This is not strictly true from my experience. I’ve had three girlfriends thus far and in all three cases, we were basically just friends who eventually realized we wanted to date one another. Of course, all three were also housemates, so I may be an odd case.
I’ve tried the “ask women out on dates” approach from time to time, but keep coming back to the impression that I’m the sort of person who just slides into romantic relationships with friends, and that if I want more romantic relationships, I need to make my social circle—not my circle of acquaintances, but my circle of folks I see on a daily basis—more generally co-ed (kind of a problem since it’s mostly folks I know from Singinst/Less Wrong these days).
Or become bisexual. If anyone posted a procedural comment on how to become bisexual, I would upvote it immediately =)
The way to become bisexual is to regularly extend your exposure to erotic stimuli just a little further than your comfort zone extends in that direction. I’ll use drawn pictorial porn as an example erotic stimulus, but adapt to whatever you prefer: start with Bridget. Everyone is gay for Bridget. Once you’re comfortable with Bridget, move on to futanari-on-female erotica, male-on-futanari, then futanari-on-male, paying attention to your comfort levels. You’ll run across some bizarre things while searching for this stuff; if any of it interests you, just go with it.
By now, you should be fairly comfortable with the plumbing involved, so it’s just the somatically male body you need to learn to find attractive. Find art featuring bishounen types, then pairing them with other male body types, and pay attention to what feels most comfortable.
It may take a while to go through this process, but I believe it’s entirely achievable for most people who don’t view heterosexuality as a terminal value.
The Bisexual Conspiracy commends your insidious efforts at propagating memes advantageous to us and has sent you several HBBs of assorted gender orientations by overnight delivery.
I wonder how much this would work for a homosexual male.
I’ve actually been trying this essential thing, although with less persistence as it requires a certain amount of effort to attend to something that just seems so immediately boring to myself. Perhaps living in a hetero-normative culture ensures that when a man decides that he’s gay, he is more likely to have discovered a roughly immutable biological fact?
One is that male anatomy is more familiar, and therefore presumably less intimidating, to straight men than female anatomy is to gay men.
Another is that in a heteronormative culture, men who aren’t strictly monosexual are more likely to identify as straight than as gay. If what this technique actually does is make men who aren’t monosexual more aware of their non-monosexuality, then I’d expect it to get more noticeable results on men who identify as straight. (I’d also expect there to be a wide range of effectiveness among straight-identified men.)
Despite subcultural normativity being strongly biased against bisexuality, really quite a lot of gay-identifying men have experimented with heterosexual behaviour, but are—ha! - closeted about it.
Alas the benefits of being open about a very slight sexual curiosity are probably not often great enough to make complete honesty seem worthwhile. Also such curiosity tends to signal a lack of self-knowledge and thus to an extent lack of trustworthiness, probably hence the vague stigma that many people have against dating bisexuals.
If you’re finding it boring, you may be trying to go too straight too quickly, or you may not be using your preferred form of erotica—I used hentai as as example, but I could’ve used textual fiction, videos, etc.
Or you could just be immutably gay; I am generalizing from just a few examples.
I suspect how well this works probably depends on exactly how hetero- or homosexual one was from the beginning. (I’m basing that on personal experience with regard to both bisexuality and various fetishes.)
Instead of a strict straight/bi/gay split, I prefer to think of it as a spectrum where 0 is completely straight, 5 is completely bisexual and 10 is completely gay. I’m guessing it’s possible for you to shift yourself a couple of points towards the middle of the spectrum, but not an arbitrary amount. E.g. if you started off at 0 you might shift yourself to 2, or if you started off at 8 you could shift yourself to 6.
I’d also note that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and emotional compatibility. I’m rather mildly bisexual and using these techniques, could probably become a bit more so. But my main issue with pursuing same-sex relationships is not the sexual attraction as such, but the fact that I find it a lot easier to relate and connect to women on an emotional level. These techniques probably wouldn’t help in that.
Instead of a strict straight/bi/gay split, I prefer to think of it as a spectrum where 0 is completely straight, 5 is completely bisexual and 10 is completely gay.
Hah! You’re trying to squish two axes into one axis. Why not just have an “attraction to males” axis and an “attraction to females” axis? After all, it is possible for both to be zero or negative.
I would say there are more than two axes which could be meaningfully considered, here. Male and female body types, personalities, and genitals can exist in a variety of combinations, and any given combination can (in principle) be considered sexy or repulsive separate from the others. For example, there are those who prefer [feminine/curvy/penis] having sex with [masculine/buff/vagina] over all other thus-far-imagined pairings.
In a similar spirit, many discussions of sexuality separate “attraction” from “identity” from “experience” onto different axes to get at the differences between a man who is occasionally attracted to men but identifies as straight, vs. a man who is equally often attracted to men but identifies as bi, or various other possible combinations.
Something related is common in the asexual community: Many asexuals identify as hetero/homo/bi/pan/a-romantic. I could certainly see someone being hetero- or homosexual and bi- or pan-romantic, or bi- or pansexual and hetero- or homo-romantic.
I would be surprised if the kinds of gradual-exposure techniques khafra endorses here for making same-sex partners more erotically compatible didn’t work equally well (or poorly) for making them emotionally compatible.
Of course, in that case you wouldn’t want to use erotic stimuli.
I’m not exactly sure what stimuli you would use, because I’m not exactly sure what you mean by relating and connecting to people on an emotional level… but whatever it is, I suspect you could test khafra’s approach by identifying specific activities that qualify, and then looking for the closest thing to that activity involving men that you find easy, and attending to that thing.
Let me stress here, though, that I’m not asserting you ought to change anything. There’s nothing wrong with being heterosexual, and there’s no reason you should feel like your heterosexuality diminishes you in any way.
I would be surprised if the kinds of gradual-exposure techniques khafra endorses here for making same-sex partners more erotically compatible didn’t work equally well (or poorly) for making them emotionally compatible.
Umm, no. To make erotic stimuli more attractive, it’s enough that you think about the stimuli often enough and learn to like it. It may be slow, but there’s relatively little risk. Learning to bond and relate to the kinds of people you’ve always had difficulty bonding and relating to requires you to open yourself up to them in an attempt to connect with them. At worst, you can end up embarassed and hurt and have an ever harder time trying to connect to them in the future.
It’s also a lot more complex, since it’s not enough to modify your own reactions. You also need to learn how to get the right responses out of other people.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, or that you couldn’t apply similiar techniques as you would to developing an erotic attraction. But those are techniques are only a small part of it, and it’s a lot harder.
Agreed that learning to get the right responses out of other people, and risking social penalties, are eventually required for this sort of social conditioning. (Though not necessarily initially required.)
It seems to me the same thing is true of erotic conditioning of the sort we’re talking about. That is, if I want to train myself to respond erotically to X, sooner or later I have to stop exclusively interacting with pictures or books or whatever and start actually interacting with X, and that can be difficult, and risks social penalties. But I don’t start there.
That said, I’m pretty much speaking hypothetically here; I’ve never actually used this technique. So I could easily be wrong.
That shouldn’t be as much of an issue, because there’s so much variation in emotional compatibility with men. If you’re sexually attracted to penises, it shouldn’t be hard to find at least someone you’re emotionally compatible with who has a penis. The main problem is getting attracted to the “other” set of genitalia. If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them, whereas emotional compatibility is more complicated and subtle.
There isn’t really a one-size-fits-all emotional compatibility with men, the way there is with sexual orientation.
If Kaj_Sotala tells me that emotional compatibility is more of an issue for him than sexual attraction, I’m prepared to accept that… I don’t see the value in challenging his observations about what “the main problem” for him really is.
That said, like you, I don’t consider it likely that this describes very many people. Then again, I also don’t find it likely that “If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them” describes very many people.
Then again again, the world is full of unlikely things.
Well, think about it like this. I also get along better and generally find it easier to get closer to women than to men. But there are some men I can connect with as well, because there is so much variation in men’s personalities. So the problem here is just finding the right ones.
Now compare this to sexual compatibility, which requires the right sex organs. This is a much bigger obstacle. I’m attracted to female genitalia and not male ones. Unlike with personality, this is a binary issue: you either like male genitalia or you don’t, and if you don’t, this rules out half the population.
Then again, I also don’t find it likely that “If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them” describes very many people.
Really? Why not? I would think it obviously describes everyone. You may not be attracted to the person attached, but you’re either sexually attracted to male genitalia, or you’re not.
Well, the short answer to “Why not?” is “Experience.”
The longer answer is, I suspect, longer than I feel like giving, since it’s clear that you and I have very different models of how attraction works.
Suffice to say that there are various attributes along which individual genitalia vary, to which I expect different people assign more or less value, resulting in different judgments. For many people I expect that this list of attributes includes the contexts established by the attached person.
I may not have spoken clearly. Let me try again, and tell me if this makes sense to you.
A lot of people are strongly monosexual: that is, no matter what a person looks like, what their personality is, or how emotionally compatible they are, if the other person has the “wrong” genitalia, this will preclude any possibility of dating, sex, or a relationship, because they won’t be able to sexually connect.
If you think about dating as going through a series of hurdles, the first and most important hurdle is having the “right” genitals. After that, there are other attributes, like looks and personality, which I think is what you’re talking about. But if someone has the “right” genitals, there is at least the potential for a sexual connection. That doesn’t mean there will definitely be sexual attraction.
I think you’re being clear; I just don’t agree with you. Yes, I think you’re missing things.
For one thing, you treat gender as equivalent to having particular genitalia. It isn’t. Even people exclusively attracted to men sometimes find themselves attracted to people without penises.
For another, you treat all genitals of a particular category as being interchangeable for purposes of attractiveness. They aren’t, any more than all voices or all hands or feet or all eyes are interchangeable. You may not care about individual differences in a particular category, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t.
For a third, your whole structure of “the first hurdle” and “the most important hurdle” strikes me as arbitrary. The idea that someone to whom I am not attracted is someone I have a “potential sexual connection” with simply because they are a particular gender, or have the proper genitals, is a perfectly legitimate perspective… but to privilege that dimension over the myriad other parameters that allow or preclude attraction is not obviously justified.
For one thing, you treat gender as equivalent to having particular genitalia.
No, I was thinking of gender as a separate hurdle. For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I don’t think the attraction is “exclusive to men” as much as it is “exclusive to people with specific genitals.” Though this is probably very variable, and monosexuals may well be divided on whether genitalia or gender is more important to them. I’d be curious to know the breakdown.
For another, you treat all genitals of a particular category as being interchangeable for purposes of attractiveness.
to privilege that dimension [genitals] over the myriad other parameters that allow or preclude attraction is not obviously justified.
I was thinking like this. Suppose you are a monosexual on a desert island with one other person. You will likely want sexual contact. At least for me, the most important quality of your island-mate (for purposes of sexual contact, that is) is that they have the “right” type of genitals; while other qualities may be unattractive or undesirable, they can be overcome if you want sexual contact enough, but having the “wrong” type of genitals can’t. To put this another way, as a straight male, someone I am not attracted to who has a vulva may be less than ideal, but still sexually satisfying; someone without a vulva couldn’t possibly be.
I had thought this would be universal for monosexuals; your comments lead me to think I was wrong, and it’s more complicated than that. I’m curious how common my view is, and the specifics of other views.
(BTW, I wish I could upvote you several times just for using ‘myriad’ correctly.)
a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. [..] I don’t think the attraction is “exclusive to men” as much as it is “exclusive to people with specific genitals.”
Huh.
So George, a straight cisgender male, walks into a dance club and sees Janey dancing. He can tell she presents as female from the way she dresses, her hair, her body shape, etc. He talks to her for a while, and he can tell she identifies as female—or at least claims to—from the things she says.
But her pants are still on.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying George does not know at this point whether he’s sexually attracted to Janey, because the “primary hurdle” hasn’t been crossed yet?
If so, you and I have very different understandings of how sexual attraction works. It seems relatively clear to me that George makes that determination within the first few minutes of seeing her, based on a variety of properties, many of which are components of gender.
If not, then I’m not really sure what you’re saying.
It seems relatively clear to me that George makes that determination within the first few minutes of seeing her, based on a variety of properties, many of which are components of gender.
Yes, he does. And you’re right: he is attracted to her even though he doesn’t know what her genitalia are like. He’s probably making an assumption that might or might not be correct, and this assumption is based on the gender properties he observes. If he’s not correct, this may change his attraction. Or not.
My mistake was using the word “attracted” in the quoted portion of my comment. What I should have said was “capable of sexual satisfaction with,” “sexually compatible,” or “genitally compatible,” which aren’t the same thing. While he may be initially attracted, he still doesn’t know whether or not he’s sexually compatible with her (though he assumes he is, which inspires the attraction).
I think you are also right that genitalia is not the most important thing for all monosexuals. I would bet it is for most, though. And at some point this is just a matter of how we define ‘monosexual’ (or ‘straight’, or ‘gay’). We could think of a 2-D version of the Kinsey scale, similar to what you discuss in an earlier comment, where gender is one axis and genitalia is another.
What I should have said was “capable of sexual satisfaction with,” “sexually compatible,” or “genitally compatible,” which aren’t the same thing.
I’m not sure that helps. Many people, even entirely monosexual people, are perfectly capable of sexual satisfaction with one another despite injury to or loss of their genitalia. So I would similarly object to defining “capable of sexual satisfaction with” and “sexually compatible” primarily in terms of genitals the way you do.
I’ll agree with defining “genitally compatible” that way, though.
If you’re willing to define people for whom genital compatibility is not primary as not-really-monosexual, then your claim is trivially true. That said, at that point you have also defined a lot of people as not-really-straight who would disagree vehemently with you.
I think that given that not all traits are observable, we make assumptions about common ones. Someone who doesn’t know that a female-appearing person has a penis is attracted to a false image of what that person’s like, said false image not completely matching the real person.
It seems unjustified to claim that in this case, they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person lacks a penis, or that they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person has a vulva, without further data.
I think “genetalia” is being used as shorthand for all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary. Otherwise the idea of slowly going from women to futnari to men would be nonsensical, right?
I don’t know how to make that interpretation compatible with, for example, Blueberry’s claim that a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF, given that many sexual characteristics typical of women are present in a a pre-op MtF. (And, indeed, my understanding of the real world is that straight cis males are not infrequently attracted to pre-op trangender MtF people.)
But I would certainly agree that the claim that the “primary hurdle” for sexual attraction is the set of all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary, is a much more sensible claim than the one I understood Blueberry to be making.
Blueberry’s claim that a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF, given that many sexual characteristics typical of women are present in a a pre-op MtF.
Did they actually make that claim? I saw you say it followed from their claim...
Well, whatever. As you say, it’s a more sensible claim regardless of whether anyone was actually making it :-P
For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I’m pretty sure “a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF” is reliably implied by that quote, though of course I could be wrong.
This is precisely why I asked them to clarify the claim in the first place.
