GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
So basically to claim bisexuality, you must have consecrated your sexuality choice by having slept with both a man and a woman. You can't be a person who is fully interested in sleeping with the same sex and the opposite sex, just simply hasn't had the opportunity yet. You apparently must then maintain your bisexuality karma balance by sleeping equally with men and women.
What I think you're missing is the reason for disbelieving what someone claims to be. When the assumption is that bisexuals must always be sleeping with both sexes equally, or that nobody is actually bisexual (it's just a phase, or experimentation, or denial about one's True Queer Identity), and THAT is why "are you really bi?", that's what people are talking about. Similarly, people disbelieved Craig because he's a loud homophobe and was apparently caught trolling for gay sex in a public place, not because he was unmarried or celibate or didn't ogle women.
Again, though, the reason that Player A would not believe Player B's claim to (x-sexuality) would be Player A's observations of Player B's behavior.
Except we've already articulated the idea that one's sexual preferences are not necessarily manifest in behavior.
So Player A's observations cannot constitute a reason to question Player B's self description.
If some claimed to be bisexual AND never ever had partners of one gender AND never displayed any romantic or sexual interest in that gender, I might wonder how bi they actually were, just as I'd wonder about a guy who claimed to be heterosexual yet spend all of his Saturday nights at Blow Buddies.
I'm ok with this, because you're claiming that one's sexual preferences are manifest in external action.
But other people in this thread have denied that relation. One can be bisexual, some claim, and only externally express sexual attraction to one gender.
If a person's self-description is beholden to external manifestations by way of action, then that's fine and wonderful. You're bi, and express external indications of attraction to both genders? Huzzah.
But if you claim to be bi, yet are married to a woman, only fuck that woman, and only indicate interest in that woman and other women? Yeah, you aren't bi, because your actions do not jive with your self description.
We don't know if player 4 is attracted to women, or has fucked women in the past, or has some other reason for choosing only to fuck men. Perhaps Player 4 is terrified of becoming a father, or is monogamously married to a man, or is much more attracted to men than to women. Do you require a 50/50 attraction before deeming someone bisexual? Is 60/40 OK?
I think I replied to this in my reply to your other post.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I imagine it's statistically harder to date your same gender as a bisexual, since people who will date their same gender are in the minority.
Just curious, but what is your definition of an asexual?
We argued about this in the changing your sexuality thread.
Short reply: Asexual human beings are impossible in principle, since human beings are creatures who, upon reaching sexual maturity, have a desire to engage in sexual activity.
Qualification: "Sexual creatures" means "have sexual desires". It doesn't matter what or whom one wants to fuck. But to be a mature human is to have that impulse to fuck.
And now we get bogged down in many, many arguments.
I'm ok with this, because you're claiming that one's sexual preferences are manifest in external action.
But other people in this thread have denied that relation. One can be bisexual, some claim, and only externally express sexual attraction to one gender.
One can. What you appear to be arguing is that an absence of external action is a manifestation of one's preferences. Nobody is saying "a person who is fucking men and women is 100% credible if they say they're not bisexual"; they're saying one can be bisexual and have partners of one gender.
If A claims to be heterosexual, but you never observe A having sex with or expressing romantic interest in men OR women, do you conclude A is lying? Is A secretly gay, or what?
If a person's self-description is beholden to external manifestations by way of action, then that's fine and wonderful. You're bi, and express external indications of attraction to both genders? Huzzah.
But if you claim to be bi, yet are married to a woman, only fuck that woman, and only indicate interest in that woman and other women? Yeah, you aren't bi, because your actions do not jive with your self description.
And if you had a long string of male partners before settling down monogamously with that women, that behavior no longer counts because you've stopped fucking men? That appears to be your argument.
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We don't know if player 4 is attracted to women, or has fucked women in the past, or has some other reason for choosing only to fuck men. Perhaps Player 4 is terrified of becoming a father, or is monogamously married to a man, or is much more attracted to men than to women. Do you require a 50/50 attraction before deeming someone bisexual? Is 60/40 OK?
I think I replied to this in my reply to your other post.
I'm not sure that you did. In your example we only know who player 4 is fucking, not what he did in the past, what his attractions are or the reason for his choices.
I know rather a lot of bi men who don't generally identify as bi because of the perception that they're all in denial about being gay/David Bowie/HIV mosquitoes who betray women. When they have a female partner they say they're straight; when they have gay partners they say they're gay. It's not worth the hassle otherwise.
