This was going to be another preachy post about bisexuality. It’s one of my pet peeves that we, as gay men, are so unwelcoming to our bi brothers. I got to thinking about why we struggle so hard. I think the issue is that, as much as we humans love to categorize things, nothing is as simple as we’d like it to be.
At one point there was only straight. Gay and bisexual people existed, of course, but we weren’t even thought about. Then the distinction between straight and gay was made. Nice, tidy, binary. Really easy to scapegoat the other in a binary world. Eventually we settled for a trinary definition. Now you can be straight, gay, or bi. But, that approach doesn’t make any sense either.
How do you define bisexuality if there are only three choices? Is it that some of us are 100% straight, others 100% gay, and everyone else is bi? Sexuality seems much more complex than that. Would that mean because I’ve had sex with women, and enjoyed it, that I’m bi? I have no sexual interest in women at this point. That isn’t very useful. Perhaps our entire approach to defining sexuality doesn’t make much sense.
While I understand the
issues, Kinsey did present a more workable alternative. If you’re totally straight you’re a Kinsey 0, totally gay a Kinsey 6, anything else would subdivide what we call bisexual. Maybe you could even pick your own number if we used a system like that. It seems like a better way to look at things.
I went for a long slow run and contemplated this. Even with more options for defining bisexuality something was still missing. There’s another continuum that directly impacts human sexuality. To look at sexuality we must also consider gender. We know now that gender is fluid. Wouldn’t that imply that we should also consider the gender continuum when look at sexuality?
I thought of the possibility of another continuum. This one would run from mono-sexual (attracted to a single cis gender) to pansexual (with potential attraction to someone of any gender identity.) I’m not sure if the idea would hold water but when I considered some fo the people in my life it seemed to make some sense.
So while I might be a 5 according to Kinsey I know from experience that I can be attracted to trans men. But, I’m not attracted to people who present as women regardless fo their gender identity. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate. I’m sure some of you agr
ee and others think I’m completely out to lunch.
The point is, that when we try to define sexuality, and gender, in simple terms we’re bound to fail. It might be that the only workable solution is to dispense with the labels altogether. If I were to envision an ideal world it wouldn’t matter a bit who anyone was attracted to or whom they loved. The best world is one in which we embrace love wherever and to whomever it happens.