I believe bisexuality exists but it’s easy to see how bisexuals get stuck on one sex or the other.
For a man the social pathway toward sex with another man or a woman is just totally different. It’s 10x or 100x easier to find a short-term male partner than a female one. Finding a female partner involves personal interaction and social signalling all of which needs to be sustained and requires a lot of effort. On the flip side once you’ve found a female partner she’s much more likely to stick around than a male one.
Looking at the low percentage of bisexuals messaging both sexes I'd wager that there is a noticeable amount of effort in trying to maintain active courtship with both sexes. I can notice something like this in myself as a bisexual man. There's difference (while still some decent overlap) in the mental frameworks I use when approaching women vs men
"which leads me to believe that sexual arousal and self-reported sexual identity don’t correlate highly. Or perhaps, they should not: at the end of the day, sexual identity is just a social signalling mechanism"
That's a crazy thing to write. Sexual identity as a concept did not even exist until maybe the past hundred years, and still doesn't exist in many cultures. If you ask primitive cultures if they have any gays or lesbians they have no idea what you're even talking about because such things don't exist, that's like asking if they have leprechauns or people who fly.
To me the much more simple explanation is that using porn is a horrible proxy for "wanting to have sex with" or "sexual attraction". It's a completely artificial stimulus that did not exist for 99.99% of humanity's existence, and has only even been around for about 60 years. For all of history, if you saw and heard sex happening right in front of you, that meant actual people were banging right in front of you, which is something very weird that doesn't happen basically ever, so it would be a completely bizarre and potentially dangerous situation, or much more likely, it's because you are having sex.
So perhaps it is simply the fact that cues of video-realistic sex noises and sex movements will trigger arousal because in a natural environment you would never be hearing those sex noises or seeing sex motions, right in your face like that, unless you were actually having sex?!
Also, para sympathetic nervous system activation will often cause genital "arousal" regardless of mental desire, just based on an adrenaline reaction. If you have ever raised a male dog from puppy hood you would know this, as they frequently get erections when they are scared or surprised, and it doesn't mean they're aroused, it's just an adrenaline and blood flow automatic thing, very similar to how they often pee when they're scared too. Since literally half of straight men and a majority of straight women are getting genitally "aroused" at porn, to me all that means is that porn is an adrenaline spiking stimulus with sexual cues that in a natural environment one would most likely experience only when actually having sex, ergo the body's natural reaction will look like arousal. But that has almost zero relation to whether someone would desire to have sex with a person, or seek it out.
The only way to test out whether someone has a true, non-self-reported sexual orientation would simply be to stick them in a room with attractive members of the opposite sex and see what happens.
As a woman I can tell you that most women absolutely have a physical, emotional, and just behavior-based DRIVE to seek out sex with men. And yes I'll get a groin rush from basically any possible porn you put on in front of me and that means nothing as I also will also find 90% of it repulsive and would want to engage in the scenarios or with the people presented in almost 0% of what I see. To me that means nothing more or less than it does that my eyes will water if you peel an onion...I'm not crying because I'm sad you're hurting the onion, it's just an automatic physical reaction that means nothing. The thousands of hours of my life I've devoted to thinking about, making efforts towards, and engaging in actually finding attracting and having sex with male partners DOES.
My guess is that you have a portion of bisexuals who are in denial about being gay and that portion should drop as it becomes less taboo. and then you have a bunch of others who are basically straight but they just have a very low disgust response and finding sex with other men is incredibly easy and they can get it basically on demand at any time for zero effort. Disgust response and the "brakes" aspect shouldn't be overlooked because it's not just about active attraction and drive towards a sex but also active repulsion and avoidance. I would be curious to see if bisexuals generally have a lower disgust response towards other things, sexually.
The fact that so many younger people are saying they're bisexual now even though they behave just like straight people may also be the result of them being confused by porn, and having way more exposure to that than they ever had with exposure to actual sex, before they started having sex. If I'm correct that response to porn is a somewhat meaningless physical response to artificial sexual cues in general (which is what your first study says to me), then young people may be severely overestimating their interest in things just based upon getting turned on by porn, when in real life they would have zero motivation or desire to be involved in such things.
Bisexual identity could be interpreted as a greater willingness to have sex with the opposite sex regardless of where their arousal lies -- somebody who is technically bisexual but only intends to date the opposite sex may be better off claiming to be straight.
Right. Which they pretty much did up til the last decade or two, when being straight became uncool in certain circles.
I would really love to know if there is any research on whether bisexuals just have a lower general disgust or aversion threshold in general. I only knew one bisexual guy well enough to be able to say with certainty, and for him it checks out...his range of partners and acts he would be open to was simply a lot broader than most people's, on many factors (age, weight, freakiness, etc).
The only thing that prevents me from having sex with chicks is just simply that it's severely gross. I don't feel any different about than I do with a potentially very repulsive man, it's just that all women are at least slightly repulsive to me. And I think that's the main thing that stops most otherwise liberal-minded/secular straight men from doing it with dudes.
There's plenty of neurological evidence that sexual orientation is biologically determined (but not genetic) and that there's significant differences in brain chemistry between people of different sexual orientations.
Bisexuality does exist and it is gay. People should honestly snap out if it. Having sex just for the enjoyment is hedonist and doesn’t lead you anywhere. There is a reason sex exists and it is reproduction. Prepare to be outbreed gaytard
Some men who identify as bisexual are actually gay men, but most of them are not. They tend to be very different from gay men.
One study found that bisexual men have more masculine-sounding voices than straight men on average*. Another study found that bisexual men tend to be low in risk aversion **. There's also evidence that bisexual men commit violent crime at a much higher rate than other groups, whereas gay men commit less violent crime than even straight women. All of this points to male bisexuality being associated with masculine behavior and traits. Maybe bisexual men are more conventionally masculine on average than straight men.
Labeling oneself as being part of a sexual minority is feminine-coded behavior, so I suspect that bisexual men who identify as straight are more likely to be masculine than those who embrace the label. Historical figures like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar engaged in bisexual behavior, but none of them ever bothered "coming out" as being part of a sexual minority. The typical prison rapist is also a bisexual, but he likely doesn't identify as such because he thinks such labels are gay.
And so we find ourselves again pondering the top/bottom distinction.
Maybe bisexual men are just such strong tops that they are able to include feminine men in their pool of possible bottoms.
Many cultures have and do conceptualize the straight/gay distinction as top/bottom. Im other words, there’s nothing gay about getting your dick sucked.
I believe bisexuality exists but it’s easy to see how bisexuals get stuck on one sex or the other.
For a man the social pathway toward sex with another man or a woman is just totally different. It’s 10x or 100x easier to find a short-term male partner than a female one. Finding a female partner involves personal interaction and social signalling all of which needs to be sustained and requires a lot of effort. On the flip side once you’ve found a female partner she’s much more likely to stick around than a male one.
Interesting discussion. I'm a bisexual guy in an open relationship with another man, but I date girls on the side.
Looking at the low percentage of bisexuals messaging both sexes I'd wager that there is a noticeable amount of effort in trying to maintain active courtship with both sexes. I can notice something like this in myself as a bisexual man. There's difference (while still some decent overlap) in the mental frameworks I use when approaching women vs men
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24028378_What_is_Sexual_Orientation_and_Do_Women_Have_One
"which leads me to believe that sexual arousal and self-reported sexual identity don’t correlate highly. Or perhaps, they should not: at the end of the day, sexual identity is just a social signalling mechanism"
That's a crazy thing to write. Sexual identity as a concept did not even exist until maybe the past hundred years, and still doesn't exist in many cultures. If you ask primitive cultures if they have any gays or lesbians they have no idea what you're even talking about because such things don't exist, that's like asking if they have leprechauns or people who fly.
To me the much more simple explanation is that using porn is a horrible proxy for "wanting to have sex with" or "sexual attraction". It's a completely artificial stimulus that did not exist for 99.99% of humanity's existence, and has only even been around for about 60 years. For all of history, if you saw and heard sex happening right in front of you, that meant actual people were banging right in front of you, which is something very weird that doesn't happen basically ever, so it would be a completely bizarre and potentially dangerous situation, or much more likely, it's because you are having sex.
So perhaps it is simply the fact that cues of video-realistic sex noises and sex movements will trigger arousal because in a natural environment you would never be hearing those sex noises or seeing sex motions, right in your face like that, unless you were actually having sex?!
Also, para sympathetic nervous system activation will often cause genital "arousal" regardless of mental desire, just based on an adrenaline reaction. If you have ever raised a male dog from puppy hood you would know this, as they frequently get erections when they are scared or surprised, and it doesn't mean they're aroused, it's just an adrenaline and blood flow automatic thing, very similar to how they often pee when they're scared too. Since literally half of straight men and a majority of straight women are getting genitally "aroused" at porn, to me all that means is that porn is an adrenaline spiking stimulus with sexual cues that in a natural environment one would most likely experience only when actually having sex, ergo the body's natural reaction will look like arousal. But that has almost zero relation to whether someone would desire to have sex with a person, or seek it out.
