From: mlloyd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Lloyd)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Sexual Attitudes (was Re: Sexual Harassment)
Date: 28 Aug 92 21:39:48 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <17llqkINN73n@agate.berkeley.edu> rsr@soda.berkeley.edu (Roy S. Rapoport) writes:
>
>Hmm ...   [and then I edit a lot, to leave:]
>
>I do think that my way of looking at women (and men :) has changed since I
>became queer ... along with my way of looking at a lot of other different
>things ... 

Me too, but my response seems in some way opposite to yours.  Coming
out as bi, for me, is part of a process of uncovering desires which
got buried by acculturation and other impenetrable childhood events.
This includes reclaiming _any_ kind of sexual desire for people I
come across.  You say:

>It's weird ... I'm a lot less physically attracted to people these days ...
>I mean, before I was bi, I would look at certain men and think "Hmm ...
>they're attractive."  I'd look at certain women, and think "Wow ... I could
>do things with her ... "

And for me it's the opposite - I'm getting far *more* physically attracted
to people, because I let myself feel these things.  Now I'm not sure
where I stand over your distinction between attraction to people and
objectifying them - objectification is a tricky issue [he said,
guffawing at his understatement].  But being bi to me is part of
being an openly, honestly sexual person.  The more I pursue that
goal, the more I find "hey - I *do* have the kinds of experiences
that everyone talks about - I've just been burying them". 

This puts me in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose,
as I recover from a point of too much control.  If I believe, for
political reasons or whatever, that a particular attitude or urge
in unhelpful, I can just leave it, and instead encourage feelings
I think are good for me - like developing a homoerotic balance to
my heteroerotic past.

I've had one guy tell me how amazed he was at my coolness - the way
I seemed (for a baby queer) to have so little internalized
homophobia (are you reading?  you know who you are - *stroke* *grin*).
I never had to >particularly< repress homosexual feelings, because
they went down the plughole with the rest of my sexuality somewhere
back along the line.  Now I get a big kick out of flirting with people
of any gender just because it's so affirming to me to feel the
attraction.

>These days, it seems like I see highly attractive persons and think "Hey ...
>sie's pretty attractive."  Period.

So here we sound different - perhaps it means I look at people as
sex objects, which would be bad, but I'm revelling in the ability to
think (and feel) "sie's pretty attractive, and ..."

Anybody know where the lines are drawn here?  Meaning, when should
I stop myself, saying "but that's objectifying"?

Finally, I have to respond to:

>I wonder how other bi men have had their perceptions of women changed by
>this.

by saying my attitudes to women really haven't changed much (feminism's
still my thang), but to get my Kinsey score up to 1 or higher, I have
to keep working on my attitude to men - the one that says they're all
basically scum, bar a very rare few.  Fortunately, I think I've now
met some of those few, so it's less difficult :-)

Mike
-- 
Mike Lloyd                         | B0/1 h- f- t w- c g+ k(+) s m- e? 
Retro-hippy, music nut, bi and     | "The Trouble with Normal is it
owner of a one-track mind:         |  Always Gets Worse" - Bruce Cockburn
   "thesis .. thesis .. thesis"    |    (-:   F**k Your Gender!  :-)