Dear EC community, I would like to offer my unreserved apology for a post that has caused offense among bissexuals because of its narrow, binary and simplistic definition of the term gay. The post was intended as an encouragement to someone who appeared to be confused and struggling, just like myself. Those who bothered to read it in full will have noticed that it ends on a positive note. The rationale behind it is that if one defines gay simply as having same-sex attraction, then the goal becomes clear, your journey becomes one of self-discovery, of finding you true self by deconstructing the socially imposed heteronormative thought patterns and behavious that have alienated you from it. You seek to reunite yourself with the person you were born as. You have a clear goal and don't have to feel guilty about it. As someone who is in a long-term heterosexual relationship, with kids and in the closet, I found that the biggest appeal of this interpretation is that it offers some much need 'certainty'. You can hang on to a concrete goal, a vision, and strive to achieve it. The biggest drawback as I just realized by the angry comments that followed is that there is not a lot of room to represent bissexual experience other than as a transitional or partial state. If you identify as bissexual and are 100% happy as you are, then its understandable that you might have got pissed off by what you read. It was never my intention to be prescriptive or normative against bissexuality as such. The whole thing has set me back a few steps, I was about to come out confidently as gay and now I am wondering if I am bissexual, how do I deal with this? How do I come out to my female partner? Only one thing is sure, things just got a lot more complicated. I hope people will not take this episode too seriously, I don't want to become persona non-grata here, we are all here to learn and exchange ideas and find ways to move on with our lives. Thank you for reading, Mr B
Don't be too hard on yourself. Mistakes are made and the important part is to make sure you learn from it all, so go you The thing about terms is that you are free to label and define your own sexuality however you please. If you feel comfortable saying you are gay even thought some people might call it bisexuality, then go with whatever is useful to you. So, if you were comfortable with labeling yourself as gay before then go for it. Its not wrong in any way. The issue that you encounter is trying to define other people sexuality. Instead of saying "For me, it was helpful to identify as gay because blah blah" you said "all people who do this and this are this, period"
Hi Mr B, I just wanted you to know that I found your post on attraction and heteronormativity to be both helpful and comforting. Thank you for writing it, and also for being the kind of person who is willing to apologize,as some did read it differently than you intended. Certainly you are not a persona non grata!
You are definitely not persona non grata! I'm one of the bisexuals who posted in the other thread. I posted my experience as a longtime bisexual who is not transitioning or changing at all. I wanted to post that to show that for some, bisexuality is our true orientation. One of our obstacles to coming out is challenges to our validity. I was just posting my personal experience. So no hard feelings here, especially after reading your post in this thread. I hope you find your best path forward, too, I wish the best for you.
It's all good and there shouldn't be any hard feelings. Sometimes the words we write lose the tone and others read with their own intentions in mind. Please keep posting.
It's all good, Mr. B. I didn't mean to cause you pain. Goodness knows, I've had enough of my own. I hope you're well. Please don't stop talking (or listening). I admire your willingness to post an apology. I wasn't being flippant when I said I'd be happy to share my VERY bi experience. I know it's not yours, but it's real. We can learn from each other... no?
It takes a lot of vulnerability to own up to missteps. No real harm done, and I think owning the issue is really all that's necessary. As for your own situation, only you can truly know where you stand. But if you're confident that your attraction has always been to men, and that you essentially suppressed that (or stayed in denial) during the time you were married, that in no way diminishes the authenticity of labeling yourself as gay. There are lots of men that are 100% gay, Kinsey 6s, who for one reason or another dated women, or married women... but are still totally gay. And there are men who have some attraction to women, but more attraction to men. These guys can label as bisexual, or as gay, whichever label feel better represents them. I wouldn't get hung up on the label. It's really for your convenience and not much else.
Mr.B Thanks so much for the apology. I am offering mine in return. I have been accused of rage in response to your posts. However, it is more frustration than anything else. While I understand, now, your analogy of left hand and right hand as it relates to YOUR sexuality, this analogy struck a deep nerve with me. I do continue (this time in a friendly way) to advise that you communicate with a bisexual to understand HIS sexuality and how it affects HIS life. Some of us won't bite your head off. Sexuality and its expression are so different for all of us. It is part of the beauty and experience of being human. I truly wish you luck in your exploration.
Yes, Mr B. No worries, and do not feel as if you'll be shunned from this group. I think the offense that was taken to your statement, though a bit hurtful for the bi community, was dealt with pretty aggressively. If it makes you feel better, I always used to think everyone was bisexual. It was just something I automatically thought about humans -- after all, that's how I felt. That deep down, I was bi. I'm normal and date men, therefore everyone must be a little bi deep down, right? Nope. I find that, in the early stages, what we find to be truth for an entire group depends solely on our own experience. Nothing is apparent or diagnosable when it comes to sexuality because this world is so heteronormative. We have to take awhile to navigate what the deal is and how others function. This is why we say sexuality is complicated, because it is! You might be gay. I might be bi leaning to women -- it's complicated to define completely, especially in a society that doesn't support exploration in such a "taboo" area. We're all still learning, and I think if anything, that thread brought about even more learning for everyone. Good luck on your path to self discovery. We're all here to keep helping and supporting you!
Thank you for all the kind words and for accepting my apologies. For a moment I felt like Homer Simpson in that episode in which he grabs a candy from the back of a student's jeans and gets accused of sexual harassement, on the next morning he is being vilified by an angry mob in Springfield. Its absolutely hilarious, one of the best episodes ever. There is no other place like EC on the internet and if I screwed my reputation here, there would have been nowhere else I could have gone to talk about these things, so it was quite despairing to see that initial flood of angry comments. I owe a special thanks to SiennaFire, who was the first to realize what was going on and intervene. I think its important to keep a sense of humour and avoid taking offense so easily unless its clearly intentional, after all we are all human. Yes, I fully understand how painful and frustrating other people's ignorance can be, but how else can you learn? There is also a more pernicious effect of too much sensitivity, which is to lead people to self-censorship. Once people get too afraid of offending others, they will become inhibited and will prefer to err on the side of caution, they will keep their most interesting and original thoughts to themselves for fear of backlashes or of being misunderstood. They will prefer to repeat the same discourse of the crowd, there will no longer be any debate, only a repetitive and monotonous choir of consonant voices and in such an environment ideas do not evolve. One of the biggest lessons I learned in this episode came from Smurf, that I am free to used any label I feel comfortable with and so is everybody else. Don't get too rigid with labels, don't try to universalize your own experiences, or to apply the definitions that work for you on other people. Lastly, communication requires a wilful act by someone expressing something AND a wilful act of understanding by the recipient. If people are willing to understand each other, they will probably find a way to understand each other no matter how poor the language is, how bad the voice, the grammar or how much noise there is in the channel. This might help shed some light on the subsequent and still ongoing debate around the infamous e-word. By far, the most import thing I learned is that 'bisexual' is spelled with one s instead of two. I think I just got confused because its with double s in the country where I grew up. I swear I will never again commit this heinous offence against the b-word. Mr B
