Basically I distinguish “capable of experiencing sexual feelings towards” from “will ever actually have an experience with”, here. It’s like saying that “I’ll, like, never fall in love with a black man” (due to the demographics of my current location) versus “I never could fall in love with a black man”. It seems to me that the logical extension of these principles is that people may be capable of sexual feelings differing from the sexual norms of their society, to a greater extent than deviation already present, but do not articulate, understand, acknowledge, or have opportunity to experience these feelings. (There has to be a more sophisticated way to phrase this than “almost everyone is secretly a little bisexual”, because that of course dramatically oversimplifies the matter and gives the wrong mouthfeel, but.)
I guess “secretly a little bisexual, but due to society’s constraints will never consider or pursue a same-sex relationship” strikes me as heterosexual, not bisexual.
Sexuality is one of those areas where people want an abstract ‘core’ that is held separate and above environmental factors. For example a person may like to believe “I am the kind of person who could fall in love with a black man” and feel that never having fallen in love with a black man is a fact about their environment, not about their ability to love. I was wary of the difference you elucidated being something like “I like to believe that I am the kind of person who would be sexually attracted to both genders if only society was more permitting”.
Basically I distinguish “capable of experiencing sexual feelings towards” from “will ever actually have an experience with”, here. It’s like saying that “I’ll, like, never fall in love with a black man” (due to the demographics of my current location) versus “I never could fall in love with a black man”. It seems to me that the logical extension of these principles is that people may be capable of sexual feelings differing from the sexual norms of their society, to a greater extent than deviation already present, but do not articulate, understand, acknowledge, or have opportunity to experience these feelings. (There has to be a more sophisticated way to phrase this than “almost everyone is secretly a little bisexual”, because that of course dramatically oversimplifies the matter and gives the wrong mouthfeel, but.)
I guess “secretly a little bisexual, but due to society’s constraints will never consider or pursue a same-sex relationship” strikes me as heterosexual, not bisexual.
Sexuality is one of those areas where people want an abstract ‘core’ that is held separate and above environmental factors. For example a person may like to believe “I am the kind of person who could fall in love with a black man” and feel that never having fallen in love with a black man is a fact about their environment, not about their ability to love. I was wary of the difference you elucidated being something like “I like to believe that I am the kind of person who would be sexually attracted to both genders if only society was more permitting”.