Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: Wandering Thoughts

As the title suggests, my thoughts have been kinda all over the place about bisexuality but the one thought that stuck out was something I’ve been aware of and have pondered and along the lines of how is it that we know a lot about homosexuality… but not a whole lot about bisexuality?

Like a lot of guys born in the era I was born into, there was always the warnings and admonishments about homosexuality – don’t even think about doing it with another guy but the admonishment also admitted that guys do, in fact, do it to each other.  The only way we knew that there were people who liked doing it to both guys and gals was pretty much word of mouth stuff; there were “rumors” of those folks who were switch-hitters, liked to bat for the other team, and other such euphemisms that, more often than not, were made in jest or, as we might say today, “Who does that?”

It was clear that despite all the angst against homosexuality, the school of thought was that if you weren’t straight, you were gay and that seems to have stuck in our social consciousness over all the time that I’ve been here and, as far as I know, since before I was born and maybe even my parents.

Over the years, I’ve seen and/or have heard guys asking the same questions that many guys are asking today, prompting me to wonder why, with all the things that get passed along from one generation to the next, bisexuality doesn’t seem to be one of them.  If there are a lot of people who doubt that bisexuality actually exists, well, I’d say there’s a reason for it, not because bisexuals are all in the closet but “simply” because no one ever really talked about it… even though bisexuality – and in mostly famous folks – has been historically documented.

It’s as if we “know” about being gay… but being bisexual proves to be much more of a complicated thing to process since, duh, being bisexual isn’t the same as being homosexual – but, yeah, as you probably are aware, many fail to make the distinction between these two things and as evidenced by the fact that many who “protest” bisexuality and its existence as a true sexual orientation seem to dismiss or even forget that bisexuals are just as much about opposite sex stuff as they are about same sex stuff – and opposite sex stuff by default.

Or that “straight privilege” that popped into the sexuality dialog.  People hear “bisexual” and just seem to automatically think “homosexual” and a continuation of that mindset that says a person is either straight or gay and, as such, that someone would be in an alleged gray area just doesn’t seem to make sense – and that’s despite the awareness of the famous – or infamous – Kinsey Report on Human Sexuality that was written just before I was born.

Now others are scrambling to get their heads around bisexuality and even to the point where the Kinsey Report has been deemed to be obsolete and irrelevant and there are attempts to rewrite a document that, oddly, many people still refer to… and they do so because, um, the Doctors Kinsey got it right when they made their earth-shattering report.  But because the focus of human sexuality has been on that aberration of homosexuality, bisexuality got overlooked, dismissed, out of the mainstream consciousness so a lot of the questions I first heard way back in the 1960s are still being asked here in 2018 and keeping in mind that history, again, points out that bisexuality has been walking nearly hand-in-hand with homosexuality all along.

All the social and moral angst toward homosexuality hasn’t exactly worked in bisexuality’s favor, either.  Just as it was back in the day, guys today are worried about being really homosexual and it continues to amaze me that they do since, um, a lot of the guys who feel they are bisexual – but worried about being homosexual – are still interacting with women and in every way that means.  While LGBTQ(whatever) communities have since sprung up all over the place, there is still not much credible information about the “B” part of the acronym – it’s pretty much still conveyed via word-of-mouth than anything  else.

Indeed, a lot of bisexuals are… dismayed that the LGBTQ(whatever) community hasn’t really done a whole lot for bisexuality as their focus has been on lesbian and gay rights which makes sense but makes a lot of bisexuals feel like redheaded stepchildren because, to them, it seems that LGBTQ(whatever) is saying, “Oh, yeah, there are bisexuals but we don’t know what to do or say about them…” and there are many within this community who are fostering and continuing the fallacy that bisexuals are really homosexuals in great denial – and that’s right alongside their in-house squabbles over their own orientation.

