Talk:Bisexuality/Archive 1

message: I changed the order of the sections in the article. In particular I moved the terminology and prevalence sections up, and the History section down. IMO it makes more sense to have the definitions and terminology before the more in depth resources. J.Ring 21:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Section order

message: The following isn't NPOV. -- SJK
:It is my opinion, after many years of research and personal experience, that bi-sexuality in women is more prevalent than most people realize, and FAR more prevalent than the previous paragraph indicates. I do not have any "concrete" research figures to draw any percentage figures from, but I think the following five paragraphs will perhaps lead to a more realistic examination of the everyday evidence regarding bi-sexuality; at least the bi-sexuality of women.
:Female to female relationships.  Girls will, from a very early age, sit together on a bench at school, or on the grass in a park, or on stairs, or on the curb and talk for hours.   They sit or stand around with their arms linked, or with their arm around their friend's shoulder or waist.  They walk along holding hands, laughing and talking as if they are the only two people in the world.  They do these things because they want and need close personal contact and intimate conversations with their 'girlfriends.'  They bond together,  especially in the case of 'best friends,' often for the rest of their lives in a relationship so strong that few men can understand it.  This is normal social behavior for females.  This same close intimacy sometimes leads to sexual activities. It is simply an extension of the need (or desire) for close physical intimacy in the friendship.  
:This closeness, and the desire to share sexually oriented contact, is also experienced by quite a large number of women (who are beyond 'girlhood') when they are in a private situation with a woman friend.  This is a normal attraction and a normal desire for women who need the intimate contact with another female that their basic sexual nature calls for.  Women who experience these feelings towards other women, but who also have intimate relationships with a man (or men) are considered to be, according to  the most accepted social definition, "bi-sexual." They are, however, simply women who are aware of their natural basic sexual orientation.  
:This feeling of need (or desire) for close physical contact by one woman for another is not wrong, or "dirty" or perverted.  It is normal.  It is not understood by most people in our society, and that is really too bad, because shared intimacy when it is mutually desired is a truly beautiful thing.  Unfortunately, many women deny themselves this intimate sharing because they feel that others will think that they are "lesbians."
:A woman who likes both men and women is not a lesbian, according to the present-day generally accepted definition.  A woman who enjoys the intimacy of close physical contact with another woman, but also likes men, is a normal woman who is correctly classified as "bi-sexual" and she has no reason to be afraid or ashamed of her desire for sexual contact with another woman to whom she is attracted.
:Conversely, women who never feel these sexual attractions toward other women are  just as normal as are women with bi-sexual feelings.  They are simply located on a different part of the sexuality curve upon which all humans are located.  The X-Y chromosome definition was, for a while, considered to be an adequate factor upon which to classify human sexual orientation.  We now know that this is only one step above the 'male-or-female' classification.
:TWW
:: Thankyou for writing that. I feel there is alot about sexuality which is neither socially acceptable nor socially and even accidemically realised. People have such knee-jerk reactions to the whole sexuality thing that it is seldomly discussed in any meaningful way. I think males are capable of being like how you spoke, but tend to not develop so because of factors borne of sociology, which in turn are probably partially borne of unrelated psycho/neurological factors vaguely associated with the brain/mind of the male sex.
KJD:  Here Here........ since finally allowing myself to be bisexual, I have talked and thought lots about it and mostly come up with much of the same info as above.  Most women are truly bi - they maybe haven't, don't, or won't act upon it, because of what others might think or in fear of being thought of as a lesbian.  Homophobia is so instilled in our society.... even me, with a gay ex-husband and many gay friends.... I just didn't want to talk about their gayness - now I do and will and you can't shut me up!  (ha-ha----most say that wasn't possible in the first place!).
See The Hite Report on Male Sexuality.  I can't recall the exact statistic, but many of the men interviewed spoke of sex play similar to that described above (usually along the lines of mutual masturbation).  As with girls, I'm sure its prevalence depends on social factors, though I suspect such sex play tapers off very quickly for males as age increases.  Music&Medicine 19:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Prevalence of bisexuality in women

message: Wat is it calld if you dont like to be atracted to ether gender and dont like to hav sex or fall in love or get meryed with enybudy?
:Dead?  - Lestatdelc
:Morrisseyxuality?
::Now THAT is funny! (for those not getting the joke check out info on The Smiths front man Steven Morrissey - Lestatdelc
:Asexuality? Marnanel 02:06, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
:"Wat is it calld if you dont like to be atracted to ether gender and dont like to hav sex or fall in love or get meryed with enybudy?" Going by the way you type, you are a child, so don't worry about it.--Old Guard 13:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Asexuality. My friend is asexual. Eirra 18:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The state of not being attracted to any gender

