Poll: Just realised I am bisexual
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I have yet to meet any other kind.Mad Scientist said:
If I meet someone who actually identifies themselves outside those binary categories, I would be willing to reassess, but it has yet to happen.
Edit: Actually, I don't subscribe to the binary nature of bisexuality. I am only suggesting this for the sake of the linguistics.
Straight male here, so women, please.
OT: Holy crap! I was only curious about this post when I saw it, but after reading nine pages of opinions and arguing and good and bad points of view I just realized I know absolutely nothing about this crap.
I mean, I have gay friends. Even went so far once as to "experiment" but I learned a decent amount of terms I had no idea existed. Pansexual and Omnisexual make sense. I didn't think it was entirely possible to be asexual and human. There are more than two genders? And what the deuce is a Brony?
OT: Holy crap! I was only curious about this post when I saw it, but after reading nine pages of opinions and arguing and good and bad points of view I just realized I know absolutely nothing about this crap.
I mean, I have gay friends. Even went so far once as to "experiment" but I learned a decent amount of terms I had no idea existed. Pansexual and Omnisexual make sense. I didn't think it was entirely possible to be asexual and human. There are more than two genders? And what the deuce is a Brony?
Perhaps I misremembered the results. I was pretty sure they recorded increased arousal in all female participants.RikPandachan said:
http://www.whatisgender.net/phpBB3/Bara_no_Hime said:
The above link is a decent if narrow resource. The forum has a lot of neutrois and androgynes but very few third-gender, two-spirit or more unconventional gender identities.
You can also find butch or transmasculine communities where the members claim that as a gender identity distinct from male, female or androgyne, but as gender identity isn't a topic I'm well-versed in or understand particularly well I can't really comment further. (I still can't really wrap my head around male and female genders existing and grew up assuming they were entirely made up.)
As a side note, I identify outside the binary categories. Pleased to meet you. I am agender, though, which could be viewed as more of an absence of gender identity depending on how you explain it, so I'm probably not what you meant.
I said met. As in, in person. I can't judge if I find someone attractive from a forum post.Mad Scientist said:
Well, I could, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea.
I am aware that there are people who identify as some pretty wide things. I merely have yet to encounter any such person in my life.
My apologies, I thought you meant you weren't aware of other gender identities, not assessing your own sexuality in regards to them.Bara_no_Hime said:
Everyone is bisexual.SadakoMoose said:
It's just that you happened to come out and put it down as your orientation.
from Tvtropes(while not completly factual. It suits my needs.)
The Kinsey scale, named for Alfred Kinsey, a biologist, invented a seven-point-scale used to rate a person's orientation from 0, or completely heterosexual, to 6, or completely homosexual. This algorithm here shows where our many tropes relating to sexuality would fall on the scale.
Congratulations on figuring yourself out. Good to hear you're so comfortable with it.
I'm a gay man, myself. Thought I was bisexual for a little while, but that was just denial from living in redneck country (better than thinking I was straight for the rest of my life prior to it, though).
Oh, and I have to throw in a vote for aliens too. Garrus lights my fire.
I'm a gay man, myself. Thought I was bisexual for a little while, but that was just denial from living in redneck country (better than thinking I was straight for the rest of my life prior to it, though).
Oh, and I have to throw in a vote for aliens too. Garrus lights my fire.
I saw this thread hours ago but I really had to think about it so I didn't give an answer. I thought the thread would die; I didn't think people would actually talk about it here.
If you've figured out what you want, what makes you happy, then go for it. I wish my life had that much certainty. This conversation just makes me feel so weird in a really weird way.
I'm thirty years old, I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents. Sex or even just a relationship seems out of the question. So I put it out of mind. I focus on what I really need to worry about: my parents, a job, and my future. But when I go to sleep every night I dream. Despite the context of the dream, be it normal, sci-fi, or horror(usually nightmares), there is always a woman that I desperately want to fall in love with me. I wake up from nightmares trying to go back to sleep just to see if I end up with the girl. So I can't kill that part of me no matter how much I want to.
