More on bisexuality

[vaneramos]

Stephen at Rattlesnake Point


Once upon a time, homosexuality felt like a trap. I called myself bisexual as an opening to talk to people about my problem and make it more bearable.

Now exercising freedom in my sexual preference, I have come to believe it’s a choice. I’m more attracted to men. But lately I have felt that under some circumstances I might choose to be with a woman. If the experience proved more positive than the ones I’ve had, I might like it. This should never diminish my freedom to choose what seems happiest and most meaningful to me.

Friday afternoon dakoopst and I hiked Rattlesnake Point, getting caught in the rain, then attended the Art Gallery of Ontario to view an abstract art exhibit entitled “The shape of colour.” We met djjo at O’Grady’s for the evening. weebax stopped at our table, but otherwise we didn’t see anyone we knew. Just much eye candy. Yesterday with Stephen: Kensington Market and an art show while Danny worked, then pizza and a movie back at the house.

I marvel at what pleasure can arise among people who care for one another when the boundaries are dismissed, of having to prove and defend one’s self.





The view from Rattlesnake Point, toward Lake Ontario


A photo of the approaching thunderstorm is posted in weather_pics.

Comments

Not judging--cant get mad!

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

Now exercising freedom in my sexual preference, I have come to believe it’s a choice. I’m more attracted to men. But lately I have felt that under some circumstances I might choose to be with a woman. If the experience proved more positive than the ones I’ve had, I might like it. This should never diminish my freedom to choose what seems happiest and most meaningful to me.

Just as long as you understand that, yeah, as a human being I could choose to be with a woman physically, but all the wiring in my head that tells me I like dick and cum and hairy men and daddies with salt 'n pepper hair? That's not something I chose. It just is.

I'm sure you know, also, that lots of us gay folk get twitchy when non-straights talk about their sexuality as a choice. It's just fodder for Christian groups like the ex-gay one you used to be a part of, to say, "See? You don't need to be gay!"

Okay, maybe I am judging. I'm disappointed by your stance.

Re: Not judging--cant get mad!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

This has been my stance for longer than I have felt curious about bisexuality. We have the right to make this choice. Religion is a choice, too, after all. Conservative groups tend to forget it is our same societal value for personal liberty that protects their right to practice their faith.

Re: Not judging--cant get mad!

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

So choosing a religion is the same to you as a person's innate sense of sexual identity. Wow.

Re: Not judging--cant get mad!

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for Van, of course, but I've heard other people use the religion analogy in this context, and here's what they usually mean by it:

1. Religious identity feels just as innate to some people as sexual identity. One example I can think of: I know people who were raised Catholic, who no longer consider themselves part of the church, but who would NEVER convert to some *other* religion, and still consider themselves Catholics. It's a profound part of who they are.

2. Most progressive modern societies, nevertheless, protect the rights of people to change religions. People raised Catholic who decide to become Buddhists or Jews are not usually told by mainstream society, "sorry, you were born and raised a Catholic, if you become a Jew you're faking, and if you practice your Judaism it will be okay for other people to punish you. You will only have any rights according to whether you stick with the religion in which you were born." (I'm leaving out what I fear religious conservatives might HOPE to do to people who change their faith, or who decide they are atheists or pagans or what have you ... I'm talking about how most civil societies have attempted to protect freedom of religious choice.)

By analogy: it it fine to seek rights for gay people based on the idea that their sexuality is innate. But it is also okay to seek rights for people to choose the person or people they want to be partnered with, and if that makes them *appear* "bisexual," or if they call themselves bisexual, they should not have FEWER rights than heterosexuals or homosexuals. Having a choice about sexuality does not make people LESSER than people who do not have a choice.

Re: Not judging--cant get mad!

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

As one of Van's friends who identifies as bisexual myself, I guess what I've learned is that some people seem to have choices about which gender(s) they're attracted to, some don't. I don't seem to have much choice about finding men VERY attractive *a lot* of the time, but also finding women VERY attractive *much less, but some* of the time.

Bisexuality and other forms of sexual ambiguity are only exploitable by the religious right if we LET them exploit it. I firmly believe that some people DO "need" to be gay--in fact, it isn't a question of need, it's just a question of who they are. And some people who don't "need" to be gay are happiest and most fulfilled in same-sex relationships. I could point to, oh, myself: partnered to a man for the last eight years, and mostly involved with men when I get involved outside my primary relationship.

It doesn't stop me from being attracted to women, however. Nor do I stop myself from acting on those attractions when it feels like the right thing for me. My partner, who is bisexual himself, and the other men and women in my life, understand that this is who I am.

Part of the reason the right exploits bisexuality is that they're aware that we in the non-straight community fear it nearly as much as they do, and they know they can drive many of us apart by playing on that fear.

Anyway, hope that perspective helps.

Re: Not judging--cant get mad!

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

I find it unfathomable when people talk about having the choice of being straight, gay or bisexual. You either are or you aren't any of those things, to different degrees. If you are bisexual, you may get to "choose" between which gender you'd like to hook up with or bond emotionally with, but you didn't "choose" to have the innate desires that allow you to be attracted to both genders.

Re: Not judging--cant get mad!

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely. I think an additional complication sets in when people's understanding of their own desires changes over time.

Van comes across to me as someone who has accepted his attractions to men; he's also open about how that was a struggle for him in the past.

Many people who've been through that struggle identify as "gay" and are comfortable doing so. And as a bisexual person who doesn't like it when people disrespect my identity, I'm careful to respect Van's. He has always identified as gay to me, so even I was a little surprised to read his feelings in this post. :-)

If Van's life from here on leads him to believe that he is actually bisexual, that his former attractions to women were real and that he still has attractions to women, and that his former struggles to be open about his feelings for MEN are not the same thing as not feeling for women ... well, he wouldn't be the first person I've met whose life path took him to some unexpected places.

What gets hard about all this is that I've known people who were SURE they were gay, and who got to that place of knowing themselves only at great cost ... and who then, equally genuinely, later on realized there was still more to learn about themselves. It can be a challenge for anyone who is such a person, or who loves such a person, to know how to react, and to describe their own experience at all times. We often lack the words.

I've also known people who questioned their sexuality only to discover that they really WERE still gay.

What seems to set the healthy people apart from the others is not asking those questions, but being open about the process, keeping others informed, and not beating oneself up about it.

It's common for people who discover that THEY have a choice about GENDER to feel that there is a choice about SEXUALITY more generally, and if Van's words disturbed you on that basis, I can certainly understand. It is not the experience of many other people, and it can definitely feel threatening to hear someone talk about a choice that we don't feel WE have. Especially when we know that there are so many people out there who want to FORCE us to make some other choice.

What I've found is that our whole language for discussing "choice" or "necessity" is really inadequate to how some of us experience our inner selves. The best I can come up with is that some people seem to feel very strongly that they DID have a choice and did MAKE choices ... whereas even I, as a bisexual, feel that what I did was learn how to make choices that were best in line with my fundamental self.

On the other hand, knowing Van as I do, I strongly doubt that he would ever mean that his choices imply what others can or can't do. And I think that's where the religious right really *can't* use any self-questioning like Van's against us, if we don't let them. Gay or bisexual, Van is, above all else, honest, open, and committed to being clear and committed with others. What's scary (even for me!) about how *some* people embrace their bisexuality is the way they then get tempted to disown the parts of their lives that don't fit, or that they're unresolved about, or that society tempts them to conceal. Van strikes me as not that kind of person. He's been there, and as far as I can tell, he's beyond it.

Hugs.

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

Stephen looks as if he has really lovely legs. I'm sorry, I know I ought to write something more thoughtful here, but this is all that the aestival clime will allow.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Now you have seen more. He certainly is a beautiful man.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I'm not sure that men and women are a choice for many people. Some of the people I know and love best just don't seem to have any ambivalence or even any variation in the gender of the people they're attracted to. They seem just perfect as they are.

But of course I know SOME people who do have a choice. And they're often also wonderful people. Myself included.

My feeling about you is that it's very clear you're capable of loving men. I suspect you're also capable of loving women. What I wish for you is the same as I wish for anyone: the right, and the support, to find people you love, and who will love you back, whole and complete as you are.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Wow, Pete, thanks for all your considered remarks.

Obviously it's new for me to come out and say these things, certainly not new to think them. The idea has been jangling in my head for many months, looking for a right mode of expression. I feel it's important to say, not just for myself.

I won't add anything more today, except one point. In our society there's a large political significance in saying "I'm gay," "I'm bisexual," or "I'm heterosexual," and it requires personal commitment to attach one's self publicly to one of these identities. I dream of a time and place where it wouldn't matter so much, so someone like myself primarily attracted to men could contemplate engaging in an opposite-sex relationship without provoking cries of betrayal. And where our relationships with others of either sex were not so weighed down with the baggage of gender stereotypes.

My disillusionment is increasing with all the labels, and I'm drawn toward queer, not as an identity, but as a state of mind.

[thewindrose.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this on and off since your wrote about it before. I identify as a heterosexual woman, and yet... I've had relations with women and would do so again if the right lady crossed my path. I find myself predominately attracted to men, and if I were to look across a crowded room for "people I'd want to sleep with," my first, second and third glances would be at the men. Yet, I have thoroughly enjoyed the women I have had the opportunity to know in that way and would be happy to do so again.

I guess for me it's all a matter of attractiveness. The women that I have been with have all been ladies that I've been attracted to their personalities first. It wasn't the immediate gut clenching reaction I get from an attractive male, it was more of a slow realization that this was someone who I wanted to be with.

So what does that make me?? I'm not sure that I would want to have a long term relationship with a woman. And I don't feel bisexual. I do think that we are all hardwired a particular way, but like you said, we can choose occasionally to go outside that biological wiring. I read what the above commentor said, and I don't mean in anyway that because we occasionally choose to go outside what we know is right for us - that doesn't mean we can live that way.

I read something amarama wrote once when she was going through a period of dating men. She called herself "A Lesbian on Vacation." I guess I think that a gay man can sleep with a woman and still be gay, a heterosexual woman can sleep with a woman and still be straight. To me, bisexual is more of the equal or nearly equal preference. Does that make sense?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Your experience with women sounds like how I imagine it might happen for me with women! Sometimes I see women I find physically attractive, but I can't see it happening spontaneously; it would take a considerable time of getting to know and trust someone. I wonder how much of my caution and ambivalence comes from past experience.

As for it making sense, it sounds as if you know what you want but have an open mind toward opportunities, and that's what's important. If our society didn't attach so much political meaning to a person identifying as gay, bisexual or heterosexual, it would be easier for people to cross the lines as you have done without risking social stigma. That's what I'm speaking for really: freedom.

Sexuality does not define us

[gayhawk.livejournal.com]

Relationships span the spectrum from sexual to purely platonic friendships. The fact that society puts us into the box labeled "homosexual" is not of our making. I was once married to a woman I very much loved. We had sex (we produced two beautiful daughters), we shared intimacy, and we were friends. Today I have a loving and wonderful (male) partner. God forbid if anything ever happened to him, but I can't honestly say that my life is ruled by my sexuality. If I fall in love again with another soul, the package matters not.

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

Choice is the buzz word here as I see it. Personally, I think our sexuality is inate to each of us. One either likes something or one does not. Even more importantly, (though its confusing to others who have the need to define their (and conversely our) world definitively) liking one thing does not preclude also liking other things. They're independant variables.

At the risk of trivializing this, just because one adores prime rib, says absolutely nothing about one's passion or distaste for lobster.

I too identify as a bisexual man. I happen to have a stronger attraction in general for my own gender than for the opposite, but there are particular women who can turn my head and start a fantasy. Moreover, while I prefer men in general, there are many men who hold absolutely no sexual fascination for me, and trigger about as much desire in me as a hamster.

The choice here is not what appeals to us, but what we choose to do about it. I've been in a very happy same gender marriage for 25 years. The marraige to my husband has been my choice. My attraction to him was not.

I have had the experience of knowing several couples who've had to weather the trauma of one of the partner's transition as a transgendered being. One couple I know have gone successfully from being a heterosexual couple to lesbian partners. Their family unit, children included, has sucessfully remained intact and happy. Another couple I know in the same situation, did not transition sucessfully. The half of the couple that had always been female, agonized over her lack of attraction to her former husband's vagina and came to see me as her medical provider for treatment for depression. I had to tell her that I could no more turn her into a lesbian, than I could turn a gay person straight. Either sex with a particular gender/body part appeals to you or it doesn't. Shortly thereafter, she accepted that while her ex-husband's gender reassignment surgery was the right thing for her spouse, it didn't mean her own sexual orientation had to change along with her partner's gender.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Interesting insights there. Thank you. I also know a lesbian/bi couple that has transitioned successfully to a heterosexual one.