message: The following comment was added to the main article by 128.125.30.42. I've simply moved it here:
:I am a 20 year old bisexual. I have never had a serious boyfriend, but I have been dating my girlfriend since June 2002 and we are now engaged. Many people do not understand how I can be with a girl and still be attracted to men. I explained it to a (male) friend of mine like this. Knowing he had a girlfriend but never having met her, I asked him what color hair she had. He said blonde. I asked him if it would make any difference to him if her hair was brown, black or red. He looked shocked. "Of course not," he said. "I love her for who she is, not how she looks". "Exactly, "I said. He looked confused. "To me, it doesn't matter what gender a person is. Though I can't honestly say I don't notice a person's body, the physical side of them is secondary to their thoughts, actions and beliefs." And that's my two cents on the topic.
-- Hadal 03:31, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "The physical side of them is secondary to their thoughts, actions and beliefs"

message: Should there be anything put in the bisexuality article about the bi-curious?
Excellent question.  But is there any real consensus about what "bi-curious" actually means?  Is it just curiousity about having a same-sex experience, or curiousity about the bisexual orientation itself, or something else?  Maybe "bi-confusion" is a better term.  Edeans 17:48, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I have never encountered another use of the word, and I don't quite see the point of "bi-confusion". Seems to be far less used, too. -- AlexR 19:47, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bi-curious 

message: This section seems far from NPOV to me.  While I happen to agree with most of it, and I appreciate the goal of educating people, it reads like a "bi pride" brochure, and implies that none of this stuff is at all true... when there is in fact some degree of truth to many of them. (e.g. Some people who call themselves "bi" really are homosexuals unwilling to give up their "hetero" status.)  Most of this information would be better incorporated into the factual parts of the article. (Update: Oops, there wasn't a "factual part" relating to this material; I've added one.) Tverbeek 19:21, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Common Stereotypes" section

message: There was an article in the July 5 New York Times about some recent research, which it might be a good idea for the article to discuss. The title is "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited," and it's at   --- I think it may be possible for nonsubscribers to view it by doing a free registration. The study was done at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, and the lead author was a grad student named Gerulf Rieger. Dunno if it's been published, but Rieger's contact info is at . Obviously this is the stuff that revert wars are made of, and the study's methodology doesn't necessarily seem ironclad, but it does seem appropriate to me to discuss some scientific research that's happened since Kinsey, and that shows at least  some doubt has been cast on Kinsey's ideas about bisexuality. I don't have any axe to grind here, just thought it might be relevant. I'd be happy to add a note about it in the article, but I didn't want to step on any toes about a controversial aspect of a subject that I don't know much about, so I thought I'd test the waters first. If it would be helpful for me at add a sentence or two, please let me know on my talk page. (This article is not on my watchlist.) --Bcrowell 7 July 2005 02:08 (UTC)
:I would be very, very, very carefull taking any research from the Blanchard/Bailey direction overly seriously - both have a history of finding facts after they made up the theories, and, let's say, their theories usually don't gain widespread acceptance. See for example autogynephilia, or the story how Bailey lost his job as head of the department at Northwestern  . Bailey at least is also a proponent of the gay germ theory, and let's not forget that all gay men are, according to him, quite femine. So I wouldn't put any money on any research coming out of that corner unless it has been confirmed by others not belonging to that wacko club. (Also read this comment on this piece of "research": )
:There is also the matter of methology - what porn/erotica arouses my physically might just not be the same as the sex I have, which in turn might not be the same as the love I feel -- which happens to be quite different from the porn/erotica that gets me personally (if I am allowed a personal remark) aroused.
:There has been a lot research being done since Kinsey, I personaly doubt we have to bother with the more dubious ones - unfortunately, somebody will probably insist on getting it into the article. -- AlexR 7 July 2005 04:51 (UTC)
::I'd add that national media watchdog groups including GLAAD  and FAIR  have gotten involved in this controversy. Jokestress 9 July 2005 16:39 (UTC)
:I have read the paper.  It is very deeply flawed, from the way they conduct the study in the first place to the way they analyse their results.  It's very obvious that they started from their conclusions and worked backwards, slinging any factual obstacles they met aside.  Frankly, it deserves a Wikipedia article so everyone can see what rubbish it is. — ciphergoth 17:33, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
::This deserves mention and links to their other works.  A lot of people have been mentioning it lately.  — Omegatron 23:44, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I also read this 'reasearch' and have found it to be extremely flawed.  First of all, bisexuality exists... I have been bi or bi-curious for over two decades.  Also, the mode of meaurement was from visual stimulus from explicit pornography... that is VERY subjective... the subject could be more aroused from viewing same-sex porn as it is DIFFERENT than mainstream porn or more 'taboo' therefore making it more eroticly enticing.  Also, in mainstream 'straight' porn, there tends to be more heavily made-up women, lots of unnecessary dialogue and a ton of silicone breasts... each one of those things turns me off and are rarely erotically arousing to me.  Also, none of these subjects were shown BISEXUAL MMF, Strap-On, Female Domination/Forced-Bi or She-Male pornography (all enormously popular genres) where there is male-to-male-to-female contact which I beleive is huge fatal flaw in researching bisexuality, especially in men.  TednAZ 21:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent research

