March 03, 2004

• From my what I've seen, most women who claim to be bi are only claiming it because most boys think it is cool. Then there's also the little thing called hegemony. While some may go both ways, society makes it easier to go straight (admittedly it is a lot different than it once was, but still...)
• Your experience runs counter to mine. All the women I know who claim to be bisexual do so because, well, they like having sex with women and men. Not necessarily at the same time.
• Man, rodgerd, I'm surprised you passed up an opportunity to link the 1:23 p.m. post. That's classic! I will be sending that to everyone I know. BTW, my friends and I have often commented that it might be, at times, quite nice to be gay.
• Yeah, the bi-women I've encountered seem to be highly sexual, they have an aura around them that can't be ignored. It's weird. But they also don't seem to have alot of deeply close relationships. I think it would be much harder to be bisexual. If you wanted to settle down, you'd likely have to find a partner willing to have an open relationship.
• i saw jon stewart perform live last friday, he had a great bit on gay marriage. says bush must be scared to death of gays: "i just know it, if there's a gay couple next door i just KNOW i'm gonna end up over there in a threesome! gotta pass an amendment!" heh.
• My current g-friend is bi, sort of... She indicated early in our relationship that she would be interested in a threesome, then retracted her comment once she started to fall in love with me. Needless to say, I was kinda bummed and flattered at the same time. She considered herself lesbian for the first few years of her active sexual life, then bi, now she says that she is "a straight woman who likes to kiss girls". A bit confusing for moi, a pretty much vanilla hetero dude, but it becomes more and more apparent to me as I grow in experience that there are more sexual shades of gray than "straight", "gay", and "bi".
• "Martial sex tends toward the boring end," he points out. "Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does" Best fucking quote ever. Although he claims to be an expert in many sexual areas, I'm calling bullshit. If he really knew what he was talking about he'd know that marital sex is far too rare to be anything but boring.
• Married much?
• rodgerd, if that link makes me catch The Gay
• And explain it too!
• This all reminds me of the futurama episode where Fry starts going out with a robot Lucy Liu, and he's forced to watch this film to show him the perils of this: Narrator [in movie]: Ordinary human dating. It's enjoyable and it serves an important purpose. [He turns the table over and a crying baby appears. He turns it back again.] But when a human dates an artificial mate, there is no purpose. Only enjoyment. And that leads to...tragedy. ... Narrator [in movie]: Did you notice what went wrong in that scene? Ordinarily Billy would work hard to make money from his paper route then he'd use the money to buy dinner for Mavis, thus earning the slim chance of performing the reproductive act. But in a world where teens can date robots why should he bother? Why should anyone bother? Let's take a look at Billy's planet a year later. [The scene changes and a foam hand rolls across an empty American football field] Where are all the football stars? [The foam hand continues to drift across an empty laboratory.] And where are the biochemists? [The scene changes to a split screen of a pair of human and robots making out on beds.] They are trapped - trapped in a soft, vice-like grip of robot lips. All civilisation was just an effort to impress the opposite sex. And sometimes the same sex. Now, let's skip forward 80 years into the future. Where is Billy? [The scene changes to a post-apocalyptic world. Billy is an aged man but he is still with his Monroebot and still making out with her.] Billy [in movie]: Farewell! [He dies.] .
• When I finally settled down, I married a blonde; however, even after thirteen years of marriage, I find that I continue to be attracted to brunettes and redheads, just as I was before marrying. I am ashamed to admit that I did not disclose this attraction to my partner before we married. I am, and remain, a (deeply closeted) tricolorsexual.
• The Christian fundamentalists argument against abortion, condems, sex education and homosexuality is actually a bunch of butt-ugly people that couldn't get a piece of ass in highschool (and college.) These are people that are uptight about sex, but they can't come out and say, "We don't like fucking. We think only married people should do the nasty." No one would ever go for that. So they try to destroy sexual freedoms piece by motherfucking piece. But as Bill O'Reilly says, "I could be wrong."
• Good one, that's almost as oversimplified as the fundementalist agruemts against the various sins of the flesh.
• Heck, I could have told you about the addictive properties of lesbians. Sheesh, All you had to do was ask.