The only way to test out whether someone has a true, non-self-reported sexual orientation would simply be to stick them in a room with attractive members of the opposite sex and see what happens.
As a woman I can tell you that most women absolutely have a physical, emotional, and just behavior-based DRIVE to seek out sex with men. And yes I'll get a groin rush from basically any possible porn you put on in front of me and that means nothing as I also will also find 90% of it repulsive and would want to engage in the scenarios or with the people presented in almost 0% of what I see. To me that means nothing more or less than it does that my eyes will water if you peel an onion...I'm not crying because I'm sad you're hurting the onion, it's just an automatic physical reaction that means nothing. The thousands of hours of my life I've devoted to thinking about, making efforts towards, and engaging in actually finding attracting and having sex with male partners DOES.
My guess is that you have a portion of bisexuals who are in denial about being gay and that portion should drop as it becomes less taboo. and then you have a bunch of others who are basically straight but they just have a very low disgust response and finding sex with other men is incredibly easy and they can get it basically on demand at any time for zero effort. Disgust response and the "brakes" aspect shouldn't be overlooked because it's not just about active attraction and drive towards a sex but also active repulsion and avoidance. I would be curious to see if bisexuals generally have a lower disgust response towards other things, sexually.
The fact that so many younger people are saying they're bisexual now even though they behave just like straight people may also be the result of them being confused by porn, and having way more exposure to that than they ever had with exposure to actual sex, before they started having sex. If I'm correct that response to porn is a somewhat meaningless physical response to artificial sexual cues in general (which is what your first study says to me), then young people may be severely overestimating their interest in things just based upon getting turned on by porn, when in real life they would have zero motivation or desire to be involved in such things.
>That's a crazy thing to write
Bisexual identity could be interpreted as a greater willingness to have sex with the opposite sex regardless of where their arousal lies -- somebody who is technically bisexual but only intends to date the opposite sex may be better off claiming to be straight.
Right. Which they pretty much did up til the last decade or two, when being straight became uncool in certain circles.
I would really love to know if there is any research on whether bisexuals just have a lower general disgust or aversion threshold in general. I only knew one bisexual guy well enough to be able to say with certainty, and for him it checks out...his range of partners and acts he would be open to was simply a lot broader than most people's, on many factors (age, weight, freakiness, etc).
The only thing that prevents me from having sex with chicks is just simply that it's severely gross. I don't feel any different about than I do with a potentially very repulsive man, it's just that all women are at least slightly repulsive to me. And I think that's the main thing that stops most otherwise liberal-minded/secular straight men from doing it with dudes.
Women are slightly repulsive to you? In general or in a sexual context?
There's plenty of neurological evidence that sexual orientation is biologically determined (but not genetic) and that there's significant differences in brain chemistry between people of different sexual orientations.
Bisexuality does exist and it is gay. People should honestly snap out if it. Having sex just for the enjoyment is hedonist and doesn’t lead you anywhere. There is a reason sex exists and it is reproduction. Prepare to be outbreed gaytard
Some men who identify as bisexual are actually gay men, but most of them are not. They tend to be very different from gay men.
One study found that bisexual men have more masculine-sounding voices than straight men on average*. Another study found that bisexual men tend to be low in risk aversion **. There's also evidence that bisexual men commit violent crime at a much higher rate than other groups, whereas gay men commit less violent crime than even straight women. All of this points to male bisexuality being associated with masculine behavior and traits. Maybe bisexual men are more conventionally masculine on average than straight men.
Labeling oneself as being part of a sexual minority is feminine-coded behavior, so I suspect that bisexual men who identify as straight are more likely to be masculine than those who embrace the label. Historical figures like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar engaged in bisexual behavior, but none of them ever bothered "coming out" as being part of a sexual minority. The typical prison rapist is also a bisexual, but he likely doesn't identify as such because he thinks such labels are gay.
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2023.2182267
** https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.adj6958
And so we find ourselves again pondering the top/bottom distinction.
Maybe bisexual men are just such strong tops that they are able to include feminine men in their pool of possible bottoms.
Many cultures have and do conceptualize the straight/gay distinction as top/bottom. Im other words, there’s nothing gay about getting your dick sucked.
More modern example would be Marlo Brando, very masculine presenting and also banging guys on the side
“is more enjoyable, easy to find” would be interested to see if ppl think former is true, latter is likely not in modern american urban centers