message: or a woman who is primarily attracted to other women, a looser official definition of lesbian
There's an official definition of lesbianism?  Which organisation, exactly, is it that standardizes lesbians? :-) Roy Badami 21:42, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Official lesbianism? 

message: :--Salix alba (talk) 02:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Bisexual actors]] proposed for deletion 

message: I removed this recently-added paragraph:
"Some clinicians in the psychiatric community have noted a peculiar trend amongst both self-identified and incidental bisexuals to have a history of sexual abuse, particularly the “men who have sex with men” referenced above.  This is based on the trauma that is suffered by victims of abuse, wherein there is confusion or even splitting of the internal sexual identity.  This is partially linked to the perculiar bipolar phenomenon where a victim of abuse will become "hyper-sexual" and seem to lose their personal boundaries."
because it violates WP:WEASEL ("some clinicians...") and possibly WP:NOR. This can be restored if somebody wants to add specific citations and rephrase it in a more NPOV way ("peculiar" is POV, for example). Catamorphism 23:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced paragraph on social status of bisexuality 

message: Line 1:
Change of the term "both" to "either" Both implies that a bisexual person must have this both a male and female. where this is not the case and promotes the stereotype that bisexual persons are sluts who cannot be satisfied by one or the other.
Line 1: Discription:
Added link to bi-permissive as defined in the terminology section.
Line 48:
Added... However, since "Bisexual orientation can fall anywhere between the two extremes of homosexuality and heterosexuality," some who identify as bisexual may merge themselves into either homosexual or heterosexual society.
Gbm2b83
:Please use : to indent paragraphs rather than spaces or tabs. The wiki reformats lines that begin with spaces/tabs in a manner that doesn't work very weel with large chunks of text. Also, i changed your indentation to italics in order to make the talk page more readable. 
:137.205.246.16 20:59, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes on 4/5/06 

message: I could not help but notice that this page is rather long, and some of the discussions are growing rather old. My account is too new to move pages. Could someone a bit more experienced maybe archive the page? J.Ring 21:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You do not need to move pages to make an archive page, see: Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. Note, though, that open debates of course should not be yet archived, nor recent ones. I personally, though, always move anonymous stuff, no matter the date (which is work to find out, too). Unless they are non-anonymous answers, of course. -- AlexR 02:13, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive this page?

message: From article;
"Moreover, it is possible for a bisexual person to be attracted to all genders but only one sex, or to all sexes but only one gender"
From Encarta Dictionary;
"sex [seks] n (plural sexes)
1.  male or female gender
What is the quotation trying to say? It seems like nothing more than a glaring contradiction so I'm gonna go ahead and delete it, but please correct me if I'm wrong and revert my edits if that is the case. 86.132.223.57 20:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you had bothered to read the discussion under the heading "Clear to all?" just two sections up on the talk page, this sentence is explained. You might want to read Gender; sex and gender are not synonyms. Catamorphism 21:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Gender  "Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.", versus Sex  "The property or quality by which organisms are classified as female or male on the basis of their reproductive organs and functions." It could perhaps be better explained in the article, however. Mdwh 21:37, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Um... What?

message: i thought people here would be interested to read this if they haven't already, it's still relatively recent. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13555604/  I would have posted it in LGBT commons but we apparently don't have one. Zappernapper 06:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  biological evidence