Sexual Fluidity

Isn't love blind when it comes to gender? Do you think that someone is either gay or not gay and nothing inbetween? If you do, you need to read this book that is spinning some heads in the gay community. Forget the LGBT labels that you know. We are much more fluid than you may think.

Heard of the Kinsley Scale? This scale created by Alfred Kinsey attempts to describe a person's sexual orientation based on history or episodes of their sexual activity at a given time. It uses a scale from 0, meaning exclusively heterosexual, to 6, meaning exclusively homosexual. However, this study was created with predominatley...well men. So, what does that mean for women? It's always about the boys with these studies isn't it, ladies? Well, not anymore.

Lisa M. Diamond, Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah has written a book, which is now getting more attention, thanks to Oprah Winfrey, called Sexual Fluidity.

The Harvard University Press has this to say:

"Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked one-hundred women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: "I fall in love with the person, not the gender," say some respondents."

I know that some of you out there think that a person is either gay or straight and no inbetween. Well, that is stone age thinking folks. I have a lot of friends who are bisexual and even more who were in straight relationships having straight sex and now identify as gay. Can you relate to that.? We shouldn't have labels when it comes to sexual orientation or sexual identity. There is a saying out there that I think is ridiculous, but I've heard alot of lesbians say about women that identify as bisexual. "I don't hate ya, but I won't date ya!". And even I have been guilty of saying "Bi now, gay later."

We need to stop all that craziness and accept those who are brave enough to be themselves. Accept bisexuals. They are just as much apart of this community as we are. Remember, LGBT.

It's all in how you idenitify yourself. Not how others identify or label you. Here is a look into what sexual fluidity is. How do you identify?

1. A married man occasionally wants to have sex with men. He may or may not act out those wishes. By inclination, that would make him bisexual. Nevertheless, he may still identify as a straight man.

2. A woman in a lesbian relationship wants to have sex with men. She may act out those wishes, or she may not, maybe based on the prejudices against bisexual people in her community. By inclination, she is bisexual. Nevertheless, she may still identify as a lesbian woman.

3. An otherwise conservative exclusively homosexual man has objections against what he considers "gay identity politics". He considers himself homosexual, but does not identify as gay.

4. Two asexual people marry. They never have sex, nor want it, but still want the relationship. They may identify as asexual, or they may identify as straight.

5. An "ex-gay" woman is in an exclusive relationship with a man. Although she still has fantasies and thoughts about being with a woman, she now identifies as heterosexual.

6. A transman considers his relationship to a cis-man as technically heterosexual, but still both identify as gay.

7. A post-operative transwoman and a straight male partner may consider their relationship as being heterosexual despite both being considered as homosexual by others, including those in the homosexual community.

8. People may identify as pansexual, queer or similar, despite having a sexual orientation that could also be described at least in part by more conventional terms such as straight, gay or lesbian, or hetero- or homo- or bisexual.

Spinning heads yet? My suggestion...read the book.

Juliet

Megan Fox on Bisexuality

Megan Fox speaking about her sexuality and being viewed as a sex object:

I know I'm seen as a sex object. I'm just really confident sexually and I think that sort of oozes out of my pores. It's just there. It's something I don't have to turn on. But I have no idea how to handle it. I don't want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson—who I have nothing against—but I don't want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every SAT word I've ever learned to prove, like, 'Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.' I don't want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I'm not a retard—but I do. And part of it is my own fault...

I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never want to sleep with a girl who had slept with a man.

I'm sure my readers who like women have no problem hearing Ms. Fox speak so candidly about her sexuality, or will disagree that she's seen as a sex object.

I guess my question, though, is: where are the openly bisexual men?

(More) On Bisexuality

A lot of articles are flaring up across the interweb these days about bisexuality, and whether or not its real. (Both of the following articles are thanks to new blogger friend, Cowtown Bisexual).

The first one that's flying around quickly -- which I think tells us how gay men get their news, in truth -- is from Gay.com:

So what do we make of these guys who define themselves as "bi"? Are they really fooling themselves as they screw their way down the path to gayhood, or do they really enjoy having sex with women? I realize that some people are just sexually charged and will take it wherever they can get it. But I say that if you're a guy having sex with another guy, chances are there's a part of you that's in denial, and only time will tell when you finally come around to the realization that, yup, you're gay.

A lot of guys are all about animal instinct. We get it when we can. We need to drop our seed and move on to the next guy. OK, OK -- I just heard a collective scream from all of you who believe in the sanctity of a monogamous relationship. Of course emotions play a role in gay male relationships, and there's no question that men can commit to each other. But think about how many gay couples you know who play around, either together or separately. Why? Because gay men like to screw...

My opinion is that they're not bi. They're not straight. They're gay and they're fooling themselves. Or they're fooling us. But do we care? As long as they bring the six pack, we're usually pretty OK with it.

