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When It Comes to Bisexuality and Monogamy, Correlation May Not Even Imply Correlation, Let Alone Causation

Tue, 2009-08-11 12:40 — figleaf

Goose of Living In Outlaw Territory has a cool post about the conundrum of being an adult bisexual. Her point that bisexuality collides not with heterosexuality but with monogamy is pretty interesting.

I would argue that one of the main reasons it is so hard to be bisexual and out is monogamy.  If I am married to a man. Well….um. I’m married. To a man.  In order to have a lesbian relationship in a pretty mono world, I’d have to break up with him (or cheat on him) and get together with a lesbian who is ok with bisexual women.  Well, what to do if I also fall in love with a man?  The issue becomes one of longevity.  Am I more straight cause I’ve been married to a man? Or am I more gay if I suddenly divorce and plunge into the queer world?

She said it here.

I think I’ve heard this objection raised before and the reply was straightforward: bisexuals, like heterosexuals, can be attracted to more than one person but still be monogamous. The flip side, judging from laws going back as far as we’ve got records, is that non-monogamous people can be attracted to more than one person and not be monogamous. In which case it doesn’t really matter whether they’re attracted to only one sex or more than one.

I think it might be intuitive that if you’re bisexual that means you require one of each partner, and if that were true then yeah, that would tend to rule out monogamy. And so since orientation and monogamy are separate dimensions you’re probably not going to see a lot of correlations. Or more accurately, since you’re really not going to be able to tell monogamous bisexuals from monogamous gay or straight people unless they tell you, the casual data people draw any correlations from are likely to be incomplete.

Optimum vs. Maximum: Deflating the Alleged Bisexual Conundrum

Wed, 2008-03-19 10:49 — figleaf


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.

We Need a Way to Cut the Cheese Out of the Porn Debate (and Porn)

Mon, 2007-12-10 19:08 — figleaf


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

So years ago some friends of mine took high-tech jobs in a little mini-Silicon Valley in, of all places, Provo, Utah. Coming as they did from places like Chicago, Santa Cruz, and Albuquerque there were some cultural adjustments. One evening early on, after a close examination of the Yellow Pages, they made their way to the deli in town (*the* deli in town!) for snacks. One of my friends asked what kind of cheeses they had. Brimming with pride the clerk informed them they had both kinds of cheese, yellow and white… Velveeta.

That story sprang to mind when I read about Audacia Ray of Waking Vixen and director of a very nice alt-porn video called The Bi Apple wrestling with the reality that is the, er, industrial porn industry.

In pornoland, bisexual means that the dudes touch each other too. And that’s what I wanted my movie to be. In pornoland, bisexual films fall under the rubric of “gay,” they aren’t included in the world of AVN, they are the propriety of GAYVN. Pornoland is trying to teach us something here: you’re either straight or you’re gay.

I knew, of course, that bisexual movies are weird things, that porn companies don’t understand who the market for these kinds of movies might be, but I also learned from Adam and Eve that without any promotion whatsoever their series “Fine Bi Me,” which is pretty bad porn but is bisexual, has sold briskly. I knew people wanted to see this stuff, and that it could sell, and when Adam and Eve Pictures gave me the chance, I was on it.

...

This week AVN announced the nominations for the awards that will be given in Vegas in January. Reading through the titles of these movies, with classics like “Slant Eye for the Straight Guy” (a nom for Best Asian-Themed Series) and “We All Scream for Ass Cream 2″ (a nom for Best Internal Release), is truly a trip through crazyland, even for someone jaded like me. This year, the list of noms is 58 pages long. ... The GAYVN nomination process is wrapping up this week, and the list of categories is a long too – there are 39 of them.

...

Wow. I’m trying to figure out what this is about, and I know it is not about demand – The Bi Apple has been a best seller for Adam & Eve on a consistent basis since it became available in February, and other bi titles (even bad ones, which is most of them) sell well. It’s really just got to be about the close-mindedness of the adult industry, and the refusal to find space for different kinds of titles.

Read the un-excerpted version here.

Got that? The porn staple “bisexual woman” is actually straight, and movies like Dacia’s that feature men and women, women and women, men and men, and FMM and FFM three-ways are gay. And while such movies sell steadily and well they’re an invisible 4th dimension to those who market and distribute them.

In other words, industrial pornographers make porn for both kinds of people: straight and gay!

And you can’t say it’s for lack of imagine on their part. (Trust me, I like to pretend I have imagination but I doubt I’d ever dreamed up a title so creatively sexist, racist, stereotypist, and pop-culture-derivative-while-simultaneously-tin-eared as “Slant Eye For The Straight Guy.”) Instead it’s just that for any marginal talk of “liberated” or “sexually revolutionary” (or other words borrowed from the early 1970s) pornography as an industry is as thoroughly culturally conservative as the 700 Club… and as thoroughly invested in it.

In terms of the porn/anti-porn debate as articulated by, say, Renegade Evolution on the pro side and Robert Jensen on the anti side, the reality of industrialists like AVN and GAYVN need to be confronted — not just acknowledged but confronted! — by people who think porn’s either harmless or cool. Conversely, the reality of dissidents like Dacia Ray needs to be acknowledged — acknowledged not confronted — by those who think pornography can only be a threat or a menace.

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