Will My Bisexual Family Member Straighten Out?
By: Loren A Olson Md
Tags: Sexuality, Relationships, Life Lessons, Psychology, LGBTQ

One of the things that pisses off bisexuals is when people suggest that bisexuality is nothing more than a state of transition between gay and straight. Let me be clear: Like me, a number of people go through a period of claiming to be bisexual before declaring they are gay, but for others, they see bisexuality as enduring.

I agree with Robyn Ochs who defines bisexuality this way:

[Bisexuality is] the potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually — to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree. — Robyn Ochs

The central premise of my controversial essay was my thesis that bisexual behavior and bisexual identity are distinctly different. People “[who have the] potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually — to people of more than one sex and/or gender” may identify in many different ways. People may identify one way and behave in a different way.

I once thought of myself as heterosexual, before considering I might be bisexual, but later I felt more comfortable referring to myself as gay. I am not unique in this.

Much of my work has been with women and men — mostly men — who come out later in life. Many of them have gone through various self-identities as they look for explanations for the conflicts of their desires with their inherited values.

In 1947, Alfred Kinsey rocked the world with his description of sexuality as a spectrum from exclusively gay to exclusively straight. Kinsey’s work was rejected as being contrary to what civilized man has been taught for generations. He said that people moved on the spectrum, but they didn’t move very far. This made sense to me.

I had once seen sexual identity as having some permanence, with limited variation over time. It is a sense of our sexual being, including gender identity and gender role, sexual orientation, and sexual self-concept. It is the label we apply to ourselves. This is who I am, and this is who I expect always to be.

But my own sexuality felt like I had fallen asleep on a moving train; I went to sleep in one place and woke up in a totally different place. One day I was straight, the next day I was bisexual, and now I’m gay. But the only thing that really changed was the way I viewed my sexual identity.

For me, bisexuality was a way station until I settled on a gay sexual identity. Bisexuality was the only explanation I could find for my behavior, but I never felt like it really fit. Before I get arrested by the bisexual police, I want to emphasize that just because this was my experience, I am not implying it is everyone’s experience. But I also know that many others share this life story.

Ochs’s definition of bisexuality above, says “the potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually.” The keyword is “potential.” Could I potentially find myself romantically and/or sexually attracted to a woman under the right circumstances? I’m a sexual being. I don’t experience sexual attraction to women now. I can imagine situations where I might be, but I make no promises about what sexual fantasies I might entertain to get there.

Sexual orientation is a complex interaction of sexual attractions, behaviors, and identity. The development of sexual identity is a critical part of adolescence, but our sexual development doesn’t end in adolescence.

The number of adult men and women having sex with members of their own gender has increased dramatically as modern culture has begun to embrace same-sex relationships.

Although society has become more accepting of bisexuality, whether single or married, many continue to lead hidden lives. Society colludes to lock these men and women inside its collective closet by ignoring, denying, or repressing the reality that men have sex with other men, and women have sex with other women.

Many millennials reject a binary definition of masculine and feminine, and younger generations see more fluidity and ambiguity in sexuality than older generations. The younger generation throws around terms like “pansexual,” “asexual,” “gender fluid,” “genderqueer,” and others. Those terms remain as confusing for most older LGBTQ people as they do for the general population.

Kinsey’s work was revolutionary and controversial in its day because it presented sexuality on a continuum from same-sex attraction to other-sex attraction. Now, perhaps, we need to exam sexuality as a matrix rather than a simple continuum.

Behavior is what I do; identity is what I am. I believe that you are gay, straight, or bisexual only by how you label yourself, not by how you are defined by others. But how you label yourself today may not be the same as tomorrow or yesterday.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I do celebrate Frankie’s choice to be open about their sexuality. I admire the fact that Frankie took control of their life and isn’t allowing their sexual development to be directed by others as I did for so many years. My biggest hope for Frankie is that they find the same peace I have found by being in control of my life.

If I want others to believe I didn’t choose to be gay, I must accept that Frankie didn’t choose to be bisexual. Human existence is tough enough. Why would anyone choose to add another layer of difficulty to it?

All of us live in cultures with deeply ingrained stereotypes, and those conventions lead to prejudice. This is true of all stereotypes, not just those that apply to our sexuality. Even when we think we have everything figured out, stereotypes bleed into our emotional life. We must keep continuous pressure on them so we don’t hemorrhage.

We all wish to protect the people we love from pain. We hope they have a happy future, but we must not presume to know how they can achieve it.

We will always love Frankie, but it’s easy to say, “It doesn’t matter. We still love you.” We must also accept that sometimes it does matter… at least for a while. But does it matter because of them, or because of me?