Leaving bisexuals pretty much on their own and trying to answer those same questions for themselves and, sometimes, it is like the blind leading the blind and even to the point or extent that the definition I first read about bisexuality has been changed to include gender-based issues, something that makes me scratch my head a lot.  I’m a fairly intelligent person – at least all those tests I took says I am – and the emphasis on gender – and, by definition, is the act of being male or female – is overshadowing and even replacing what the “original” definition was, i.e, the physical and/or emotional attraction to the same and opposite sex.

The guys on the bi forum sometimes talk about gender and it’s often a big deal and again, maybe it’s my old school ass but even with transgenderism in the mix, um, you’re still either male or female unless you’re one of those folks who have decided that accepting either gender role doesn’t suit their purpose and, again, to my old school way of thinking, actually genetic composition is just ignored:  You can change your body but not the chromosomes that were responsible for one to be born male – XX – or female – XY.

And while all this slicing and dicing is taking place, those very same questions I heard way back then are still being asked:  What is it like to do it with another guy (or another gal if you’re female)?  Am I really gay?  If this is the way I’m feeling, should I jump in the pool and do the things I’ve been thinking about that, for some strange reason, I’m being compelled to do?  If I do jump in the pool, will other people think that I’m gay and would they even believe me when I tell them that, no, I’m not gay – I still very much love women (and in all their insane glory)?

This whole… informational disconnect is, let’s say, interestingly crazy to be aware of the fact that there are men who do, in fact, know what gay men like and prefer to do with each other… and they’re asking how to go about sucking a dick or how does one go about getting fucked in the ass.  These days, a lot of men want to know how to go about handling a same-sex relationship and, again, despite an awareness of the fact that gay men have been doing this all along – and the current informational disconnect has been insisting that unless you’re of a mind to engage in a same sex relationship, your alleged bisexuality may not really be valid and, at least in my opinion, something that should be carried out in the same way heterosexuals interact and, importantly, no sex without romance or some other investment, hearts before parts, and other things that have, so far, proven to prompt more questions than they do answer them.

It’s kinda scary to understand that here in 2018, there are bisexuals who kinda/sorta don’t know how to be bisexual… and that’s because there’s little available that allows such a thing to be definitely defined, not like heterosexuality and homosexual are.  I just can’t keep wondering why this is; it keeps amazing me that bisexuality is kinda/sorta being seen as something new that’s arrived on the scene… and, at least over my decades of existence, still seen as some crazy kind of… flaw,  for lack of a better word that seems to defy explanation.

The rise of biphobia hasn’t made things any easier and I’ve been in the somewhat unique position to know that a lot of the things biphobia preaches are, in fact, the same things that was said about homophobia, up to and including the fact that homosexuals didn’t really exist… but despite the evidence that they’ve always existed.  True enough, there are more modern things to be concerned about… but a lot of the stuff I’ve been reading doesn’t as much “support” bisexuality as it does issue dire warnings against being bisexual… and just as it was with homosexuals back in the day and also including health issues like STDs and all the moral issues that are still vigorously debated.

If bisexuals are confused, well, one can almost understand why if they’re aware of how long this war of sexuality has been going on and the constant social pressure to just be heterosexual despite what an individual feels and in the face of the fact that, um, people have never been 100% heterosexual.  It’s not what we do know that’s the problem – it’s what we don’t know, the things about being bisexual that aren’t really being talked about in what I’d call real terms and not in the way that, today, bisexuality is trying to be normalized and regimented in similar ways that heterosexuality has always been, up to and including the ongoing angst against casual sex, thus perpetuating the belief that the only good and proper sex is relationship sex… and in an environment where a relationship isn’t desired or even possible for some people, either by choice or situation, like already being in a relationship.

You have folks like me trying to fill in the blanks and it’s clear that we need more folks who are willing to step to the plate and speak plainly and frankly an in a no-nonsense way and without a lot of the psychobabble that’s currently taking place about bisexuality and to answer the questions that have gone mostly unanswered until someone, somewhere, asks, “What am I supposed to do with the way I’m feeling… and what the fuck am I feeling?”