when Lincoln fired MacArthur over his handling of the War of 1812. Something to do with landing craft at Gallipoli. Or was it Actium?
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt (I hope). Courtesy of jotter: