Ravenscroft
Banned
Actually, it's a real question, & one that I've pondered since I started thinking about sexuality at all (like, ~1973).
I'm not intending any definitive answers, but rather unpacking things I've learned. If the thread is better relocated to another forum, I'm fine with that.
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Firstly, there's the Kinsey scale. Briefly, it runs from 0 (not interested in same-sex intimacy) to 6 (interested only in same-sex intimacy).
That would seem at first glance to place "bisexual" at 3... but where does that leave the 2s & 4s? Are the 1s & 5s just outliers of the "true" groupings at either end, or more properly placed with the bisexuals?
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I figure everyone's heard the "one in ten" trope. Used to mean that one person in ten is homosexual, which always seemed like a stretch, & the world might be a better place if it were actually so.
Over the years, it was stretched to include pretty much anyone non-heterosexual, & transfolk as well, so maybe it's a bit closer to reality.
But for anyone who's ever pondered the Klein grid, "sexual orientation" soon looks less like a definitive personal fact, & more like an exercise in particle physics.
Hey, here's OKC's Klein Sexuality Test. Has anyone mentioned this before...?
Somewhere in my jumble of books is an article from the 1970s that (IMO) did a great job of defining the problem, simply to get at a proper population study of homosexuals. I wish I could find it, but to the best of my recollection it defined a "homosexual" person as someone who
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In the mid-1980s, Equal Time, the Twin Cities' biweekly LGBTQ paper (since defunct), polled local women who declared themselves lesbian, & found that about 20% had willingly had sex with a male in the previous two years.
In something like 40% of these instances, the male was gay.
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I knew a gay man & a lesbian who were members of the Morris dancing community. They quickly became total bff, & eventually surprised us all by marrying. Last I saw, they were still disgustingly happy together & had three kids.
They consider themselves totally homosexual, & see it as a huge fluke to have mutually found "the only exception."
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I'm not intending any definitive answers, but rather unpacking things I've learned. If the thread is better relocated to another forum, I'm fine with that.
________________
Firstly, there's the Kinsey scale. Briefly, it runs from 0 (not interested in same-sex intimacy) to 6 (interested only in same-sex intimacy).
That would seem at first glance to place "bisexual" at 3... but where does that leave the 2s & 4s? Are the 1s & 5s just outliers of the "true" groupings at either end, or more properly placed with the bisexuals?
________________
I figure everyone's heard the "one in ten" trope. Used to mean that one person in ten is homosexual, which always seemed like a stretch, & the world might be a better place if it were actually so.
Over the years, it was stretched to include pretty much anyone non-heterosexual, & transfolk as well, so maybe it's a bit closer to reality.
But for anyone who's ever pondered the Klein grid, "sexual orientation" soon looks less like a definitive personal fact, & more like an exercise in particle physics.
Hey, here's OKC's Klein Sexuality Test. Has anyone mentioned this before...?
Somewhere in my jumble of books is an article from the 1970s that (IMO) did a great job of defining the problem, simply to get at a proper population study of homosexuals. I wish I could find it, but to the best of my recollection it defined a "homosexual" person as someone who
They found that 8.4% of the people they interviewed fit the criteria.in the previous three years has primarily had sexual contact with members of the same gender, and intends to continue in this mode.
________________
In the mid-1980s, Equal Time, the Twin Cities' biweekly LGBTQ paper (since defunct), polled local women who declared themselves lesbian, & found that about 20% had willingly had sex with a male in the previous two years.
In something like 40% of these instances, the male was gay.
________________
I knew a gay man & a lesbian who were members of the Morris dancing community. They quickly became total bff, & eventually surprised us all by marrying. Last I saw, they were still disgustingly happy together & had three kids.
They consider themselves totally homosexual, & see it as a huge fluke to have mutually found "the only exception."
________________
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