From: muffy@anableps.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: Gender-specific needs
Date: 17 Nov 92 14:50:43
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
NNTP-Posting-Host: anableps.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: rsr@soda.berkeley.edu's message of 13 Nov 1992 12:13:35 GMT


In article <1e065fINN4l4@agate.berkeley.edu> rsr@soda.berkeley.edu (Roy S. Rapoport) writes:
>In article <MUFFY.92Nov10110212@remarque.berkeley.edu> muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>->or I have wanted "sex in general" (*grin*), but I've never had this
>->feeling of wanting the in-between "sex with someone of a particular
>->gender."

>I know the feeling ... part of why my sexual kinsey rating fluctuates wildly
>most of the time ... 

The responses I've seen have all been of this sort...the idea that the
level of attraction to men and women varies over time.  In fact, this is
what one of the first bisexual people I knew told me; he was sometimes
mostly attracted to men and other times mostly attracted to women.  This
Isn't anything I have experienced yet, though, and it isn't the effect I
was having, so I thought I'd to try clarify what's happening to me,
since I'd still like to know if anyone recognizes this.

I haven't experienced any change in how much I am attracted to men or
how much I am attracted to women.  Really, I have always just been
attracted to individuals, and I am still just as attracted to each
individual, regardless of their gender.  However, lately when my mind
turns to sex, I start thinking of all the attractive women I know,
and it doesn't really seem to matter which of them it is.  Usually, I
will be most interested in a specfic person at any given time.  This
business of wanting any one of the set of attractive people of a
particular sex is the new thing.

Some time has passed now since my originally noticing the feeling.  I'm
starting to think now that at least part of it is "wanting to play with
my new toy."  It's been a year and a half since I first noticed being
attracted to a woman, but less than a year since I first got involved
sexually with a woman, so it's pretty new.  It's not that I'm attracted
to anyone solely because they're female, but they're still new and
different, as a group, and therefore command more of my attention, just
as any new individual lover does.

I don't know how it is for most people (it seems to vary), but for me,
my emotions are the same, and just depend on who the individual is - I
haven't noticed any correlation with their gender at all.  Sex, on the
other hand, is different in various ways, including simply the way
people's bodies feel.  I don't prefer one to the other, and I don't
*think* that I would normally want sex with one gender more than the
other (well, I guess I might have preferences from day to day if it was
sex-for-fun, but these days it's generally sex-for-caring), but I've
done so little of one (with women) and so much of the other that the
former keeps popping into my mind...*smile*.

Oh, well...does any of that make sense?  I should be programming,
anyway...

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                               muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
~Weavers' fingers flying on the loom/patterns shift too fast to be
 discerned/all these years of thinking/ended up like this/in front
 of all this beauty/understanding nothing~ - Bruce Cockburn
Newsgroups: soc.bi