(Well, you can—just create multiple accounts for the purpose—but I’d rather you didn’t.)
As I understand it, there are many cases of men who identify as heterosexual but who, in all-male environments, nevertheless participate in sexual encounters with other men.
That suggests to me that for many heterosexual men, having the “right” genitals isn’t as singularly definitive a property as it is for you.
Granted, another possibility is that such men aren’t actually heterosexual, they merely think they are, and your description is accurate for genuine heterosexuals. If so, it seems genuine heterosexuals are noticeably rarer than people who identify that way.
One theory is that there is a difference between sexual orientation and relationship orientation, so that there are men who prefer romance and relationships with women, but are sexually bi. Since our language and culture don’t typically make this distinction, such people might just identify as straight.
Another is that sexuality is flexible, so in the desert island example, or in all-male environments, the men adapt over time to become capable of getting sexual satisfaction from other men in a way that they weren’t before. This is similar, in a way, to the gradual-exposure techniques khafra talked about.
But—and this was my main point—before such a shift in sexuality occurs, a straight man would be out of luck even if he had 100 males to choose from. But once such a shift occurs, all he has to do is find one out of the 100 he’s emotionally compatible with (assuming he’s looking for emotional compatibility). This is why I said the sexual shift was the hard part: males are not an emotional monolith and out of 100, at least one should be more or less emotionally compatible.
I very frequently find someone attractive, or not, long before seeing their genitals. Indeed, there are dozens of people in the world whose genitals I have never seen, and yet I am still able to find them either attractive or not.
Compatibility of genitalia is surely important for answering the more specific question “am I going to have sex with this person or not?” but that’s not the same thing as attraction. For most of us, there are plenty of people in the world who are very attractive but with whom we will never have sex. Many people choose to have sex with people they find not all that attractive (e.g. because they are in some sort of long-term relationship, and either their tastes or the appearance of the other person have changed over time).
Instead of a strict straight/bi/gay split, I prefer to think of it as a spectrum where 0 is completely straight, 5 is completely bisexual and 10 is completely gay. I’m guessing it’s possible for you to shift yourself a couple of points towards the middle of the spectrum, but not an arbitrary amount. E.g. if you started off at 0 you might shift yourself to 2, or if you started off at 8 you could shift yourself to 6.
By this metric, I started at a zero (unable to find other males sexually attractive,) and ended at a zero. My attempts to influence myself to have a sexual interest in men achieved null results.
I have no problem finding other men attractive, but they’re still about as sexually appealing to me as plants.
The scale you are talking about when used by psychologists and others when discussing sexuality is the Kinsey scale. Under the standard scaling it goes from 0 to 6 with 0 being complete heterosexuality and 6 being complete homosexualty.
It should be 0 for female-attracted and 6 for male-attracted (or the reverse, but I’ll go this way since Kinsey used it first on men). The idea that homo- and hetero- are the basic orientations is asinine, but surprisingly common.
I’ll admit to being a 2 on the scale that I just described, but I refuse to be placed on Kinsey’s scale at all.
Or become bisexual. If anyone posted a procedural comment on how to become bisexual, I would upvote it immediately =)
Within the nearby cluster in personspace: I think Robin Lee Powell has said that he chose to become bisexual, if you want to ask him to elaborate on that process. :)
(I’ve gotten a bit more bisexual over time, and I occasionally wonder if I actually pushed myself in that direction (since I remember wishing that I could be, as early as 14 or 15), or if that’s just the direction I was drifting in anyway and I happened to be open to it in advance. But it’s probably hard to tell in retrospect.)
Or become bisexual. If anyone posted a procedural comment on how to become bisexual, I would upvote it immediately =)
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
I have heard from some people that having a reputation as bisexual has increased their prospects with women. I suspect this is dependent on location, social circle, and attractiveness.
It may also be that a large percentage of women are no longer interested, but enough of the women that remain are significantly more interested- and so you go from, say, 20 women who might date you to 10 women who might date you, of whom 2 want to. Overall prospects down, but easy prospects up.
(I will comment, though, that this probably has to do way more with the masculine/feminine balance of the people in question than their sexual history or orientation.)
For the foreseeable future, I’m going to be exclusively dating poly or poly-friendly girls anyway. I don’t think being bi would hurt me within that subpopulation—does that seem wrong?
(One data point: my girlfriend has only-half-jokingly claimed that if I really want to make her happy, I ought to make out with one of my male friends and send her photos)
Well, it would likely prevent a guy from running for political office or becoming a CEO of a major corporation, for instance. Or at least make it very difficult. There are only a few openly gay politicians, and even then they have to fit certain social ideals.
Okay, I cross that off then.
How about naturism? In east Germany its a trivial part of the culture. In the US it seems to be a highly stigmatized lifestyle.
I didn’t select my friends from (a conservative Christian) college for lgbt-friendliness or non-conformist dating styles or really anything at all, besides maybe an enjoyment of genre television or some connection to friends I already had. And yet it turned out that at least a third of the women in my social circle share my love of hot bi guys and m/m in general. Also, m/m fanservice for the benefit of female fans seems to be rather a common thing for hot young male celebrities to do in certain cultures, such as Japan.
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
I’ve found that just meeting more people solves this one nicely. The percentage difference is not overwhelming, and you really won’t want those people anyway.
I disagree with the “you really won’t want those people anyway.” I suspect the loss of attraction many women feel if they hear a guy has been with another guy has marginal ‘conscious choice’ in it.
But anyway, I’ve followed this thread too long. I don’t really have any expertise on bisexuality—I’ve just heard lots of straight women tell me it turns them off.
I think the reason for that is that so many gay men go through a phase, as part of their coming out, where they claim bisexuality for a while. This, combined with the fact that there seem to be relatively few numbers of truly bisexual men, means that a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay. So going out with a bisexual guy is really risky from the woman’s point of view.
I’ll admit, when I run into people who talk like this, I generally assume that they are weighting the costs of a relationship ending badly due to a boyfriend turning out gay significantly higher than the costs of a relationship ending badly for other reasons.
But perhaps that’s unfair of me; perhaps, as you suggest, it’s really just about probability estimates.
Would you mind putting some numbers around “really risky”?
That is… if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a partner who identifies as bi, what’s your estimate and confidence level for (B-S)?
That is… if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a partner who identifies as bi, what’s your estimate and confidence level for (B-S)?
Well, my numbers would be a bit skewed by the fact that I quite happily date bisexual women (I am one myself). Should I put the non-straight women in S or B? Or make a third category L?
Your skew is fine… I’m just interested in clarification of your original claim, however skewed it may be, that going out with a bisexual guy is really risky because a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay.
That said, given that your original claim was about men, I should have said if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a male partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a male partner who identifies as bi. Point taken.
Well, for S, most relationships end “badly” (in a breakup, at least), so I guess I’ll ballpark that at 90 percent.
For B, I estimate that 34 percent of men presenting as bi are actually gay (going from this study.) I’ll assume that a relationship with the other 66 percent of bi guys would have the same 90 percent failure rate as the S group, but that a relationship with one of the 34 would have a 100 percent failure rate. So B overall is 93.4.
It’s only a few percentage points higher, yes, but the fact that S is already high doesn’t do much to change the fact that if you have one (small) dating pool where fully a third of the dudes are essentially just looking for beards, a straight woman loses little by excluding that pool, and improves her prospects overall.
For a more extreme position, Rieger, Chivers, and Bailey (ETA:here) find that 75% of self-identified bi men get erections from gay porn, 25% from straight porn, though reported arousal is bisexual.
ETA: that is a quote from press coverage. It pushes a bit farther than the paper and does not match the data. The direct quotes in the press coverage suggest to me that the fault is the authors, not the reporters. The text of the paper is more cautious, but I think also misleading.
Eyeballing the data, I would say that 1⁄2 of bis respond only to gay porn, 1⁄4 only to straight porn, and 1⁄4 uniformly. Also, 1⁄4 of straights and gays respond uniformly. (this is after removing 1⁄3 of all orientations that have no genital response)
What is more interesting is that reported arousal to the porn fits self-identification pretty well. It would be interesting to how the gap between genital and reported arousal varies across individuals. Some patterns would suggest that people are lying to themselves while others that the gap is due to sexuality being complicated. I was amused that straights admitted to being aroused by gay porn, while gays did not admit to being aroused by straight porn; but I suspect that the sample of straights was pretty biased.
One of the things that amused me about that report when I read it was realizing that while I am often aroused by actual women, most mainstream straight porn does nothing for me.
I can only assume that many straight men find porn more arousing than actual women, since the whole point of porn is to be a superstimulus, so there seems to be a difference there.
while I am often aroused by actual women, most mainstream straight porn does nothing for me.
One of the numerous problems with that study. I consider it completely worthless.
I can only assume that many straight men find porn more arousing than actual women, since the whole point of porn is to be a superstimulus
Wait, what? No! Not at all! The point of porn is to help you when you don’t have an actual woman to have sex with. It’s never as arousing as an actual woman. It’s like a microwave dinner when you’re hungry but don’t have the time or money to cook or go to a restaurant.
I didn’t mean ”...to have sex with.” I meant actual women. Who can sometimes be arousing even if I’m not having sex with them. As can men. Others’ mileage may, of course, vary.
I suspect mileage varies a lot here. But I’m a little confused. You’re comparing porn, which depicts people without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts, with people in general? With clothes on? Do you mean just someone walking down the street? Obviously someone without clothes, or in a sexual position or activity, is generally going to be more arousing than a person in a non-sexual situation: this seems like it would be fairly robust across all genders and orientations.
Do you mean arousal from women in non-sexual situations? Or do you mean arousal from women in sexual situations but not from photos or videos or textual depictions of women in sexual situations? Or is this just about “mainstream” vs. alternative depictions? I’m curious what you mean.
I’ve noticed that people critical of porn (I don’t mean you) have a very narrow view of what “mainstream” porn is that doesn’t match my experience; it’s very common for someone to complain about porn in general because they object to a few specific things that are only in some porn.
Yes, I was saying that I often find actual women, even those in non-sexual situations, even those wearing clothes on, more arousing than women in porn, depicted without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts.
I hope that clears things up.
I can easily see where this might be an artifact of a relatively narrow porn sample; I’m not especially a connoisseur of porn.
The point of porn is to be as arousing as possible so people want to watch and hopefully pay for it. I doubt that nobody finds it more arousing than having an actual partner, because it can depict things they’re unlikely to be able to see or do with a partner. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone claiming to find live action porn more arousing than real sex, but 2D complexes appear to be a real thing.
I doubt that nobody finds it more arousing than having an actual partner, because it can depict things they’re unlikely to be able to see or do with a partner.
True. Also, sexuality is one area in which...your mileage may vary. It’s a big world. I’m pretty sure that if you looked hard enough, you could find someone for whom X is more arousing than Y for quite a few values of X and Y.
I think I’d split the difference. Porn can’t give you interactivity or a lot of partner stimuli, so it attempts to compensate by superstimulating what it does have access to. It would of course be good for porn producers if they came up with something that was better than actual sex for most people, but thanks to the format’s limited sensory bandwidth that’s probably impossible.
If the Rieger/Chivers/Bailey results are reliable, this might suggest that male bisexuality’s associated with a preference for sexual stimulation other than what straight porn gives you. This ought to be testable, but I don’t know of any studies that have made the attempt.
In the study, 1⁄3 of the men, uniformly across all orientations, had no genital response. Also, 1⁄3 had no subjective response, though I don’t see any indication in the paper whether they were the same people.
(nods) I would also be interested to see what the correlations were between response-to-porn and response-to-people. Lots of interpretations of studies of this sort seem to treat the former as a proxy for the latter, so if it turned out that they were not strongly linked the interpretations might be misleading.
I would say, speaking from other bisexual men I know as well as myself, that if bisexuality turned someone off that would in fact reduce their attractiveness, in the general case.
But yeah, we both only have anecdotes at this stage :-)
I’m reminded of coming out as bi to a high-school friend of mine, who allowed after some consideration that he was pretty squicked by the notion, but he saw no particular reason why either one of us should pay much attention to that reaction.
Which I can respect, actually.
Though admittedly it would turn me off in a prospective partner.
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
Nobody is required to signal their sexual preferences far and wide. That is personal information, to be revealed if and when you deem it appropriate or beneficial. This means that becoming bisexual merely gives you more options, without interfering with your existing options unless you choose to let it change your signalling strategy. That said, humans are notoriously bad at making decisions when burdened with extra choices!
Also, a lot depends on whether the people I am approaching for dates share a social community.
If they do, then if I want to keep control over who becomes aware of my sexual preferences, I need to expend additional effort to prevent that information from traveling through that community… that is, it stops being “private” and starts being “secret.”
This is otherwise known as “being in the closet” in some communities.
This is otherwise known as “being in the closet” in some communities.
Fortunately it is a closet full of beautiful women who you find highly attractive. Such a better closet to be in than the one homosexuals have had to hide themselves in at times. :)
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better. Agreed.
Of course, even better is to not have to keep any of them secret, and to instead be able to reveal whatever information about my sexual preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
All of that said: perhaps I’ve lost track of context.
MBlume’s parent comment framed bisexuality as an improvement, and lukeprog warned that there were costs to it. You countered that those costs can be averted by keeping one’s bisexuality secret. But that seems to completely subvert MBlume’s original point… if I’m in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better.
It seems the choice is, instead, between having your attraction and sexual appreciation mechanism biologically crippled so as to halve the potential partners or to give yourself the option of specialising your signalling as to optimise your chances within a specific target niche or of seeking more diverse experience.
But that seems to completely subvert MBlume’s original point…
Neutral returns as a worst case makes the point a good one. :)
Well, in my own life, the additional option of living in a social context in which honest signaling about gender-selection with respect to attraction and sexual appreciation doesn’t have especially negative consequences became available, and that has worked pretty well for me.
I’ve lived the “specializing my signaling” lifestyle before; I don’t prefer it. The returns of such signal-specialization can be worse than neutral in some cases.
Alas, a process by which I can modify myself to broaden the scope of those to whom I am sexually attracted is not available to me—I can’t give testimony either way. But I can always wish for it.
if I’m in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
You don’t have to be in the closet with everyone. Just treat it as something personal that you only tell people once you know them and trust them enough, and you’ve gauged their reaction to casual mentions of bisexuality.
Agreed that avoiding keeping just most people from knowing about my relationship preferences isn’t as difficult as keeping everyone from knowing about them.
Of course, as above, even better is to be able to reveal whatever information about my relationship preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
I’ll note that I have personally tried to become bisexual, and it didn’t work. If anyone else has had success in this endeavor, I’d be very interested to hear it.
This is not strictly true from my experience. I’ve had three girlfriends thus far and in all three cases, we were basically just friends who eventually realized we wanted to date one another. Of course, all three were also housemates, so I may be an odd case.