• And by the way... I do love that MoFi becomes LeFi/GaFi on an alarmingly regular basis!
• Although I'm curious how an ostensibly straight guy would know about how addictive lesbians are A lesbian trapped in a male body. Girl, I want to take you to a gay bar....
• Good one, that's almost as oversimplified as the fundementalist agruemts against the various sins of the flesh. Actually, no, Keith Talent. If Christians don't have a problem with premarital sex than why do they oppose sex education and birth control? Sex Education

  George W. Bush's recent State of the Union address expressed concern about the numbers of teenagers contracting sexually transmitted diseases, but offered additional funding only to programs that most experts agree are largely ineffective

• "It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush." Fuck. I'm so doing something wrong. Iggy, don't forget BiFi. ...and therein a warning to those who would make, however innocently, such comments as "most women who claim to be bi are only claiming it because most boys think it is cool", or suggest that in some way bisexuality is an unstoppable compulsion to have sex with members of alternate sexes on a strict rota basis. Just sayin', y'know, not having a go at anyone. Monkey love, y'all, monkey love bonobo-style...
• If he really knew what he was talking about he'd know that marital sex is far too rare to be anything but boring. Keith Talent - 1 My Monitor - 0 You know what gay people need to make sex less addictive? Children. One week straight of 3 a.m. feedings and poopy diapers and they'll be nolosexuals.
• This sortay gits us thinkin. How the fuck dae ah ken ah'm no a homosexual if ah've never been wi another guy? Ah mean, really fir sure? Ah've always had a notion tae go aw the wey wi another guy, tae see what it wis like. ... Anywey, ah widnae mind gaun aw the wey wi a gadge, if it felt right. Jist fir the experience. Problem is, ah only really fancy birds. Guys jist dinnae look sexy. It's aw aboot aesthetics, fuck all tae dae wi morality. Renton, in Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh.
• Darshon: I don't see why. Straight people in committed relationships usually try to give up fucking other people. Why do you feel bisexual people would be any different?
• IgnorantSlut: Please, continue with these descriptions of addictive lesbians.
• rodgerd: It'll all be in the memoirs, my boy, all in the memoirs!
• Now that I say/write that it seems like a pretty decent way to make a buck. It really becomes too easy to write a juicy bit of fiction when you've got the experiences of several years worth of working in a lesbian bar.
• rodgerd makes the point more bluntly than I, and in bigger writing. Well done. No malice intended, I'm sure, but it's so easy for some really quite offensive misunderstandings to get casually slung in the direction of bisexuals. I mean, I've actually had people who I considered friends tell me that they didn't think I existed. Now that's a whole new level of insult. Reminds me of a story, though. Some friends of mine once staged an oh-so-indie club night, which they gave a very witty (they thought) title. It was around the time the Manics released If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next, and they all had a love/hate thing with the Scottish indiepop band Bis (pronounced to rhyme with 'this'). So the name If You Tolerate Bis, Your Children Will Be Next seemed just perfect... Sweet lord above, did they get some flak from the LBGT people over that. We now return you to your normal lesbians.
• that's odd... given what i've been taught, lesbians have the lowest sex drive. hetero couples come in second, and gay males in first place. so, if lesbian sex is so addictive, how come they don't do it all the time? of course it doesn't make it any better that there are political forces in the world of science; each time one group finds evidence that homosexuality may be genetically based (and thus definitively not a choice, making it that much easier to say anti-gay is as wrong as anti-black, etc), an opposing group will attempt to refute the finding. not always to push a religious agenda, either; some of the most active research in neural and genetic differences in gay people is in fact done by gay people, who see different advantages and disadvantages in promoting a specific worldview. huh - occurred to me as i wrote this that even if homosexuality is viewed as a choice, rather than a genetic thing, there would still be a precedent saying it is wrong to discriminate - after all, religion is a choice; if you don't like the religiopn you were born into you can convert, but we don't allow anyone to discriminate against jews or muslims or catholics, etc. nor do we say that buddhists can't get married, or that wicca is addictive, or that once you go baptist you never go back. feh. christian fundamentalists need to find something better to do than push their brand of intolerance and ignorance on the rest of the world. in regards to the aforementioned teen abstinence programs, etc., it strikes me as funny that the parts of the US with the highest percentage of unplanned pregancy seems to be the same places they only teach abstinence. i always liked how when presenting stats on how effective various birth controls are, they include people who forgot to use them or used them incorrectly, to make it look like pills and condoms aren't as effective. why then when presenting abstinence stats don't they include those who forgot to abstain? the fact that we have teen pregnancies is evidence enough that it ain't working. seems to me that, once elected, our leaders immediately forget that they were once horny teenagers who had sex. or that they have, say, a once-vocal gay activist daughter...
