From: jclark@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (John Clark)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: Bisexuality runs in the family?
Date: 30 Jul 92 08:20:25 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

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?

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'.

This reasoning should not be interpreted as a 'there is no problem
with abuse, sexual or otherwise'. The argument is that a casual use
of incidences, anecdotal data, etc. should not lead one to 'facts' or
even 'factoids'.

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'.

As for dominance/submissive aspects of sex play, I don't think that
children have any more or less in any other group activity. Again it
is the 'badness' of sex which condemns the 'pressure' of one child
on another for sex play. The society says nothing, or even
encourages, such pressures when applied to sports, academic study,
and other socially 'valued' activities.

All this is my observations and based on what I preceive as a
schizophrenic attitude about sex, one it's 'bad' almost everywhere
except as the highest sacrament of the dyadic heterosexual union.
(And since its bad and popular, useful to sell much really un-needed
junk).
-- 

John Clark
jclark@ucsd.edu