*looks thoughtful*

[nevecat]

Something that came up in conversation last night over beer was bisexuality. I tend to consider that my sexuality is skewed largely towards being attracted to males, whereas Dave thought that in fact my bias was fairly strongly the other way - at which point I acknowledged that my perception of it was largely based on relationships rather than

Comments

[nevecat]

Erm...I'd say most people, within those they find attractive, have those they consider somewhere in the range between the 'You, my bed, now' reaction and the rather quieter/saner 'OK, major crush, but so not acting on it, because of X/Y/Z'

What you're talking about there is not so much whether the non-platonic attraction varies by gender, and more whether it varies by confidence/libido/ethics/circumstance/etc

To give examples of what I mean:

The woman who claims bisexuality and in fact splits it as "50% jump-into-bed attraction with guys, 50% lipstick-lesbian drunken snogs to tease the boys" would probably get raised eyebrows as to her definitions.

The woman who in fact only claims 5% jump-into-bed attraction to other women, but splits the rest as 5% jump-into-bed attraction with men, and 90% evenly split silent crushes from afar - that's less likely to be challenged, even though there's actually far less overt sexual tensions that the first example.

It's never (well, OK, rarely, and then usually be pedants in this argument) claimed that somebody who has never been involved with anyone can't 'know' they're straight/vanilla/monogamous-wired/etc - yet there seems to be an unspoken expectation that one has to have experienced every kink in the book to be a 'real' [whatever]

[astatine210]

“...yet there seems to be an unspoken expectation that one has to have experienced every kink in the book to be a 'real' [whatever]”

I've found few certainties in life, but one of them is that when someone goes 'round categorising people as a ‘real’ or ‘true’ something-or-other - especially if it's something they themselves claim to be - they're usually talking out of their arse.

[bateleur]

Yeah, true, though that expectation makes little sense to me.

I wouldn't say it's about what you've tried. The distinction I was trying to make has nothing to do with crushes from afar vs. bedtime action scenes. It's about the fact that some attractions don't aspire to sexual contact.

When people are 'going out', everyone assumes they're all over each other in private (assuming they aren't in public too !) - but sometimes not so.

What's the relevance to bisexuality ? Simply that if you're not too fussed about hot sex, it's therefore of potentially little importance what gender your partner is.