04-07-2018, 03:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-07-2018, 04:44 PM by gayprojectforum.)
GENERAL OVERVIEW
This chapter is dedicated to clarifying some basic concepts related to bisexuality. It is known that Kinsey, in his studies on sexuality, stressed that sexual orientation cannot be reduced within a schematic dualistic distinction between heterosexuals and gays. Kinsey postulates that between exclusive homosexuality and exclusive heterosexuality there is a continuous distribution of intermediate sexual orientations in which homosexuality and heterosexuality mingle in various ways. This idea finds ample evidence also in the experience gained in Gay Project.
DICHOTOMY BETWEEN AFFECTIVITY AND SEXUALITY
Of course, on a statistical level, to define bisexuality, analogously to what happens for homosexuality, we can take as a basis or objective sexual behaviors, that is, couple sexuality, in practice the fact of having relationships with both guys and girls, or memberships, that is “feeling bisexual”, concept , this one, with very uncertain contours, as we will see soon, assuming however that to talk of bisexuality it is necessary to have the presence of both emotional and sexual interest towards people of both sexes. This means, for example, that when a guy's sexual interest is addressed exclusively to guys and his emotional interest is exclusively addressed to girls, that is when we face the "dichotomy between affectivity and sexuality", it is improper to talk of bisexuality.
I emphasize that the sexual dichotomy, among the guys, almost always presents the orientation of sexuality in the gay direction and the orientation of affectivity in the straight direction, the opposite is absolutely exceptional. Generally, in these cases, in order to identify sexual orientation, sexual component is more indicative then the affective one, which often is not even a true affective component but is the product of a confusion of plans for which it is considered love with sublimated sexuality what is actually just a sympathy based more on a commonality of interests than on a deep emotional involvement. In essence, the sexual dichotomy with gay-oriented sexuality should be interpreted rather as a form of homosexuality that has not yet reached true affective maturity.
HETERO-CURIOUS AND SEXUALITY OF ESCAPE
Very different is the case of the so-called "Hetero-Curious", that is of people, generally not young, with a clearly heterosexual history behind them, who, at a certain point of their individual journey, feel a clear "exclusively sexual" interest in men. Even this may seem like a case of sexual dichotomy, but the situation is, as we shall see, quite different, a guy who lives a form of sexual dichotomy evolving towards forms of homosexuality that integrates affectivity and sexuality has a typical "gay sexuality", that is he considers the partner or the possible partner as a guy whom one can fall in love with, and in no way as a substitute for a girl, which instead is the rule for a hetero-curious who is and remains heterosexual, even in his search for a sexuality with another man, because that sexuality, from his point of view, can only have a hetero type setting: fixed roles, in which the hetero-curious takes always and only the active role, constant presence of anal penetration that for gays, on the other hand, is a decidedly minoritarian practice, with minimal or no interest for the partner's penis. Basically a guy who has a dichotomy affectivity-sexuality, with sexuality oriented towards guys and affectivity oriented towards girls, is a person who is gradually becoming aware of his homosexuality, his sexuality is already typically homosexual, while his affectivity is not yet. A "hetero-curious " adult man is instead a deeply frustrated heterosexual who seeks a "fleeing sexuality" with another man, but interprets the relationship with that man with the categories of a typically heterosexual relationship.
BISEXUALITY AND MASTURBATION
A bisexual lives or can experience both emotional and sexual involvement both towards guys and girls and in both cases such involvements are true forms of love, that is, of love, both emotional and sexual. The most typical index of bisexuality is the presence, in the absence of conditioning, of a masturbation that is neither exclusively in a hetero key nor exclusively in a gay key. It should be emphasized that it is not uncommon for guys who live moments of uncertainty about their sexual orientation to be forced to masturbate with straight fantasies to confirm the idea of not being gay, these guys, despite having a masturbation that is partly in hetero kay, and that even when it is in a hetero key can be at least partially satisfactory, certainly are not heterosexual but they are not even bisexual because sexual spontaneity is lacking and the mechanisms that lead them to masturbation with hetero fantasies are heavily influenced by psychological factors of social and cultural origin.
FALSE BISEXUALITY IN THE OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
It also happens that guys who have been always spontaneously straight, from a certain moment on, try, sometimes compulsively, to masturbate with gay fantasies to evaluate their eventual homosexuality. In these cases the guys themselves don’t use to say that they masturbate but that they "test" themselves, just to underline that it is essentially a test, sometimes repeated obsessively and compulsively. The results of this self-imposed masturbation may also appear not completely disappointing, but obviously, even in this case, despite the presence of a masturbation not exclusively in a straight key, we are not facing homosexual or even bisexual guys. The described behaviors lead to forms of spontaneous masturbation that don’t have the characteristics of freedom typical of the true expression of profound sexuality and therefore not only are not indicative of bisexuality but are instead indicative of discomfort related to sexuality.
DEGREE OF GAY PROPENSITY OF BISEXUALS
The placement of a bisexual on a grading system that goes from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality can be operated on the basis of subjective perception, asking the subject himself to classify, but the classifications of this kind are precisely subjective and not very significant. More useful, even if schematic, is an objective criterion based on the frequency of gay oriented masturbation compared to the total, using this criterion, for example, if a guy spontaneously masturbates 90% of the time with gay fantasies and 10% with hetero fantasies, he can be said to be bisexual with a 90% gay propensity.
BISEXUALITY AS A TRANSITORY CATEGORY
It is well known that about 30% of guys who end up considering themselves as gay in an exclusive way have previously experienced hetero stories. In common language, especially in the period of emergence of homosexuality, these guys use to define themselves bisexual but in reality they are not bisexual, most of them, even when they lived a straight couple sexuality, they still maintained an exclusive gay masturbation, what excludes that they are bisexual, or had a partially heterosexual masturbation or even an exclusively hetero masturbation but still unsatisfactory and very conditioned from the outside and from preconceptions of various nature, which prevents to attribute to it a meaning as an indicator of sexual orientation.
HOW MANY ARE BISEXUALS?
If we ask how many bisexuals are, we are faced with great difficulty in giving a clear answer, above all because the percentage of gay people who come from hetero experiences is high and these gays tend, even for quite long periods, to consider themselves bisexual. Then there is another difficulty deriving from the fact that heterosexuals deeply frustrated by their heterosexual life (marriages lived as a trap, incompatibility of heterosexual couple, etc.), the so-called "hetero-curious", who take refuge in some form of homosexuality, exclusively sexual, are quite frequent. They are generally men with a typically hetero story who "consider themselves bisexual" but they are not because they don’t fall in love with guys and live relationships with guys only on a sexual level. In these relationships, sometimes, rather rarely, we can find logics that have little to do with sexuality, as forms of domination/subordination, which highlight more complex relational problems. In some cases, even this time rather rarely, with the passage of time there is evidence of the so-called Mentor complex, that is the tendency to become a guardian and protector of another gay, generally younger. In this last case a true emotional relationship can develop within a stable homosexual couple, and in this case it could also make sense to speak of bisexuality that has emerged late.
A final element of uncertainty is given by the fact that true bisexuals, in general, are not at ease neither in typically hetero environments nor in typically gay environments. The reasons for the discomfort of bisexuals in the gay environment can be found in two different types of prejudices that gays and bisexuals claim, each of them towards the other group. In general, gays consider the existence of bisexuals to be dubious and tend to consider bisexuals as gay men who have not yet reached full awareness of themselves, that is they consider bisexuality as a transitory, evolutionary phase which leads in any case to homosexuality, for their part the bisexuals are lead to think that everyone is radically bisexual and that orientation towards gay or straight direction is only the result of cultural pressures. After all, both gays and bisexuals, endorsing these prejudices, tend to absolutize their sexuality and make it a general rule. In both cases, however, it is only a matter of prejudices because bisexuals really exist and it is not at all true that all of us carry a basic bisexuality.
Based on what I noticed through Gay Project and his statistics, I am led to estimate that the true bisexuals, in the objective sense, are not really many and are more or less 2% of the general population, that is, there is on average about a bisexual every 4 gays. The estimate derives from the fact that even though there were not a few people who turned to Gay Project as bisexual, in fact, in many cases it could be found that they were not really bisexual. The estimate, again on the basis of the Gay Project statistics, obviously goes up a lot, up to about 8%, if the bisexual feeling, that is a subjective criterion, is adopted as a classification criterion. But while those who consider themselves gay go against the mainstream and if they consider themselves gay, certainly don’t do so because of social pressure, those who consider themselves bisexuals often do so because they consider the bisexual category more acceptable than the gay one.
POLARIZATION OF BISEXUALITY
If we now consider the objective distribution of the entire bisexual population on a grading system between hetero and gay, we observe that the distribution is strongly polarized towards the extremes and assumes a U shape, this means that they are decidedly more numerous bisexuals strongly oriented towards heterosexuality i.e. the so-called nearly heterosexual bisexuals, which is foreseeable given that the great majority of the population is heterosexual, then there is a less consistent group of bisexuals strongly oriented towards homosexuality, the so-called nearly gay bisexuals, while bisexuals with unclearly polarized sexuality, the so-called 50/50 homosexuals, are much rarer.
BISEXUALITY AND PROBLEMS ARISING FROM EXCLUSIVITY
We now come to the typical problems of bisexuals. It must be said right away that these problems vary greatly depending on the weight that the individual components of sexuality (gay and hetero) have in the specific case. A nearly heterosexual bisexual guy, that is, with a heterosexual masturbation at 95% and above, could very well adapt to a married life by limiting its gay sexual component to sporadic masturbation only. Here, in essence, the discomfort of limiting the couple sexuality to the heterosexual dimension is in fact very limited. In a similar way a nearly gay bisexual guy, i.e. with a gay masturbation at 95% and above, could very well adapt to a gay couple's life. However, as we move away from nearly heterosexual or nearly gay situations and move towards really intermediate positions, the discomfort increases, because, for example, for a bisexual with a 50% gay propensity both the idea of the exclusive hetero couple and the idea of the exclusive gay couple are in fact a clear forcing.