The thing about bisexuality that I find confusing is that in my mind there are emotional winners and losers. A MMF or FFM or MMM or FFF relationship is going to have two people that are more in love with each other than they are to the third. I know I'm confusing sexuality with love but this subject has so many layers. Out there somewhere is a man who loves his wife that wouldn't mind touching another man and a lesbian couple equally in love but one of them didn't exactly hate it when her male prom date got to third base.
I know what I am. If you know what you are then that's fuckin' awesome. I'm afraid that I sound like an asshole: I have no intention of being one.
If you've figured out what you want, what makes you happy, then go for it. I wish my life had that much certainty. This conversation just makes me feel so weird in a really weird way.
I'm thirty years old, I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents. Sex or even just a relationship seems out of the question. So I put it out of mind. I focus on what I really need to worry about: my parents, a job, and my future. But when I go to sleep every night I dream. Despite the context of the dream, be it normal, sci-fi, or horror(usually nightmares), there is always a woman that I desperately want to fall in love with me. I wake up from nightmares trying to go back to sleep just to see if I end up with the girl. So I can't kill that part of me no matter how much I want to.
The thing about bisexuality that I find confusing is that in my mind there are emotional winners and losers. A MMF or FFM or MMM or FFF relationship is going to have two people that are more in love with each other than they are to the third. I know I'm confusing sexuality with love but this subject has so many layers. Out there somewhere is a man who loves his wife that wouldn't mind touching another man and a lesbian couple equally in love but one of them didn't exactly hate it when her male prom date got to third base.
I know what I am. If you know what you are then that's fuckin' awesome. I'm afraid that I sound like an asshole: I have no intention of being one.
No you're wrong, on almost every point that you made and it physically pains me to see how wrong you are. Bi-sexuality does not imply TOTAL attraction for both sexes. Sexual preference can be more accurately measured on a sliding scale. There are different levels to every sexuality, in fact it has been theorized that there is no such thing as true homo or heterosexuality, but rather different degrees of sexual preference. This isn't to say that all people are bisexual, but rather that their sexual is not as rigid as you appear to think it is.JackSparrowSucks said:
You are also wrong about your definition of pansexuality and I'm not quite sure where you managed to cook that definition up from, because pansexuality is rather, not true bisexuality but instead blankets an attraction to all sexuality and all gender types, up to and including transexuality.
Finally science has proven next to nothing about the nature of sexuality, in whether it is choice, or genetic or biological, so there is no SCIENCE behind this claim that bisexuality does not exist. I'd also like to question the sources that you seem to draw your knowledge because they seem like complete and utter shit. So please show me the sources that you base these claims on, as a psychology student of two years, I am curious as to when they decided sexuality had been proven by science, truly I am curious as to how this occurred while I've been studying the subject for the last two years.
In closing, what I am saying is that your information is both inaccurate and potentially harmful to anyone who would take this tripe as truth. Bisexuality is different than pansexuality, just as they are both different from heterosexuality and homosexuality, to call one false and another true is just plain closeminded.
EDIT: Link to an Academic Source so you can better understand what you got wrong
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-hhscale.html
Yup. Bisexual here. Not "pansexual" as I don't think I'd find aliens or non-humans sexually attractive under the best of circumstances; but then again - I've never met one. Maybe aliens are dead-sexy. I tend to like "iconic" masculine men and feminine women. Androgyny doesn't do much for me in either gender.SadakoMoose said:
I crack up at the arguments on this thread (and the Escapist forums in general) about bisexuality and sexuality in general. You want to know what's pretentious? Telling another person that they "aren't" what they claim to be because "science" has proven it otherwise. Truthfully, there has never been a scientific study that has "disproven" bisexuality, the one small study done awhile back was flawed in quite a few ways.
From one article:
Bisexual desires are sometimes transient and they are still poorly understood. Men and women also appear to differ in the frequency of bisexual attractions. "The last thing you want," said Dr. Randall Sell, an assistant professor of clinical socio-medical sciences at Columbia University, "is for some therapists to see this study and start telling bisexual people that they're wrong, that they're really on their way to homosexuality." - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/05sex.html
And if you want a more scientific article with references as to why the study was flawed, here:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/NYTBisexualityFactSheet.pdf
I'm 32 years old and I've been with the same woman, my wife, for 11 years. My avatar pic? That's us: My wife, my male partner, and I. I met my partner 9 years ago so we have a combined total of about 20 years together, all living together under the same roof. My partner is gay. My wife is bi. Me, I'm bi, *usually* prefer women and generally watch "straight" porn when I watch it at all; but I definitely find some men attractive. Mainly my partner.
