Photo by Flickr user antosousa. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In a general disquisition on attractions to different sexes, Julie of r e d l i g h t says

A common belief is that bisexuals cannot be happy when they pick only a man or only a woman. I believe this is wrong. I mean, I’m attracted to brunettes and redheads, but if I date a brunette, I don’t also need to have a redhead on the side. Granted, hair color is insignificant compared to penis/vagina, but the comparison fits my point of view.

Read the quote in context here.

Pretty much sums it up why the assumption that bisexuals are automatically interested in three-ways or polyamory are overblown.

Many years ago a small-is-beautiful curmudgeon I read complained that a lot of people have a tendency to equate the words maximum and optimum. He quipped that an optimum body temperature was 98.6 F degrees, but it was by no means the maxumum body temperature.

Of course some bisexuals think multiple partners are or would be the bee’s knees, but most likely only in the same way non-bisexuals would — because they believe or else they’ve discovered it would be a lovely experience — and not because as bisexuals the only way they can find fulfillment is by simultaneously experiencing both.

Update: Hmm. Must be something in the atmosphere as there seem to be a lot of reflective posts about the reality vs. fantasy of bisexuality today.

Best by far is Piny of Feministe, not least for a nice bit of grounding snark

I am shy, and I do tend to dress like someone who expects to get paint all over her clothes at some point in the day, but…I do not understand this argument. I hear it a lot. Where is all this sex that we’re supposed to be having? Why have I not seen the benefit of these increased odds? Why aren’t all my bi-identified friends living lives of idle cheatin’, as opposed to the durable partnerships they seem to commit themselves to? Are we some sort of aberration?

You’d probably enjoy the rest of her post too. Read it here.

But also extra credit for linking it with another, even more pernicious and perilous myth

And maybe I’m wrong to say that this argument makes exactly as much sense as the belief that your gay coworker will attempt to hump your leg in the men’s room because, after all, you have a penis.

Can’t remember who it was that said it’s pretty arrogant of straight men to imagine themselves attractive to gay men. I think it’s a little more complicated than that (men, who unlike women are the sex class in the dominant paradigm, and therefore get a little panicky around gay men because of that suddenly-pesky indoctrination never to say no) but arrogance or no it’s still more of the same when we imagine bisexual partners would be eager to bring their same-as-their-sex friends along to bed with us. And if the next thought it “maybe instead they want to bring same-as-*our*-sex friends that’s still living inside other fantasies.

Still not to say it doesn’t or couldn’t happen, just that the odds don’t really go up as much as the standard fantasy insists.