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So basically to claim bisexuality, you must have consecrated your sexuality choice by having slept with both a man and a woman. You can't be a person who is fully interested in sleeping with the same sex and the opposite sex, just simply hasn't had the opportunity yet. You apparently must then maintain your bisexuality karma balance by sleeping equally with men and women.
People can be homo/hetero/bi sexual prior to engaging in the act of sex.
For homo/hetero/bi sexual to be meaningful labels, they must be discernable through external observations of a persons actions.
If we do not want "fucking" to be the external observation then, ok, let's include
- Flirting
- Romantic pursuit
- Discernment of arousal via FMRI
Again, my worry is that self-descriptions that are only beholden to a person's own self narrative are incredibly useless terms. For the terms to be meaningful, they have to be evidenced by some external action that is in principle knowable to another individual.
So, at the very least, bisexual means that if we put you in an FMRI and show you pictures of Jessica Alba and joseph gordon-levitt, your "i wanna fuck that" zone lights up equally for both.
I've run into more than one self identifying homosexual who refused to believe bisexuality existed. They proposed this concept that bisexuals are just homosexuals who are still in partial denial/closeted. I find it astounding that you could take such a binary view of things, especially coming from the particular individuals, who I know to be sensible and open minded about just about everything else.
That may be an artifact of some people of that type existing, and an early study of bisexuals for which none of the self-identifying bisexuals were actually bisexual (they were hooked up to machinery and failed to respond to one gender). As it stands, better sampling actually found some honest bisexuals, but it seems reasonably to conclude that the population of actual bisexuals is a minority of self-identified bisexuals (mostly due to certain types of women).
Really, we've already established that sexuality is not a choice, so taking self-identification or beards into account is fairly silly. Similarly, if you are aroused by both genders, you're bisexual.
So basically to claim bisexuality, you must have consecrated your sexuality choice by having slept with both a man and a woman. You can't be a person who is fully interested in sleeping with the same sex and the opposite sex, just simply hasn't had the opportunity yet. You apparently must then maintain your bisexuality karma balance by sleeping equally with men and women.
People can be homo/hetero/bi sexual prior to engaging in the act of sex.
For homo/hetero/bi sexual to be meaningful labels, they must be discernable through external observations of a persons actions.
If we do not want "fucking" to be the external observation then, ok, let's include
- Flirting
- Romantic pursuit
- Discernment of arousal via FMRI
Again, my worry is that self-descriptions that are only beholden to a person's own self narrative are incredibly useless terms. For the terms to be meaningful, they have to be evidenced by some external action that is in principle knowable to another individual.
So, at the very least, bisexual means that if we put you in an FMRI and show you pictures of Jessica Alba and joseph gordon-levitt, your "i wanna fuck that" zone lights up equally for both.
I am gay and wouldn't fuck JGL with a ten foot pole.
So basically to claim bisexuality, you must have consecrated your sexuality choice by having slept with both a man and a woman. You can't be a person who is fully interested in sleeping with the same sex and the opposite sex, just simply hasn't had the opportunity yet. You apparently must then maintain your bisexuality karma balance by sleeping equally with men and women.
People can be homo/hetero/bi sexual prior to engaging in the act of sex.
For homo/hetero/bi sexual to be meaningful labels, they must be discernable through external observations of a persons actions.
If we do not want "fucking" to be the external observation then, ok, let's include
- Flirting
- Romantic pursuit
- Discernment of arousal via FMRI
Again, my worry is that self-descriptions that are only beholden to a person's own self narrative are incredibly useless terms. For the terms to be meaningful, they have to be evidenced by some external action that is in principle knowable to another individual.
So, at the very least, bisexual means that if we put you in an FMRI and show you pictures of Jessica Alba and joseph gordon-levitt, your "i wanna fuck that" zone lights up equally for both.
There's this little thing called the "cognitive revolution." You might want to look it up at some point.
One can. What you appear to be arguing is that an absence of external action is a manifestation of one's preferences. Nobody is saying "a person who is fucking men and women is 100% credible if they say they're not bisexual"; they're saying one can be bisexual and have partners of one gender.
If A claims to be heterosexual, but you never observe A having sex with or expressing romantic interest in men OR women, do you conclude A is lying? Is A secretly gay, or what?
