Rethinking Bisexuality

Every few months, we have an article come out that talks about Celebrity X who has decided that they're no longer bisexual and now straight (or gay). Then there are the articles critical of big media for labeling bisexual celebrities as gay (despite what the celebrities have said in the past). And let's not forget the articles about sciences struggle to "prove" bisexuality.

The problem is, I don't think we're looking at bisexuality correctly.

And just so we're all on the same page as far as common definitions are concerned, let's recap the New Oxford American Dictionary definitions of these terms:

Heterosexual: (of a person) sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex.

Homosexual: (of a person) sexually attracted to people of one's own sex.

Bisexual: sexually attracted to both men and women.

Traditionally, sexuality is regarded in a linear fashion:

Heterosexual <—> Bisexual < — > Homosexual

Humans tend to want to make group classifications as simple as possible. We have a whole generation of people known as Baby Boomers, or Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z. What's next, Generation AA? Folks who don't use spreadsheets won't get that joke. That's easy enough for lazy writers to use those classifications, but does one Gen Xer equal another? Is it fair to them to join them together and put psychoanalitical mumbo-jumbo personality traits on them? Every generation is filled with "lazy" people and go getters.

And here, after millions of years of human evolution, we've got to a point where we classify human sexual preferences into two (maybe three) categories.

That doesn't seem right.

I think there's a better way to start considering human sexuality, we need to first create two new super groups: Emotional Sexuality and Physical Sexuality.

Emotional Sexuality

This major classification of human sexuality is defined as who we tend to be attracted to when creating an emotional bond with someone.

Heterosexual people would be interested in creating emotional bonds with people of the opposite sex. Homosexual people; those of the same sex.

This group is fluid in that people can move between being Heterosexual and Homosexual. However, movement between the two states is extremely slow, as compared to Physical Sexuality, as we'll see. For most people, they tend to stay in the same Emotional Sexuality State most of their lives. When a move does occur, there can be a long period of internal conflict leading up to the change. If/when a change does occur, it tends to be a lifelong change, people do not tend to switch states frequently, if ever.

The Emotional Sexuality state is one that's set early in life, but solidifies in the teens/early 20s. When in childhood, it's usually expected that the child will grow up to be heterosexual. Even gay parents I know believe this of their kids. So, from childhood, people are put into the heterosexual state by actions (intentional or not) of friends and family.

As a child grows into their teens/20s, experimentation and exploration may lead them to understand and self identify themselves as homosexual. This is a long, hard decision to make for many. But can also be a point of great emotional relief once the change has been accepted by the individual.

How does a "closet-gay" work within this group? If we ignore the demeaning aspect of that classification and focus on the deeper meaning, we then clarify the question to be similar to asking about the person in a heterosexual relationship that's really gay. As I talked above, all people are predisposed as heterosexuals. Because of societal expectations, many people who internally identified themselves as homosexuals maintained their heterosexual identities. As society became more open/understanding of homosexuality, individuals were able to be more open about their own identification and may have switched. Also, a "closet-gay" may be an individual in the process of switching states as they struggle to understand their own feelings.

It is important to understand that Emotional Sexuality is about who you prefer to create an emotional bond with. It is not about the physical act of sex.

One final question on this, can a person prefer to create emotional bonds with both sexes? I don't know. I'm not familiar with anyone that I could definitively say. I'm tempted to throw in the concept of Polysexuality or Pansexuality here, but for other reasons, which I'll discuss later in this blog post.

Physical Sexuality

Regardless of who we prefer to create emotional bonds with, with whom we derive physical sexual pleasure from can be completely different. This is where the Physical Sexuality classification fits in. It is mainly a sub-classification of the Emotional Sexuality and is defined as who we tend to be attracted to for sexual bonding.

Within this group is Asexual (those who have no sexual desires), Monosexual (those who are interested in sex with only one gender identification) or Bisexual (those who are interested in sex bonding with multiple gender identifications).

