Biheterohomosexual

Sexuality has frequently been a puzzle for me, throughout my life. Even after having dated both women and men, I don't see much of a difference. If someone asks me my sexuality I tend to answer bisexual, but there have been periods of my life that I've found myself saying I'm straight or gay. I guess I'm an active participant in the process of bisexual erasure, or so I might be accused. Being bisexual is such a complicated position to be in, because discrimination comes from all sides.

There are a bunch of bisexual stereotypes. Often even gay-friendly people think bisexuals are ..

.. gay and in denial.
.. only experimenting and will eventually just settle for a straight relationship.
.. hypersexual and having sex with whoever is willing.
.. thinking it will make them more sexy to their boyfriends.
.. lonely or desperate and will take whatever they can get.

And then there are the typical religious gay bashers that just call them sodomites the same as homosexuals.

I can of course understand why some of these stereotypes exist. Pornography is bi-friendly - straight guys apparently don't always like to see dicks in their porn, and like the naughty idea of girls fucking and letting them watch. So a lot of guys fetishize lesbians, Katy Perry kisses a girl (and then compares it to "kissing [her] own elbow" in an interview), Madonna and Britney kiss, and the image of girls making love is made to seem sexy, loose and adventurous because it's taboo and they all know it.

A woman's sexuality is expected to be somewhat less strict than a man's. Dan Savage says female sexuality is fluid where male sexuality is solid. I'm not sure how much biological truth there is to that. History is littered with examples and norms of men having male sexual partners while marrying women, from the Far East to the West, so maybe both men and women have somewhat fluid sexualities, and the rigidity is just due to our repressed puritan culture.

All this just makes me really uncomfortable with admitting that I feel bisexual. If I'm with a guy, it doesn't seem to matter so much and leads to awkward situations if he knows. If I'm with a girl, it will just put this little spot of doubt in the back of her mind that maybe one day I'll decide I'm straight and dump her, especially since I'm rather femme.

So, even now, when I know I'm bi, I still will sometimes just let people assume what they want and then act accordingly. If they assume I'm gay, I stick to that. In fact I'm more comfortable with that than if people assume I'm straight. I guess that assumption bothers me because I identify so much with gay culture, and tend to gravitate toward the lesbian crowd if I'm alone in a group.

It's not so comfortable for me to be out loud and bi proud. There's the rarely spoken but obvious truth that if you're bi, your life will have a lot less adversity if you have a straight relationship. Gay people don't have that choice. They're stuck only loving the people that will get them called sodomites, stuck having to deal with all sorts of prejudices that bisexuals can choose to sidestep if they so desire. Although to a certain extent one can't choose who one falls in love with, so it's not quite so simple.

To add to the complication, right now I'm not dating men. I've made that an absolute rule. I've had too many bad relationships with men, so I'm much more interested in women these days. I want to develop that side of me, as my only relationship with a girl was really wonderful, long and complex. We didn't have sex - it was an early high school relationship. So, I've yet to have sex with a woman, despite so often wanting to.

So, since I'm choosing to not date men, I may as well be gay. Should I say that I am? I already do to the guys who hit on me that I want nothing to do with, though it doesn't always avert them and occasionally makes them worse. It's still not true though. If I'm being honest, I should just say, "I'm not looking for a guy, I'm looking for a girl." or something along those lines, because it's true that I'm not looking for or interested in men right now.

Anyway, sexuality is sure to come up again in this blog, since it's such an interesting topic to me.