GBLT forum census now with a poll

[Gustaf]

Straight.  I doubt anyone is purely straight or gay, but I've considered myself 'straight' so that my attractions pretty much fit perfectly into that role.  If I have any latent bisexuality, it's well-repressed.

Really? What do you base that on? I find it pretty easy to imagine that sexual preferences would be one way or the another. I have a much harder time understanding bisexuality than homosexuality, for instance.

Anyway, straight for me.

[Gustaf]

Straight.  I doubt anyone is purely straight or gay, but I've considered myself 'straight' so that my attractions pretty much fit perfectly into that role.  If I have any latent bisexuality, it's well-repressed.

Really? What do you base that on? I find it pretty easy to imagine that sexual preferences would be one way or the another. I have a much harder time understanding bisexuality than homosexuality, for instance.  

I don't have much familiarity with the field, but it seems like arousal and emotional attraction is probably not concrete by sexual orientation.  Isn't that basically what the Kinsey studies of sexuality found?  

I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm unclear on whether incidental homosexual behavior is just needs fulfillment, and to what extent not pursuing something like that is filling social roles vs. genuine orientation.

On a similar line, I think there's been some research that shows that sexual experiences and attractions rewire the brain.  So maybe we really do convince ourselves that we're hetero, during the period that some younger people are unsure of their orientation, in a way.  Honestly I always just "assumed" I was what I was, but I gather that's not the experience for lots of people.

1. Kinsey, I believe, has been largely discredited and his studies are viewed as very untrustworthy.

2. People don't start out as sexual beings. I had no interest at all in girls before puberty. I didn't want to be attracted to them either. But it happened. I agree that there may be some social influences and so on, but I doubt it is that random. I mean, why would it be? Fundamentally, sexual attraction serves a clear biological purpose. It's pretty obvious why men and women are attracted to each other. That it can be rewired in some way to be the opposite is also not so strange. Nor, I guess, is it strange that it can be linked with something else (like leather or whips or cream or something) but most people do not have a sexual attraction for just randomly anything. I don't get anything from animals, for instance, and I doubt that's due to socialization.

[Gustaf]

1. Kinsey, I believe, has been largely discredited and his studies are viewed as very untrustworthy.

He had his sampling errors in some of his studies, in that he did not choose truly random samples, but not this one IIRC.

2. People don't start out as sexual beings. I had no interest at all in girls before puberty. I didn't want to be attracted to them either. But it happened. I agree that there may be some social influences and so on, but I doubt it is that random. I mean, why would it be? Fundamentally, sexual attraction serves a clear biological purpose. It's pretty obvious why men and women are attracted to each other. That it can be rewired in some way to be the opposite is also not so strange. Nor, I guess, is it strange that it can be linked with something else (like leather or whips or cream or something) but most people do not have a sexual attraction for just randomly anything. I don't get anything from animals, for instance, and I doubt that's due to socialization.

I definitely didn't say it was random, or anything like that...

I didn't say we'd all be pansexual, just maybe more incidentally homosexual were it not for social pressures to fit into certain roles.  I mean, not to get all Opebo, sexual stimulation/attention is sexual stimulation/attention.  Sure the whole "it's a guy" thing would be a major "ick" point for me too, but beyond that what?  And where does the "ick" part come from?

I'm not saying we all start 50/50 (or "random") and then society forces us into our roles, lord no

But if you're talking sexual stimulation there is no reason to limit it to humans or even living beings. You could get stimulation from a rabbit...but there is an ick factor there (if that is the term we are now to use officially) and I don't think it is necessarily societal. Sexual attraction isn't just abot "stimulation" regardless of what Opebo thinks.

If you're saying that there are people out there who are homosexual but repressing it because of societal norms (and so on) I'm with you. That's pretty obviously true. But it isn't the same as saying that people that are straight would like to bang someone from the same sex every once in a while if it weren't for norms. I doubt that bit.

Besides, my gay friend told me bisexualism was just a denial-phase for gay people.

[Gustaf]

Personal attraction and sexual stimulation, then, whatever.  Do we determine sexual orientation by who we fall in love with, then?  What makes a love romantic vs. not?  More accurately, how do you define sexual orientation, so I don't have to dance around it?   And why do we bother with this s**t?

I'm sure bisexualism is oftentimes a denial phase, but I doubt it's exclusively that.

I'm not entirely sure what you are dancing around now. But, yeah, defining sexual orientation by who you fall in love with sounds reasonable enough. Or if you want to be less romantic by what can turn you on by thinking about it. Not what can turn you on through touch, or whatever, since that would encompass pretty much everything.