I've been oft to say that, "If he's having sex with a man, he's not straight," which should be more apprpriately termed as, "If he's having sex with a man, he's not heterosexual." It's a subtle, but important difference.

But let's move on to article two, this time from Michael Musto in the Village Voice:

Everyone always says they're bisexual, blabbing on and on about how "sexuality is fluid, and I don't really like labels"--but usually I find these are just gay men who are afraid to come out. I know there are real bisexuals out there--mainly because I've heard that there are--and I do think it's a lovely idea to actually crave sex with people regardless of gender. I'm just wondering how real a phenomenon this is, as opposed to a smoke-and-mirrors coverup designed to keep antsy gays in the closet.

Now, the Bi Avenger @ Cowtown-Bisexual makes a great point: who the fuck cares what Michael Musto thinks? But that's not my point.

Working in HIV, you get an interesting perspective on the behvavior vs. identity bit that seems to play out in the public discourse on bisexuality -- a lot of people assume that the two are the same, that, somehow, just because you are doing something means that you actively identify as doing it. I think we need look no further than the racist/homophobic/sexist/hateful discourse on the "down low" to understand that it doesn't matter whether or not someone identifies as anything. It matters, more, what their behavior is. If a man is having sex with men and women, he is acting bisexual, regardless of whether he identifies as such. If a woman has a drunken college party threesome with a man and another woman, she is having a bisexual experience, but does not need to necessarily identify as bisexual.

When we ask people about their behaviors, we do not use the terms "gay," "bi," or "straight" to talk about someone's risk factors. We do ask about their self-identifier, but we also go on to ask about their behavior and with whom they have had sex. Why? Because you can identify as gay but still have had sex with a woman in your life. A lot of gay men understand that...

...but we don't seem to understand that you can identify as straight and have had sex with men in your life.

It is not the business of this writer, nor the other writers of the world, to enforce a dogma of sexual or gender identity. It's not our job. If someone identifies as bisexual, but has only had sex with men for 15 years, guess what? They are bisexual. Just because they live an exclusively homosexual life or have exclusively homosexual relations does not diminish their identity as bisexual. If a woman chooses to identify as bisexual, or (as I've heard sometime) heteroflexible, but only has had sex with men in their life... except for that one drunken party when I was 18... then they are bisexual (or heteroflexible).

We should not be in the business, as a community, of placing identities on other people, and we certainly shouldn't be in the business of actively undermining other people's identities just because we do not understand it. We come out and tell people that society cannot define our sexuality... well, guess what, the authors of the above articles now fall into the category of "society" and they are defining someone's sexual orientation for them.

In the race to be equal, we have begun to become ignorant.

On Bisexuality

I have no doubt my readers have some commentary on this very interesting column out of SFGate, abbreviated here for you:

The question is, when is bisexuality an agenda, and when is it a valid sexual orientation?

Personally, I blame the gays. No. I take that back. I blame the straight community, wherever they are -- oh, right, they're all around us like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Except now I think I hear Kinsey yelling at me from the cryogenics lab in my basement unintentionally defrosting in the current heat wave. The thing is, most people don't think that bisexuals actually exist. But Kinsey made this neat scale, because he was a nerd, and yeah you might be a straight-as-a-stick "1" (whether or not you like sports or receiving anal sex) or a flaming, Perez-Hilton Kinsey "6" (also whether or not you like sports or receiving anal sex) but most of us bitches (and I mean you) reside somewhere in the middle.

So in all seriousness, I blame Kinsey for making us all a bunch of almost-homos. Because when you look at the stereotypes that came up in this sex ed branding session, you see that when it comes down to it (and Jesus Christ I hope someone's coming from it) bi men and women are treated with equal disdain by pretty much everyone. But what Kinsey proved through scientific method and data is that bisexuality isn't just valid, it's normal...

No one believes in bisexuality but everyone loves to fake it. Knock it off, all right?

I remember once learning the term "transitional bisexual," those people who identify as bisexual on the path of accepting their "true" sexual orientation. Seemed demeaning because, even in my head, I thought "Oh, right." Then, of course, I work in HIV... where everyone is having sex with everyone regardless of how they identify and we get fabulous terminology like MSM (Men who have sex with men), or MSMNGI (MSM Non-Gay Identified), or MSMPC (MSM in Particular Circumstances), or, my favorite), BMSR (Black Men at Sexual Risk). See, in HIV, it matters more who you do rather than what you say.

And then there's the question of people of color and the terminology of "gay," and whether we blame them for being homophobic when really they are rejecting the predominate middle class, white version of homosexuality.

But that's a whole other column -- for the moment, I'm content to wonder about how much time we really give to our community "B's," not to mention the "Q's," "L's," or "T's."

Anyways, I'm not sayin' much, I'm just sayin'.