• rodgerd, my comments are merely based on who I, personally, have encountered. The bisexuals I have met have all been women. I imagine bisexuals having a more difficult time due to the fact that they have twice as many potential lovers to give up!!!! Any bisexuals out there willing to comment on my naivete?
• I think I just did, didn't I? :-) For starters, no, not twice as many. The old Woody Allen joke about being bisexual doubling your chances of a date on a Saturday night? Nope. Increases it by, ooh, maybe 10%, if you're lucky. Increases chances of rejection by about 90%. (That's comparing bi with straight, obviously. Being gay is a different thing entirely, what with the tendency to cluster together. But a bi person going onto the gay scene is then ruling out... oh, you get the picture.) Most other bisexuals I know are by nature romantic, slightly quirky and a little introverted, often in committed, extremely affectionate monogamous relationships, and with no more of a hedonistic sexual history than your average person. But that's probably more inidcative of the kind of people I know than of anything else. Which is kind of the point. What I would suggest is that you've almost certainly known more bisexual people than you think. It's just that the ones who wanted to shag everything that moved were the only ones you ever found out about... c l frogs - that's an extremely good point about buddhists being allowed to marry. I shall remember it, and use it in anger.
• This thread sounds like a club for the bashers-of-sexual purity. Or at least those who support it.
• Sounds more to me like a bunch of people saying "do what the hell you feel comfortable with". Why not start your own abstinence thread? It's fun and it's free! And I promise not to sniff your bed!
• If you don't believe lesbian sex is addictive, watch When Night is Falling... (Generally safe for work, though perhaps a little sexy - sorry for Geocities link, but IMDB had no pictures for this brilliant but very indie Canadian film.) My boyfriend won't let me watch it anymore, because he thinks it gives me the wrong ideas. (I try to tell him that they stay just as ideas, but ...) and to jump on the bi-derail - You can be bisexual without even having kissed a member of the same sex, or the opposite sex. Simple question: do you find some members of the same sex sexy? Do you find some members of the opposite sex sexy? If you answered "yes" to both questions, you might be bisexual. f8x, not so much bashing sexual purity as bashing bashers - though Mofi is a bit of a sexfilter. I am fully in favour of abstinance - so long as you wear a condom when abstaining :)
• Hot damn! I've been bisexual all this time and didn't even know it! Maybe this is why my best friend keeps trying to get me into bed! Unfortunately, just not my type.
• Well, it's all really just an identity thing, Darshon. The idea of being straight or gay is kind of a twentieth century invention (not the desires, but the way the desires now are part of identity). But it's also a polite shorthand for "breasts are nice, but so are flat chests," and so forth. But that never has meant that bisexual people are attracted to anyone - we have standards, and tastes, and some of us are primarily attracted to people wearing pocket protectors. (It's just that pocket-sexual sounds so wrong...)
• f8xmulder: Perhaps you could contribute something other than snark to the thread. If, as you seem to imply, yoiu feel that Paul Cameron's ideas are not those of a crackpot, you might care to explain why. Otherwise, you're just bringing us down to MeFi standards of behaviour. Darshon: I did, didn't I? Seriously, I'm not sure it's that much of a difference than, say, giving up on other physical attributes you like if the person you fall for doesn't have them. If you like large breasts, but fall for a woman with small ones, it's not customary to suggest you be allowed to fondle ample women from time to time on the side to get your fix. Of course, one can also work outside strict monogamy in many and varied ways. And I'm not surprised you know bi women rather than a mix of men and women. Bisexuality is between "permissible" and "actively trendy" in women these days, but will still likely get you the same range of "funny looks" to "punch in the mouth" for bi men that gays enjoy.
