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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Technically, given that most people are heterosexual, Woody Allen's quote - "The good thing about being bisexual is that it doubles your chance of a date on a Saturday night." - is inaccurate. It only increases your chances by the percentage of people of your gender who are open to same-sex encounters.
I think I have enough evidence to say this confidently without unfairly stereotyping: On balance, gay men are so much more promiscuous than straight women that being bisexual really might double or triple the opportunities for a man to have sex. But your point is well taken and certainly applies to chances for a monogamous relationship.
Point of curiosity if anyone knows the answer: How promiscuous are bisexual men and do they tend to have more m-m than m-f sex because the m-m sex is much easier to obtain? If not, why not?
I'm a 1 on the Kinsey scale but I have only had sex with women, not men. I don't identify as bisexual.
I suspect that the median bisexual man has more m-m sex because the median person willing to identify as bisexual is not a 3 on the Kinsey scale but leans towards the homosexual side of the scale. Also, especially for young people just coming to terms with their sexuality, identifying as bisexual is often a path towards identifying as gay, and such people are likely to have more sex with their true preferred type of partners.
There is a negative perception in the gay community that bisexual people are more promiscuous, but this probably isn't true. I'm pretty sure the reason bisexual men tend to have sex with men more often than women is not because getting gay sex is as easy as posting a "Hey, who wants to come over, blow me, and leave right away without talking?" on Craigslist, but because most people that identify as bisexual are just more gay than straight.
Btw, if anyone was intrigued by the possibility of making such a Craigslist post, if you say you're straight you'll get at least twice as many replies! :D
This is of course controversial but I've had a number of gay friends and acquaintances deny that there even are true bisexual men. The position they take it is that homosexuality is a binary, pre-natal development characteristic and that bisexual males are pretty much just gay men holding out hope for a normal marriage/family life.
No offense to those men here who identify as bisexual, obviously. This all may just be in group posturing and what not.
I don't exist -_-;;
So there is actually new evidence since we had this conversation. Bisexual men do exist! Past studies found that the men they studied who identified as bisexual weren't.
The different results are likely due to the different procedures used to determine the participant pool. The 2005 study took it's sample of bisexual men mainly from college campus LGBTQ student associations while the more recent study advertised on craigslist M/F for M and, on top of that, refused to include anyone whose claim to bisexuality they didn't believe.
Neither do I, apparently, even after meeting with LWers in person!
I, meanwhile, am not entirely sure that there are straight women.
(Every woman I have met has fallen into one of the following categories: 1) She would not know if she were non-straight, due to inadequate self-examination or understanding of the concept of orientation. 2) I would not know if she were not straight, due to not having a close enough relationship with her or due to social constraints on her end preventing her from being out or due to the topic never having come up. 3) I know her to be bisexual, gay, asexual, or some other non-straight sexuality.)
Counterexamples are welcome to present themselves, of course.
The thread seems to be resurrected, so I'll present myself. :)
I am a cissexual slightly genderqueer exclusively androsexual monogamously married woman. I think about sexuality and orientation a lot. Including my own. I don't recall ever being sexually or romantically attracted to a woman. Intellectually, monosexuality seems a little weird to me, but nevertheless it seems to describe me. In fact I think of my monosexuality as a gender fetish, but I hesitate to apply that paradigm to other people's monosexuality.
That is one of the most delightfully precise explanations of personal gender identity and sexual preferences I have ever seen. Also, as an exclusively monosexual male, I agree with your thoughts that monosexuality is understandable but doesn't seem optimal from an individualistic standpoint.
Reminds me of a study I read about. They basically showed men and women different types of porn and measured genital arousal. The results were straightforward for men: if they identified as straight, girl-on-girl porn caused the greatest arousal, girl-on-guy was ok, and guy-on-guy caused almost no arousal. For gay men, the results were reversed. For girls, there were no simple categories, and their identification as straight or gay didn't predict which images would be the biggest turn-on.
My impression from attending a women's college was that by the fourth year, most women who came in identifying as straight had experienced some attraction to other women. And those who came in saying "My life would be so much easier if I liked girls" were more likely to be dating women by the end (though no data on whether their lives were actually easier!)
Which category do you yourself fall into? (Or would you prefer not to answer that question?)
I'm bi.
I'm around 90% confident my girlfriend is straight.
Update- She has a date with a girl next week. So... oops. :-)
Update #2-- And now.... she is in a long-term relationship with a woman.
I've gone on dates with a couple guys just to check -- I'm still pretty definitely straight.
Polls show that about 10% identify as non-straight, so your initial estimate wasn't bad.
One would hope that dating someone would provide enough evidence to make a better estimate than a blind prior.
I think you both need to clarify your definitions a bit. It seems to me that females have a lot more scope for physical intimacy with other females in western society without generally being considered non-straight than males do. A straight female expressing physical attraction/admiration for other females is not considered grounds for doubting self-reported sexuality the way it might be for males.
It's true that evidence one has for classifying people's sexual orientation can be different for men and women. Thus I have female friends who, if they were men and behaved toward men the way they now behave toward women, my beliefs about their sexual orientation would alter dramatically. But such behaviors don't define heterosexuality. An Anglo-American man who compliments other men on their attractiveness, holds hands or is affectionate toward other men is giving us evidence that he is gay or bisexual. But these facts don't make him gay or bisexual. Facts about who wants to have sex with and who he wants to have romantic relationships define his sexual orientation.
People really aren't comfortable with their naive notion of heterosexuality? It's true that these concepts, like all cultural and social concepts, might break down upon extremely close examination. There are often degrees and exceptions. But I think we can use them just fine.
I more or less agree with your interpretation but it seems to me that the crux of any disagreement you have with Alicorn may well be over your respective defintions of 'straight' for males and females rather than a disagreement over the prevalence of certain behaviours.
Examples of behaviours that are quite common between girls I consider 'straight' but I would consider an indication of homosexuality in (western/anglo-american) males: holding hands; kissing on the lips; sharing a bed; overtly sexual dancing; commenting on the sexual attractiveness of other females. Would you consider any of these behaviours evidence that your girlfriend is not straight? Would Alicorn consider any of them evidence that a girl is not straight? That's where I think some clarification is needed.
For what it's worth, I know a few women (2 certainly, 1 arguably) who strike me as reasonably self-aware, are at least as familiar with the concept of orientation in the abstract as I am, whose sex lives I'm reasonably well acquainted with, who have expressed sexual attraction to and initiated/accepted sexual intercourse with a number of men, and who have expressed (sometimes with regret) their lack of sexual attraction to and have never initiated/accepted sexual intercourse with any women.
Calling them straight seems reasonable to me... certainly I would call myself gay were all of that true of me.
That said, I can certainly imagine all of them having sex with another woman were the circumstances perfectly aligned (at least, I suppose I can imagine it; I've never actually done so and it seems vaguely impolite to do so now, especially since I'm at work).
There are also "David Bowie bisexuals", straight men willing to identify as bisexual in solidarity with the gay rights movement, or as an acknowledgement of the general fluidity of sexuality and gender.
Interesting. I'm pretty sure my gay friends would find this offensive and patronizing.
This isn't exactly very common (I can't think of a David Bowie bisexual other than David Bowie), and David Bowie was also all kinds of crazy and drugged up at the time. Saying he was gay was kind of stupid, but it certainly was not the dumbest thing he did under the influence of drugs. This is the guy who read some Nietzsche and then misunderstood it so dramatically that he wrote The Supermen. Good song, though.
I'm willing to forgive David Bowie for nearly anything.
We could almost call Oh! You Pretty Things transhumanist pop.
I'd embed a copy of the song but Markdown doesn't allow, so anyone that wants to listen will have to google for it.
I have trouble imagining how I would feel if heterosexuals were persecuted and one of my gay male friends kissed a woman to show solidarity.
So I think I just figured out the motivation behind this tactic which wasn't obvious to me before (maybe it was to you). I doubt straight men innately dislike kissing or showing affection toward men. It seems more likely to me that they (okay, we) are either homophobic or wary of the status cost of being seen as gay or bisexual. Thus a straight male who declares himself to be bisexual demonstrates a rejection of homophobia and in part shows that he doesn't think being gay or bisexual is low status and refuses to accept some (but not all) of the privileges he has as a straight male (the privilege language is obviously controversial but it probably isn't to the people who do this).
The problem is part of the anti-gay narrative is that homosexuality isn't actually an important part of anyone's identity, that it isn't innate but basically just people choosing to be "sinful". Identifying as bisexual for political reasons bolsters this position. "If these straight males can choose to behave like bisexuals, then the bisexuals can choose to behave like good, church-going straight people!" Also, the fact is a straight male really can't take on the same persecution non-heterosexuals face. They can always opt out and they are never told that a part of their identity is immoral (their told that the act their putting on is immoral, but that isn't the same thing). And of course in some circles being gay or bisexual is a status booster- my friends would be suspicious I was "coming out" for these status-benefits, not out of a genuine attempt at solidarity. Actually, I've seen this complain leveled at some college-aged bisexual women.
I went to a kissing workshop. (Things escalated slowly and nothing was mandatory.) I was turned off more quickly than I expected by kisses with guys - just by a very short closed-mouth kiss.
(I like hugs though.)
I'm certain I'd also benefit from the bisexual pill, and my aversion to the idea is irrational.
"I hate spinach, which is a good thing because if I liked it I'd eat it all the time, and I hate the stuff." - half remembered second-hand quote, apparently from the 19th C(?)
I understand that you're describing another's position not your own, but can you describe how that position's predictions differ from the predictions from "true bisexuality"?
I suppose it predicts a likelihood that any given male bisexual will more and more exclusively have sexual relationships with males, a higher probability of eventually identifying as gay (relative to the probabilities of those of other orientations changing their identifications) and a low probability of a successful and happy relationship with a female.
ETA: The number of people who still identify as bisexual and lead bisexual lifestyles late into adulthood should be negligible modulo some kind of continued denial.
So having been in the bi community for 19 years, I should know lots of men who used to identify as bi but now identify and behave as gay, and relatively few who still identify and behave as bi? In that case I can confidently say that this is nonsense.
Obviously the ones who "turn gay" might not continue to come to bi events, but I'd still have noticed through social networking websites.
I dunno... I talked to a couple of (male, straight) friends of mine about this once. We all agreed that although we were straight, 100% would be an exaggeration. I think it's probably a continuum, although dominance/submission factors muddy the waters a bit too.
EDIT: I have now officially heard of the Kinsey scale.
I don't think the fact that most straight men wouldn't say 100% is particularly strong evidence against the original thesis. It is consistent with the claim that sexual orientation for men is very heavily clustered at the poles of the Kinsey scale.
On the other hand, I think I've read claims that everyone is actually bisexual, and people who claim they're heterosexual are just suppressing their homosexual tendencies and vice versa.
Well, the claims are certainly made. I find them about as absurd as the claims that everyone is actually monosexual, myself, though I'd certainly agree that there are a whole lot of people asserting a far greater degree of monosexuality than they actually possess.
Whenever this subject comes up I'm reminded of a woman at a party who was trotting out the "there are no bisexual men, they're just gay men in denial" chestnut, to which I replied "Right! I mean, consider me and my husband. We've been in a monogamous same-sex relationship for the last twenty years, but we claim to be bisexual solely to preserve our heterosexual privilege. Um. No, wait, how does that work again?"
She was annoyed with me.
My understanding is that bisexuality rarely endures past one's twenties, and that bisexuals of both genders tend to end up choosing men. Of course, that may stem from the fact that publicly displayed bicuriousity is far less ostracized when it occurs amongst women, so more straight-leaning women are tempted to fool around than straight-leaning men, resulting in most bisexuals settling with men.
Of course, there are people who remain bisexual past that, and my data is not exactly rigorously gathered - I have some friends who study psychology and sexuality, and I've heard it from them.
Bisexual males often don't identify as 50-50 which complicates the matter.
Is someone who is what might be called "prison gay" bisexual? (That is, someone who will engage in homosexual acts as a substitute for masturbation, but is not physically attracted to members of the same sex. Yes, it's probably a bad/loaded term, but I don't know what a better one is.)
As I understand it, it's a standard human response to being trapped with substandard mates to have increasingly-greater estimates of their attractiveness. This has no relevance to sexual orientation.
There don't seem to be any findable sources that present an unbiased view on the matter (say, relevant statistics), and I suspect that the categories are sufficiently fluid at the moment that the question would be difficult to pin down.