I appreciate the tone of your replies.
I'd think A a very strange individual, and I'd ask them what they mean by "heterosexual", since they don't seem to be acting in the way heterosexuals act.
Which, come to think of it, is a premise that's been in my posts that I may have not clearly stated: I am under the impression that homo/hetero/bi sexuality is expressed in terms of particular habits of action that are common to all individuals included in that category.
I do not think that premise is crazy. But feel free to indicate the problems in it.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
I'm sympathetic to basing sexual preference on acts, but I feel like you're limiting the sexual acts immensely.
If a guy only ever has actual sex with his wife but fantasises about gay sex and/or watches it on his computer some times wouldn't it be fitting to label him bi-sexual?
Some people tried to explain this via the bi-curious route, but that is not helpful. Mostly because we don't seem to have a good reason to not also permit hetero-curious and homo-curious.
Would it be sensible to make a distinction between sexual acts directly involving other people's bodies, and sexual acts involving masturbation and images / audio? That distinction could clarify some of the problems, but I'm not sure if it actually solves them.
Why would we need to make a distinction?
Attraction does not imply action. The labels people apply to themselves do not describe action, they describe attraction. If I'm attracted to a girl but then do not have sex with her (as so often happens) does that mean I'm not actually attracted to her? Surely that would be ridiculous?
So the attraction has to be equal? It can't be 60/40, or 70/30? Where's the cutoff?
That's an interesting question.
It relates to the "I wouldn't fuck joseph gordon-levitt, but i'd bone Chris Evans" sentiment. Presumably sexual attraction is to general traits rather than particular individuals. So, "bulky, strong, muscular men" as opposed to just Chris Evans, or whomever.
I think the cutoff would be a percentage such that one could indicate an attraction to a group/class/set that included more than one particular individual.
But perhaps some bisexual person is attracted to nerdy girls, goth girls, alternative girls, emo girls, and muscular guys. That seems fine to me....provided that the attraction to those categories is similar in quantity.
I may have just pushed back the "quantify that!" question.
Do you get where I'm going, though? The idea of class/set attraction rather than particular individuals?
I'm sympathetic to basing sexual preference on acts, but I feel like you're limiting the sexual acts immensely.
If a guy only ever has actual sex with his wife but fantasises about gay sex and/or watches it on his computer some times wouldn't it be fitting to label him bi-sexual?
Some people tried to explain this via the bi-curious route, but that is not helpful. Mostly because we don't seem to have a good reason to not also permit hetero-curious and homo-curious.
Would it be sensible to make a distinction between sexual acts directly involving other people's bodies, and sexual acts involving masturbation and images / audio? That distinction could clarify some of the problems, but I'm not sure if it actually solves them.
Why would we need to make a distinction?
Attraction does not imply action. The labels people apply to themselves do not describe action, they describe attraction. If I'm attracted to a girl but then do not have sex with her (as so often happens) does that mean I'm not actually attracted to her? Surely that would be ridiculous?
Action can be something other than fucking. Less than fucking but more than cheek flushing, probably.
Now I'm getting distracted thinking about what it means to be "attracted" to someone.
Of course being gay is a choice just like being straight is. You just have to choose to fight against or go with your natural instincts. Just like you can choose what gender you decide to present yourself as. Just like you can choose to ignore someone elses choice.
Of course being gay is a choice just like being straight is. You just have to choose to fight against or go with your natural instincts. Just like you can choose what gender you decide to present yourself as. Just like you can choose to ignore someone elses choice.
Life is all about choice.
That's not choosing to be gay or straight, because those natural instincts are whether you're gay or straight.
If I offer you a choice between vanilla and chocolate, you can choose which to pick, but what you can't choose is which you want to pick. If you want chocolate you can still pick vanilla, but you can't choose to want to pick vanilla. And gay or straight or bi or asexual or etc. is based on what you want to pick, not what you do pick.
Most of the time, what you want is what you pick. But bring up outside factors that try to determine what you want based on what you pick, and have consequences associated with them, and that may not always be the case.
No, I'm not making a difference between someone's instincts and someone's sexual identity. Just pointing out that we make decisions against our nature all the time.
You can choose to ignore it. Thousands of men and women do it to themselves all over the world for various reasons. All those stories of priests coming out and men coming out after having three children.