• Of course, one can also work outside strict monogamy in many and varied ways. *laughs like bejeezus* (Married, and wishing to keep balls attached to usual bits.)
• jb, you're my hero on these sorts of threads. And give "Better than Chocolate" a spin. Neat, funny, mildly erotic movie. One of the better I've seen. Case(s) in point on sexual identity pretty much abound, especially in classic Greece and Rome as Westener friendly examples. In Spartan society it was expected men would take a male lover in their teens and then a wife in their late twenties (prior to becoming a full citizen at 30), whereupon the male lover would become a close friend, but no longer a sexual intimate. In both Greek and Roman societies it was not considered remarkable for a man to have a younger male lover from time to time; social stigma was more attached to what you did with them (it would be scandalous to suggest that a middle aged man still sucked cock; that was something young men were supposed to do to their elders; "tops" and "bottoms" were very much tied in with social class and age). Notions of strict hetero or homosexuality only started coming about in Rome with the rise of Christianity and the Pauline hatred of sex; while the Stoic ideas of restraint had always been popular with Romans, particularlyt the aristocracy, actual dislike of sex per se was a new idea.
• Wolof: I was thinking of prior arrangements people make, rather than more, shall we say, ad hoc situations. The former is moral, the latter immoral.
• Eagle flies on Friday...
• By the way, f8x, I'm not joking. I regret the pile-on, but start your own thread. In no way was I snarking on you. Just expressing an honest opinion. OK?
• i say we all join the woodhull foundation. "The Woodhull Freedom Foundation brings together experienced, successful sexual freedom activists who seek to eliminate the barriers governmental and private to expressions of human sexuality in the United States and around the world." huzzah!
• Wolof: no offense taken. I suppose I could start my own thread, but then I might not get any real work done...
• rodgerd: okay, I'll bite. Sullivan says: "The Christian fundamentalists argument against abortion, condems, sex education and homosexuality is actually a bunch of butt-ugly people that couldn't get a piece of ass in highschool (and college.) These are people that are uptight about sex, but they can't come out and say, "We don't like fucking. We think only married people should do the nasty." No one would ever go for that. So they try to destroy sexual freedoms piece by motherfucking piece" So because I'm a fundamentalist who actually DOES believe in the sanctity of sex within marriage (and conversely, decry its profane use outside of marriage), I get characterized as someone who "couldn't get a piece of ass in high school". That's so fair. Thanks for taking my religious and moral beliefs and boiling them down into some misplaced, self-hatred ideology. I acknowledge that some, in fact many of my Christian counterparts are prigs about sex. However, there are some Christians out there, believe it or not, who celebrate sex and yet still abide by Christian principles when designating when sex is appropriate. To us, sex is and always was intended by God as a pleasurable activity to be engaged in by a married couple. That a thousand+ years of misread Pauline doctrine regarding sexual purity has been reduced to, "Christians hate sex." is indicative of the total ignorance on the part of the "fundie bashers". Like Sullivan, for instance, who, I hesitate to say, might be projecting a bit. rodgerd: "If, as you seem to imply, yoiu feel that Paul Cameron's ideas are not those of a crackpot, you might care to explain why." Actually, Mr. Cameron does sound like a crackpot. I just don't dig on comments like this: "If Christians don't have a problem with sex than there is no reason to be against measures that would help prevent AIDS, STDs and unwanted pregnancies." (again, Sullivan) Let's face facts. Christians do have problems with sex outside of marriage. And why not? Since the advent of the sexual revolution, we've seen increased disease, AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, poverty, crime, etc. etc. All the things that sexual purity (abstinence until marriage) would prevent. So please, let's not bash something that is, at its heart, a very socially constructive moral pillar.
