Bi?

[Safe_Bet]

Many people these days declare loud and hard 'I am this/I am that.'

Lesbian
Gay
Bi-sexual
Transexual

...What the fuck does 'LGBT' really mean???

It's just a current fashionable phrase that will find itself locked into a particular zeitgeist and era.

Spoken like someone who has never had to fight for their human rights nor has ever been spit on, beaten or abused because of who they are.

Fucking god damn right I loudly declare I'm a lesbian. I fought hard as hell for the right to do so and your rights to be a "I'm kinda, sorta Bi when it suits, just don't call me that!" person.

You can sluff off the political and social part of being lesbian, gay or trans if you are bi (and can "blend" back into the hetero world when needed/desired, but don't you dare diss those of us who both can't and won't and who work for YOUR freedom to be what ever the fuck you want to be.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Those people who did the spitting, kicking, and abusing, didn't somehow change their minds overnight because of 'rights' being given by rules and regulations and laws.

Failing to address why people behave the way some of them do - with violence and aggression and prejudice - is part of the persisting problem.

To me a lot of what has recently been happening is a series of blithe short-cuts that end up with external and simplistic effects that are not going to be far-reaching or long-running. There was nothing democratic that happened on a broad scale that changed the laws - far from it.

Sure, one can say but on that reasoning we never should have abolished slavery either - but it's not that it shouldn't have been abolished at law, it should have been abolished in people's heads and in the prejudices they have - and it hasn't. Because the process used for addressing the issue was flawed.

I'm on the extreme idealistic end of all of this because I'll never be satisfied inside unless and until people DON'T just go around kicking and spitting and abusing - as a function of what it means to be a human, what it means to be in a human society.

I'm afraid all I see around me are thugs in black with a lot heavy armour turning their weapons on civilians - because they are there at the beck and call of elite interests to make sure that people do not have individual human rights.

Nothing has changed.

 

[stickygirl]

Given the depth of BS on this thread now
*unsubscribes*

 

[Bramblethorn]

Those people who did the spitting, kicking, and abusing, didn't somehow change their minds overnight because of 'rights' being given by rules and regulations and laws.

Nope, and it's not about changing their minds. It would be great if all the bigots in the world grew past their prejudices and learned to love LGBTI folk but I don't know anybody who believes that's going to happen. The object here is more about rendering that bigotry less dangerous by diminishing its power.

Sure, one can say but on that reasoning we never should have abolished slavery either - but it's not that it shouldn't have been abolished at law, it should have been abolished in people's heads and in the prejudices they have - and it hasn't. Because the process used for addressing the issue was flawed.

There's truth in this. America is still racist as fuck (not claiming Australia is better) and the equality that exists on paper is a long way from the reality.

But what's the better way of doing it? If we'd decided to let slavery continue until the slave-owners were all ready to give it up, we'd still be waiting. We'd have the same set of prejudices, only with the law on their side.

Nothing has changed.

I think you'd have trouble finding a black person anywhere in the USA who'd agree that abolishing slavery changed nothing - even while most might agree that the job is still far from complete.

 

[LesbianChickLit]

I had only meant to ask for general opinion in on sexual identity. I have no doubts of my political identity (Libertarian for anyone who's counting). Granted, for many people sexual and political identities are inexorably fused.

Exact definitions of human rights under law are important and every social justice movement fighting to protect life, liberty, and property for all citizens is important, especially for portions of the population who are naturally or politically vulnerable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bygP_su1o_g

Things have changed. CPS isn't perfect and sometimes kids go from bad homes to bad foster homes, but at least I have as much legal right to protect a child as I do a horse.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

If I wanted to find a black person in the USA I'd go to a jail and look.

If I wanted to find an Aboriginal in Australia I'd go to a jail and look.

Nothing's changed.

What's the way around this or forward from this? Something different from anything commonly seen or known about, that's for sure.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

But if I think about the OP's starting issue, to me it's a pretty good example of how people's priorities are fluid from one person to another:

Some people just don't care what other people - even their friends - think, and other people do care a lot about what people think about them, what judgements are being made and so on.

Is there some decisive way of determining what the accurate situation is? You might be able to say that there is a spectrum of orientations - maybe someone leans more to being gay than bi and that the demarcation point is actually a 'region' like a 'phase shift' in spectrometry, and not a single point or line.

This is all very mechanistic and hardly gives much ground to variations between individual human beings - or the legitimate potential for wide variation.

