On Labels and the Right of Self Determination

I'm a boy who finds both men and women's bodies sexually and aesthetically attractive. I tend to be attracted to people dominant both in bed and out of it, which given the way we socialize the sexes makes me more attracted to men on average. My main sex act outside of BDSM play is receptive anal sex, but I enjoy being taken with a strap on or its biological equivalent equally. I find myself profoundly uncomfortable with the hegemonic heterosexual male gender role in relationships, and as such tend to gravitate towards alternative and genderqueer women, and am far more at ease in a queer social setting than a straight one.

Fuck if I know where that puts me on the gay-bi-straight axis or even on a 7-point Kinsey Scale. Is it proper to take into account the socialization that most men and women have undergone when figuring which one I favor, or are only intrinsically masculine or feminine qualities in bounds? Is it fair to take into account the greater difficulty of finding people of one sex over the other with common sexual interests? I tend to wash my hands of the matter, claiming a reasonably approximate, "bisexual," or slightly to the gay side of the Kinsey Scale only when pressed.

Here's what I do know- my sexuality involves at least a modicum of attraction to both sexes. Which is why I get so frustrated with the "bisexuals don't really exist," "male bisexuals are really gay, and are only saying that they're bi to placate their families," "bisexual women are just in it to get attention," memes.

(As an aside, I get the frustration lesbians feel when a girl leads them on, when they were only in it to turn on their boyfriends. Obviously such duplicity is immoral. But seriously, this "real lesbian" shit has got to stop. No one gets hegemony over sapphic love. Not one of us gets to define what it is for everyone else. Most of us like turning our partners on, and there's nothing wrong with self-aware adults putting on a show. Yeah, this particular manifestation can say troubling things about homophobia and power differentials in the sexes (why are women the only ones turning to same-sex encounters to turn their partners on?), and yeah, compulsory bisexuality sucks, but that doesn't mean that you can paper over someone else's life with your theory).

Fundamentally, this is about respect. It's about believing that your fellow human beings have the capabilities to assess and define themselves. It's about respecting the right everyone has to name their own experiences.

Really, espousing such opinions doesn't make you homophobic, or even biphobic. What they make you is an asshole. It betrays a chauvinistic self-centeredness that demands your experience be the normative one, at the center of the universe, and that everyone's experience fall into some constellation that agrees with the way you view the world. It betrays a hubris so strong even the objectivists would blush at to contend that you are better able to understand and define another better than they are able to.

Just as important, we should be asking ourselves why we feel that these stereotypes even matter, or why we view them as negative. Why should it matter that many gay men at one point were or identified as bisexual? Why is it so negative that someone had to go through a process of self-discovery before finally figuring things out and accepting themselves? Were you born fully formed with an identity? Did you never go through a process of exploration? Were you immediately comfortable the first time you had a gay desire? Likewise, why is it so negative if a woman likes turning on her partner with a show?

I am reminded of the tired cliches of watermelon and fried chicken eating blacks. They are not particularly important differences, or even necessarily negative ones once divorced from their context, but they serve to marginalize the stereotyped class. Above all, the fact that they are even notable betrays at least a minor level of uncomfortableness about the stereotyped classes, serving a need to make them truly other.

One cannot ignore the negative effect that this can have on bisexual people. It's generally viewed a negative if, say, a bisexual person's sexualitiy changes over time, and they find themselves inclining more and more to the gay end of the spectrum. It makes certain progressively minded women feel guilty about tresspassing when enjoying a perfectly kosher kink. And it balkanizes the queer and alternative sexuality communities, when what we need above all is unity.