I’ve tried the “ask women out on dates” approach from time to time, but keep coming back to the impression that I’m the sort of person who just slides into romantic relationships with friends, and that if I want more romantic relationships, I need to make my social circle—not my circle of acquaintances, but my circle of folks I see on a daily basis—more generally co-ed (kind of a problem since it’s mostly folks I know from Singinst/Less Wrong these days).
Or become bisexual. If anyone posted a procedural comment on how to become bisexual, I would upvote it immediately =)
The way to become bisexual is to regularly extend your exposure to erotic stimuli just a little further than your comfort zone extends in that direction. I’ll use drawn pictorial porn as an example erotic stimulus, but adapt to whatever you prefer: start with Bridget. Everyone is gay for Bridget. Once you’re comfortable with Bridget, move on to futanari-on-female erotica, male-on-futanari, then futanari-on-male, paying attention to your comfort levels. You’ll run across some bizarre things while searching for this stuff; if any of it interests you, just go with it.
By now, you should be fairly comfortable with the plumbing involved, so it’s just the somatically male body you need to learn to find attractive. Find art featuring bishounen types, then pairing them with other male body types, and pay attention to what feels most comfortable.
It may take a while to go through this process, but I believe it’s entirely achievable for most people who don’t view heterosexuality as a terminal value.
The Bisexual Conspiracy commends your insidious efforts at propagating memes advantageous to us and has sent you several HBBs of assorted gender orientations by overnight delivery.
I wonder how much this would work for a homosexual male.
I’ve actually been trying this essential thing, although with less persistence as it requires a certain amount of effort to attend to something that just seems so immediately boring to myself. Perhaps living in a hetero-normative culture ensures that when a man decides that he’s gay, he is more likely to have discovered a roughly immutable biological fact?
Two related thoughts come to mind.
One is that male anatomy is more familiar, and therefore presumably less intimidating, to straight men than female anatomy is to gay men.
Another is that in a heteronormative culture, men who aren’t strictly monosexual are more likely to identify as straight than as gay. If what this technique actually does is make men who aren’t monosexual more aware of their non-monosexuality, then I’d expect it to get more noticeable results on men who identify as straight. (I’d also expect there to be a wide range of effectiveness among straight-identified men.)
Despite subcultural normativity being strongly biased against bisexuality, really quite a lot of gay-identifying men have experimented with heterosexual behaviour, but are—ha! - closeted about it.
Alas the benefits of being open about a very slight sexual curiosity are probably not often great enough to make complete honesty seem worthwhile. Also such curiosity tends to signal a lack of self-knowledge and thus to an extent lack of trustworthiness, probably hence the vague stigma that many people have against dating bisexuals.
The Bizarre World of the Bisexual—it’s all 100% true! [1]
[1] Statement of 100% truth may not be 100% true.
If you’re finding it boring, you may be trying to go too straight too quickly, or you may not be using your preferred form of erotica—I used hentai as as example, but I could’ve used textual fiction, videos, etc.
Or you could just be immutably gay; I am generalizing from just a few examples.
Hmm, I’ll experiment with a variety, and report back if I make findings.
I suspect how well this works probably depends on exactly how hetero- or homosexual one was from the beginning. (I’m basing that on personal experience with regard to both bisexuality and various fetishes.)
Instead of a strict straight/bi/gay split, I prefer to think of it as a spectrum where 0 is completely straight, 5 is completely bisexual and 10 is completely gay. I’m guessing it’s possible for you to shift yourself a couple of points towards the middle of the spectrum, but not an arbitrary amount. E.g. if you started off at 0 you might shift yourself to 2, or if you started off at 8 you could shift yourself to 6.
I’d also note that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and emotional compatibility. I’m rather mildly bisexual and using these techniques, could probably become a bit more so. But my main issue with pursuing same-sex relationships is not the sexual attraction as such, but the fact that I find it a lot easier to relate and connect to women on an emotional level. These techniques probably wouldn’t help in that.
Hah! You’re trying to squish two axes into one axis. Why not just have an “attraction to males” axis and an “attraction to females” axis? After all, it is possible for both to be zero or negative.
I would say there are more than two axes which could be meaningfully considered, here. Male and female body types, personalities, and genitals can exist in a variety of combinations, and any given combination can (in principle) be considered sexy or repulsive separate from the others. For example, there are those who prefer [feminine/curvy/penis] having sex with [masculine/buff/vagina] over all other thus-far-imagined pairings.
Dimension reduction is not automatically an illegitimate move. That said, I grant that in this case it’s worthwhile to keep at least two axes.
In a similar spirit, many discussions of sexuality separate “attraction” from “identity” from “experience” onto different axes to get at the differences between a man who is occasionally attracted to men but identifies as straight, vs. a man who is equally often attracted to men but identifies as bi, or various other possible combinations.
Something related is common in the asexual community: Many asexuals identify as hetero/homo/bi/pan/a-romantic. I could certainly see someone being hetero- or homosexual and bi- or pan-romantic, or bi- or pansexual and hetero- or homo-romantic.
An excellent point.
I would be surprised if the kinds of gradual-exposure techniques khafra endorses here for making same-sex partners more erotically compatible didn’t work equally well (or poorly) for making them emotionally compatible.
Of course, in that case you wouldn’t want to use erotic stimuli.
I’m not exactly sure what stimuli you would use, because I’m not exactly sure what you mean by relating and connecting to people on an emotional level… but whatever it is, I suspect you could test khafra’s approach by identifying specific activities that qualify, and then looking for the closest thing to that activity involving men that you find easy, and attending to that thing.
Let me stress here, though, that I’m not asserting you ought to change anything. There’s nothing wrong with being heterosexual, and there’s no reason you should feel like your heterosexuality diminishes you in any way.
Umm, no. To make erotic stimuli more attractive, it’s enough that you think about the stimuli often enough and learn to like it. It may be slow, but there’s relatively little risk. Learning to bond and relate to the kinds of people you’ve always had difficulty bonding and relating to requires you to open yourself up to them in an attempt to connect with them. At worst, you can end up embarassed and hurt and have an ever harder time trying to connect to them in the future.
It’s also a lot more complex, since it’s not enough to modify your own reactions. You also need to learn how to get the right responses out of other people.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, or that you couldn’t apply similiar techniques as you would to developing an erotic attraction. But those are techniques are only a small part of it, and it’s a lot harder.
Agreed that learning to get the right responses out of other people, and risking social penalties, are eventually required for this sort of social conditioning. (Though not necessarily initially required.)
It seems to me the same thing is true of erotic conditioning of the sort we’re talking about. That is, if I want to train myself to respond erotically to X, sooner or later I have to stop exclusively interacting with pictures or books or whatever and start actually interacting with X, and that can be difficult, and risks social penalties. But I don’t start there.
That said, I’m pretty much speaking hypothetically here; I’ve never actually used this technique. So I could easily be wrong.
That shouldn’t be as much of an issue, because there’s so much variation in emotional compatibility with men. If you’re sexually attracted to penises, it shouldn’t be hard to find at least someone you’re emotionally compatible with who has a penis. The main problem is getting attracted to the “other” set of genitalia. If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them, whereas emotional compatibility is more complicated and subtle.
There isn’t really a one-size-fits-all emotional compatibility with men, the way there is with sexual orientation.
If Kaj_Sotala tells me that emotional compatibility is more of an issue for him than sexual attraction, I’m prepared to accept that… I don’t see the value in challenging his observations about what “the main problem” for him really is.
That said, like you, I don’t consider it likely that this describes very many people. Then again, I also don’t find it likely that “If you’re attracted to one penis, you’re probably attracted to all of them” describes very many people.
