Monday, December 14, 2009

What is sexuality?

Lately I've seemed to have a run where every girl I meet is bisexual. At first I thought it was on the rise but then I started thinking it's not that it's a rising phenomenon, so to speak, its just that bisexuality in women grows more socially acceptable by the day. Male culture, however, is still stagnantly homophobic. It's seemed to grow only more so over time. In the early 1900's, James Dean and Marlon Brando - two well known, highly respected actors - had a relationship together. It was not something thrown into the face of everyone, but it was just an accepted thing. When the 60's and 70's came suddenly there was a huge explosion of 'bisexuals' in the media, between David Bowie, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, and others. But I think by the time the 80's came around and the conservative backsplash began, anything remotely gay or bisexual was shunned in male culture. Slowly now more men are accepted for being gay, but I have only met one man that admits to being bi. There seems to be this conception that if there is just one thing remotely sexual between two men, those men can be gay and gay alone. I've kissed another man before, out of curiosity. It felt like giving somebody CPR, so I take that to mean I must not be gay. On occasion I do however still feel slightly bicurious. This to me is a completely normal thing, and most guys could probably admit that to be true if they did some soul searching. However, to admit to any of that publicly is to be labeled 'gay', even though 99 percent of people I have been with have been women. This is not a bad thing, but it still drastically changes social interactions with people.
But the point I am trying to make out of all of this rambling would be that there is no straight-bi-gay list, set in stone. Nobody is 100 percent straight and nobody is 100 percent gay. Even in the Lesbian/Gay community this is ignored or downplayed, and bisexuals are often looked down upon. The Kinsey scale rates from 0-6, with an additional X for asexuality. 0 is strictly heterosexual and 6 is strictly homosexual. This also varies from moment to moment. Overall, I would personally be a 1, but it varies so that one moment I'd be a 0, the next I could be a 3, and quite frequently I am an X. That may even be my predominant number.

Perhaps eventually people will fully realize this and put away the idea that people have to be 'gay', 'straight' or 'bi', and can simply interact with each other as they see fit, without societal repercussions.

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