I lowkey believe the vast majority of monosexual people are actually bisexual people who have decided for one reason or another they will only date one gender.
Agreed. Honestly believe that no one is truly entirely hetero or homosexual. I mean, either of those existing is predicated on the existence of a strict gender binary. If gender is a spectrum, sexuality necessarily has to be as well.
Wholly agree, it’s a spectrum. I’m het, but that’s just a shorthand convenience label that says I’m for the most part attracted to people that don’t look like me, even if it’s not particularly useful or necessarily true, but I don’t think it’s a bad word if it’s helping express something I like.
When I do think it’s an awful word is when it’s used to restrict someone’s freedom in choosing a partner, or forcing someone’s view of themselves into a black and white stereotype, so it’s a rather loaded word at this point.
It’s just so simplistic and limiting for there to be words that treat attraction like a fixed trait. I’ve got to be straight, gay, bi, or some global descriptor for my own behaviour? That sucks.
Like maybe I’m straight, but in a “knows when dudes are hot and comfortable at kink parties” way, you know? There’s no word that doesn’t lump me in with loads of people I have nothing in common with.
I’m bisexual and pretty open about it… whenever men have had a few drinks around me and I mention it, so many start telling me all the men they are attracted to.
Personally and from a pragmatic viewpoint, I don’t think it’s the vast majority, at least not based on my experience and assuming we’re both using the same nonscientific and imprecise definitions.
Having said that, I am fully on board with the idea that more people are somewhere in between on the spectrum of sexuality than most of us realize or recognize, and that far fewer of us are at the extreme ends (i.e. 100% fully hetero, 100% fully homo) than the average person assumes.
At issue here, for me, is recognizing that sexuality is (or can be) extremely complicated. It’s a situation where you can be almost comically pedantic and precise, taking things to the absurd, and easily make the claim that nobody is “monosexual”. There are so many factors to consider. Peoples’ presentation doesn’t necessarily correlate to their actual innate orientation. People’s sexuality can, and not infrequently, does change over the course of their lifetime. Those are just two examples.
I think a big part of my comfort with describing it as a vast majority is because I have an expansive definition. From what I’m given to understand, most people think of a kinsey 1 as het and a kinsey 5 as gay, but those are both clearly bi for me
the whole “innate v.s. choice” dichotomy is toxic. claim it’s a choice, and society will force people to “choose” differently. insist that it’s innate and all those people you’re alluding to will conclude from their first sexual encounters that they could never choose to enjoy a different type of encounter.
How much time have you spent considering your sexuality, and when did you last consider it? I suspect a lot of people chose a sexuality a long time ago under significant social pressure and don’t have a great memory of it because there was kind of a lot going on at the time.
I don’t know if I’m representative at all of the general population, and I swear I’m not trying to be an aha! guy here, but I do ponder this subject every other day or so. Maybe it is my exposure to the online queer/trans spaces, or in part my upbringing (among my parents’ friends were many gay couples), but it’s frequently on my mind. Is that something you ask yourself ? I do an exercise : I peruse the female form, and I strain to imagine the same individual as a man. Over time I’ve gotten quite good at this and it challenged my historic view of gender pretty effectively. I dropped thinking of individuals as women or men first, which is how the world was built in my brain from early on (can’t say why really). Ultimately, men do nothing for me, carnally speaking. I remember this Woody Allen (?) quote where he said bi folk have twice as much chances to get laid at any given party. I can find any person charming, including men, but that’s from an interpersonal point of view, and it doesn’t seem to extend to physical attraction. I’m afraid I find the mere thought repulsive.
I lowkey believe the vast majority of monosexual people are actually bisexual people who have decided for one reason or another they will only date one gender.
Agreed. Honestly believe that no one is truly entirely hetero or homosexual. I mean, either of those existing is predicated on the existence of a strict gender binary. If gender is a spectrum, sexuality necessarily has to be as well.
Wholly agree, it’s a spectrum. I’m het, but that’s just a shorthand convenience label that says I’m for the most part attracted to people that don’t look like me, even if it’s not particularly useful or necessarily true, but I don’t think it’s a bad word if it’s helping express something I like.
When I do think it’s an awful word is when it’s used to restrict someone’s freedom in choosing a partner, or forcing someone’s view of themselves into a black and white stereotype, so it’s a rather loaded word at this point.
It’s just so simplistic and limiting for there to be words that treat attraction like a fixed trait. I’ve got to be straight, gay, bi, or some global descriptor for my own behaviour? That sucks.
Like maybe I’m straight, but in a “knows when dudes are hot and comfortable at kink parties” way, you know? There’s no word that doesn’t lump me in with loads of people I have nothing in common with.
I’m throwing you in the “fun people” pile, so there’s another label ;)
I’m not even fun half the time I’m fuckin SLEEPY
I’m bisexual and pretty open about it… whenever men have had a few drinks around me and I mention it, so many start telling me all the men they are attracted to.
It’s a really funny phenomenon
Personally and from a pragmatic viewpoint, I don’t think it’s the vast majority, at least not based on my experience and assuming we’re both using the same nonscientific and imprecise definitions.
Having said that, I am fully on board with the idea that more people are somewhere in between on the spectrum of sexuality than most of us realize or recognize, and that far fewer of us are at the extreme ends (i.e. 100% fully hetero, 100% fully homo) than the average person assumes.
At issue here, for me, is recognizing that sexuality is (or can be) extremely complicated. It’s a situation where you can be almost comically pedantic and precise, taking things to the absurd, and easily make the claim that nobody is “monosexual”. There are so many factors to consider. Peoples’ presentation doesn’t necessarily correlate to their actual innate orientation. People’s sexuality can, and not infrequently, does change over the course of their lifetime. Those are just two examples.
I think a big part of my comfort with describing it as a vast majority is because I have an expansive definition. From what I’m given to understand, most people think of a kinsey 1 as het and a kinsey 5 as gay, but those are both clearly bi for me
the whole “innate v.s. choice” dichotomy is toxic. claim it’s a choice, and society will force people to “choose” differently. insist that it’s innate and all those people you’re alluding to will conclude from their first sexual encounters that they could never choose to enjoy a different type of encounter.
It’s certainly more complicated than the dichotomy makes it out to be.
If that is the case, then I’ve made that decision unknowingly from my own self
How much time have you spent considering your sexuality, and when did you last consider it? I suspect a lot of people chose a sexuality a long time ago under significant social pressure and don’t have a great memory of it because there was kind of a lot going on at the time.
I don’t know if I’m representative at all of the general population, and I swear I’m not trying to be an aha! guy here, but I do ponder this subject every other day or so. Maybe it is my exposure to the online queer/trans spaces, or in part my upbringing (among my parents’ friends were many gay couples), but it’s frequently on my mind. Is that something you ask yourself ? I do an exercise : I peruse the female form, and I strain to imagine the same individual as a man. Over time I’ve gotten quite good at this and it challenged my historic view of gender pretty effectively. I dropped thinking of individuals as women or men first, which is how the world was built in my brain from early on (can’t say why really). Ultimately, men do nothing for me, carnally speaking. I remember this Woody Allen (?) quote where he said bi folk have twice as much chances to get laid at any given party. I can find any person charming, including men, but that’s from an interpersonal point of view, and it doesn’t seem to extend to physical attraction. I’m afraid I find the mere thought repulsive.