Then again again, the world is full of unlikely things.
Well, think about it like this. I also get along better and generally find it easier to get closer to women than to men. But there are some men I can connect with as well, because there is so much variation in men’s personalities. So the problem here is just finding the right ones.
Now compare this to sexual compatibility, which requires the right sex organs. This is a much bigger obstacle. I’m attracted to female genitalia and not male ones. Unlike with personality, this is a binary issue: you either like male genitalia or you don’t, and if you don’t, this rules out half the population.
Really? Why not? I would think it obviously describes everyone. You may not be attracted to the person attached, but you’re either sexually attracted to male genitalia, or you’re not.
Well, the short answer to “Why not?” is “Experience.”
The longer answer is, I suspect, longer than I feel like giving, since it’s clear that you and I have very different models of how attraction works.
Suffice to say that there are various attributes along which individual genitalia vary, to which I expect different people assign more or less value, resulting in different judgments. For many people I expect that this list of attributes includes the contexts established by the attached person.
I may not have spoken clearly. Let me try again, and tell me if this makes sense to you.
A lot of people are strongly monosexual: that is, no matter what a person looks like, what their personality is, or how emotionally compatible they are, if the other person has the “wrong” genitalia, this will preclude any possibility of dating, sex, or a relationship, because they won’t be able to sexually connect.
If you think about dating as going through a series of hurdles, the first and most important hurdle is having the “right” genitals. After that, there are other attributes, like looks and personality, which I think is what you’re talking about. But if someone has the “right” genitals, there is at least the potential for a sexual connection. That doesn’t mean there will definitely be sexual attraction.
Does that seem right? Am I missing something?
I think you’re being clear; I just don’t agree with you. Yes, I think you’re missing things.
For one thing, you treat gender as equivalent to having particular genitalia. It isn’t. Even people exclusively attracted to men sometimes find themselves attracted to people without penises.
For another, you treat all genitals of a particular category as being interchangeable for purposes of attractiveness. They aren’t, any more than all voices or all hands or feet or all eyes are interchangeable. You may not care about individual differences in a particular category, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t.
For a third, your whole structure of “the first hurdle” and “the most important hurdle” strikes me as arbitrary. The idea that someone to whom I am not attracted is someone I have a “potential sexual connection” with simply because they are a particular gender, or have the proper genitals, is a perfectly legitimate perspective… but to privilege that dimension over the myriad other parameters that allow or preclude attraction is not obviously justified.
No, I was thinking of gender as a separate hurdle. For instance, a straight cisgender male is most likely primarily attracted to persons with vulvas, whether they identify as men or women. He might secondarily prefer women, but that’s a lesser “hurdle”. that is, there would be a possibility of sexual attraction to a FtM (gender = man, bio-female) but not a pre-op MtF (gender = woman, bio-male) because of genital incompatibility.
I don’t think the attraction is “exclusive to men” as much as it is “exclusive to people with specific genitals.” Though this is probably very variable, and monosexuals may well be divided on whether genitalia or gender is more important to them. I’d be curious to know the breakdown.
I was thinking like this. Suppose you are a monosexual on a desert island with one other person. You will likely want sexual contact. At least for me, the most important quality of your island-mate (for purposes of sexual contact, that is) is that they have the “right” type of genitals; while other qualities may be unattractive or undesirable, they can be overcome if you want sexual contact enough, but having the “wrong” type of genitals can’t. To put this another way, as a straight male, someone I am not attracted to who has a vulva may be less than ideal, but still sexually satisfying; someone without a vulva couldn’t possibly be.
I had thought this would be universal for monosexuals; your comments lead me to think I was wrong, and it’s more complicated than that. I’m curious how common my view is, and the specifics of other views.
(BTW, I wish I could upvote you several times just for using ‘myriad’ correctly.)
Huh.
So George, a straight cisgender male, walks into a dance club and sees Janey dancing. He can tell she presents as female from the way she dresses, her hair, her body shape, etc. He talks to her for a while, and he can tell she identifies as female—or at least claims to—from the things she says.
But her pants are still on.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying George does not know at this point whether he’s sexually attracted to Janey, because the “primary hurdle” hasn’t been crossed yet?
If so, you and I have very different understandings of how sexual attraction works. It seems relatively clear to me that George makes that determination within the first few minutes of seeing her, based on a variety of properties, many of which are components of gender.
If not, then I’m not really sure what you’re saying.
Yes, he does. And you’re right: he is attracted to her even though he doesn’t know what her genitalia are like. He’s probably making an assumption that might or might not be correct, and this assumption is based on the gender properties he observes. If he’s not correct, this may change his attraction. Or not.
My mistake was using the word “attracted” in the quoted portion of my comment. What I should have said was “capable of sexual satisfaction with,” “sexually compatible,” or “genitally compatible,” which aren’t the same thing. While he may be initially attracted, he still doesn’t know whether or not he’s sexually compatible with her (though he assumes he is, which inspires the attraction).
I think you are also right that genitalia is not the most important thing for all monosexuals. I would bet it is for most, though. And at some point this is just a matter of how we define ‘monosexual’ (or ‘straight’, or ‘gay’). We could think of a 2-D version of the Kinsey scale, similar to what you discuss in an earlier comment, where gender is one axis and genitalia is another.
I’m not sure that helps. Many people, even entirely monosexual people, are perfectly capable of sexual satisfaction with one another despite injury to or loss of their genitalia. So I would similarly object to defining “capable of sexual satisfaction with” and “sexually compatible” primarily in terms of genitals the way you do.
I’ll agree with defining “genitally compatible” that way, though.
If you’re willing to define people for whom genital compatibility is not primary as not-really-monosexual, then your claim is trivially true. That said, at that point you have also defined a lot of people as not-really-straight who would disagree vehemently with you.
I think that given that not all traits are observable, we make assumptions about common ones. Someone who doesn’t know that a female-appearing person has a penis is attracted to a false image of what that person’s like, said false image not completely matching the real person.
That’s certainly true.
It seems unjustified to claim that in this case, they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person lacks a penis, or that they are attracted to that person because of their (false) belief that this person has a vulva, without further data.
I think “genetalia” is being used as shorthand for all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary. Otherwise the idea of slowly going from women to futnari to men would be nonsensical, right?
I don’t know how to make that interpretation compatible with, for example, Blueberry’s claim that a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF, given that many sexual characteristics typical of women are present in a a pre-op MtF. (And, indeed, my understanding of the real world is that straight cis males are not infrequently attracted to pre-op trangender MtF people.)
But I would certainly agree that the claim that the “primary hurdle” for sexual attraction is the set of all sexual characteristics, both primary and secondary, is a much more sensible claim than the one I understood Blueberry to be making.
Did they actually make that claim? I saw you say it followed from their claim...
Well, whatever. As you say, it’s a more sensible claim regardless of whether anyone was actually making it :-P
Quoth Blueberry:
I’m pretty sure “a straight cis male would not be attracted to a pre-op MtF” is reliably implied by that quote, though of course I could be wrong.
This is precisely why I asked them to clarify the claim in the first place.
Ah, right. I probably read that as including hormones and breast implants, but yours is certainly the simpler interpretation.
(Well, you can—just create multiple accounts for the purpose—but I’d rather you didn’t.)
As I understand it, there are many cases of men who identify as heterosexual but who, in all-male environments, nevertheless participate in sexual encounters with other men.
That suggests to me that for many heterosexual men, having the “right” genitals isn’t as singularly definitive a property as it is for you.
