Bisexual Men Exist: A Handbook for Bisexual, Pansexual and M-Spec Men

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Personally, where I stand, I see methodological questions with the study that Dan has raised. I also think the paper didn’t do a good job in its communication. As written, it puts emphasis on the existence of bisexual male preference, as if this paper was a serious arbiter of the validity of bisexual social identity, which obviously it is not. And it should have taken care to clarify this point. Unless one approaches the mind from a skinnerian viewpoint that it is purely an epiphenomenon of physiology, it is difficult to understand how one can think such a study can truly capture the full breadth of a continuous sprectrum of sexuality. Though I suppose that was not the point of the study. It was an attempt to put a final nail in the coffin of the old racist academic grandfathers with a method they could not summarily dismiss with “I don’t believe self-report”.

Just out of curiosity: Do you generally find comments like “Could you maybe [bleep] off?” contribute to the sense that a space is “welcoming”?” Ok. That’s fine, but you’re the one who called other people obtuse for not taking away #2 from it. Then, even after Gelman stated his own contradictory reading and Dan assented to it saying “everything Andrew said”, you still insisted that it’s obviously #2. What part of the post makes you so sure it’s #2 and not #1, in direct contradiction to the exact words of the author? Why are we all so obtuse for not taking away something contrary to the author’s claims? I’m waiting for an argument. That makes no sense to me. Evidence for bisexual orientation requires only that there are some people who are sexually attracted to both men and women. No inverted-U-shaped distribution is required. The analysis itself is some sort of linear regression with a breakpoint such that the regression was a U shape (the arousal was higher/lower depending on where your are on the Kinsey scale). They used two different break points (but didn’t seem to adjust for the multiple testing) rather than using an automatically detected break point. If anything, Jabbour et al.’s results raise questions about the veracity of monosexuality. Jabbour et al. measure genital arousal by neutral stimuli or by erotic videos featuring men or women. They quantify arousal as the difference between the subjects’ responsivity to men and women, divided by the within-subject SD. On this measure, 5 to 10% of exclusively and predominantly monosexual participants showed more or same levels of arousal in response to the gender they are supposedly unattracted to. Jabbour et al. suggest this result is a sampling error, but it may be compatible with research showing that a fair amount of self-identified monosexual men had sexual relationships with and are physically attracted to both men and women ( 3, 4).But I’m personally not that interested in spending any actual effort to “discover bisexuality”. (Who expected Colonize Bisexuality would be July 2020’s clarion call!) Kritzer, too, questions the study design. She points to the large number of men who were not genitally aroused during the study. Stonewall followed this with the LGBT in Britain Bi Report in 2020, revealing that 31 per cent of bisexual people (male or female) had experienced a hate incident. 75 per cent did not report it out of fear that the police would not take their case seriously. Furthermore, the report concluded that 76 per cent of gay people are out to all their friends compared to 36 per cent of bisexual people, and 63 per cent of gay/lesbian people are out to all their family members, compared to just 20 per cent of bisexual people.

I’m not going to comment on the particular analytical choices the authors made. “Discovering” bisexuality seems pretty goofy, but I don’t think the authors claim that self-reports of sexuality are not a legitimate indicator (unless of course Michael Bailey’s views in the comments reflect those of all the authors…or perhaps Michael Bailey finds them to be rather valid but also, like other measures, subject to some error) nor that only “true” bisexuals exhibit a specific pattern based on device scores (per Daniel Lakeland’s second comment; I think his third comment more closely approximates the conclusions of the paper in question- “Results strongly confirmed that men who report attraction to both sexes are more genitally and subjectively aroused by both sexes compared with men who report that they are attracted only to one sex”). While the climate has improved for bisexual people, we still see the same topics arising again and again. ‘Bisexual people are transphobic’, despite the fact that bisexual doesn’t mean attraction to cis men and cis women but simply attraction to more than one gender, inclusive of all gender identities. ‘Bisexual people are cheaters’, simply because our attraction goes beyond a single gender. ‘Bisexual people are secretly gay/straight’, perpetuating the idea that bisexuality is just a phase. BisexualMenExist was created as a response to the biphobia bisexual men receive. In 2019, after seeing the abuse my bisexual male mutuals were receiving online, I decided I had enough with the negativity. The hashtag was my way of fighting the abuse, not by debating the topic but creating a wave of positivity. The question of whether bisexual arousal patterns exist has been less controversial about women than men Ross, L.E., Dobinson, C. and Eady, A. (2010) ‘Perceived determinants of mental health for bisexual people: A qualitative examination’, American journal of public health, 100(3), pp. 496-502.

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According to Stonewall’s statistics, when looking at LGB people, bisexual people are more likely to experience anxiety, self-harm and suicidal thoughts when compared to their gay and lesbian counterparts. In every category, bisexual women were worse off by a fair margin. And these findings are replicated in numerous other studies in other countries, too. Today is Bi Visibility Day, a day that has been celebrated since 1999. This is a day to recognise bisexual history, celebrate the bisexual community, and talk about the issues and experiences that bisexual people face. While bisexual people have come a long way since 1999, there are numerous issues that still persist, issues that are rarely highlighted or discussed within the LGBTQ+ community. I have had my sexuality questioned, both in person and online, from outside and inside the LGBTQ+ community. Gay and bisexual men who test negative can benefit from pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP is highly effective in preventing HIV when taken as prescribed.