From: atmpas@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: Bisexuality runs in the family?
Date: 30 Jul 92 13:39:52 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster

In article <36307@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, jclark@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (John Clark) writes:
> In article <84631@netnews.upenn.edu> egedi@ahwenasa.cis.upenn.edu (Dania M. Egedi) writes:
> +
> +Here's the situation:  my younger sister is bisexual, as am
> +I.  My mother knew about my younger sister, but not about me.
> +She has been quite accepting, but I was concerned about how she would
> +handle the idea of 2 (out of 4) of her children being bi.  Plus, she's
> +just been coming to terms with the fact that I was abused as a child by
> +one of the foster kids that my family kept.  I didn't want to put too much on 
> 
> There is a rampant problem with this 'antecedent' reasoning. First
> problem is the 'result' of the 'stimulus'. If it was found that
> 70%(to quote a post that I've somehow lost) of the top 10% of
> musicians in the world were sexually abused, and that it was only
> due to this abuse, that they developed into fine musicians, what
> would the 'societal' view of 'abuse' be?

	Quite possibly similar.  Various forms of mental illness are associated
	with creativity and intelligence, but are still not encouraged.

> 
> It seems that since society has a negative view of both sex and
> homosexual activity, that any 'abuse' in childhood directly relates
> to 'deviant' behavior later. Unfortunately, certain statistics don't
> illuminate causality (never mind Hume). In that statistic '70% of
> bi's and gays were abused' no one seems to ask, how many 'straights'
> were abused and did not become 'bi or gay'.

	About 10% for men or 33% for women, probably a generous figure given
	the source I got it from.

> Now the next problem is 'abuse' and how to define it. The legal view
> sort of has the idea of 'forced/coerced/intimidated' involved with
> the act. I'm not going to discuss adult vs children and sex, but
> rather children vs children.
> 
> Several children are engaged in sexual play. The adults arrive. The
> adults immediately indicate in various ways that the sex play is
> 'bad'. Some children discontinue, other do not. The adults
> re-enforce the sex play is bad, and as time goes on, only a very few
> children continue. These children are then classed as having a
> 'behavioral' problem and in later life turn out to also be abusers.
> 
> Now some years later, the children who are now adults, when
> reflecting on the sex play, now see it as being abused by these
> 'problem' children.
> 
> The question is, what would be the out come if the adults indicated
> sex play is 'good', and only got involved when there is clear
> 'coersion/force/violence'.

This is exactly what my parents did, and I definitely didn't
benefit as a result.  Neutral or beneficial sex play is possible,
certainly, and that happened to me too.

Age gaps between participants are thought to be important - as little a
three year gap can make the difference between sex play and abuse.  
(I'm slightly surprised and would have expected participation from
opposite sides of puberty to be more important.)

> John Clark
> jclark@ucsd.edu


		- Paul
Newsgroups: soc.bi