Hell I have one friend who was convinced she was a lesbian...until she tried having sex with a woman. Turns out she was just rebellious/a bit confused.
What am saying is you can choose not to be gay or not to be straight, not that you weren't born that way. Is it a good idea to fight against your instincts on this? Probably not.
This isn't a value judgement here but a fact of life. Of course I believe people are born straight or gay and I'm pretty sure those with gender identity issues also usually know what is going on. People can decide to act however they want.
_J_ you're literally going up against the APA with your claims. Attraction does not require action. A person can be attracted to someone and take no action. This does not make it any more meaningless than other emotions and urges people do not take action on.
I understand the difference between thoughts and behavior, and I suppose strong arguments can be made that they matter. In the end, however, I am an advocate of refering to people as they want to adressed. If someone says they are bisexual, then I am happy to accept that regardless of whether it is because of desires or lifestyle.
And when Larry Craig wants to self-identify as a heterosexual we respect that and do not question his "true nature", right?
For homo/hetero/bi sexual to be meaningful labels, they must be discernable through external observations of a persons actions.
Say an individual who claims to be of a certain orientation is imprisoned for their entire life, and never has sexual contact with another being. Can they not still say they're sexually attracted to another?
If someone discovers that they're gay after being in relationships with only women, it seems like you're positing that they can only be considered gay if they perform sexual acts with another man, but if this is the case, how would they discover that they're gay if they can't be considered gay prior to action?
I understand the difference between thoughts and behavior, and I suppose strong arguments can be made that they matter. In the end, however, I am an advocate of refering to people as they want to adressed. If someone says they are bisexual, then I am happy to accept that regardless of whether it is because of desires or lifestyle.
And when Larry Craig wants to self-identify as a heterosexual we respect that and do not question his "true nature", right?
That's not the same thing and you know it. Larry Craig won't admit he wants dudes to do things to his wiener because he is ashamed of his desires becoming public knowledge.
I understand the difference between thoughts and behavior, and I suppose strong arguments can be made that they matter. In the end, however, I am an advocate of refering to people as they want to adressed. If someone says they are bisexual, then I am happy to accept that regardless of whether it is because of desires or lifestyle.
And when Larry Craig wants to self-identify as a heterosexual we respect that and do not question his "true nature", right?
He can self-identify as heterosexual, and people should respect that identification.
When he is caught out rather blatantly performing homosexual acts the focus should not be on claiming him as 'gay' or 'homosexual' but as a hypocritical bigot who denounces something, homosexual sex, that he engages in. Attacking his identity doesn't need to come into that.
Attacking someone's identity is dangerous and usually unnecessary. People should be allowed to identify however they like, even if they are vile bigots.
"How can you say you like both steak AND lobster? I've never seen you order lobster!"
"I like it fine. It's just usually more expensive than steak, and anyway I like steak a little better."
Clearly, speaker #2 is lying, because otherwise he'd be ordering surf n' turf every goddamn time.
If I say, "Hey, i'll pay for your lobster." and Speaker #2 replies, "Fuck that I'm not eating sea rats." then, yes, Speaker #2 is lying.
Sea bugs. But in this case, you are doubting Speaker #2 because the disgusted reference to lobster contradicts the earlier statement "I like it fine". If you say "Hey, I'll pay for your lobster" and Speaker #2 says "I really feel like I want a rib-eye tonight, but thanks," is Speaker #2 still lying?
As an analogy, I'm not sure how useful your counter-example is; it would be, say, a self-described bisexual man or straight man who reacts to the idea of a female partner with disgust, which is different than one who has a preference for men over women, or who is married to a man, or who you just haven't seen with a woman.
That said, I think you are conflating two different situations:
1) Person says they do not like to do X, yet you observe them doing X. (That's Larry Craig.)
2) Person says they do like to do X, yet you do not observe them doing X. (That's your bisexual who you only see dating one gender.)
Both 1 and 2 meet your broad definition of "their self-description does not match their observed behavior". But only 1 is actively contradicting their stated preference or identity. 2 is not displaying that stated preference or identity, but neither are they contradicting it.
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I like lobster okay but I like almost everything better so I never order it and I don't really feel a need to eat two meals or I just don't feel like lobster but if I'm in the exact right mood yeah I'm going to enjoy some lobster.
Clearly I cannot possibly like lobster.
