Other bisexual people see this merging as enforced rather than voluntary; bisexual people can face exclusion from both homosexual and heterosexual society on coming out. Bisexual behaviors are also associated in popular culture with men who engage in same-sex activity while otherwise presenting as heterosexual. In the U. Like people of other LGBT sexualities, bisexuals often face discrimination. In addition to the discrimination associated with homophobia , bisexuals frequently contend with discrimination from gay men, lesbians, and straight society around the word bisexual and bisexual identity itself.
Male bisexuality is particularly presumed to be non-existent, [69] with sexual fluidity studies adding to the debate. In , researchers Gerulf Rieger, Meredith L. Chivers , and J. Michael Bailey used penile plethysmography to measure the arousal of self-identified bisexual men to pornography involving only men and pornography involving only women.
Participants were recruited via advertisements in gay-oriented magazines and an alternative paper.
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They found that the self-identified bisexual men in their sample had genital arousal patterns similar to either homosexual or heterosexual men. The authors concluded that "in terms of behavior and identity, bisexual men clearly exist", but that male bisexuality had not been shown to exist with respect to arousal or attraction. The authors said that this change in recruitment strategy was an important difference, but it may not have been a representative sample of bisexual-identified men. They concluded that "bisexual-identified men with bisexual arousal patterns do indeed exist", but could not establish whether such a pattern is typical of bisexual-identified men in general.
Bisexual erasure or bisexual invisibility is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality in culture , history , academia , news media and other primary sources. There is increasing inclusion and visibility of bisexuals, particularly in the LGBT community. A common symbol of the bisexual community is the bisexual pride flag , which has a deep pink stripe at the top for homosexuality, a blue one on the bottom for heterosexuality, and a purple one — blending the pink and blue — in the middle to represent bisexuality.
Another symbol with a similarly symbolic color scheme is a pair of overlapping pink and blue triangles, forming purple or lavender where they intersect. This design is an expansion on the pink triangle , a well-known symbol for the homosexual community. Some bisexual individuals object to the use of a pink triangle, as it was the symbol that Adolf Hitler 's regime use to tag and persecute homosexuals.
In response, a double crescent moon symbol was devised specifically to avoid the use of triangles. In Steve Lenius' original paper, he explored the acceptance of bisexuality in a supposedly pansexual BDSM community. The reasoning behind this is that "coming-out" had become primarily the territory of the gay and lesbian, with bisexuals feeling the push to be one or the other and being right only half the time either way. What he found in , was that people in BDSM were open to discussion about the topic of bisexuality and pansexuality and all controversies they bring to the table, but personal biases and issues stood in the way of actively using such labels.
A decade later, Lenius looked back on his study and considered if anything has changed. He concluded that the standing of bisexuals in the BDSM and kink community was unchanged, and believed that positive shifts in attitude were moderated by society's changing views towards different sexualities and orientations. But Lenius does emphasize that the pansexual promoting BDSM community helped advance greater acceptance of alternative sexualities.
Brandy Lin Simula , on the other hand, argues that BDSM actively resists gender conforming and identified three different types of BDSM bisexuality: gender-switching , gender-based styles taking on a different gendered style depending on gender of partner when playing , and rejection of gender resisting the idea that gender matters in their play partners. Simula explains that practitioners of BDSM routinely challenge our concepts of sexuality by pushing the limits on pre-existing ideas of sexual orientation and gender norms. For some, BDSM and kink provides a platform in creating identities that are fluid, ever-changing.
Feminist positions on bisexuality range greatly, from acceptance of bisexuality as a feminist issue to rejection of bisexuality as reactionary and anti-feminist backlash to lesbian feminism. A widely studied example of lesbian-bisexual conflict in feminism was the Northampton Pride March during the years between and , where many feminists involved debated over whether bisexuals should be included and whether or not bisexuality was compatible with feminism. Common lesbian-feminist critiques leveled at bisexuality were that bisexuality was anti-feminist , that bisexuality was a form of false consciousness , and that bisexual women who pursue relationships with men were "deluded and desperate.
Bindel has described female bisexuality as a "fashionable trend" being promoted due to "sexual hedonism" and broached the question of whether bisexuality even exists. Jeffreys states that while gay men are unlikely to sexually harass women, bisexual men are just as likely to be bothersome to women as heterosexual men. Haraway's essay states that the cyborg "has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all powers of the parts into a higher unity. Ancient Greeks and Romans did not associate sexual relations with well-defined labels, as modern Western society does.
Men who had male lovers were not identified as homosexual, and may have had wives or other female lovers. Ancient Greek religious texts, reflecting cultural practices, incorporated bisexual themes. The subtexts varied, from the mystical to the didactic. Once the younger soldiers reached maturity, the relationship was supposed to become non-sexual, but it is not clear how strictly this was followed. There was some stigma attached to young men who continued their relationships with their mentors into adulthood. Similarly, in ancient Rome , gender did not determine whether a sexual partner was acceptable, as long as a man's enjoyment did not encroach on another's man integrity.
