Finding Your Sexuality Poll

[SummerMorning]

What's not clear to me is how this might be tied to bisexuality. I can see your earlier post (about immediate gratification) as applying to promiscuity and/or to casual or immediate sexual gratification, but that doesn't seem to me to be innately tied to the ability to feel desire for either gender. Surely there are heterosexual individuals who engage in infantile/narcissistic sex and there are bisexuals who don't. I like your point, really, on the infantile/narcissistic bent of the culture, but I can't see that it ties up all that neatly with sexual orientation.

Shanglan

It doesn't. Like I said, I think it's a bit of a thread-jack. It might tie in in the following way:

1. you have a society* which socializes infantile and narcissistic individuals.
2. These individuals are unable to creatively channel (sublimate in PA-speak) their sexual impulses, to accept social authority, to accept any delay in the gratification of their impulses.
3. You get individuals who feel a need to satisfy their impulses at all costs, but are unable to do so**, and thus experiment radically outside the boundaries of traditional society.
4. And then you all-kinds-of-sexuals who feel under pressure to have great sex lives even though they can't really enjoy sex.

But that's just guess-work.

*Important note: The type of society is not the same as the type of individuals it produces! An aggressive society DOES NOT NEED aggressive individuals. But this is a total thread-jack and I won't pursue it here.
**They are unable to satisfy their impulses because they have been raised to understand that "anything-goes" ... which is a problem, because it means they suddenly lose the object of their sexual desire. Every time they achieve their object it is somewhere else, thus every time they have sex they are frustrated, because it's just not as good as it seems it should be.

 

[SummerMorning]

Again, I wouldn't presume that casual sex is infantile, either. Depends on the person. If you are in a presumably exclusive marriage, and you sleep with a crack whore because your wife is healing from childbirth, well, THAT would be a prime example of infantilism. A bunch of swingers just having fun on their spare time would not. There is a difference.

Hmm ... well, it's certainly immature and plain wrong ... the first example (looks worriedly at the sky, where a deluge is continuing).

 

[BlackShanglan]

It doesn't. Like I said, I think it's a bit of a thread-jack. It might tie in in the following way:

1. you have a society* which socializes infantile and narcissistic individuals.
2. These individuals are unable to creatively channel (sublimate in PA-speak) their sexual impulses, to accept social authority, to accept any delay in the gratification of their impulses.
3. You get individuals who feel a need to satisfy their impulses at all costs, but are unable to do so**, and thus experiment radically outside the boundaries of traditional society.
4. And then you all-kinds-of-sexuals who feel under pressure to have great sex lives even though they can't really enjoy sex.

I like your point on the ever-increasing demand for more novel experience as each experience turns out not to be satisfying - largely because of the participant's inability to delay physical gratification and seek more long-term types of stimulus, support, and pleasure. Certainly the key theme one tends to see in the lives of the truly debauched is not happiness but exhaustion, and that seems to be the reason - the constant, restlesss, and essentially unhappy quest for the magical "perfect" instant gratification. The more sexuality becomes the one crux of happiness in one's life, as well, the more that problem seems likely to be exacerbated.

I think where I diverge from your view is that I see sexual orientation as distinct from sexual practice. That is, I think that one can be straight, gay, or bisexual without having acted on any of those sexual impulses. While I do actually agree that in some cases bisexual behavior could be driven by a thirst for novelty, I think that it's equally possible that bisexual desire could be as unconsciously constructed as gay or straight orientation, and as thoroughly disciplined, channeled, and integrated into a personality that understands the concepts of delayed gratification and social strictures.

Shanglan

 

[Quiet_Cool]

I'm straight, but....

look, I'm attracted to people not plumbing. Is there a guy out there who interests me? Well, not that I'm aware of at the moment. But if I fell in love with another guy, I think I would move past the physical questions in time. Sure, there would be some weirdness.

But I think the first time with a girl was pretty weird too....wonderful, but weird...I just don't think of it that way now. I'm sure at the time it was different.

I think this is what best describes me. It's not that I can say I "know" I'm straight, or that I'd say I'm "straight as an arrow," and I'm actually more confident in my own sexuality because I don't say them. They seem awful defensive in nature for these terms to be truthful, and not more denial based, or at least fear-based.