To call me "confused" after living with a man and a woman for nearly a decade is just... asinine.
I wrote a brief blog post on it here - http://thegnomeburrow.com/?p=80
Most bisexuals I know are monogamous, meaning they settle down with one partner at a time, I'm a bit of a rarity in that I'm an openly polyamorous bisexual man. I've met a few others like myself, and generally we don't make a huge public fuss about how we exist.
We know we exist.
As to the OP, congratulations on finding out something about yourself. I like to think that life is a series of events that leads us to a better understanding of ourselves and our fellow men.
You'd be surprised at what people will talk about on the internet. Privacy has been replaced with a burning desire in human consciousness to be understood and to understand. There's a war going on right now between the two urges.PlasticLion said:
Interesting. I wonder why it would make you feel weird?PlasticLion said:
Why would you want to kill that part of you? Sounds like you're a normal heterosexual male; of which there are probably at least a couple billion of on this planet. As for being unemployed or living with your parents, I don't think it's anything necessarily to be ashamed of in and of itself. I had a friend like you once, actually, where circumstances kept him at home. Nice guy. Intelligent, etc.PlasticLion said:
When I dream, sexually, I guess I usually dream about women but I've had dreams about men, too. Which I assume is normal for a bisexual.
See my post, and the link to this - http://thegnomeburrow.com/?p=80 - above. I don't think there has to be emotional losers in this type of setup; it definitely works for me and mine. See, one day you may have kids. You may have more than one kid. Most parents love their children in *different* ways, not necessarily causing one to "emotionally lose out" - or, say, you love your mother and father. Most people love their parents in *different* ways, though of course there are people out there who have their favorites.PlasticLion said:
I have a wife, and I have a partner. I also have 5 cats. I love each and every one of these cats for a different reason, and I'd never allow any harm to come to any of them. A person can argue that when a monogamous, heterosexual couple have a child the father becomes an emotional "loser" as the mother spends more time with her infant, etc., but this isn't necessarily true - you don't have to make anyone an emotional loser. My wife and my partner provide different and equally important things to my well being, my psyche, etc. I rely on them in different ways and that's about all I can really say on it.
Nah, you don't sound like an asshole. I'm not exactly sure how you're coming off here, which is amusing in and of itself to me.PlasticLion said:
Yeah, I never quite got how people can be confused about their sexuality, denial I get, but confusion? (and even nowadays, most people I know at least, don't care that much about peoples sexuality, though television does suggest otherwise so it could be a region thing)Diamondback One said:
A friends girlfriend had him pay for a flight to Cambodia, which she used to 'kiss and make up' with her ex-boyfriend, which was the reason for which she left even though she claimed family. As soon as she arrived she broke up with him.
So yeah... People can suck. =/
Sir, I find myself compelled to thank you. The fact that you and your family unit exist provides me with a certain amount of scientific joy.The Gnome King said:
Perhaps a bit of background would be appreciated? Allow me to elaborate. I started reading Robert A. Heinlein's books at the age of 8 and, though I do not always agree with his points of view, I found myself, for the first time in my life, thinking scientifically.
While reading Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, I developed a theorem that stated: As the number of individuals involved in a relationship increases, so too does the ability of the relationship to rebound from disaster/trauma (death, birth, et cetera).
Of course, I shortly realized that, not being capable of actually understanding adult motivations and emotional responses, my theorem was foolish and either untestable or damn near at the present time. I set it aside, resolved to investigate it further at a later date, when I could bring a more mature perspective to bear on the subject.
That later date came approximately seven years later, far enough into puberty to be able to approximate the adult knee-jerk emotional response to the situation. I discovered that jealousy was prominent in my analysis of my response and I "fixed" my theorem: As the number of individuals involved in a sexual relationship increases, so too does the likelihood of sexual jealousy: while not insurmountable, this can lead to strained relationships; along with this increased likelihood of sexual jealousy, however, comes an increased resilience to traumatic experiences within the relationship.