• And why not? Since the advent of the sexual revolution, we've seen increased disease, AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, poverty, crime, etc. etc. I don't think I agree with that. I expect Britain, for example, has much less poverty now than it did in Victorian times, much less crime too, and disease. And unwanted pregancies, too. People have always had sex outside of marriage - the difference is now people are more honest about it. Which in my opinion is a good thing. Honesty, I mean. We can always do with more honesty, less hypocrisy, I feel. That's not to say abstinence until marriage wouldn't necessarily be a good thing - although i don't believe it is - but to say that people (in general) have never actually stuck to it.
• MonkeyFilter: All your sexuality are belong to us. Jumping forward a few millenia from the Greco-Roman sexual melting pot, the origins of modern sexual identities (the straight/gay binary opposition) can be traced back to the eighteenth century. Previously, the priviledge to do whatever one wanted was, like in ancient Greece, a class thing; the kind of stuff the Earl of Rochester got up to was stuff only people called something like "the Earl of Rochester" could get away with. But during the eighteenth century, for example in the Molly Houses of London, a 'gay culture' began to emerge. The very fact that it was, by necessity, a secretive, underground phenomenon led to it being explicitly set-up as an opposition to heterosexual culture; they would conduct weddings and even 'births' that were both assertions of personal validity - rites of passage, almost - and yet also parodies of the straight norm. Eventually, the fire-and-brimstone preachers got their way, and the Molly Houses were almost all shut down, but (through a reaction to societal oppression and non-acceptance) the idea of 'gay' as opposed to 'straight' was cemented. There was an excellent Channel 4 documentary about this, Queer as 18th Century Folk, in which (you'll be glad to hear) I played a Georgian rent-boy. Oh, and don't even get me started in institutionalized homesexuality in Papua New Guinea. Those people are sick, do you hear me, sick! On preview: yeah, f8x, what Sully said was pretty dumb, and decidedly uninformative. There is an argument (a vague and hand-waving one, to be sure) that can be made about christianity and 'fear of sex', but that certainly isn't it.
• dng: From The American Enterprise - "In Victorian England, the proportion of illegitimate births to total births fell from 7 percent in 1845 to less than 4 percent by the end of the century. In 1960, English illegitimacy began to rise--from 5 percent in 1960 to 32 percent at the end of 1992, a sixfold rise in three decades. In the United States, the figures are no less dramatic. Starting at 3 percent in 1920 (the first year for which there are national statistics), the illegitimacy ratio rose gradually to slightly over 4 percent by 1960 (the same figure as England), after which it grew rapidly, more than doubling by 1970, and reaching 30 percent by 1991. Or let us take another "moral statistic": crime. In England between 1856 and 1901, the rate of serious crimes declined by almost 50 percent. The absolute numbers are even more graphic: while the population grew from 19 million to 33 million, the number of offenses fell from 92,000 to 81,000. England's low crime rate persisted until the mid-1920's when it started to rise leveling off or declining slightly in the early 1950s. A dramatic rise started in the mid-1950s, and by 1991 the crime rate was 10 times that of 1955 and 40 times that of 1901. National crime statistics for the United States start only in 1960, but local statistics suggest that, as in England, crime generally decreased from the latter half of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. A rapid increase started in 1960, the rate tripling by 1980. A decline in the early 1980s was followed by another rise, bringing the 1992 rate to a level somewhat lower than its peak in 1980. The rate of violent crime followed the general pattern, except that the increase after 1985 was more precipitous, making for an almost fivefold rise from 1960. "
• Cheers, f8xmulder. I'll have to look into that. It contradicts what I have heard before, though. (Hey, even when presented with facts I'm not going to believe I'm wrong, obviously...)
• Likewise, dng. Keep in mind I'm not advocating that a return to Victorian society is the answer. But the stats are somewhat revealing.
• f8x - "illegitimate" and "unwanted" pregnancies aren't the same thing, though, surely? It also seems likely to me that the number of recorded illegitimate (i.e., out of wedlock) births would skyrocket with the crumbling of the social disapproval of such a status. In Victorian times, nobody would want to admit to either having an illegitimate child, or to put such an obstacle in their child's way. Also, crime in Victorian England - the fall in crime from 1856 onwards is most likely due to the fact that it was only then that proper police forces were being established around the country (following on from the County and Borough Police Act of 1856). And the upward trend in crime begins before the sexual revolution. Moreover, I have to say I don't immediately see the link between changing sexual morality and crime. Fascinating link though, and although I have quibbles, I'm not dismissing it out of hand. Oh, darn it. I have so much work to do, and yet I feel another 953 coming on...
