Bisexuality is often a point of speculation, confusion, inaccuracy and even judgment within our community. Some view bisexuals as having an advantage over the L, G and T members of our community: They aren’t limited by gender when looking for a romantic or sexual partner and therefore have better odds of finding a
mate, and bisexuals get to exist in the world as “straight” some or all of the time, allowing them to benefit from all of the associated privilege. Yet, many bisexual women and men report feeling alienated from the LGBT community and invalidated by the “straight world” overall. In large part, this relates to a lack of understanding of what it means to be bisexual and a general disbelief by many that bisexuality is a true sexual orientation. Many people, gay and straight alike, consider bisexuality to be nothing more than a transient period, one of either experimentation before resuming a heterosexual status or a pit stop on the way to gay. However, as it turns out, bisexuality is a legitimate sexual orientation with a good deal of fact-based evidence to back it up.
While there is still emerging research on bisexuality as a stable sexual orientation, numerous studies have already been conducted that demonstrate that bisexual men and women alike have favorable physiological responses to both genders in sexual situations and that most individuals identifying as bisexual do not change their orientation over time. In one long-term study conducted by researcher Lisa Diamond, 92 percent of women who identified as bisexual during adolescence maintained this identity a decade later; however, some were much more inclined to same-sex relationships and sexual partners while others were significantly more inclined in the opposite direction. Similarly, some bi-identified men and women reacted more strongly to one gender over another when exposed to various sexual stimuli. This is due to the limiting nature of these studies, which rely mainly on self-report (i.e., interviews, surveys, etc.) and monitoring of physical responses while viewing varying types of pornography. There is a certain amount of detachment that is unavoidable in such techniques because they cannot account for the mental and physical stimulation that occurs from more abstract and difficult-to-recreate components of being attracted to or turned on by a partner, such as valuable conversation, eye contact, smells and touch (to name a few) — in other words, chemistry.
Interestingly, people like Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey first began hypothesizing about bisexuality in the 1920s and 1940s, respectively, with Freud suggesting that we are all bisexual and Kinsey conceptualizing sexuality as fluid, as opposed to the widely recognized binaries: gay or straight. Kinsey created a scale he used for his research where participants could assign themselves a number between 0-6, with 0 being completely straight, 6 being completely gay and the numbers in between representing the range of bisexuality. Kinsey’s scale took into account sexual experience as well as sexual desire, an important concept in understanding bisexuality (and one that is still scrutinized today). Self-proclaimed bisexual celebrities Angelina Jolie and Anna Paquin are now both married to men and deny having polyamorous relationships, yet neither have renounced their bisexual identities. Why? Because who we desire is not always who we are having sex with; a bisexual individual can be in a monogamous relationship with a member of one gender but still sexually desire members of the other gender. In other words, if Angelina and Anna never have sex with a woman again for the rest of their lives, they are and always will be bisexual. By the way, bisexual women and men are in no way more inclined to engage in polyamory or to step outside of their relationship against their partner’s will.
Sexuality and sexual orientation is a complex subject. It can’t be reduced to merely sex and genitalia. It encompasses experience, desire, attraction, identity, emotion, passion, lust, love. Sexuality is the height of our humanness and we are all equally entitled to experience it as authentically as possible, whether that means just with men, just with women or with both genders. It’s time to break down stereotypes about bisexuality and allow our friends who represent the “B” in LGBT to own their identities without needing to provide explanation to members of our community or to anyone else.
And hey, if bisexuals are a bit luckier than the rest of us when it comes to finding a mate in sex or in love, let’s not hold that against them!