Bisexual Sex Article
When you enter a super mart, you look at the signs hanging above; cold produce, vegetables, and hardware et cetera to find your way around. Life with its entire mystique is probably like that too with the desire of humans to categorize anything and everything when possible to make their understanding easier. So in terms of sexual orientation, there are gays, lesbians, transsexuals and bisexuals. Both the gay and lesbian community seem to be more accepted these days from celebrities openly coming out and declaring they are gays or lesbians to having legalization of homosexual marriages. What about the somewhat neglected bisexuals, the B of the LGBT? Though the practice of bisexuality has been around for centuries, the term bisexual, an individual who finds themselves attracted either romantically or sexually to members of the opposite sex, was only applied in the 19th century.
The concept of bisexuals can be traced as far back as ancient Greece where it was thought that males underwent changes in their sexual identity as they go through different phases of life; homosexual during the adolescence, bisexual for the period of young adulthood ensued by a heterosexual existence thereafter after marriage. In fact it was stated in their law that young Spartans coming of age were to have homosexual relationship with an elder with the understanding that this relationship would later be terminated as the matured adult would move on to have a family of their own. This relationship was built on the idea of inducing heroism and loyalty of the men during battle. Though historical document of bisexual men can easily be found, bisexual women on the hand had less literature to delve upon, possibly due to a primarily male dominated society in the past, hence neglecting and suppressing bisexual sex of females.
Bisexuals often find themselves in a limbo; an ambiguous existence. Such ambiguity has led to the creation of a scale, the Kinsey scale, to measure the level of sexual orientation. Bi-permissive and the bi-curious are also closely associated to bisexuals. The former describes one who is open to sex both ways but does not actively pursue for such relationships while the latter, a declared heterosexual who occasionally experiments with the opposite sex. The term bisexual itself is self explanatory. At times, bisexuals find themselves in a heterosexual relationship while at other times, in a homosexual one. The level of attraction to one gender cannot be simply quantified for a bisexual as this depends largely on the individual. They may find themselves attracted to certain qualities in their partner that to the bisexual, gender does not pose an impediment.
Bisexuals however are being placed on the stand with the accusation that are they merely gays using heterosexual relationships as a cover, that they were mere closet homosexuals; bisexuality was in actual fact a ‘pre-gay’ state. This was further supported by the findings of one study where researchers measured the genital arousal of men when shown pictures of men and women and found that participants that claimed they were bisexual had contradictory results leading to more doubts on this identify of bisexualism. Other misconstruction of bisexual sex includes equating bisexuality with infidelity or polyamory. Being a bisexual though does not mean that the bisexual has to be in multiple relationships with two opposing genders at the same time hence dismissing the former statement though arguably there may be bisexuals that are in polygamous relationships.
Bisexual sex is a way of life for at least 1.8 percent of American males and 2.8 percent of American females within the age range of 18 to 44 years as noted in a recent survey done in the United States. Why are there people though who decide that their sexual identity was preference for bisexual sex? According to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, everyone has a possibility of going both ways at any point in time of their lives nonetheless the ‘homosexual’ side is suppressed to eventually attain psychological maturity. While Freud acknowledged the fact that an individual has this innate potential to be attracted to both male and female, he still concluded that bisexual sex was a psychological disorder. His theory though influential was not agreed upon by all sides. Pondering on his theory, I suppose there lies some truth in the sense that we are born as blank sheets, and throughout our lives outside influences and negates what we can be and should be. If there were no concept of males and females, religion or the norm in society of heterosexual relationship, there would be no opposition to bisexual sex or any sexual identity for that matter.
Bisexuals are often met with cynicism from both the homosexual and heterosexual society as both groups may not be able to grasp the understanding as to how a person can be committed, to be drawn to both sides as both hetero- as well as homosexual relationships are created as an individual finds reasons why they are drawn into a same sex or opposing sex relationship similarly having a list of cause to repel the contrary relationship. For instance, a heterosexual individual brought up in a ‘normal’ environment, has always been surrounded by those in heterosexual relationships so they have set their ideals that a normal relationship constitutes one of a heterosexual one while a homosexual simply rejects the idea of a heterosexual relationship. So how can this indistinctness, this identity of bisexualism exist? The satisfaction of a bisexual relationship however does not rely solely on the sex aspect. Some bisexual are able to find comfort, understanding, acceptance in one relationship but nevertheless are unable to deny the attraction they have for members of the other sex. Being ‘different’ from normal is hard enough, so imagine being different within different itself. No matter what type of sexual identity you choose to identify yourself with, as long as it gives you the inner peace and you are ready to take on whatever criticism or denunciation that undoubtedly would fall in your way, stay true to what you are.
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