There’s been a lot of talk about bisexuality, bicuriousity and hereoflexibility this week. First, a wife wrote to advice columnist Coleen Nolan about her husband who she claims got drunk and hooked up with not one but two separate guys on a boys’ trip.
Related: Curious Straight Guy Absolutely Cannot Stop Fantasizing About Experimenting With Another Dude
“He confessed that he’d got drunk and slept with another man, blaming the fact that he was ‘so out of it,'” she said, adding that he described the encounters as “just a bunch of stuff that happened.”
Then, Australian TV personality Osher Günsberg, a.k.a. Andrew G., gave a radio interview in which he talked about hooking up with guys in his 20s.
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Related: “Straight” Guys Are Having More Bisexual Sex Than Ever Before, Study Finds
The 42-year-old, who is happily engaged to a woman, compared taking a dip in the man pond to going to an amusement park, saying, “You’ve got to go on all the rides at Dreamworld before you find the one you want to stay on all day.”
Günsberg also admitted to “pashing” at least “a bloke or two” in his younger years.
Related: What Exactly Is The Protocol After Hooking Up With A Straight Guy?
While all this is very fun and incredibly interesting, it raises a legitimate question: How many times can someone who identifies as “straight” or “bi-curious” have gay sex before they’re officially just “bisexual”? Do labels even matter anymore?
Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Guy068
Why don’t we let the people who are going to wear the label to decide which one they use? What goes on in any one person’s head is not the same as anyone else’s. Two journeys that look similar from the outside can and do have totally different narratives to the persons who lived them. When you label another person you’re just saying how you would personally feel should you do the things they did and almost always doesn’t match with how the other person actually feels about them…
Paco
If the sexual act, alone, of having sex with both men and women excites you enough to seek it out and act upon it regularly, then technically you are bisexual. Irrespective of your societal “romantic” feelings toward either sex.
Until there is no longer systemic and social discrimination against LGB, labels will always matter. If it has to be hidden from view to avoid consequences, then the labels matter. Keeping it hidden does nothing to change the attitudes surrounding sexual labels, except to reinforce the default straight label as the only normal one.
It really bothers me when the question of the relevancy of sexual labels is asked, because it is always a push back against the non-default labels in defense of the ‘straight’ one. If labels really do not matter, then the default label of straight, which carries privilege, needs to end as well. Until these ‘straight’ guys, regularly enjoying gay sex, can give up their label they cling to, labels will always matter. Unless it is being proposed that we all just call ourselves ‘straight’ too, regardless of who we are enjoying sex with.
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
[Song] We looooooooooooove the straight maaaaaaaaaaaaan. We love hiiiiiiiim. We worship hiiiiiim. We adore HIIIIIIIM!
Strrrrraaaaaaaaaiiiight maaaaaaaaaaaaaan.
And, song.
Thank you.
Billy Budd
Most people will be bisexual in the future, when religion stops being important and becomes just a memory of medieval times.
Aromaeus
I do think there is a point where individuals who want to “have their cake and eat it too” need to be called out. If you are effectively living a queer life but denying a label so you don’t deal with the social pressures then you are doing a huge disservice to actual out and proud individuals. We’re the ones getting harassed, denied employment, housing, parental rights, etc for doing exactly what you’re doing only we are just choosing not to live in the shadows. However they want get to reap the benefits when we do make strides. That’s messed up.
Tobi
@Aromaeus: There’s still a lot of resentment amongst the older gay generation who remember back in the 1970’s when it was achingly fashionable to be bisexual. The moment AIDs hit in the 1980’s most bi’s ran for straight cover. I’ve also never actually worked out what bisexuals want separately from those of us fighting for homosexual equality, well apart that is from not wanting to be labelled as “gay”.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
For some people it takes a paragraph to describe their sexuality instead of just one word. In fact a simple label considered over the span of a lifetime of things experienced and things fantasised or barely acknowledged it doesn’t work for probably most people to confine their sexuality to one word.
Brian
The word “bisexual” is very imprecise and misleading. I avoid using it as much as I can.
I think we should encourage all men to not hide their same-sex desires. Use them to gain an advantage over women.
Dave Downunder
I have a problem with the use of the term ‘gay sex’ as used in this article. What is gay sex? The act of sex is actually gender neutral and it is technically incorrect to describe sex between two men this way. It is the people having sex that are either gay or straight or bi and they are just having sex.
That said I would suggest that once a ‘straight’ guy starts actively seeking sex with other men he has gone from bi-curious to bisexual particularly if he regularly visits or has profiles on hook up apps. Bi-curious implies someone who is still fantasising about it but has yet to act on it. At most you would think they may have indulged in an opportunistic grope or frolic but have not yet started actively seeking it out.
Dave Downunder
I wanted to make a comment on the term bi-curious being used to gay bait some guys on dating apps but it won’t let me post it for some reason.
Is there somewhere you can view a list of banned words etc?
sanfranca1
@Guy068: Well said.
Hugh Walker
I was straight. Then I was bicurious-just curious. Then I was bisexual, but a little more gay than straight. Now I can’t remember what it was like to be attracted to the opposite sex. I’m only attracted to men so I’m now strictly homosexual. I don’t think there was a tipping point. Each stage merged into the next smoothly and comfortably. It’s been a good journey!
