From: idx009@cck.coventry.ac.uk (the Crisco Kid)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: The War Between Us (Long)
Keywords: I was a teenage muffin
Date: 30 Jul 92 16:34:11 GMT
Organization: Eris's Restaurant

In article <1992Jul29.171351.12318@menudo.uh.edu> cullen@tree.egr.uh.edu (Caleb Cullen) writes:
>In article <4874@tuegate.tue.nl> gtoal@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl (Graham Toal)  
>writes:
>>My sentiments exactly.  And when it's no big thing to say you're bi,
>>and a lot more of us speak up who *aren't* at the high end of the Kinsey
>>scale, I think we'll find that we're not a minority inside a minority,
>>but the largest group of non-straights around...

Sorry about not responding to your original posting, Graham, but I've
been a little busy to read news for a while and so it's expired: but
who are the "we" of your second sentence?  Bifolk?  low-Kinsey Bifolk?

It seems inuitively obvious (but then the primrose path to fallacy
is paved with obvious intuition) that bifolk should be the largest
group of non-straight folk around.  After all, the monos only have
two Kinsey slots between them, and we have all that lovely middle
ground to play in.  However, the great problem that I see with the
reasoning (and I'm not saying that the reasoning is necessarily wrong;
merely that there's a tenuous stretch in it) is that it depends greatly
on exactly who we claim as bi: those who claim their own bisexuality,
or those whose objective behaviours can't be described as monosexual.

Those of us vocal enough to state our bisexualities are very few, I think,
in comparison with those of the second group; and that seems to depend
very much on your proviso of "*when* it's no big thing to say you're bi".
Right now it can be a very big thing indeed to be articulate about
your sexuality.

So: in the ideal world, where sexual preference is unimportant except
to people who are considering sex with each other (and I am assuming
that this is a part of an ideal world), nonmonosexuals will, I guess,
constitute the greatest portion of the preference spectrum.  But, in
that ideal world, that fact is trivial: like sexual preference itself,
the demographics of preference will be unimportant.

So: is it of importance at the moment?  Yes, in some ways, it is: there
are pressures enough to make bifolk appear, in your words, "a minority
within a minority", and people of ill-intent enough to use that appearance
as a legitimisation of ignoring our needs.  Hence, I think, the
dichotomy between "queer liberation" and "lesbian and gay (and, when
expedient, bisexual) liberation".  We've seen enough - quite enough -
instances of bifolk being queer enough to fund and fight for lesbian
and gay causes, but not then being queer enough to enjoy the fruits of
them.  Hence recent discussions of building a bisexual community in
parallel with lesbian and gay community.

>I think it may not be such a good thing that "it's no big thing to say  
>you're bi" because it seems to be responsible in part for bisexuals' not  
>being taken seriously.

Caleb: you missed Graham's "when", I think: it's certainly not generally
no big thing to say that you're bisexual.

>I have seen several cases in which people who should normally be  
>considered straight embrace a "bisexual" lifestyle because its "in style"  
>with their friends, and in doing so make bisexuals as a whole look like  
>silly, confused people.  This is one of the reasons I don't make my  
>sexuality known to everyone.  I can't sum up in a few words what it means  
>to be bisexual the way I am bisexual.  Because it's not the same way that  
>anyone else is bisexual.  (This applies to everyone - perhaps I place too  
>much importance on individual "taste" or tendencies.)

Mmmmm... how do these people 'embrace a "bisexual" lifestyle'?  And in
what ways do they 'make bisexuals as a whole look like silly, confused
people'?  I agree that "I'm bisexual" paints one with a very broad
brush - it can say little more than "I fancy both women and men", after
all - but then how fine a brush does one normally need?  I generally
find that "I'm bi" conveys enough of my sexual preference for people
to decide whether they want to find out the finer detail.  And there is
plenty of fine detail, for all of us: everyone's sexuality, not just
that of bifolk, is a complex and intricate thing (I suspect it's got
a high irrational Hausdorff dimension :)).

>What I'm saying is - IMHO, the people who declare their bisexuality openly  
>-outside this forum- are primarily at the low end of the Kinsey scale.

In my experience, there's a pretty broad mix, and it's getting broader all
the time.  Perhaps in earlier days there was a *high*-end bias - most of
the people I knew as bi then were fairly activist, and had learned their
activism in the lesbian and gay liberation movements, as I did - but
that seems to be levelling out nowadays.  But that's only my experience,
based in the UK: I don't know where 'uh.edu' is...

>(We are exceptions, friends)  Once the populace becomes familiar with  
>bisexuals who are not married in a motos relationship, once they lose that  
>stereotype, the individuality of bisexuals may be established.  Until  
>then, people will think of bisexuals as closet homosexuals who can't  
>commit.  (This stereotype makes me sick.)

Yes, it's a pretty grim stereotype; but I'm not sure to what extent it's
universal: we've just had that estimable Steve Dyer come in here and tell
us that we're all really straight and buying into gay chic, and, before
that (I *think* it was here) some other guy saying that we're all really
gay and buying into heterosexual respectability.  I guess they get to
hurl the mud that they themselves wallow in...

>Thanks for listening.  And WHOA, what a de-muffin...

And thanks for being listenable-to.  De-muffin?  <hug> <slurp> <lick>
<smooch> <nibble> <stroke> <kiss> <nuzzle> <soft-cheese-on-the-nipples>
and all that... :)

		mad, bad, and too hot in the office
				Kay


-- 
6'2", dark short hair, blue eyes, bisexual and horny as ....
Kay Dekker, Dept of Industrial Design, Coventry University, Coventry UK
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Phone: +44 203 838668 (work) +44 203 337865 (home) |Deflowerer-of-innocents