dafydd
Feb 8, 2012, 12:17 AM
Right. A follow up to my rather bizarre 'experiment' post over a week ago entitled'This is an Experiment' (http://www.bisexual.com/forum/showthread.php?12460-This-is-an-Experiment)
This is a really really long post, (2parts because i did not have time to finish it all tonight) It is not me just waffling for no reason, and is intended mainly only for those interested in the original. I tried to condense my thoughts but I wanted to explain exactly what led me to write the post This Is An Experiment. If you're easily bored by having to sit through holiday snaps or hearing about what dream someone's had, you may want to skip this thread. If you think its just the usual Dafydd self-indulgent psychoanalysis, you know me too well, for it is. Be grateful for the back button on your browser and hit it NOW.
----0----
One of the things I have always struggled with is how my homosexuality sits alongside my heterosexuality. Some of you may know how I came into bisexual.com, identifying as a gay man who felt things didn't feel quite right within his sense of self re: sexuality. In some ways I didn't believe that my sexual feeling towards both sexes could be authenticate. I had known heterosexuals who had explored their homosexual desires but no experience of the other way round.
That was 5 years ago and of course in between I have redefined my definition of what being bisexual means to me in terms of emotional, social and sexual aspects. Im not a fan of the Kinsey scale, and I don't understand the idea that bisexuals 'have more choice' just because they like men *and* women. I don't want sex with a generic male or female form, but with the person. In that sense, my choice is limited to the type of people I like. The more specific the type, the less choice I have in finding them. So when people say bisexuals have more choice to me they are assuming that it is simply the default male and/or female physical attributes that bisexuals find attractive.
Surelt in that sense maybe it is more accurate to say that male bisexuals have more choice, because men are perhaps more able to have sex with default faceless bodies than women. perhaps not. anyway the 'more choice' rhetoric also hints at a more intriguing premise for me to explore.
Is my bisexuality really added value? 2 for the price of 1. hetero attraction + homo attraction = more attraction and/or bisexuality
What I’m trying to say is I do not know whether my bisexuality is really the unit addition of heterosexuality and homosexuality, or whether it is formed by mixing the two (rather like mixing 2 colour paints together for the result of making a different shade, not to get a greater volume of paint.)
And if so, do I lose the original memories of those two colour. Am I no longer gay because of it? The teenager, withing me might ask am I no longer straight?
Lately there seems to have been a number of posts whose topics include 'Bi and Gay', 'Biphobia the Gay Side', 'Lesbians and Gay Men Who Don't Date Bisexuals'
I couldn't understand how bisexuals could talk about gay people with such distance, in some cases enacting homophobia in their generalisations. Surely they would understand homophobia too and be more aware of their own criticisms or judgements made about same-sex desire. The word 'gay' may have been used to describe an identity rather than a desire in those discussions but still why was there such a dividing line between biphobia and homophobia?
My theory: If bisexuality was personally defined as a mixture of sexual feelings so intertwined that some original parts e.g homo/hetere could no longer could be indentified as individual distinct elements of desire, it might make sense that people would find it hard to empathise with the purely homosexual mind or the purely heterosexual one and go on to further 'other' those gays and straight as not like themselves.
I realised that I couldn't assume everyone defined their bisexuality the same way e.g. maybe it was possible to regard same-sex sexual activity in ones own mind without feeling it was 'homosexual' activity.
And so I wanted to force the identification with one of those two ideas. Another analogy: it was the difference between thinking of bisexuality as a bowl of M&Ms (you can still see the individual colorerd sweets that make up the bowl) or a pan of melted M&Ms (the colours combine, the elements fuse together, to form something completely unlike the original components). Not a good analogy if you've ever melted M&M's and seen what they turn into.
So before I could open up discussion of bisexual homophobia I wanted to understand idenitifcation with homosexuality.
Shortly after I posted I noticed something that to me was truly astonishing. It had nothing to do with the information I was seeking (I quickly realised that no trends could be identified on such a small scale, and my original bit of research had gotten so complicated for me it would have made more sense to just tease it out in a post about the real issue that was bothering me: homophobia on the site). What I did notice however in the response to the question made me question the nature of my own uneasy need to define my own personal bisexuality.
Despite being labelled as a hypothetical experiment, with clear instructions to choose only 1 generic statement, some members wouldn't respond due to principal, and indeed found the whole affair rather uncomfortable. I did too! The post looked very uncomfortable to me, and the whiff of trying to dumb down bisexuality by forcing identification with generic ideas reeked from the first post. I wanted to say desperately why I was doing it but didn't want to influence people who thought I would just take a pop at them if they didnt embrace their homosexuality. So precious was I about my own 'fluid' definition of sexuality that I couldn't even stand people to think that I was someone who needed to define others!
Side note: This 'protection' I had of my own open-minded fluidity was the main reason I took so long to follow up. I wanted to see if I could sit long enough without replying - to live with the thought that members might see me as a 'pigeon-hole whisperer', and a man who needed to fit the world into very tight barriers of labelling (It's one of my fears in life that I'm regarded as close-minded). So in that sense, it became a bit like a CBT session in real time...and the realisation of the fear whilst uncomfortable, and weighed on my mind, wasn't that bad at all...until Void posted his prematurely critical though absolutely right-on and thoughtful moan, and I knew it was time.)
So why would some people:
a) refuse to choose or
b) respond by giving a completely new definition entirely, (despite the clear instructions that they had to choose one or the other)
c) feel as though they had to explain themselves (partly my fault for encouraging explanation and not insisting on simply listing a 1 or 2 - though at that time i had no idea it would go like this)
Could bisexuality be in some ways more inflexible and rigid in self-thought than it was promoted as? Was it a fluid notion but only in so far as the fluid had space in any one mind to flow?
continued in part 2 later
This is a really really long post, (2parts because i did not have time to finish it all tonight) It is not me just waffling for no reason, and is intended mainly only for those interested in the original. I tried to condense my thoughts but I wanted to explain exactly what led me to write the post This Is An Experiment. If you're easily bored by having to sit through holiday snaps or hearing about what dream someone's had, you may want to skip this thread. If you think its just the usual Dafydd self-indulgent psychoanalysis, you know me too well, for it is. Be grateful for the back button on your browser and hit it NOW.
----0----
One of the things I have always struggled with is how my homosexuality sits alongside my heterosexuality. Some of you may know how I came into bisexual.com, identifying as a gay man who felt things didn't feel quite right within his sense of self re: sexuality. In some ways I didn't believe that my sexual feeling towards both sexes could be authenticate. I had known heterosexuals who had explored their homosexual desires but no experience of the other way round.
That was 5 years ago and of course in between I have redefined my definition of what being bisexual means to me in terms of emotional, social and sexual aspects. Im not a fan of the Kinsey scale, and I don't understand the idea that bisexuals 'have more choice' just because they like men *and* women. I don't want sex with a generic male or female form, but with the person. In that sense, my choice is limited to the type of people I like. The more specific the type, the less choice I have in finding them. So when people say bisexuals have more choice to me they are assuming that it is simply the default male and/or female physical attributes that bisexuals find attractive.
Surelt in that sense maybe it is more accurate to say that male bisexuals have more choice, because men are perhaps more able to have sex with default faceless bodies than women. perhaps not. anyway the 'more choice' rhetoric also hints at a more intriguing premise for me to explore.
Is my bisexuality really added value? 2 for the price of 1. hetero attraction + homo attraction = more attraction and/or bisexuality
What I’m trying to say is I do not know whether my bisexuality is really the unit addition of heterosexuality and homosexuality, or whether it is formed by mixing the two (rather like mixing 2 colour paints together for the result of making a different shade, not to get a greater volume of paint.)
And if so, do I lose the original memories of those two colour. Am I no longer gay because of it? The teenager, withing me might ask am I no longer straight?
Lately there seems to have been a number of posts whose topics include 'Bi and Gay', 'Biphobia the Gay Side', 'Lesbians and Gay Men Who Don't Date Bisexuals'
I couldn't understand how bisexuals could talk about gay people with such distance, in some cases enacting homophobia in their generalisations. Surely they would understand homophobia too and be more aware of their own criticisms or judgements made about same-sex desire. The word 'gay' may have been used to describe an identity rather than a desire in those discussions but still why was there such a dividing line between biphobia and homophobia?
My theory: If bisexuality was personally defined as a mixture of sexual feelings so intertwined that some original parts e.g homo/hetere could no longer could be indentified as individual distinct elements of desire, it might make sense that people would find it hard to empathise with the purely homosexual mind or the purely heterosexual one and go on to further 'other' those gays and straight as not like themselves.
I realised that I couldn't assume everyone defined their bisexuality the same way e.g. maybe it was possible to regard same-sex sexual activity in ones own mind without feeling it was 'homosexual' activity.
And so I wanted to force the identification with one of those two ideas. Another analogy: it was the difference between thinking of bisexuality as a bowl of M&Ms (you can still see the individual colorerd sweets that make up the bowl) or a pan of melted M&Ms (the colours combine, the elements fuse together, to form something completely unlike the original components). Not a good analogy if you've ever melted M&M's and seen what they turn into.
So before I could open up discussion of bisexual homophobia I wanted to understand idenitifcation with homosexuality.
Shortly after I posted I noticed something that to me was truly astonishing. It had nothing to do with the information I was seeking (I quickly realised that no trends could be identified on such a small scale, and my original bit of research had gotten so complicated for me it would have made more sense to just tease it out in a post about the real issue that was bothering me: homophobia on the site). What I did notice however in the response to the question made me question the nature of my own uneasy need to define my own personal bisexuality.
Despite being labelled as a hypothetical experiment, with clear instructions to choose only 1 generic statement, some members wouldn't respond due to principal, and indeed found the whole affair rather uncomfortable. I did too! The post looked very uncomfortable to me, and the whiff of trying to dumb down bisexuality by forcing identification with generic ideas reeked from the first post. I wanted to say desperately why I was doing it but didn't want to influence people who thought I would just take a pop at them if they didnt embrace their homosexuality. So precious was I about my own 'fluid' definition of sexuality that I couldn't even stand people to think that I was someone who needed to define others!
Side note: This 'protection' I had of my own open-minded fluidity was the main reason I took so long to follow up. I wanted to see if I could sit long enough without replying - to live with the thought that members might see me as a 'pigeon-hole whisperer', and a man who needed to fit the world into very tight barriers of labelling (It's one of my fears in life that I'm regarded as close-minded). So in that sense, it became a bit like a CBT session in real time...and the realisation of the fear whilst uncomfortable, and weighed on my mind, wasn't that bad at all...until Void posted his prematurely critical though absolutely right-on and thoughtful moan, and I knew it was time.)
So why would some people:
a) refuse to choose or
b) respond by giving a completely new definition entirely, (despite the clear instructions that they had to choose one or the other)
c) feel as though they had to explain themselves (partly my fault for encouraging explanation and not insisting on simply listing a 1 or 2 - though at that time i had no idea it would go like this)
Could bisexuality be in some ways more inflexible and rigid in self-thought than it was promoted as? Was it a fluid notion but only in so far as the fluid had space in any one mind to flow?
continued in part 2 later