Granted, another possibility is that such men aren’t actually heterosexual, they merely think they are, and your description is accurate for genuine heterosexuals. If so, it seems genuine heterosexuals are noticeably rarer than people who identify that way.
One theory is that there is a difference between sexual orientation and relationship orientation, so that there are men who prefer romance and relationships with women, but are sexually bi. Since our language and culture don’t typically make this distinction, such people might just identify as straight.
Another is that sexuality is flexible, so in the desert island example, or in all-male environments, the men adapt over time to become capable of getting sexual satisfaction from other men in a way that they weren’t before. This is similar, in a way, to the gradual-exposure techniques khafra talked about.
But—and this was my main point—before such a shift in sexuality occurs, a straight man would be out of luck even if he had 100 males to choose from. But once such a shift occurs, all he has to do is find one out of the 100 he’s emotionally compatible with (assuming he’s looking for emotional compatibility). This is why I said the sexual shift was the hard part: males are not an emotional monolith and out of 100, at least one should be more or less emotionally compatible.
I very frequently find someone attractive, or not, long before seeing their genitals. Indeed, there are dozens of people in the world whose genitals I have never seen, and yet I am still able to find them either attractive or not.
Compatibility of genitalia is surely important for answering the more specific question “am I going to have sex with this person or not?” but that’s not the same thing as attraction. For most of us, there are plenty of people in the world who are very attractive but with whom we will never have sex. Many people choose to have sex with people they find not all that attractive (e.g. because they are in some sort of long-term relationship, and either their tastes or the appearance of the other person have changed over time).
[EDITED once, to fix a trifling typo.]
As one data-point: I am a straight male, and gender is more important to me than genitalia.
By this metric, I started at a zero (unable to find other males sexually attractive,) and ended at a zero. My attempts to influence myself to have a sexual interest in men achieved null results.
I have no problem finding other men attractive, but they’re still about as sexually appealing to me as plants.
The scale you are talking about when used by psychologists and others when discussing sexuality is the Kinsey scale. Under the standard scaling it goes from 0 to 6 with 0 being complete heterosexuality and 6 being complete homosexualty.
It should be 0 for female-attracted and 6 for male-attracted (or the reverse, but I’ll go this way since Kinsey used it first on men). The idea that homo- and hetero- are the basic orientations is asinine, but surprisingly common.
I’ll admit to being a 2 on the scale that I just described, but I refuse to be placed on Kinsey’s scale at all.
I take it this is a process that’s worked for you?
Accidentally, but yes. I’ve also seen it work on other people who frequent /b/, both for bisexuality and many paraphilias.
heh, I had a suspicion that /b/ had something to do with this
Within the nearby cluster in personspace: I think Robin Lee Powell has said that he chose to become bisexual, if you want to ask him to elaborate on that process. :)
(I’ve gotten a bit more bisexual over time, and I occasionally wonder if I actually pushed myself in that direction (since I remember wishing that I could be, as early as 14 or 15), or if that’s just the direction I was drifting in anyway and I happened to be open to it in advance. But it’s probably hard to tell in retrospect.)
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
I have heard from some people that having a reputation as bisexual has increased their prospects with women. I suspect this is dependent on location, social circle, and attractiveness.
It may also be that a large percentage of women are no longer interested, but enough of the women that remain are significantly more interested- and so you go from, say, 20 women who might date you to 10 women who might date you, of whom 2 want to. Overall prospects down, but easy prospects up.
(I will comment, though, that this probably has to do way more with the masculine/feminine balance of the people in question than their sexual history or orientation.)
For the foreseeable future, I’m going to be exclusively dating poly or poly-friendly girls anyway. I don’t think being bi would hurt me within that subpopulation—does that seem wrong?
(One data point: my girlfriend has only-half-jokingly claimed that if I really want to make her happy, I ought to make out with one of my male friends and send her photos)
It won’t hurt in any way. The pure heterosexual or pure homosexual are slightly odd in most poly scenes.
And everyone knows about straight guys kissing to get the chicks …
I actually know a girl who succeeded in getting male friends of hers to pose for that kind of picture.
I suspect it would be trivial to do so in most modern US college-type situations.
Don’t do it!!!!
She definitely wants to have something she can blackmail you with if the need arises!
He can only be blackmailed with such photos if he would mind having them displayed to some third party.
Indeed.
Mother: Mildly awkward conversation
Boss: “Mike, that was kinda TMI”
Brothers: “Ewwwww”
Randomly Chosen Singularitarian Friend: High-Five
...that’s all I can really think of.
But he might benefit from having her think she’s blackmailing him.
No such luck—I’ve already e-mailed her this thread.
I do not get how making out with a male is considered a blackmail worthy offense.
Well, it would likely prevent a guy from running for political office or becoming a CEO of a major corporation, for instance. Or at least make it very difficult. There are only a few openly gay politicians, and even then they have to fit certain social ideals.
I’m already quite publicly a polyamorous sex-positive atheist, I’m not running for political office any time soon
I wonder which you would get the most flack for. Reminds me of this one. (!TVTropes-link!)
Unfortunately, in the US today, probably atheism.
Okay, I cross that off then. How about naturism? In east Germany its a trivial part of the culture. In the US it seems to be a highly stigmatized lifestyle.
I’m trying to picture this scenario and can’t stop laughing =P.
Poly-friendly != bi-friendly, necessarily, but I’d definitely agree that your odds are better than in the mainstream community.
I didn’t select my friends from (a conservative Christian) college for lgbt-friendliness or non-conformist dating styles or really anything at all, besides maybe an enjoyment of genre television or some connection to friends I already had. And yet it turned out that at least a third of the women in my social circle share my love of hot bi guys and m/m in general. Also, m/m fanservice for the benefit of female fans seems to be rather a common thing for hot young male celebrities to do in certain cultures, such as Japan.
I’ve found that just meeting more people solves this one nicely. The percentage difference is not overwhelming, and you really won’t want those people anyway.
I disagree with the “you really won’t want those people anyway.” I suspect the loss of attraction many women feel if they hear a guy has been with another guy has marginal ‘conscious choice’ in it.
But anyway, I’ve followed this thread too long. I don’t really have any expertise on bisexuality—I’ve just heard lots of straight women tell me it turns them off.
I think the reason for that is that so many gay men go through a phase, as part of their coming out, where they claim bisexuality for a while. This, combined with the fact that there seem to be relatively few numbers of truly bisexual men, means that a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay. So going out with a bisexual guy is really risky from the woman’s point of view.
I’ll admit, when I run into people who talk like this, I generally assume that they are weighting the costs of a relationship ending badly due to a boyfriend turning out gay significantly higher than the costs of a relationship ending badly for other reasons.
But perhaps that’s unfair of me; perhaps, as you suggest, it’s really just about probability estimates.
Would you mind putting some numbers around “really risky”?
That is… if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a partner who identifies as bi, what’s your estimate and confidence level for (B-S)?
Well, my numbers would be a bit skewed by the fact that I quite happily date bisexual women (I am one myself). Should I put the non-straight women in S or B? Or make a third category L?
Your skew is fine… I’m just interested in clarification of your original claim, however skewed it may be, that going out with a bisexual guy is really risky because a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay.
That said, given that your original claim was about men, I should have said if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a male partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a male partner who identifies as bi. Point taken.
Well, for S, most relationships end “badly” (in a breakup, at least), so I guess I’ll ballpark that at 90 percent.
For B, I estimate that 34 percent of men presenting as bi are actually gay (going from this study.) I’ll assume that a relationship with the other 66 percent of bi guys would have the same 90 percent failure rate as the S group, but that a relationship with one of the 34 would have a 100 percent failure rate. So B overall is 93.4.