DEVALUATION OF BISEXUALITY BY PARTNERS
Partners of bisexual men, in general, are either straight women or gay men. A heterosexual woman towards her bisexual partner very frequently commits the mistake of thinking that her bisexual partner is not bisexual but heterosexual because he has sex with a woman; a gay guy, on the other hand, is led to think that his bisexual partner is not bisexual but gay because he has sex with a guy. Both of these limitative ways of interpreting the behavior of a bisexual guy are wrong and produce expectations destined to remain disappointed and this fact often fuels misunderstanding and mutual distrust. For a bisexual 50/50 adapt to an exclusive sexuality, be it heterosexual or gay, is a restrictive limitation and in these cases, they realize a half of their sexuality in the couple relationship, but it is difficult to reduce the other half to masturbation alone and he actually feels the need also for a couple relationship of the other kind.
PROBLEMS OF THE HETEROSEXUAL MODELING OF BISEXUAL SEXUALITY
Generally a bisexual with a 50% gay propensity, given the social environment in which he lives, will tends to orient himself more to form a heterosexual fixed couple than a gay fixed couple, that would be against the current. In general, for a bisexual, precisely because it is much easier to live a straight couple sexuality, the typical models of the straight couple end up being dominant. A woman who marries a bisexual with a 50% gay propensity may not notice her husband's bisexuality at all and, precisely for this reason, when she discovers it she is suffering a not indifferent trauma. A gay man, on the other hand, when he lives a relationship with a bisexual, generally, realizes that his partner is not really gay because he keeps in his homosexual contacts characteristics and ways of doing that are not those common to those who are exclusively gay. A bisexual generally maintains the idea of sexual roles even when he lives a couple sexuality with a gay man, tends to always keep the active role and above all doesn’t understand that the assumption of roles is not a spontaneous thing for a gay.
A bisexual, despite having a true gay component, tends to overlap over it his heterosexual component in which he has generally experienced most of his sexual relationships. This fact makes gay-bisexual sexual relationships very problematic and causes bisexuals to be even more limited to hetero field. A bisexual, in a sexual contact with a gay man, also feels that something is not really symmetrical and this leads to objective situations of unease. A further complicating factor is that when a bisexual attempts a sexual approach, heterosexual or gay, he generally avoids saying he is bisexual and introduces himself to women as a heterosexual and to gays as a gay, such a behavior, compared with the real sexual behaviors of bisexuals, induces in the partners a lot of perplexities. Objectively, the problems of a bisexual, at least those of a bisexual who is not nearly gay nor nearly straight, are more complex than those of a gay guy; correspondingly, even the discomfort experienced by a bisexual is generally more deep than that experienced by a gay.
PERIODIC BISEXUALITY
There is also another form of bisexuality, of which I have found only one case with certainty and perhaps a second, in ten years of activity, it is the so-called periodic bisexuality. To clarify the concept, I quote below the story of a man about 50 years old: free youth with clearly gay behavior, at 20 he discovers heterosexuality, he marries with enthusiasm at 22, he has a son, at 29 he meets a guy of 26, he separates from his wife, from whom he will divorce after a few years, and goes to live with the 26-year-old guy, he feels totally gay, becomes an activist of gay associations, after 7 years of gay domestic partnership, which he defines marvelous, at the age of 36, he meets a 30-year-old girl, falls madly in love with her, leaves his male lover, and marries the thirty-year-old girl, he is convinced that it will be his definitive choice, he has a daughter from this second marriage, feels fulfilled, but at 44 years, meets a handsome 29 year old guy and falls in love, according to what he tells himself, mad love, he separates from the second wife, from whom he divorces after a few years and goes to live with the beautiful twenty-nine old guy. At 50 he feels lost, the love of the beautiful now thirty-five is not enough for him ... he meets a girl who is also very beautiful, 24 years old. This is actually a limit case but it serves to clarify the concept. A periodic bisexual alternates long periods of clearly hetero sexuality and hetero affectivity (hetero phase), with long periods of affection and sexuality clearly gay (gay phase).
The real moments of crisis correspond to the transition from one phase to the next and in those moments bisexuals are dealing with terrible crises in which family relationships that seemed to be very strong are destroyed and they feel a kind of loss and disappointment that is very deep and difficult to manage. A periodic bisexual, especially if he has a family and goes through the first transition, can experience situations of extreme loss and discomfort. The periodic bisexuality, which is objectively very rare in its extreme forms, can present itself with a certain frequency in much more nuanced forms, together with other elements that complicate the overall picture quite a lot. An example can be found in the first of the attached documents.