Whut.
Alternatively:
I claim to like women of any hair color. I have only been with blondes, never red-heads or blondes. This means I only like brunettes.
Whut.
Incenjucar on
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I like big butts, and I cannot lie
However, it cannot be said that my fiancée has "got back"
_J_ I think your logic circuits got some water on them or something.
Like what is up with this? This isn't even pedantic it's just... like, inaccurate.
Do you know someone personally who annoyingly insists on bisexuality while exhibiting no behavior that indicates the fact? Because I can't see where the idea of combating a vast web of bi-lies comes from.
Like yeah if someone says they are bi and then only fucks either men or women then I may say "pssh they totally aren't they just think it's interesting" but... like... that isn't a philosophical position. That's shit-talking about an annoying person. And it's not even necessarily accurate shit-talking. For all I know they do all their making out with a gender I haven't seen them macking on behind closed doors!
Also on just a totally different note: never, ever, ever use fMRI to prove a thing, yet. Even the good fMRI studies aren't showing causality, and they're not all good. It's super overused for simple "x lit up therefore we can read minds" studies.
Short reply: Asexual human beings are impossible in principle, since human beings are creatures who, upon reaching sexual maturity, have a desire to engage in sexual activity.
. . . what?
I'll bet this is news to all the asexual people out there.
Short reply: Asexual human beings are impossible in principle, since human beings are creatures who, upon reaching sexual maturity, have a desire to engage in sexual activity.
. . . what?
I'll bet this is news to all the asexual people out there.
I think you mean all the liars out there who, for some reason, continue to insist upon their lies in the face of _J_ being able to read the whorls of their mind.
Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
edited May 2012
I have a hard time believing someone says they're attracted to both genders but have only ever shown interest (JUST interest, not actually sleeping with or whatnot) in one gender. I guess maybe they're ashamed, but if they were, they'd just lie and say they were straight.
Note: I totally believe bisexuality is a thing, it's just weird that someone who claims to be as such doesn't really act on it any perceivable way.
Also as for asexuality, that is also a thing. You can even have forced asexuality as a side effect of some medicines!
Edit: LadyM - So weird seeing you outside of the Pony thread!
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Biden is now explicitly supporting same-sex marriage. I think the polling data is such that Obama will start to lose more than he'd gain by trying to keep splitting the difference as we get toward November, hopefully he'll switch over soon too.
What I have learned from this thread is that virgins are asexual up until the point they perform a sexual act and that one's sexuality has no effect at any point an individual is not performing a sexual act. Thank you thread for all the useful insights you have provided me.
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The ones who only ever have sex with one gender.
Again, though, the reason that Player A would not believe Player B's claim to (x-sexuality) would be Player A's observations of Player B's behavior.
Except we've already articulated the idea that one's sexual preferences are not necessarily manifest in behavior.
So Player A's observations cannot constitute a reason to question Player B's self description.
I'm ok with this, because you're claiming that one's sexual preferences are manifest in external action.
But other people in this thread have denied that relation. One can be bisexual, some claim, and only externally express sexual attraction to one gender.
If a person's self-description is beholden to external manifestations by way of action, then that's fine and wonderful. You're bi, and express external indications of attraction to both genders? Huzzah.
But if you claim to be bi, yet are married to a woman, only fuck that woman, and only indicate interest in that woman and other women? Yeah, you aren't bi, because your actions do not jive with your self description.
"I like it fine. It's just usually more expensive than steak, and anyway I like steak a little better."
Clearly, speaker #2 is lying, because otherwise he'd be ordering surf n' turf every goddamn time.
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I think I replied to this in my reply to your other post.
We argued about this in the changing your sexuality thread.
Short reply: Asexual human beings are impossible in principle, since human beings are creatures who, upon reaching sexual maturity, have a desire to engage in sexual activity.
Qualification: "Sexual creatures" means "have sexual desires". It doesn't matter what or whom one wants to fuck. But to be a mature human is to have that impulse to fuck.
And now we get bogged down in many, many arguments.
Is sexual activity the only measure? Sexual and romantic inclinations are not relevant?
Certainly they can. But "question" is different from "objectively refute".
One can. What you appear to be arguing is that an absence of external action is a manifestation of one's preferences. Nobody is saying "a person who is fucking men and women is 100% credible if they say they're not bisexual"; they're saying one can be bisexual and have partners of one gender.