Movement between these states is far more fluid and have much shorter term staying power.

For example, a Hetero/Monosexual male can, for most of his life, only be interested in emotional bonding with women and sexual bonding with women. But on a short term basis, have a strong desire for sexual bonding with a male. In this case, the male goes from Hetero/Monosexual to Hetero/Bisexual for that short period, then moves back to Hetero/Monosexual.

Some would want to claim that the male is always a Hetero/Bisexual since he occasionally has these desires. I would say he's not, but because of the fluidity of Physical Sexuality, we can't group any individual into any subgroup with clear precision.

There are people who have been Monosexual all their lives and become, for whatever reason, Asexual (sometimes to the despair and confusion of their current partners). There are gay men who occasionally have sex with women. There are straight women who occasionally have sexual encounters with women. And, of course, there are straight men who sometimes seek out sexual encounters with other men, but are otherwise happily married.

In all of those cases, while they became bisexual (or asexual) for a period of time, they can easily slide back to their more natural/long term state for the rest of their lives. Also, understand that Monosexuality is not necessarily the same gender as your Emotional Sexuality Class would define it.

For example, a heterosexual male has an emotional bond with females, but has full preferences to create sexual bonds with other males. This does not preclude the idea that he would have sex with his female partner as sex can be part of healthy relationship.

The Missing Physical Sexuality State

If I'm a male who's attracted to a transgender person (for this example, lets say a male who had surgery/treatments to become a female), how do I define myself? Am I hetrosexual because the person's gender is now female? Am I homosexual, because they were a male at one point?

What if the person has both female features (facial/breasts) but male genitalia?

There is a generally accepted term out there to use: pansexual, which is defined as "not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regard to gender or activity."

While it could be said that I should include pansexual within the Physical Sexuality super group, I would say that it isn't included because of a small, two word phrase I used to describe the states: gender identification.

By using the phrase "gender identification" in the definitions instead of the typical "gender," I'm incorporating pansexuality into monosexuality and bisexuality. For example, a monosexual person can only be interested in sexual bonds with male-to-female transgender people. Or a bisexual person can be interested in males and female-to-males.

Is Pansexuality An Emotional Sexuality State?

I alluded to the concept of a third emotional sexuality state whereas a person can prefer to have emotional bonds with both same and opposite sex people. I am fully aware that there will be people out there who will scream, "Yes!" And I am open to the concept of this being true.

However, let's recap what emotional sexuality is, as I've defined it.

Consider this. If, for whatever reason, you could no longer have physical sex, who would you prefer to spend the rest of your life with? Because of the extremely slow nature of the emotional sexuality state changing, I find it hard to find examples of pansexuality in the real world.

The closest I can come would be an open relationship where three people are part of the relationship. In an example, a couple is married but has a second female as part of their relationship. Here, the male is heterosexual because both partners are female.

The married female is the question. Is she pansexual or not?

To say that she's heterosexual does not preclude the idea that there is an emotional bond between her and the second female, because the emotional sexuality classification is about preferences to create those bonds.

If the male in this relationship suddenly passed away (or left the relationship), would the emotional relationship between the two women continue or was the second female in an emotional bond with the male, but a bisexual bond with the female. If so, then I would expect the relationship would not continue between the two females and each would find another male to emotionally bond with.

A pansexual Emotional Sexuality state would, however, enable the relationship between the two females to continue on an emotional bonding level.

I invite more discussion and viewpoints on this question.

Conclusion

Human sexuality is wide and diverse that defies definition. By nature, humans want to classify things as simply as possible and our current linear definitions are not robust enough to handle the dynamic nature of sexual preferences.

In this blog post, I presented a concept to start classifying human sexuality on multiple levels, the highest being the Emotional Sexuality Classification and the lower being the Physical Sexuality Classification.

Each classification had two or more states within them.

I invite intelligent discourse on this topic and help flesh out the ideas more or to correct any glaring gaps.