Wheldrake
Posts: 477
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MsHonor quote:
ORIGINAL: eyesopened (those people are normally referred to as "very bi") but i believe there are many more who can enjoy same-sex as an activity but which does not touch their heart. I'm glad I made you smile... :-) But, whoever is "normally" using the word "bisexual" that way is using it wrong. It's binary in nature. Either you're attracted to members of both sexes, or you're not. It's not about touching your heart so much as about touching your libido. I have heard "a little" or "very" or "theoretically" used to modify "bisexual" in terms of the frequency or commonness of that attraction with arguable correctness... But it's not a matter of whether or not you do it. "Bisexual" is not, in any way, a matter of doing something you have no natural urge or desire to do, for it's own sake, to be obedient. That's just a heterosexual boy/girl performing a homosexual act, on command. I agree completely that willingness to perform homosexual acts on command doesn't have much to do with bisexuality. On the other hand, I have to respectfully disagree with your "binary" view of bisexuality. I think it's much more realistic to look at sexuality as a continuum on which individuals can fall almost anywhere, and even shift around a bit over time. Strict homosexuality would be at one end of the continuum, strict heterosexuality would be at the other end, and strict bisexuality would be in the middle. If I understand you correctly, you would want to call a person bisexual if he or she had drifted even a tiny bit from the heterosexual pole. But I think it's anything but arguable that someone in that position would only be "a little" bisexual, and that - if you're just going to use one word - "heterosexual" would be a better approximation of his or her orientation than "bisexual". Of course, even that continuum doesn't do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon. Some people may be very bisexual in certain contexts, or with the right kind of potential partner, and hardly bisexual at all in others. Other men don't "touch my libido" at all in vanilla situations, but domineering men with an interest in restraining and torturing me might be... more interesting. I think a lot of us probably have complicated sexual orientations that can't be accurately captured by a one-word label, and the existence of precise "clinical" definitions of heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual might just indicate a simplistic mindset on the part of the clinicians - unless, of course, they recognise that each of those terms can cover a very broad and complex set of behaviour, and that some individuals won't fit neatly into any category. And about that horse with the ham-hock in its mouth... don't you think it could possibly develop a taste for meat and become, if not an carnivore, perhaps just a bit omnivorous? Knowing a little bit about the flexibility and quirkiness of animal behaviour, I don't think this is really so implausible.
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