ErikO
If someone’s “bi curious” they’re bisexual, it’s not a phase or period of time and it’s just as much of a true and valid sexuality as being gay/lesbian, or heterosexual is.
SumSay
@Dave Downunder: I’d agree to a certain extent. You need clarification sometimes and in this instance “gay” sex is needed. Sexual identity is ultimately a personal choice (not saying sexual feelings are, only identity) and not all people subscribe to societal labels so yes, people can have “gay” or even “straight” sex with no basis of how they identify. If gay men can have straight sex, straight men can have gay sex. Also consider that what sex means for you might not be the same as what sex means for someone else.
DCguy
The second they are attracted to more than one sex. People seem to want to purposely confuse what people are willing to admit to, with reality.
All “Bi-Curious” means is somebody who is bisexual who hasn’t taken the plunge yet. Nobody EVER says that a heterosexual virgin is “Hetro-Curious:.
Why do we KEEP reading posts that feed into the right wing narrative that being lgbt is a choice?
gaym50ish
The existence of people who are bisexual or “bi-curious” is the reason that our opponents continue to insist that being gay is a choice we make. But Kinsey got it right more than 60 years ago when he described sexuality on a six-point scale — zero being totally hetero and six being totally gay. There are many more of us who are somewhere in between than than there are at the extreme ends. And wherever we are on that scale, we did not CHOOSE to be there. People need to stop obsessing over whether they’re gay, straight or bi and — as the hippies used to say — if it feels good, do it!
When the purveyors of “reparative therapy” claim success, what does that really mean? That they moved a Kinsey 5 down to a Kinsey 3, or at least convinced the “patient” that he was more attracted to women than he used to be? And if they were successful in the short term, it’s never the same in the long term. We all eventually settle into the life that is right for us. It may take some experimenting and maybe even a marriage and children first, but we DO get there.
Masc Pride
When they decide to identify as bisexual. Sexual identity is a self-identification.
Masc Pride
*When/if they decide to identify as bisexual.
TravisLopez
@Tobi: I agree, but it’s not only from older generations, out and proud LGBT people from other counties are still going through the same struggles. I live in Asia, and it pisses me of to see western people trying to project the idea of CHOICE exactly at the outset of their own LGBT rights… younger countries are listening, western sexual habits are becoming a reference against LGBT rights. the more separation between sex and sexual orientation, the more ridiculous gay marriage becomes.
esslar
@Aromaeus: What exactly is wrong with wanting to have your cake and eat it too? If I am a man who likes other men and also wants to be with women, I think that’s great. First, I don’t get to “decide” that anyway; my attraction to women is real and is in me along with my attraction to men, not as a replacement to it. Second, you are trying to deny me my freedom to go with whoever I want to go with, man or woman, from your own jealousy of my willingness to ask to have my cake and eat it, too. Hey, that’s your problem, not mine! Don’t push your hangups on me.
Caterina_Susan
There’s no such thing as bi-curious. There’s this think called bisexuals who “hate labels labels suck all labels can go to hell etc.” while insisting (s)he’s just as straight as a straight line just occasionaly has homosexual sex it’s like I label myself as asexual and I have sex regularly (I don’t BTW because I am asexaul).
Caterina_Susan
@Aromaeus: Seriosly, girl who likes both guys and girls and indetifies herself as straight, denying her bisexuality is doing a huge not-favor to all LGBT in closet who are afraid to come out. To quote my mum, “you wouldn’t be the first or the last” so don’t give homophobes another reasons to call bi girls “confused”.
Caterina_Susan
@TravisLopez: The idea of choice doesn’t mean “I have a right to choice my sexuality” because no, you don’t, if I could I would change mine years ago so I can have my own children (I’m a biromantic asexual btw). It means “If I like men and I choose to date one you have no right to tell me what to do with my soul and body.” That is at least the way I see it.
TokyOtaku
Whenever they want to…? To be honest, labels don’t and shouldn’t matter. Whatever the person feels like they should label themselves as or if they even want to have a label. In my opinion- again- it doesn’t matter.
Shimata
You stop being “bi-curious” and become bisexual as soon as you’re comfortable/brave enough to stop giving a damn about what other people will think of you. Especially once you stop caring what the bitter, jealous gay men and threatened straight women think.
trixieboy
That sounds exactly right. And when you have the courage to look your self in the mirror and admit that you are sexually attracted to both sexes.
RainLevity
I disagree with those who say there isn’t any such thing as “bi-curious.” I have always strongly identified as cisgender straight. I’ve been married (to a man) for nearly 20 years and very happy with him. However, I recently (like, the past year or so) realized that I am also attracted to some women- but it’s been a bit of a process to figure out what that is or what it means, and how I wanted to handle it. Lucky for me, my husband is not only the greatest man on the planet and willing/supportive of my interests, but actually curious himself about the idea of bisexuality (his own as well as mine), which is also quite a process. Also lucky for me, I just spent last weekend with a (girl)friend discovering that I may be more than curious. Like, seriously- this is the first time I have been on a site like this wondering if I actually might belong here. It isn’t always something you just know. Some of us have to figure it out later in life, and it may evolve over time. I still really don’t know how I identify- it’s just too new & I’m still not sure how far it really goes- if it’s permanent, ubiquitous, or just situational with this one woman, so “bi-curious” seems apt for the moment, though it might change tomorrow.