It’s only a few percentage points higher, yes, but the fact that S is already high doesn’t do much to change the fact that if you have one (small) dating pool where fully a third of the dudes are essentially just looking for beards, a straight woman loses little by excluding that pool, and improves her prospects overall.
Agreed.
For a more extreme position, Rieger, Chivers, and Bailey (ETA: here) find that 75% of self-identified bi men get erections from gay porn, 25% from straight porn, though reported arousal is bisexual.
ETA: that is a quote from press coverage. It pushes a bit farther than the paper and does not match the data. The direct quotes in the press coverage suggest to me that the fault is the authors, not the reporters. The text of the paper is more cautious, but I think also misleading.
Eyeballing the data, I would say that 1⁄2 of bis respond only to gay porn, 1⁄4 only to straight porn, and 1⁄4 uniformly. Also, 1⁄4 of straights and gays respond uniformly. (this is after removing 1⁄3 of all orientations that have no genital response)
What is more interesting is that reported arousal to the porn fits self-identification pretty well. It would be interesting to how the gap between genital and reported arousal varies across individuals. Some patterns would suggest that people are lying to themselves while others that the gap is due to sexuality being complicated. I was amused that straights admitted to being aroused by gay porn, while gays did not admit to being aroused by straight porn; but I suspect that the sample of straights was pretty biased.
One of the things that amused me about that report when I read it was realizing that while I am often aroused by actual women, most mainstream straight porn does nothing for me.
I can only assume that many straight men find porn more arousing than actual women, since the whole point of porn is to be a superstimulus, so there seems to be a difference there.
One of the numerous problems with that study. I consider it completely worthless.
Wait, what? No! Not at all! The point of porn is to help you when you don’t have an actual woman to have sex with. It’s never as arousing as an actual woman. It’s like a microwave dinner when you’re hungry but don’t have the time or money to cook or go to a restaurant.
I didn’t mean ”...to have sex with.” I meant actual women. Who can sometimes be arousing even if I’m not having sex with them. As can men. Others’ mileage may, of course, vary.
I suspect mileage varies a lot here. But I’m a little confused. You’re comparing porn, which depicts people without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts, with people in general? With clothes on? Do you mean just someone walking down the street? Obviously someone without clothes, or in a sexual position or activity, is generally going to be more arousing than a person in a non-sexual situation: this seems like it would be fairly robust across all genders and orientations.
Do you mean arousal from women in non-sexual situations? Or do you mean arousal from women in sexual situations but not from photos or videos or textual depictions of women in sexual situations? Or is this just about “mainstream” vs. alternative depictions? I’m curious what you mean.
I’ve noticed that people critical of porn (I don’t mean you) have a very narrow view of what “mainstream” porn is that doesn’t match my experience; it’s very common for someone to complain about porn in general because they object to a few specific things that are only in some porn.
Yes, I was saying that I often find actual women, even those in non-sexual situations, even those wearing clothes on, more arousing than women in porn, depicted without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts.
I hope that clears things up.
I can easily see where this might be an artifact of a relatively narrow porn sample; I’m not especially a connoisseur of porn.
The point of porn is to be as arousing as possible so people want to watch and hopefully pay for it. I doubt that nobody finds it more arousing than having an actual partner, because it can depict things they’re unlikely to be able to see or do with a partner. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone claiming to find live action porn more arousing than real sex, but 2D complexes appear to be a real thing.
True. Also, sexuality is one area in which...your mileage may vary. It’s a big world. I’m pretty sure that if you looked hard enough, you could find someone for whom X is more arousing than Y for quite a few values of X and Y.
I think I’d split the difference. Porn can’t give you interactivity or a lot of partner stimuli, so it attempts to compensate by superstimulating what it does have access to. It would of course be good for porn producers if they came up with something that was better than actual sex for most people, but thanks to the format’s limited sensory bandwidth that’s probably impossible.
If the Rieger/Chivers/Bailey results are reliable, this might suggest that male bisexuality’s associated with a preference for sexual stimulation other than what straight porn gives you. This ought to be testable, but I don’t know of any studies that have made the attempt.
In the study, 1⁄3 of the men, uniformly across all orientations, had no genital response. Also, 1⁄3 had no subjective response, though I don’t see any indication in the paper whether they were the same people.
(nods) I would also be interested to see what the correlations were between response-to-porn and response-to-people. Lots of interpretations of studies of this sort seem to treat the former as a proxy for the latter, so if it turned out that they were not strongly linked the interpretations might be misleading.
Are those sets disjoint?
I would say, speaking from other bisexual men I know as well as myself, that if bisexuality turned someone off that would in fact reduce their attractiveness, in the general case.
But yeah, we both only have anecdotes at this stage :-)
I’m reminded of coming out as bi to a high-school friend of mine, who allowed after some consideration that he was pretty squicked by the notion, but he saw no particular reason why either one of us should pay much attention to that reaction.
Which I can respect, actually.
Though admittedly it would turn me off in a prospective partner.
Nobody is required to signal their sexual preferences far and wide. That is personal information, to be revealed if and when you deem it appropriate or beneficial. This means that becoming bisexual merely gives you more options, without interfering with your existing options unless you choose to let it change your signalling strategy. That said, humans are notoriously bad at making decisions when burdened with extra choices!
Also, a lot depends on whether the people I am approaching for dates share a social community.
If they do, then if I want to keep control over who becomes aware of my sexual preferences, I need to expend additional effort to prevent that information from traveling through that community… that is, it stops being “private” and starts being “secret.”
This is otherwise known as “being in the closet” in some communities.
Fortunately it is a closet full of beautiful women who you find highly attractive. Such a better closet to be in than the one homosexuals have had to hide themselves in at times. :)
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better. Agreed.
Of course, even better is to not have to keep any of them secret, and to instead be able to reveal whatever information about my sexual preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
All of that said: perhaps I’ve lost track of context.
MBlume’s parent comment framed bisexuality as an improvement, and lukeprog warned that there were costs to it. You countered that those costs can be averted by keeping one’s bisexuality secret. But that seems to completely subvert MBlume’s original point… if I’m in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
It seems the choice is, instead, between having your attraction and sexual appreciation mechanism biologically crippled so as to halve the potential partners or to give yourself the option of specialising your signalling as to optimise your chances within a specific target niche or of seeking more diverse experience.
Neutral returns as a worst case makes the point a good one. :)
Well, in my own life, the additional option of living in a social context in which honest signaling about gender-selection with respect to attraction and sexual appreciation doesn’t have especially negative consequences became available, and that has worked pretty well for me.
I’ve lived the “specializing my signaling” lifestyle before; I don’t prefer it. The returns of such signal-specialization can be worse than neutral in some cases.
But if it works for you, that’s great.
Alas, a process by which I can modify myself to broaden the scope of those to whom I am sexually attracted is not available to me—I can’t give testimony either way. But I can always wish for it.
You don’t have to be in the closet with everyone. Just treat it as something personal that you only tell people once you know them and trust them enough, and you’ve gauged their reaction to casual mentions of bisexuality.
Agreed that avoiding keeping just most people from knowing about my relationship preferences isn’t as difficult as keeping everyone from knowing about them.
Of course, as above, even better is to be able to reveal whatever information about my relationship preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
You don’t have to tell them that...
I’ll note that I have personally tried to become bisexual, and it didn’t work. If anyone else has had success in this endeavor, I’d be very interested to hear it.
I strongly prefer heterosexuality on aesthetic grounds. I wonder how common that is.