4 ms·

This is very interesting stuff. I'm a man and have identified as gay for most of my awareness of my sexuality, but started experiencing attraction to women some

by nxc18 8y ago

This is very interesting stuff. I'm a man and have identified as gay for most of my awareness of my sexuality, but started experiencing attraction to women sometime in college. I think I'm bi now, but preferences seem to vary considerably month to month. It was pretty confusing for a while before I stopped trying to put labels on it and just went with it. The biggest thing I've realized is that in the ways that count, I really actually just like people. There seems to be a small aspect of sexuality driven by visual attraction ("wow he's hot") but really the person inside (behavioral identity) seems to be more important. I wonder how many people (especially men) might have expressed sexual fluidity if it wasn't for the societal idea that you're gay/straight/bi and that's that...I know I wasn't too open to being attracted to women for a long time, and I don't think that's a healthy place to be.

zaarn 8y ago
personally, I'm fairly certain that 99.9% of the population is to some degree bisexual, though most people fall on an extreme where they prefer one gender over the other a lot (but you could convince them to say someone of the same gender is hot or someone of the other gender is hot or whatever you land on)
- pitt1980 8y ago
  I suspect you're correct, One implication of you being correct though is how we should react to things that subtly move the culture one way or the other, The behavior of culture warriors of all stripes makes a lot more sense if you are correct http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/01/setting-the-default/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/01/setting-the-default/ was an interesting post that made a lot of behavior that seemed baffling to me, make more sense after I read it
- ashleyn 8y ago
  This is my personal experience and yet I'm careful not to put my own experience onto anyone else. I've met more than enough people, gay and straight, who seem genuinely repulsed by one or the other. I don't purport to know what they feel like, nor can I.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  Well isn't attraction a combination of physical and intellectual attraction? The physical attraction seems to be strongly binary for the majority, but if you're not then being "sexually fluid" seems like a natural consequence to me.
amaccuish 8y ago
> I'm a man and have identified as gay for most of my awareness of my sexuality, but started experiencing attraction to women sometime in college I'm a gay man myself, but what I sometimes find difficult is sometimes I feel some sort of attraction to a few of my very close women friends. It's quite confusing, I can't entirely decide whether these feelings are platonic or sexual, or even some sort of FOMO that I don't know what it's like to be with a girl, maybe I should try it. And as I've come out, and labeled myself as gay, I think it would be disingenious of me to try anything, since my women friends don't expect that from me. Though it has become easier being heavily into the kink scene (Recon, rubber/leather etc), and I come across all sorts of people, a lot of whom would identify as bi or pansexual. I'm just glad we can have a conversation about this instead of hiding it all and I'm 21, so I'm sure I'll work it all out.

by nxc18 8y ago

zaarn 8y ago

personally, I'm fairly certain that 99.9% of the population is to some degree bisexual, though most people fall on an extreme where they prefer one gender over the other a lot (but you could convince them to say someone of the same gender is hot or someone of the other gender is hot or whatever you land on)

pitt1980 8y ago
I suspect you're correct, One implication of you being correct though is how we should react to things that subtly move the culture one way or the other, The behavior of culture warriors of all stripes makes a lot more sense if you are correct http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/01/setting-the-default/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/01/setting-the-default/ was an interesting post that made a lot of behavior that seemed baffling to me, make more sense after I read it
ashleyn 8y ago
This is my personal experience and yet I'm careful not to put my own experience onto anyone else. I've met more than enough people, gay and straight, who seem genuinely repulsed by one or the other. I don't purport to know what they feel like, nor can I.
magicalhippo 8y ago
Well isn't attraction a combination of physical and intellectual attraction? The physical attraction seems to be strongly binary for the majority, but if you're not then being "sexually fluid" seems like a natural consequence to me.

amaccuish 8y ago

> I'm a man and have identified as gay for most of my awareness of my sexuality, but started experiencing attraction to women sometime in college I'm a gay man myself, but what I sometimes find difficult is sometimes I feel some sort of attraction to a few of my very close women friends. It's quite confusing, I can't entirely decide whether these feelings are platonic or sexual, or even some sort of FOMO that I don't know what it's like to be with a girl, maybe I should try it. And as I've come out, and labeled myself as gay, I think it would be disingenious of me to try anything, since my women friends don't expect that from me. Though it has become easier being heavily into the kink scene (Recon, rubber/leather etc), and I come across all sorts of people, a lot of whom would identify as bi or pansexual. I'm just glad we can have a conversation about this instead of hiding it all and I'm 21, so I'm sure I'll work it all out.