We're All Bisexual: Distorting Sexual Identity And Preference

Unless you're living in a vacuum, no opposition can contest that social forces influence the way we act, behave, think, speak, feel, and view the world. One of the most heavily molded aspects of ourselves that is so fundamental to us that we rarely think to question it is our sexual orientation. For most individuals, you're either cognitively heterosexual or homosexual, with few brave bisexual people in between, and that is the end of it. The purpose of this Buzzfeed article is to examine the true nature of the sexual human being and if these extremes are really apt in defining what many believe to be an innate lack of preference - an attraction to both men and women. Topics we will employ to do this include: 1. History 2. The animal kingdom 3. Researchers and their research 4. What coming out can teach us about social forces oppressing bisexual nature 5. How degrading bisexuality by fetishizing it, condemning it, or labeling it as "confused" affects our expression and cognition of our bisexual selves

What's so wrong with a little bit of history repeating?

lesgaybitrans / Via youtube.com

In his book, The Bisexual Option, sex psychologist Fritz Klein explains a little history of bisexuality. Klein exhibits that this is nothing new to human society. Not only is this a strong indicator that bisexuality is innate, but it also exhibits how people throughout history have wanted or needed an outlet in society with which they can behave sexually between members of the same sex. Klein specifically notes the “Bloomsberries” and the Greeks. He is thus exhibiting how it is both innate – it has been a human drive for millennia – and modern – something that has never left us and had prominence even in the early 1900s. He conveys “The ‘Bloomsberries’ were almost all - if not all - bisexual not only in action but in psychological outlook. As with the Greeks, it is this outlook that is of special interest.” The Bloomsberries were highly educated members of society that enjoyed bisexual relations and used this cognizantly as a social facilitator. The Greeks used bisexual relations in multiple ways, but even included it in business transactions, to exhibit power dynamics and form a sense of trust or partnership. In these ways, our human history has made a strong case for bisexuality in society and in personal expression that is not overly sexualized but clearly has a role in our highly developed and intellectual world.

Source:

Klein, Fritz. The Bisexual Option. Revised/Expanded ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

It's all in a name

history-of-hinduism.blogspot.com / Via history-of-hinduism.blogspot.com

The word bisexual did not come about until Freud termed it with regards to people that equal measure of masculinity and femininity, a glaringly obvious difference from the definition we hold for it today. Panati writes that “People didn’t think of themselves in these terms [sexual identities based on sexual preference] before the advent of psychology and sexology in the last century.” He goes on to write that before that, we saw something very natural in the human community and the crux of my argument - “A person’s beauty justified attraction to that person. The person’s sex was secondary.” In understanding and accepting bisexuals as well as our own sexuality, this concept is critical. We have to embrace our nature as humans and simply love other humans – regardless of gender, sex, or identity. Sexual identities were an invention and a very recent one at that, many popularized by Krafft-Ebbing in the late-19th century in a publication called Psychopathia Sexualis which was a book of paraphilias, literally “abnormal love”, describing the sexual experience and at modern-day psychiatry’s eve. Before that time, people’s sexual experience throughout life was not hindered by social ideas and strict adherence to identities and social norms. Essentially, before there was a world of indentity, everyone had accepted what was their birthright in their sexual nature and our modern society has merely denied it. They did not label themselves by sexuality and, as Panati writes, had sex with partners that had almost no boundry to gender or age. It is the taxonomy that has gotten us away from the inborn, instinctive drive for the absolute simplicity of seeing with our hearts and eyes, not our identities.

Source:

Panati, Charles. Sexy Origins and Intimate Things: The Rites and Rituals of Straights, Gays, Bi's, Drags, Trans, Virgins, and Others. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Our closest relatives still think it's good enough

Cintia Garai / Via youtube.com

Rees explains the various sexual patterns of bonobos and other close relatives to humans in the chimpanzee world. As we examine the article, we see that chimpanzees are highly bisexual and give no restriction towards open sexual expression. Rees discusses for example how the female apes will engage in sexual activity with other females regularly. Acts include female genital rubbing, or as those studying primates call it calls it, "genito-genital rubbing." Rees explains In bonobos, females show strong social bonds which they express through sexuality – and male violence towards a female, should it occur, is countered by a concerted attack on the male in question from the other females." This shows how incredibly important physical action is in the female bonobo world, obviously indicating bonobo bisexual encounters to be a supreme social facilitator. It is one way that they resolve conflict (male and female) as well as how they express emotional connections and social ties. It is important for the functioning of their society. I think that similarly, if we were to have the degree of bisexual expression in our society and reject the stigmas that cause us to in turn reject bisexual relations we would be much better off socially. Additionally, the intervention on the part of the women emphasizes how physical acts – sexual or forceful – are an extension of expression of social closeness in bonobos that is incredibly important for the functioning of their complex society and the health and safety of the bonobo species. Lastly, she writes, “Recent accounts of homosexual behaviour in animals (Bagemihl, 1999)

