Common misconception about bisexuals

People are supposed to think bisexuals don't exist, that they're just confused people in transition to gay or straight. I've only met one person who actually believes this, however. It isn't a very threatening misconception—it's easy to point out someone who has "practiced" bisexuality for a very long time.

In my experience, the most common misconception is that all bisexuals feel attraction the same way. Bisexuals are supposed to be gender-blind, attracted to both sexes equally as if there were no distinction between them. Although there are some bisexuals who feel this way, there are many more to whom this does not apply.

The Kinsey scale is a good first pass at quantifying and categorizing bisexuals. Trying to sum up a lifetime of attraction, fantasy, activity and self-definition with a single number is obviously going to be limited.

The rich, deep description of someone's bisexuality comes from asking that person about it. You'll meet one person who finds that each sex has its own attractions (as I do), another who is gender-blind, a third who describes himself as straight and mostly prefers women but can't resist a little oral sex with a man once in a while.

There's simply no substitute for just asking a person. Of course, this defies easy categorization. And isn't that exactly what bisexuality is all about?

I would have to say that the most common misconception about bisexuals (from the point of view of the straight hetero) is that bisexuals are sluts who will literally screw anything. Even some bisexuals make a joke about "there's twice as much people to pick from!"

From the gay and lesbian folks that my wife and I know, I found this to be completely wrong. From my limited pool of friends who are bi, it seems that they are much more discriminating. While they are attracted to both sexes, they have had several long-term monogamous relationships. Having a wider range to choose from also means that they can take their time to narrow the field. Of course there are "loose" people who are bisexual, just like there are "loose" heteros. Most of the folks who I know are bi don't divulge their preferences until they're very comfortable with the friendship. With the folks who have told me they were bi, eight of the nine had to add that they were not sluts immediately after the word bisexual left their mouths. This is rather unfortunate, and it is another reason why some folks continue to hide themselves from the general public.

What about the idea that they want to have threesomes? It seems that bisexuality and orgies are irrevocably linked in the minds of some people (perhaps thanks to porn). Just because they like both sexes, people seem to infer that they like both at once.

I dated a bisexual woman for almost two years and inevitably, whenever someone would find out she was bi, they would ask me if we ever had a threesome. When I replied, "No," I would always -- without fail -- be asked, "why?" This was not only offensive to my girlfriend, but me, because they intimated that I should "take advantage" of her "broader" sexuality. At least thats how they see it.

Ultimately, "straight" society seems to want to demonize and make deviants out of anyone who isn't straight. Not everyone, but society as a whole. Because, by creating this image, people can separate themselves from that which they do not understand.

Different communities of people tend to have different misconceptions about bisexuals. Even groups of bisexuals have misconceptions about bisexuals.

Some of the misconceptions I've encountered:

• we're all polyamorous
• we'll sleep with anything that moves
• we're more highly evolved (than people who are heterosexual or homosexual, presumably)
• All people are bisexual by nature
• we're all gender-indifferent
• we can't be emotionally fulfilled without at least one lover of each gender
• we're responsible for spreading AIDS to lesbians
• we're responsible for spreading AIDS to heterosexuals
• we're guaranteed to leave our male partners for women
• we're guaranteed to leave our female partners for men
• we're really straight, and sleeping with members of the same sex because it's trendy
• we're really homosexual, and we're only pretending to be attracted to members of the opposite sex in order to cling to heterosexual privilege
• none of us are over the age of thirty

One can, I'm sure, come up with similar lists of misconceptions about heterosexuality and homosexuality. I've probably heard variations on "everyone's really bisexual" most often; however, I hang out with a mostly-bisexual crowd, and that bit of bisupremacy is most often heard from bisexuals, so I can't really generalize from my experience.