Dan Savage on bisexuality

[Etoile]

Hi, Dan. Straight girl here who loves your column. Giddy admiration aside, I have a problem: As time progresses I find myself more and more attracted to women. My first sexual experience was with a woman. So it's pretty apparent that I'm a bisexual. But I don't know who I can talk to about my sudden realization or how I can meet other bisexual women. I go to a rather large university and have been dating men consistently for the past few years, but I want women. What can I do? Thanks.

Hot and Lonely

Finding another bisexual college girl at a large university, HAL, is about as difficult as finding a beer bong on frat row--if you can't find one, you're not looking very hard. According to the new issue of Details (yes, the one with Ashton Kutcher on the cover), people under 25 are all freakin' bisexual these days--even the boys. While some may be tempted to dismiss the story as so much wishful thinking on the part of Details' editors (especially the part about the boys), I know for a fact that it's true. Once upon a time on American college campuses only girls could be casually bisexual, dabble a bit, and still be taken seriously when they claimed to be straight after graduation. Now straight guys are being cut similar sexual slack and I think that's just swell.

So how do you find yourself a girl, HAL? You open your mouth and start telling people you're bisexual, for starters, and once you're comfortable doing that, you start hitting on girls you find attractive. Make yourself easy to find and some hot girl will come along and nab you--but don't be surprised if she wants to bring along her fratrat boyfriend, his beer bong, and the dude he's messing around with on the side too.

I noticed Dan said that people under 25 are all freakin' bisexual these days--even the boys. Does anybody agree with this statement? I do see where he's coming from, as it seems bisexuality is all the rage these days.

 

[SensualMan]

Dan...

I am not that far removed from college and I have to say that there is a certain level of truth to his statements, but it is not nearly as common as he makes it seem. While in my experince there are a growing number of guys that dabble around in bisexuality, I would not categorize most of them as bisexual. Trying it once or twice is a lot different than being bisexual. It was my experience that the vast majority of guys in college still never try it. The reason most don't feel the need to is the same reason Dan stated...it is so easy to find a girl to have sex with they don't need to think about an alternative. Anyway, I was just throwing my 2 cents in on this one, and my experience was that bisexuality is not nearly as prevelant as he makes it seem.

 

[Netzach]

I think it's just kind of taken the place of political lesbianism.

If I had a dime for every married and hetero political lesbian I went to school with a few years back....

trend and political ideals do not a solid and lifelong sexuality make.

Desire does and it's the only thing that does.

 

[Sillyman]

It doesn't really apply on my campus, and openly gay or bisexual men face severe discrimination in my set. I think at larger more liberal universities, there may be some influence, but I doubt it.


Men sexuality seems to much more rarely crop up in male politic, so I doubt it's a political matter so much as men in a age stratified and frequently fatherless society trying to find their role within a greater social structure. "Well, I like Judy Garland, so am I gay? I dunno. Maybe I should fuck a guy and see if I like it."