If A claims to be heterosexual, but you never observe A having sex with or expressing romantic interest in men OR women, do you conclude A is lying? Is A secretly gay, or what?
And if you had a long string of male partners before settling down monogamously with that women, that behavior no longer counts because you've stopped fucking men? That appears to be your argument.
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I'm not sure that you did. In your example we only know who player 4 is fucking, not what he did in the past, what his attractions are or the reason for his choices.
I know rather a lot of bi men who don't generally identify as bi because of the perception that they're all in denial about being gay/David Bowie/HIV mosquitoes who betray women. When they have a female partner they say they're straight; when they have gay partners they say they're gay. It's not worth the hassle otherwise.
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People can be homo/hetero/bi sexual prior to engaging in the act of sex.
For homo/hetero/bi sexual to be meaningful labels, they must be discernable through external observations of a persons actions.
If we do not want "fucking" to be the external observation then, ok, let's include
- Flirting
- Romantic pursuit
- Discernment of arousal via FMRI
Again, my worry is that self-descriptions that are only beholden to a person's own self narrative are incredibly useless terms. For the terms to be meaningful, they have to be evidenced by some external action that is in principle knowable to another individual.
So, at the very least, bisexual means that if we put you in an FMRI and show you pictures of Jessica Alba and joseph gordon-levitt, your "i wanna fuck that" zone lights up equally for both.
That may be an artifact of some people of that type existing, and an early study of bisexuals for which none of the self-identifying bisexuals were actually bisexual (they were hooked up to machinery and failed to respond to one gender). As it stands, better sampling actually found some honest bisexuals, but it seems reasonably to conclude that the population of actual bisexuals is a minority of self-identified bisexuals (mostly due to certain types of women).
Really, we've already established that sexuality is not a choice, so taking self-identification or beards into account is fairly silly. Similarly, if you are aroused by both genders, you're bisexual.
Now what.
Chris Evans, on the other hand...
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
If I say, "Hey, i'll pay for your lobster." and Speaker #2 replies, "Fuck that I'm not eating sea rats." then, yes, Speaker #2 is lying.
There's this little thing called the "cognitive revolution." You might want to look it up at some point.
I appreciate the tone of your replies.
I'd think A a very strange individual, and I'd ask them what they mean by "heterosexual", since they don't seem to be acting in the way heterosexuals act.
Which, come to think of it, is a premise that's been in my posts that I may have not clearly stated: I am under the impression that homo/hetero/bi sexuality is expressed in terms of particular habits of action that are common to all individuals included in that category.
I do not think that premise is crazy. But feel free to indicate the problems in it.
Why would we need to make a distinction?
Attraction does not imply action. The labels people apply to themselves do not describe action, they describe attraction. If I'm attracted to a girl but then do not have sex with her (as so often happens) does that mean I'm not actually attracted to her? Surely that would be ridiculous?
That's an interesting question.
It relates to the "I wouldn't fuck joseph gordon-levitt, but i'd bone Chris Evans" sentiment. Presumably sexual attraction is to general traits rather than particular individuals. So, "bulky, strong, muscular men" as opposed to just Chris Evans, or whomever.
I think the cutoff would be a percentage such that one could indicate an attraction to a group/class/set that included more than one particular individual.
But perhaps some bisexual person is attracted to nerdy girls, goth girls, alternative girls, emo girls, and muscular guys. That seems fine to me....provided that the attraction to those categories is similar in quantity.
I may have just pushed back the "quantify that!" question.
Do you get where I'm going, though? The idea of class/set attraction rather than particular individuals?
Action can be something other than fucking. Less than fucking but more than cheek flushing, probably.
Now I'm getting distracted thinking about what it means to be "attracted" to someone.
Life is all about choice.
If I offer you a choice between vanilla and chocolate, you can choose which to pick, but what you can't choose is which you want to pick. If you want chocolate you can still pick vanilla, but you can't choose to want to pick vanilla. And gay or straight or bi or asexual or etc. is based on what you want to pick, not what you do pick.
Most of the time, what you want is what you pick. But bring up outside factors that try to determine what you want based on what you pick, and have consequences associated with them, and that may not always be the case.
You seem to be making a distinction between one's "instincts" and one's "sexual-preference-identity".
If we claim that one's instinct to fuck men IS one's sexual-preference-identity, what then?