It was socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to want sex with both female and male partners, as long as he took the penetrative role. Both women and young men were considered normal objects of desire, but outside marriage a man was supposed to act on his desires only with slaves, prostitutes who were often slaves , and the infames.
It was immoral to have sex with another freeborn man's wife, his marriageable daughter, his underage son, or with the man himself; sexual use of another man's slave was subject to the owner's permission. Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life , indicated that a man was incapable of governing others; too much indulgence in "low sensual pleasure" threatened to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person.
Alfred Kinsey conducted the first large surveys of homosexual behavior in the United States during the s. The results shocked the readers of his day because they made same-sex behavior and attractions seem so common. Bisexuality tends to be associated with negative media portrayals; references are sometimes made to stereotypes or mental disorders. In an article regarding the film Brokeback Mountain , sex educator Amy Andre argued that in films, bisexuals are often depicted negatively: [].
I like movies where bisexuals come out to each other together and fall in love, because these tend to be so few and far between; the most recent example would be 's lovely romantic comedy, Kissing Jessica Stein. Most movies with bi characters paint a stereotypical picture In other words, the bisexual is always the cause of the conflict in the film.
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Using a content analysis of more than articles written between and , sociologist Richard N. Pitt, Jr. Alternatively, the white bisexual man is often described in pitying language as a victimized homosexual man forced into the closet by the heterosexist society around him. In the first documented appearance of bisexual characters female and male in an American motion picture occurred in A Florida Enchantment , by Sidney Drew.
Virginia Woolf 's Orlando: A Biography is an early example of bisexuality in literature. The story, of a man who changes into a woman without a second thought, was based on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West. Woolf used the gender switch to avoid the book being banned for homosexual content. The pronouns switch from male to female as Orlando's gender changes. Woolf's lack of definite pronouns allows for ambiguity and lack of emphasis on gender labels. Following Sackille-West's death, her son Nigel Nicolson published Portrait of a Marriage , one of her diaries recounting her affair with a woman during her marriage to Harold Nicolson.
Other early examples include works of D. Lawrence , such as Women in Love , and Colette 's Claudine — series. Contemporary novelist Bret Easton Ellis ' novels, such as Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction frequently feature bisexual male characters; this "casual approach" to bisexual characters recurs throughout Ellis' work. Rock musician David Bowie famously declared himself bisexual in an interview with Melody Maker in January , a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.
But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer [ Queen singer Freddie Mercury was also open about his bisexuality, though did not publicly discuss his relationships.
In , Jill Sobule sang about bi-curiosity in her song "I Kissed a Girl", with a video that alternated images of Sobule and a boyfriend along with images of her with a girlfriend.
Another song with the same name by Katy Perry also hints at the same theme. Some activists suggest the song merely reinforces the stereotype of bisexuals experimenting and of bisexuality not being a real sexual preference. Lady Gaga has also stated that she is bisexual, [] and has acknowledged that her song " Poker Face " is about fantasizing about a woman while being with a man. Brian Molko , lead singer of Placebo is openly bisexual. I mean, it's something that I've always been interested in.
I think people are born bisexual, and it's just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of 'Oh, I can't. It's ingrained in our heads that it's bad, when it's not bad at all. It's a very beautiful thing. There are these other feelings you may have about the same sex, the opposite sex, especially being in Berkeley and San Francisco then. People are acting out what they're feeling: gay, bisexual, transgender, whatever. And that opens up something in society that becomes more acceptable. Now we have gay marriage becoming recognized I think it's a process of discovery.
I was willing to try anything. In the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black the main character, Piper Chapman , played by actress Taylor Schilling , is a bisexual female inmate who is shown having relationships with both men and women. Then, upon entering the prison, she reconnects with former lover and fellow inmate , Alex Vause , played by Laura Prepon.
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She has an intimate relationship with fellow inmate Nicky Nichols , played by Natasha Lyonne , while still yearning for her male "fiance", Christopher MacLaren , played by Stephen O'Reilly. The same network had earlier aired the television series The O. The Showcase supernatural crime drama, Lost Girl , about creatures called Fae who live secretly among humans, features a bisexual protagonist, Bo , [] played by Anna Silk.
In the story arc she is involved in a love triangle between Dyson, a wolf- shapeshifter played by Kris Holden-Ried , and Lauren Lewis, [] a human doctor played by Zoie Palmer in servitude to the leader of the Light Fae clan. Most prominent among these is Captain Jack Harkness , a pansexual who is the lead character and an otherwise conventional science fiction action hero. Within the logic of the show, where characters can also interact with alien species, producers sometimes use the term "omnisexual" to describe him.