have shown the degree to which uncomfortable pieces of apparent evidence

are ignored by mainstream writers… These examples, however, were

rarely cited and largely ignored. They didn’t fit the image of heterosexual

reproductive sex that is at the heart of modern evolutionary theory.” This calls to question who is should we be studying – the bonobos or the humans? Why does this concept make us so uncomfortable that we abandon scientific integrity and an intergral part of the living world and complex social systems. It is clear that Rees believes that heteronormacy has influenced this rejection of what we can CLEARLY see is innate bisexually. Maybe it is good that we’re studying the bonobos because we have a lot to learn – and maybe we’ll change our behavior patterns!

Source:

Rees, Amanda. "Higamous, hogamous, woman monogamous." Feminist theory 1.3 (2000): 365-370.

Freudian psuedoscience backs it up!

baumanrarebooks.com / Via baumanrarebooks.com

In his book, Three Contributions to Sexual Theory, Freud makes the argument that all people are innately bisexual or homosexual. Freud explains in his logic that when babies are in the womb, they are at once masculine and feminine before changing to be either girl or boy. As we understand it today, the fetus starts as a girl, and then boy attributes raise up leaving behind remnants of before that are unrelated to the man gender - belly button, nipples, etc. As Freud explained, there was something else that was left over for both genders - a liking for the same sex. He believed however that many individuals merely transitioned into monosexuality from this state, but still had a liking or attraction to members of the opposite sex in smaller amounts. This means that we still have an innate attraction to members of both sexes, but our expression has been dulled and that you will be attracted more to one sex at all times. This is the equivalent of never being a 0, 3, or 6 on the Kinsey scale that was established later in the 1950s.

Source:

Freud, Sigmund, and A. A. Brill. Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory. New York: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Pub., 1910. Print.

"I'm predominantly heterosexual, but incidentally homosexual. What about you?"

Via therustlerette.wordpress.com

Alfred Kinsey, renowned sexual psychologist, attempted in the 1950's to try to define people's sexual orientation and the degree to which individuals are truly monosexual. He asked about peoples sexual experiences throughout their lives - past and present - and then rated responses of sexual experience, attraction, and thought, on a spectrum. the spectrum is such as this:

0 - Exclusively heterosexual

1 - Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual

2 - Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual

3 - Equally heterosexual and homosexual

4 - Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual

5 - Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual

6 - Exclusively homosexual

X - No socio-sexual contacts or reactions

As one can see, the scale allows for any degree of variability in sexual orientation, and it came at a time when even homosexuality was completely repressed. The scale's verbage allows for fluidity in definition, i.e. acts and/or thoughts that can classify one as "incidentally homosexual" if they have had marginal participation in sexual acts with members of the same sex/gender (depending on definition) or if they experienced mere attraction to them. So what did the reports find? Women and men showed nearly equal rates of a 3 - being equally heterosexual and homosexual - with women weighing in at a 11% response and men at 11.6% (aged 20-35, white). This is an interesting finding because the fetishization of the female-female sexual experience today has made it appear to the average individual that women's rates are staggeringly higher than men for identifying as bisexual. But instead, I hypothesize that the discrepancy in which we found to be true in Kinsey's studies and the expression of bisexual nature is due to a stronger stigmatism towards males coming out due to social forces like pressure for men to be masculine or the male stereotype that encourages homophobia and eschews members of society that show homosexual tendencies. Here are the interesting statistics however - men that reported they had taken part in both heterosexual and homosexual encounters and/or been aroused by members of both sexes took 46% percent of the male population studied. This means that 1) the participants had difficulty identifying themselves with and identity that was stigmatized but they connected with (as a 3), or 2) that the Kinsey scale was correct in assessing that participation in sexual activities with or attraction to either sex is not a clear indicator of sexual identity or preference and that these behaviors and excitements could still be incidental in any case. Still, that is an overwhelming split for males, especially considering the stereotypes we see for men! What’s more staggering is that only 6 to 14% of females had experienced more than incidental homosexual exposure. This is an odd finding because of the way we view gender roles. In conservative 50's culture, women may have felt more pressure to lack any sexual interest much less a highly controversial one and this may be reason for bias that could skew our results and their implications. But in either case, it's clear that:

1. Men are equally if not more so bisexual than women,

2. Homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality are all extremes, and that most individuals fall somewhere down the line of appealing mostly to one side with definite draw to the other,

3. These rigid identities for defining sexuality and sexual preference are inefficient and misrepresentative of the human population and condition, and

4. That innately in us we do exhibit a propensity to be sexually attracted to or active with members of both sexes/genders, but that for become displaced to other extremes on the scale with prolonged exposure to societal norms and social forces.