You can choose to ignore it. Thousands of men and women do it to themselves all over the world for various reasons. All those stories of priests coming out and men coming out after having three children.
Hell I have one friend who was convinced she was a lesbian...until she tried having sex with a woman. Turns out she was just rebellious/a bit confused.
What am saying is you can choose not to be gay or not to be straight, not that you weren't born that way. Is it a good idea to fight against your instincts on this? Probably not.
This isn't a value judgement here but a fact of life. Of course I believe people are born straight or gay and I'm pretty sure those with gender identity issues also usually know what is going on. People can decide to act however they want.
Man, I really need to watch the Daily Show more often.
And when Larry Craig wants to self-identify as a heterosexual we respect that and do not question his "true nature", right?
Say an individual who claims to be of a certain orientation is imprisoned for their entire life, and never has sexual contact with another being. Can they not still say they're sexually attracted to another?
If someone discovers that they're gay after being in relationships with only women, it seems like you're positing that they can only be considered gay if they perform sexual acts with another man, but if this is the case, how would they discover that they're gay if they can't be considered gay prior to action?
That's not the same thing and you know it. Larry Craig won't admit he wants dudes to do things to his wiener because he is ashamed of his desires becoming public knowledge.
He can self-identify as heterosexual, and people should respect that identification.
When he is caught out rather blatantly performing homosexual acts the focus should not be on claiming him as 'gay' or 'homosexual' but as a hypocritical bigot who denounces something, homosexual sex, that he engages in. Attacking his identity doesn't need to come into that.
Attacking someone's identity is dangerous and usually unnecessary. People should be allowed to identify however they like, even if they are vile bigots.
Sea bugs. But in this case, you are doubting Speaker #2 because the disgusted reference to lobster contradicts the earlier statement "I like it fine". If you say "Hey, I'll pay for your lobster" and Speaker #2 says "I really feel like I want a rib-eye tonight, but thanks," is Speaker #2 still lying?
As an analogy, I'm not sure how useful your counter-example is; it would be, say, a self-described bisexual man or straight man who reacts to the idea of a female partner with disgust, which is different than one who has a preference for men over women, or who is married to a man, or who you just haven't seen with a woman.
That said, I think you are conflating two different situations:
1) Person says they do not like to do X, yet you observe them doing X. (That's Larry Craig.)
2) Person says they do like to do X, yet you do not observe them doing X. (That's your bisexual who you only see dating one gender.)
Both 1 and 2 meet your broad definition of "their self-description does not match their observed behavior". But only 1 is actively contradicting their stated preference or identity. 2 is not displaying that stated preference or identity, but neither are they contradicting it.
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Clearly I cannot possibly like lobster.
Whut.
Alternatively:
I claim to like women of any hair color. I have only been with blondes, never red-heads or blondes. This means I only like brunettes.
Whut.
However, it cannot be said that my fiancée has "got back"
Am I lying?
(this is like a logic puzzle)
Like what is up with this? This isn't even pedantic it's just... like, inaccurate.
Do you know someone personally who annoyingly insists on bisexuality while exhibiting no behavior that indicates the fact? Because I can't see where the idea of combating a vast web of bi-lies comes from.
Like yeah if someone says they are bi and then only fucks either men or women then I may say "pssh they totally aren't they just think it's interesting" but... like... that isn't a philosophical position. That's shit-talking about an annoying person. And it's not even necessarily accurate shit-talking. For all I know they do all their making out with a gender I haven't seen them macking on behind closed doors!
Also on just a totally different note: never, ever, ever use fMRI to prove a thing, yet. Even the good fMRI studies aren't showing causality, and they're not all good. It's super overused for simple "x lit up therefore we can read minds" studies.
. . . what?
I'll bet this is news to all the asexual people out there.
I think you mean all the liars out there who, for some reason, continue to insist upon their lies in the face of _J_ being able to read the whorls of their mind.
Note: I totally believe bisexuality is a thing, it's just weird that someone who claims to be as such doesn't really act on it any perceivable way.
Also as for asexuality, that is also a thing. You can even have forced asexuality as a side effect of some medicines!
Edit: LadyM - So weird seeing you outside of the Pony thread!
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And I am perfectly okay with that.
Also, the VP wouldn't come out and say something that wasn't passed by the Oval Office anyway.