Then I read Spider Robinson, and discovered that he'd already written down what my first theorem had stated in simpler terms: Shared sorrow is lessened, shared joy is increased. I was, frankly, overjoyed to discover that someone else had thought about this intriguing facet of human behavior, that we instinctively seek to socialize and share our experiences. Fascinated, I continued to refine my theory with the input I was receiving, both from my own and my closest friends' experiences.
The result thus far (three years into the refinement) reads as follows: As the number of sexually secure and emotionally mature individuals involved in a relationship increases, so too does the ability of the resultant unit to reduce sorrow and increase joy.
Regrettably, I have been unable to test this theory in any real-world sense (I'm an 18 year old introverted computer/philosophy geek whose closest friends are all male and whose experience with women is approximately equal to a snowball's chance of getting through the Christian depiction of Hell), but my hypotheticals have all met with absolutely positive results.
And now, knowing that there is a real family unit of 3 out there, working in the real world, well, it gives me hope. Hope that maybe I'm not completely insane and that there is actual logic behind this theory. That it might actually work.
So yeah, dramatic as that last bit might have been, all I really wanted to say was thank you. Your existence has proven a logical point that I wasn't sure actually worked. You've given me ammunition, now I need to find the right weapon. Thank you.
This may have been the cause of confusion, since for me gender and sex are interchangeable words that mean the same thing - thus we weren't really discussing the same thing.Eldarion said:
Even given the other usage of "gender", to mean psychological gender identity, I don't really distinguish that from physical sex anyway.
If you were to take that entire sentence from that Wikipedia article then it would read:Eldarion said:
"Pansexuality may or may not be subsumed under bisexuality, with some sources stating that bisexuality encompasses sexual or romantic attraction to all gender identities."
So basically, it isn't a definition - merely what "some sources" say. There doesn't seem to be a very good definition, actually, but I personally find it odd to have pansexuality be a part of bisexuality. It doesn't really make sense to do that - they're not the same thing.
As I see it, pansexuality includes attraction to:
which bisexuality does not.Eldarion said:
I see it that simply, perhaps because of how simply I comprehend "gender" and how binary it is to me.
As I see it, if you're a feminine man, you're still a man. If you're a masculine woman, you're still a woman. Unless you're born intersexed, you're one or the other - and even then I think you still have either an XX or XY chromosome.
Wow, thank you. I appreciate the kind words and I'm... somewhat elated? Flattered? - To know that I was able to give somebody hope and/or joy. I'm a simple beast; I tend to enjoy making people happy and try to avoid bringing people pain. I'm working the kinks out of my moral philosophy beyond that.RagnorakTres said:
I grew up on Heinlein, too. Good stuff; even if I'm not quite as libertarian or pro-military in my outlook than he was. I get into excellent debates with a good friend of mine about Heinleinian (yes, I made that word up) philosophy on a regular basis. (He's actually a devout Catholic, Republican/libertarian leaning guy; but somehow we manage to put up with each other and have nurtured a years-long friendship through a shared love of figuring each other out and playing D&D...)
Was it always easy? No. I think our relationship took work but... then again, every relationship I've had in life, monogamous or not, took work. "Work" in the sense that you have to communicate with each other and occasionally push boundaries in order to figure out where the other(s) are coming from, and even if you disagree, find common ground. I notice that I've grown less selfish over the years - at least, I like to think that I have. Realizing how much I love the people in my life and how badly I want to avoid causing them any pain or discomfort has made me a better man, if that makes sense. Love can do all kinds of wonderful things.
This is pretty much how it tends to work for us. We've all been here for each other in sickness and in health. When my partner was in the hospital and suffered complications from a late-in-life tonsillectomy (don't laugh!) both my wife and I were there to take care of him - their relationship has become almost brotherly/sisterly over the years. All three of us have different "skill sets" that we bring to the table, we're all very different people and we tend to compliment each other.
Being able to grow up together (we've spent our 20's together, and have lived together for many years) has given us a chance to withstand stress that many couples would have difficulty with. In our case, when one of us is down, we have not just one but two people to lend a hand to pick that person back up.
I wouldn't trade my life for the world.
Thanks, again, for the post. It's nice to know my family situation made somebody out there smile.
