Bisexual Me

Bisexual Me

Marie-Jones Duff is a Los Angeles based freelance multimedia journalist and frequent traveler with a fondness for all things bizarre and nerdy. Look for posts that focus on everything from men's fashion to science.
What makes a man bisexual? Is it as simple as being sexually aroused by both males and females? Or does it have more to do with self-identity? Well, the science is far from settled on that topic.
In a Gallop Poll that surveyed more than 300,000 Americans, 42% of respondents who claimed to be members of the LGBT community were men. Around 2% of all men in the United States identify as bisexual. It’s certainly a grey area within both demographics – men in general and the LGBT community.
Some people think that bisexual men are actually homosexuals who are “on the down low” or simply confused about the nature of their homosexuality. Other experts uphold that bisexual men are indeed attracted to both men and women.
There were 30 heterosexual, 33 bisexual, and 38 homosexual men participating in the work. They were connected to a ring that encircled their penises with the intention of measuring their level of genital arousal when shown sexually suggestive images of men and women.
Bailey’s findings were controversial. He reported that most of the men who purported to be bisexual responded with a greater tendency toward homosexuality in terms of genital arousal. He summarized that bisexuality “appears primarily to represent a style of interpreting or reporting sexual arousal rather than a distinct pattern of genital sexual arousal.”
The broader implication of Bailey’s study was that bisexuality in men was being disqualified as a sexual orientation. According to Bailey and his team, men who identified as bisexual were just homosexual men who chose to identify as bisexual for a number of different reasons.
The case of bisexual identification is complex, just as any other form of sexual preference is complicated. Is bisexuality an identity complex or a case of adaptive flexibility? The simple answer is – the man likes what he likes. Yet, there are other reasons why a straight or homosexual man might identify as something in between.
Some men who are attracted to other males might not want to jeopardize their social or cultural standing to fully identify as gay. They might make certain exceptions for instances when and where attraction to other men is acceptable.
For example, some men who become incarcerated might “go gay for the stay”. They don’t identify as members of the LGBT community in their normal lives but find an exception in their circumstances for homosexual ideation and behaviour while they are in prison.
Some men are married or in straight relationships and they don’t want to identify as homosexual to their partner. This might endanger their family’s reputation or lead to a separation. So, this person might engage in homosexual activity “on the down low.”
Another reason a man might falsely identify as bisexual is to be included in the LGBT community. That might sound strange to some people – the idea that someone who is straight would fake being attracted to someone of the same sex, but this does occur. It can be beneficial for someone who is straight to lie and say that they were bisexual to seek employment, increase their social or political standing, or simply to fit in with current cultural trends.
This is just a smattering of reasons; there are many, many others.
The findings of the 2005 study led to more research about bisexuality in men. Even J. Michael Bailey decided to revisit his original findings and make a more comprehensive analysis of male bisexuality. Bailey participated in a review of his own work and other studies just this year.
In a paper published through Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers determined that men who identify as bisexual do indeed exhibit genital arousal toward both males and females.
The original study had fewer than 100 participants, but the follow-up review included the findings of eight previous studies. The conclusions drawn from this study were far more widespread. The only problem is the criteria by which the researchers judged sexual perception. It also completely ignored the fact that sexual arousal isn’t a one trick pony.
Yet, they agree that genital arousal did occur in the participants of the study who identify as bisexual and therefore bisexuality in men does exist. Hold on for a second though. Why are scientists trying to determine whether bisexuality is real?
Should scientists even be trying to validate a person’s sexual identity at all? The idea that a person’s sexual preference or identity must be first validated by science is condescending and ethically questionable.
Scientists should study social behavior and sexuality. However, challenging scientific theories and notions is exactly how we reach a more comprehensive understanding. In the case of male bisexuality, the scientific research should’ve taken into account a fuller range of lived experiences and perspectives.
Researchers should focus less on whether a person’s sexual preference is indeed real and focus more on the nature and characteristics of the actual person. In other words, sexual arousal does not identify a man. His sexual identity serves to further illuminate his personage and it expands his capacity to love.
For now, researchers should not try to identify whether bisexuality is real. The main reason is that so many men already identify as bisexual. It’s real because they say it is real.
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My best friend and I were on the bus coming home from school in the seventh grade, and we were almost at our stop. For the entire ride, she had been avoiding telling me the name of her new crush, who had been leaving her forlorn and mopey for weeks. I was getting impatient.
“I need to tell you something first,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “I’m bisexual .”
“Okay,” I said slowly, elongating the second vowel. I had never heard that word before. “What does that mean?”
With the confidence that the cooler best friend tends to exude when explaining a scandalous new topic (at least in middle school), she said, “It means that I like boys and I like girls.”
And then I shouted, “Oh, my God, I’m that too!”
Bisexuality is more complicated than that, of course. Like her sister identities, such as pansexuality and omnisexuality, bisexuality implies an attraction to multiple (or all) genders. (If you're wondering, “ What is pansexuality ?" here's what you need to know). The simplification of being attracted to men and women (especially wherein these genders are assumed to be cis) is not only incorrect but also harmful. But as a kid without a deep understanding of gender, I was nonetheless struck by my best friend’s definition.
You see, growing up, I was confused. Many queer kids have a similar experience: We’re presented with only one option of what relationships look like—cis man plus cis woman equals true love forever!—and we can sometimes sense early on that something about our internal experience feels different.
In the fifth grade, when a friend of mine sneered that I was gay as an insult, I thought maybe I had landed on a name for what I felt. But I went home and asked my dad what that meant, and it still didn’t fit. I wasn’t straight like I was supposed to be, but damn it, I wasn’t this countercultural “gay” thing either.
I felt stuck. As I saw it at the time, there were girls who were attracted to boys, and there were girls who were attracted to girls, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t simply pick one. I was both—and I thought I was the only one.
Learning the word bisexual on the bus that day a couple of years later was an unforgettably powerful moment of validation. Not only was there a name for what I felt, but I wasn’t alone after all.
Unfortunately, my road to strong, assured bisexual identity was riddled with potholes, as it is for many of us. Over the course of my life, because I internalized so much stigma around bisexuality , I’ve struggled with claiming this identity that at first felt custom-made for me.
I started dating my first love, a woman, when I was 15. It was with her that I had my first sexual experience . I was very comfortable identifying as bisexual then. I had crushes galore, and gender felt irrelevant to my attractions. I also helped start the Gay/Straight Alliance at my high school. Sure, people mistook me for a lesbian and hurled associated slurs at me, but I felt solid in my bisexuality.
When I later started dating a man, though, I felt a significant shift. Suddenly, my peers questioned my queerness. Even my boyfriend at the time told me, point-blank, “No one is bisexual forever. You eventually have to choose.” But instead of questioning our messed-up understanding of sexuality, doubt started creeping into my heart instead: Would I eventually have to choose?
For many years after that, I dated cis men almost exclusively, mostly as a result of convenience. I still identified as bisexual, because I had crushes, went on dates with, and hooked up with people of various genders. But the love interests who tended to stick, who wanted me most, were cis men. I was even engaged to one before I graduated from college! Eventually, this led me in the opposite direction of what you might assume: My sexual boredom and sometimes even disgust with the men I dated led me to believe I was, and always had been, super gay after all.
So, in my early 20s, I threw myself in a new direction and got deeply involved in my local queer community. I dated only women for a few years, identified as a lesbian, started a blog for queer femmes, and eventually got into a long-term, live-in relationship with a woman. I came out anew—only to be shocked when I later fell for a man all over again. I tried donning a “homoflexible” label for a few years, but two boyfriends later I had to sit back and take a good look at my identity and why my perception of it kept shifting seemingly so drastically.
What I didn’t understand as I tried on these different labels was that it isn’t simply our behavior that dictates who we are. It’s also our internal experience and how we choose to describe it. The normative understanding of bisexuality tends to falsely define it as a strict set of feelings and actions: We’re told that bisexuality means having equal attraction to multiple genders and engaging with them romantically and sexually in similar amounts. Not only is this an incredibly reductive way to understand sexuality, but it also leaves many people grappling with whether they’re “allowed” to identify as bisexual when their experiences don’t align with this narrow definition. That’s what happened to me before I realized I was thinking about it all wrong.
It took years for me to realize that sexual fluidity (the experience of sexual identity as flowing and fluctuating) is legitimate. Now I’m comfortable with the idea that my attractions sometimes shift, and with that sometimes comes identity changes, which are also valid.
But it’s worth questioning why bisexuality as a label kept slipping away from me, despite attraction to multiple genders always being a part of my sexual experience.
What does it actually mean to be bisexual? And who is allowed to claim it?
Over the years, I’ve created and nurtured relationships in my community with other bisexual people, and women in particular. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard of this common experience, which often throws people into a spiral of invalidation: A cis woman is attracted to multiple genders, but for various reasons has only ever engaged romantically and/or sexually with cis men. Maybe she recognized her attraction to others later in life and is, at that point, in a monogamous life partnership already. Maybe she feels uncomfortable—like an imposter—in queer spaces, so she hasn’t been able to meet, let alone date, anyone except cis men. Maybe her city, family, or culture is conservative, and living her life authentically could be dangerous to her. She knows in her heart where her attractions lie, but her experience betrays that. Is she bisexual?
Well, yeah. If that’s what she wants to call herself, which is up to her.
When I was in graduate school, working toward a master’s and then a doctorate degree in Human Sexuality Studies, I was introduced to the Orientation, Behavior, and Identity (OBI) Model. Popularized by Brent A. Satterly, Ph.D., and similar to its more famous predecessors, the Kinsey Scale and the Klein Grid , it aimed to be a simple framework for understanding the complexities of human sexuality experiences.
The OBI Model posits that our orientation (who we’re naturally attracted to), behavior (who we engage with romantically or sexually, including through fantasies ), and identity (how we describe ourselves) exist on independent scales, and there are endless combinations beyond the dictionary definition of any given sexuality. It says “not so fast” to the pervasive myth that in order to identify as bisexual, you must be attracted to all (or multiple) genders equally, and you must be romantic and sexual with all (or multiple) genders equally. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces of trying to understand my own sexuality fell into place.
If you too have been grappling with your sexuality or sexual identity, here’s how the OBI model suggests thinking of it:
Here’s how that plays out for me: I find myself attracted to people of all genders, although some far more often than others. Most of my romantic and sexual behavior has been with cis men and cis women, but not all of it, and I choose not to actively go out of my way to date (particularly cis) men. I identify as bisexual and pansexual interchangeably because those words describe my experience of attraction to all genders; I also identify as queer, particularly politically. But I make a point to use the term bisexual as often as possible to combat the notion that someone else’s idea of bisexuality defines me.
Bisexuality can look like primarily being attracted to and/or dating one gender, while also having interest in others. It can look like making a conscious choice to date one group of people over another, despite broader attraction. It can look perfectly portioned with equal experience across genders. Or, like with my own experience, bisexuality can look like shifting external behavior with a static orientation.
Ultimately, bisexuality isn’t a phase or a confusion or a burden. It’s a legitimate experience and identity. And any outside disbelief or internalized imposter syndrome that comes up for us likely isn’t the fault of bisexuality itself, but of a culture that doesn’t give us the tools to talk about ourselves authentically.
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Define your bisexuality on your terms. The word bisexual means different things to different people. In general, it means being attracted to men and women. However, there are varying degrees of bisexuality. If you want to embrace your sexuality, spend some time thinking about what the label means to you. [1]
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Sexuality is fluid and difficult to define. Understand that, when using the word bisexual, it's okay if it means something different to you than other people. You may be interested in both men and women sexually, but only men romantically. You may have always had sexual feelings for men and women, or you may have developed sexual feelings for a particular gender later in life.
There is no right or wrong way to be bisexual. While there are some people that insist that 50/50 makes someone bisexual, this view does not match up with reality. While some people do experience equal levels of attraction, others do not. If you are bisexual, it's acceptable to define yourself however you want.
Pay attention to yourself and your own feelings. It's okay if your definition of your bisexuality differs slightly from another person's bisexuality. Everyone is different.

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