Sources: The Kinsey Reports:

Kinsey, Alfred C. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP, 1998. Print.

Kinsey, Alfred C., and Wardell Baxter Pomeroy. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP, 1998. Print.

Social Forces and Stigmas

Via youtube.com

Social forces limit our agency in sexual preference, and stigmas towards bisexuality extend beyond the nonconformity to sterotypical masculine and feminine roles. Because we live in a heteronormative adn therefore heterocentric society, we often ignore that there are more than just the extremes of sexual preference that we exhibit in modern day society - majority heterosexual with a minority homosexual and even fewer bisexual. Because of that, bisexual people are very misunderstood, because the foundation of heterosexuality and even at times homosexuality that has caused the general population to opt for such a strict binary now seems so natural to them that it is hard to understand the nature of the bisexual individual. Monosexuals often condescend bisexual individuals, indicating that they are simply going through a phase that they will eventually mature and grow out of. Women are overly sexualized and their relations are thought of to be "hot" or "cute." On the other hand, the same population is condemning bisexuals, putting for that they are disgusting, overly sexual and incapable of fidelity or romance, or unnatural (which is ironic because it seems that this is not the case). The video above shows from the side of the oppressed that bisexual people really do experience the weight of these social forces. What Alaire and Gaudet set forth to elucidate is that bisexuality is "invisiblized" - meaning that people attempt to ignore their bisexuality and that of others in society, and make it appear to be an ephemeral, unrealistic, and degraded sexual identity that is incapable of sustainment throughout one's life. What we see is that the feelings expressed in the video at the hands of monosexual people influence a drive to invisibilize bisexuality and that the societal structure that we have today inhibits its expression so severely that you are either essentially forced be miserable or forced to completely deny it until you think that it's not a part of you and truly label what is potentially human nature to a ripple or phase in your human development. Also, because we know that they feel this oppression, it is reasonable to conclude that the individual that innately feels an attraction to both sexes but still stands to benefit by not identifying as a bisexual in a society that belittles that population will squelch these urges and chose one side or the other. This could be for whichever side would be more advantageous for them or whichever they are closer to on the Kinsey scale, i.e. a 5 would probably choose their monosexual identity to be a 6 even though homosexuality is not privileged in our society because it is still not a stigmatized as bisexuality is.

Source:

Alarie, Malaine, and Stephanie Gaudet. "I Don't Know If She Is Bisexual or If She Just Wants to Get Attention': Analyzing the Various Mechanisms Through Which Emerging Adults Invisibilize Bisexuality"." Journal of Bisexuality 13.2 (2014). 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014. .

Paradox - Homosexual people also persecute bisexuals

GayGod / Via youtube.com

[Please excuse the language employed by the individuals in the video. A lesbian version is also available via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUozcqlhX3w thanks to Arielle Scarcella.]

This video stands testament to the fact that homosexual individuals hold strong prejudices toward members of the bisexual or pansexual communities. This extends not only to believing that they would be less desirable or preferable partners but that they are "liars" (as one man in the video was absolutely admit about), confused (a sentiment reflected also by the monosexual-heterosexual community), and weird. One individual in the video intonated that it is "It's hot when a girl is bisexual to another guy, but I think it's just weird when a guy is bisexual to me, because they're gay, and still having sex with a girl." This shows that this standard flows both ways, equal discrimination against bisexuals encountered from both monosexual groups, but from a different perspective. Both the lesbians in the video attached above (though not embedded) and gay men heavily condemned the bisexual community but more so because many felt that they had been "deceptive" in their orientation and limited their datability in the eyes of the homosexuals. Much of the stigma that surrounds bisexuals has made them less attractive to both monosexual communities, and because of this homosexual people seem off put that they would initially appear to be part of the homosexual community at first and therefore be potentially datable, but subsequently that interest would be lost because the homosexuals did not want to date a bisexual due to these stigmas. In this way they have accepted and perpetuated the condemnation of the bisexual, an odd occurrence given their situation because homosexuals are they are also condemned by society for their orientation. What Morgenstern states "Bisexuals encounter the same sorts of prejudice as gay people. However, we encounter it within the gay community as well as in the straight world.... misunderstood and ostracized by both gay and straight people." He also goes on to say "We feel even more hurt when gays reject us than when straights do, since we feel that gay people know better.... The word 'bisexual' has been added to the masthead [of the gay rights front], but we don't feel truly included or accepted." The ways in which the gay and straight community come together to eschew bisexual people is a strong social force in repression of the bisexual nature that makes it feel easier to drop your bisexual identity later in life - in essence perpetuating the wrongful claim that its nature is a phase ironically because of the claim's existence and the stigma it perpetuates - rather than carry the weight of that burden the rest of one’s life, limiting ones access to partners and questioning their sense of self. These views epitomize the oppression of the bisexual individual, a key aspect of understanding their experience in the world as well as the repressed nature of bisexuality that we find in individuals just forming their sexual identities as well as those that have accepted a different sexual identity later on in life.