The only thing I can add to this is that, while there may be some possibility of male-male, or some mixed group, encounters in the future, I can say that I don't see them coming, unlike my encounters with women, which had been long-awaited and more than often fantasized about.

Q_C

 

[3113]

Was the gay/bi/straight study actually measuring sexual orientation, or was it possibly only measuring one kind of sexual interest (visual) in isolation? Is it possible that part of being bisexual might be experiencing a mixture of sexual stimuli or triggers? Might excitement in response to visual stimulus alone not give us the full picture?

Excellent question! So what do women respond to? If they're not as visual...what are they? And I wonder how written erotica would fit into it.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

It doesn't. Like I said, I think it's a bit of a thread-jack. It might tie in in the following way:

1. you have a society* which socializes infantile and narcissistic individuals.
2. These individuals are unable to creatively channel (sublimate in PA-speak) their sexual impulses, to accept social authority, to accept any delay in the gratification of their impulses.
3. You get individuals who feel a need to satisfy their impulses at all costs, but are unable to do so**, and thus experiment radically outside the boundaries of traditional society.
4. And then you all-kinds-of-sexuals who feel under pressure to have great sex lives even though they can't really enjoy sex.

But that's just guess-work.

*Important note: The type of society is not the same as the type of individuals it produces! An aggressive society DOES NOT NEED aggressive individuals. But this is a total thread-jack and I won't pursue it here.
**They are unable to satisfy their impulses because they have been raised to understand that "anything-goes" ... which is a problem, because it means they suddenly lose the object of their sexual desire. Every time they achieve their object it is somewhere else, thus every time they have sex they are frustrated, because it's just not as good as it seems it should be.

I have some issues with this theory.

First of all, I am VERY skeptical of "social authority", by which I presume you mean that existing in civil society, rather than duly elected representatives and magistrates of the Res Publica. Self-appointed "social authority" is often as transient as the arbitrary and artificial social mores that it establishes, not to mention that it only has jurisdiction by the non-coercive means of persuading people to accept its authority. I, for one, do not take Oprah, fashion magazines, Montell, Billy Graham, Rush Limbaugh, or Rob Reiner to be "authorities" over my way of life. I have a problem with even gated communities and their desire to impose herd morality on the individual, thus erasing his individuality.

To me, creativity is more dependent on liberating oneself from such mores than on sublimating one's desires by delayed gratification. I acknowledge that there are times when such delays are practical, but I haven't found them to cause any more creativity than while I am indulging my desires. Delays need justification. Otherwise, they are just pointless: unless, of course, you are a masochist, which I am not.

Perhaps this is due to my Nietzschian leanings, but I regard the individual as the reason for the group's existence, not vice versa. A society is nothing more than a collection of individuals gathered for mutual self-interest. If such a society fails to serve that purpose, it must be either abandoned (by emigration, for instance) or transformed (by social or political revolution).

For many biseuxals, like me, it is NOT about novel experiences. It is about self-actualization and self-emancipation from the herd. It is about being what I am. It is about accepting that I am attracted to both sexes, and wisely refusing to live in denial.

Now, the sort of person that you and Black Shanglan seem to describe, an extreme example of being unable to accept even necessary delays of gratification, fits into one of two categories: sex addiction and nymphomania. The former has the same reaction to sex that some people have to drugs, alcohol, or nicotine. He is not "debauched". He is addicted.

The 2nd case, usually associated with the fairer sex, is actually frigid and incapable of achieving climax. She roams vainly from one sex partner to the next, in a fruitless search for any gratification, let alone instant gratification (which she probably expects it to be, lacking any experience with it).

In conclusion, it is a mistake to confuse self-restraint and self-denial. What many call self-restraint is actually self-denial, and it often breaks down, leading to cheating and such other failures. Self-restraint is knowing when and where to seek gratification, instant or otherwise. Self-indulgence, or hedonism, is inability to either know that limit or follow it. Self-restraint is what Aristotle called the "golden mean" or happy medium between the two extremes of self-denial and self-indulgence. And, yes, there are bisexuals, like myself, who practice it. Another such bisexual was Aristotle himself.