• Don't you guys ruin lesbian sex for me, dammit. It's every man's right to imagine two women locked in a passionate embrace, lovingly caressing each other's silky smooth skin, touching, caressing.... Ahem. Er. Yeah. Don't you ruin this for me, fuckers!
• Don't worry, jim. As I understand it, they're actually just waiting for a real man to come along and show them what they've been missing... :-)
• Have you told Kimberly about this, jim_t?
• flashboy: I don't doubt that the number of recorded illegitimate births after Victorian values fell away would have risen, or rather did rise. But isn't that kind of my point? Social values, or virtues, as this author attests, impact social ills. Unless you're arguing that illegitimate births are not a problem to civilized society, in which case, Victorian values are simply a wasted effort at combatting an inevitable trend. I really should have made my allusions more clear. General crime, perhaps, has a less tenuous connection to sexual morality than, say, the number of abortions in a given year. Obviously, though, even basic common sense tells us that areas that have greater instances of single mothers, for instance, have a greater crime rate than other areas. Poverty is generally higher in areas in which rampant sexual activity occurs. Instances of disease (esp. sexually transmitted ones) are also more common. Whether you see a direct link or a distant causation, there are definitely trends. That's all I'm sayin'. Please, not another 953 so soon...
• Obviously, though, even basic common sense tells us that areas that have greater instances of single mothers, for instance, have a greater crime rate than other areas. Basic common sense has never told me that. And I live in single mother central. And, despite my comment yesterday, its quite a quiet and pleasant land round here. (When in doubt, resort to random anecdote, thats what I always say.)
• I don't understand at all the straight guy "lesbian" [irony quotes] porn fixation. I mean, it doesn't squick me the way that red-hot man-on-man action does, sure; but presumably there's some stronger appeal than "less squicky," yes? /pornfilter
• HoMoFi. Er, quickly - illegitimate simply meaning a child not born to a married couple. This is not by itself a social ill (in my ethical framework) as that includes many unmarried couples who are wonderful parents, in a long-term relationship, and who may well get married after the brith of their child. Single parents - there's more of a debate there, but I refuse to belive that a single parent is de facto a social ill. Genuinely unwanted children - much more of a social ill, especially for those living in poverty (although I'm sure we have amongst our numbers someone who resulted from an unplanned pregnancy in a poor background, and I'd hesitate to call them a 'social ill', as it might seem a tad impolite). The other stuff - I'll think about later. I have a long tube journey ahead of me. That is not a euphemism, repeat, "a long tube journey" is not a euphemism. Oy.
• dng: append the word "generally" to the end of my statement. I believe in exceptions that prove the rule. Essex may be one of those.
• flashboy, please don't take my calling out of trends as social ills to be personal attacks on anyone who has experienced them. By no means am I suggesting that a single parent is a social ill, or an illegitimate child (my older brother is one, technically). I'm merely suggesting that taken as a whole, those instances of 'less complete' families (wholeness challenged?) are not socially healthy, esp. taken over the long-term. In great enough numbers, a glut of single-parent families might potentially run a society down, due to the statistical likelihood of increased crime, poverty, etc. That's a hypothetical scenario, of course, and isn't likely to happen...
• I had sex once.
• given what i've been taught, lesbians have the lowest sex drive Um, not according to the lesbians I know. But that may be a biased sample. (NYC, home of Hot Monkey Sex!) This is a great thread, and I'd like to compliment dng for excellence in quoting (the futurama one is particularly brilliant).
• flashboy: I prefer to think of it as "all those 'straight' girls are just waiting for a real woman to come along". We recruit, don't ya know! ;)
• I'm totally masturbating right the fuck now.
• BBF: um, ewww.
• Aw, thanks languagehat.
• BBF, if there was ever TMI, that's it.
• I think hope BBF is kidding. Right? RIGHT?!