Source:

Morgenstern, J. (2004, May-June). Myths of bisexuality. Off our backs.

Sexual and romantic identities are not the same.

Haddaway / Via youtube.com

In a distinctly different chapter of his book, Klein made a wonderful clarification that is integral for understanding the bisexual world. Via his “Bisexual-Intimacy Scale” he put forth that there was a difference between sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy. Effectively, he classified our abilities to identify with either gender more than the other via two separate entities – a sexual self and a romantic self. These identities don’t necessarily have to align. An individual may feel equally attracted to both sexes sexually but only romantically attracted to one. This is what I theorize is one of the reasons we can readily reject our bisexuality. While we may feel attracted to both genders in one way, our propensity for just one doesn’t make entirely choosing just one sexually or romantically in preference seem so extreme. This also helps us to understand complex social relations, like female-female friendships that allow for a large degree of romance because they do not have the stereotype of needing to embrace only a male figure while men do not facilitate friendships that seem to carry a romantic degree because it is not socially acceptable and works against their homophobic stereotypes. In large part, a bi-romantic nature may have served the purpose of easing social tensions and facilitating a greater sense of unity in early human populations while the sexual aspect of it may have breed pleasure and allowed ancients to resolve conflict easily – again showing how bisexual nature is innate and how valuable its acceptance could be for society.

Source:

Klein, Fritz. The Bisexual Option. Revised/Expanded ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Romance Between Men Was Not Always Uncommon

significancemagazine.org / Via significancemagazine.org

In Shakespeare’s day, men were openly intimate with other men. But here's the catch - it was romantically. This goes back to Klein's distinction between romance and sexuality, or behavior and thought. Modern students that learn a great deal of Shakespeare’s love letters are to men automatically label him as gay, but as it seems, we see only romantic relationships between him and other men. And it is significant, as men are the topic of the majority of his love letters! This was much more common in his day and, as exhibited with our misunderstanding of it now, it was easier for men to embrace their romanticism in the society of his day than it is in the society of ours. This may have led to more fulfilling friendships between men as we see with many women today.

Source:

https://search.eb.com/shakespeare/article-252446

"Compulsory Bisexuality" - On the other hand, we have to embrace it, but are we REALLY embracing it?

Peter / Via instartupland.com

So we're clear that we're NOT embracing bisexuality at this point.... Or are we? We have an obvious drive to accept this part of ourselves that is very true to our being, and so we have a fascination to it, an attraction... a fetish? Fahs examines how in modern society we are using our draw to bisexuality as a means of sexual pleasure to an end of degradation, an incredibly ironic concept. She explains that the visual attraction to this very natural sexual expression or experience has formed and almost fetishization and compulsory element to bisexual relations, with young women expected to be overtly sexual with one another and older women feeling required to have sexual relations with other woman in the bedroom. There is a paradox here. It is clear that society wants an outlet to experience bisexuality as it is usually heterosexual men who are “turned on” by these voyeuristic displays. In this way, men are unknowingly accepting their bisexual identities, even without action or performance themselves because men have equal propensity to be turned OFF by same-sex displays if they are from a male to another male. This means that they truly do accept certain parts of bisexuality. Women play along and have an outlet for expression. But another paradox exists in that many are fine with exhibiting same-sex sexual behavior but because they don’t identify as bisexual or homosexual they are not necessarily supportive of the non-heterosexual community. This discrepancy that Fahs highlights exemplifies how women are willing to participate in the acts but that social forces still govern their thinking, perception of social acceptance, and attitudes towards the non-heterosexual relationships and therefore reject any bisexual nature in their identities due to the stigmas that surround its existence.

Source:

Fahs, Breanne. "Compulsory bisexuality?: The challenges of modern sexual fluidity." Journal of Bisexuality 9.3-4 (2009): 431-449.