Even so, even if you want to BE mechanistic, you can't just jump from simple XX / XY chromosome physical outcomes and brain structures - and I've seen quite a few scientists do it - because once you add in the dimension of neural networks that people build up themselves during their maturing and their experience sets, the number of pontential network structures is so absolutely incredibly vast that really, you could just go on and on and on having completely individual individuals and not subsets with easy labels, and therefore I would say the concept of 'normal' is factually meaningless, although 'normative' inside a society in which a person accepts themselves as being a part of, has meaning if you CHOOSE to accept labels in order to fit into that society.

My sense of what the OP 'is,' (?) is that she is gay, in the ordinary definition of the word.

And that is going to lead to or open some questions about what it means to be 'bi.'

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Time for me to crash the party.

Many of you know me.

I may stick around...or go...dependent on the depth of smarts here in Gay World.

If I ever become President I intend to put most of you in detention camps because your politics eat shit. My chief opposition to queers is your politics. Also, your jealousy tantrums make it difficult for me to have gay pals. Queers are born with the vapors.

I stipulate there are a few humans exclusively queer and straight, but I believe the thrill factor is normally distributed, with 2/3rds of humans in the middle, and a few purists at the extremes. That is, if I gotta bet the farm on your sexuality youre bi.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Where are all the fags and fagettes?

 

[stickygirl]

Where are all the fags and fagettes?

Aww - will no one come out to play with you?

 

[haurni]

But if I think about the OP's starting issue, to me it's a pretty good example of how people's priorities are fluid from one person to another:

[...]

Is there some decisive way of determining what the accurate situation is? You might be able to say that there is a spectrum of orientations - maybe someone leans more to being gay than bi and that the demarcation point is actually a 'region' like a 'phase shift' in spectrometry, and not a single point or line.

This is all very mechanistic and hardly gives much ground to variations between individual human beings - or the legitimate potential for wide variation.

[...]

And that is going to lead to or open some questions about what it means to be 'bi.'

Sexual orientation (and gender identity, while we're at it) are not binary - at the simplest, they're located on a continuum (probably multidimensional) and are also variable over time. Given our inability to accurately measure human behaviour, it's not possible to say something like "I'm 84.3% straight today". We therefore assign convenient labels to different parts of the spectrum as a short-hand for saying "I feel like this most of the time". The variation is in the reality, the labels simply don't do the reality justice. The down-side of this short-hand is that other people may not understand it in the same way. If there's any confusion as to what someone means, perhaps the best way to understand them is to just talk to them and learn what they mean by the label they've adopted.

I call myself bisexual for convenience, but I'm much more likely to be interested in a romantic relationship with a woman than a man (maybe 85%). While my sexual preference is closer to 70/30, I watch almost exclusively hetero porn (90/10). Behaviourally, in terms of the number of partners I've actually had (and exactly how you define 'sex'), I'm somewhere between 60/40 and 80/20. I'd rate myself a '2' on the Kinsey Scale (0-6). The label I most prefer at the moment is 'heteroinclined'. It's complicated.

 

[stickygirl]

That sounds about right.
only posted this to bump it up

 

[Black13]

I don't even bother trying to describe my sexuality anymore. I want what I want, and I know it when it's there.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

"The labels simply don't do the reality justice." (Said haurni)

The nail. The head. Whack! Right on.

 

[avalanche777]

Almost every girl in the world is partly bisexual. That's totally OK. Even great! It's double your chances to find a date on Friday's evening.

 

[PleasePeesMe]

I absolutely adore sex

So I'd be crazy to write off half the population, wouldn't I?

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Thanks everyone. I guess I am bi then. I would have sworn I was gay. Oh well.
She's known me since I was 17 and I haven't been with a guy since before that, so she doesn't have to worry about me meeting an Adonis. We just get into stupid arguments now and then. This one is worse than usual of course, because now I havee to go admit that I was wrong.

I'm so late to this party, but bored, I'm surfing through to forums and stumbled up on this thread.

Here's my thought: Our transgendered friends are allowed to self-identify their gender preferences without question from those who are caring and sensitive about such matters. So, why aren't the rest of allowed to self-identify our sexual preferences without others attempting to correct us? It's not a spectrum or a continuum, it's a choice.

If you're gay, then be gay. Be 100% gay until that no longer suits you. Straight people come out as gay all the time. Why can't the rest of us choose and have our choices accepted?

 

[haurni]

We absolutely should be able to, yes, and be respected whatever that choice may be.

 

[tiny_tits]

I really hate labels.

I took a Psych course a while back, and all it did was label people and conditions.

If you have a disorder, I can somewhat see the purpose- how do you treat someone before diagnosing the problem?

But when it comes to sexuality- if it isn't a problem, lets not label it!