Is it normal for bisexual people?

Eh, in my experience, the majority of straight women I've met have also disliked having sex with men, but did it because of social pressure. It's sadly pretty normal, so I don't think it means much.

And plenty of straight women enjoy casual sex with women, while still being 100% straight in their own minds. Society never questions it either. I personally think that everyone has the capability to enjoy sex with both genders, which is also why even totally straight men have enjoyable sex with men in prison. That doesn't mean they've discovered they are gay just because their dick in a man's hole feels good to them.

We're all human beings and we all can enjoy sex with both genders, regardless of what our real sexuality is. We also can detest sex with a gender we're attracted to, because that's also human nature.

It just kind of sucks that gay people are pressured to sleep with people to "prove it", when straight people are never asked to do this.

I also don't see anyone answering the question about gay people who morally dislike casual sex. If a lesbian sleeps with a woman casually, and then hates the experience entirely, what then? What sexuality would we call her? What would we do after we forced her to sleep with a random woman to "prove it", and she doesn't even like it, despite only being attracted to women? Maybe she would enjoy sex with the right woman in a relationship, but her gut instinct might have already said that. But if you only like sex with a person based on certain limitations, then wouldn't forcing yourself to experiment confuse a person way more?

 

You're taking my words and morphing them with yours. I said experience allows you to say with certainty that you are what you think you are. In effect it is confirmation.

You also skipped over the part where I said that the confirmation is living/interacting as your target gender and being comfortable in that situation. It is sometimes called Real Life Experience and has nothing to do with cisgender people. It is how you negeotiate the external world from the perspective of your target gender. Clearly trans people (and be careful not to limit this to trans women) are dealing with a different data set compared to cisgender people. Conversely, cisgender people have no sense of having the combined perspectives of ones gender assigned at birth and ones target gender.

That sounds very much like some gays and lesbians offering their opinions about bisexuality. You might want to rethink your words.

Sorry, you have improperly stated your arguement to the point of rendering it useless and it completely ignores what I have said about living as ones target gender.

Very silly and totally misconstruing what I said, so let's have a bit of Transgender 101...

Gender Identity is a spectrum of thoughts and behaviors. It has various shades of gray between the extremes, or ends. Here I will be speaking about males and those who move from male to female, but it applies to females and female to male.

At one end of the spectrum will be those who crossdesss. They are typically cisgender males who, for whatever reason, enjoy wearing women's clothing. They are typically closeted and tend not to venture out dressed. Their gender identity remains masculine. Typically they say that they become someone else, i.e. adopt a different persona, when dressed. They have no desire to transition or live fulltime as women. Also typically, there is a sexual or fetishistic component to their dressing.

At the other end of the spectrum are those people who have a complete, or nearly complete, mismatch between their physical aspects (based on their sex assigned at birth) and the mental image of themselves. These are the people who need to, at least, socially transition to living as their target gender. Real Life Experience plays an important part here, not only as validation for the trans people but also as gaining approvals/recognition for possible future medical interventions, document gender marker changes, etc.

Finally, there is middle gtround. This is where terms such as non-binary, gender non-conforming, gender fluid, etc. come into play. I tend to be more aligned with gender non-conforming, but non-binary is close. All non-binary means is that you don't view yourself as strictly male or strictly female.

Personally, I've never felt that I was in the wrong body so I have no desire to transition. At the other end of the spectrum, I don't match well with the crossdressers. I am not cisgender. I do not become someone else when I am dressed. Basically, if you know DeeAnn you know Don. The differences are down to very minor things such as DeeAnn is more touchy-feely than Don. There was essentially no sexual or fetishistic component to my dressing. And finally, but perhaps most significantly, my default for problem solving, navigating the world, etc. is based on intuition and not logic. It isn't that I don't do logic; it just isn't my default. You would probably say "So what?". What you don't know is that I retired a bit over a year ago from a 43 year career as a mechanical engineer. Trust me, the way I work is nothing like my colleagues. Anyway, it is a very non-masculine way of viewing and dealing with the world.

Two and a half decades ago I started to sort out my sexuality and I came to the conclusion that I was gay. A few years went by and it occured to me that I needed confirmation. I acted on my thoughts and moved from intellectualizing to confirmation. It stayed like that for a few years until I figured out that bisexuality was closer to my reality. That was about 2000 and essentially nothing has changed. Don and DeeAnn are bisexual. The first time that I completely dressed, I went out. I won't go into detail, but the main takeaway was that while I was a bit concerned about seeing someone I knew, I was very comfortable in the clothes. That was a total surprise. It was several years before I went out again, but that was the impetus for upping the frequency. Going out more increasingly confirmed for me that I was exercising more of who I really was. While I am out 2 to 5 times a week these days to various community events and organization meetings, I have no plans to be fulltime as it would be very impractical. It takes me 1.5 to 2.5 hours to get ready to go out, so there would be no such thing as a quick trip to the grocery store.

So, from my experience, acting on your thoughts can have particular benefits. The thing is, knowing something intellectually is not the same as internalizing it. It is the difference between having information and embracing it. While you can say that you don't have to get hit by a truck to understand that it will hurt, understand that we are talking about concepts that can be very convoluted, yet subtle and deceptive.. Also, humans are very complicated creatures. We can respond differently to the same stimulli or respond the same to different stimulli. In short, we don't always respond in ways that are obvious. Trying to apply absolutes and predictability to humans is always risky business. Hence, experience is often the best teacher.

DeeAnn

 

I think the problem here is that many people limit gay experience to sex.

I haven't had sex with a woman, yet you can't fully say "I lack experience" either, because I've dated women. I have had girlfriends. I have had my heart broken by women and been emotionally intimate with them. We've felt sexual desire for each other, but it simply was not the right time to have sex as no one felt ready to do so.

This is enough to completely confirm it for me.

It's not the full blown experience I could have had, but I liken it to your example of trans people trying to live as their target gender. It's some experience and that's enough for both sides.

Now this is where it gets controversial, I personally have a hard time believing that non-binary genders even exist at all. To me they seem based only on arbitrary gender roles. My experience as a woman isn't because I'm "feminine-thinking" (I'm not, I actually think more like a dude) but because I have a vagina and have been oppressed and socialized based on it.

That being said, I will respect non-binary pronouns and identities without forcing my opinion on them. I'm only stating my opinion now because I'm growing tired of the double standards on this website. I dislike having to feel like my opinion needs to be censored to protect the "safe space" of others, and yet at the same time I also have to see subtle homophobic statements that invalidate the reality of gay people.

 

Yes, that is what happens and it was never really the case. It involves the relationships you build, who you look to for support, how you align yourself politically and maybe some other things that I can't think of. The funny thing is what heterosexuals are hung up on. With gay people it revolves around sex. With trans people it revolves around who has what genitalia. When we are thought of in purely sexual terms, they don't have to deal with us in any meaningful human way.

The important thing is that it applies to you. That may not be the case for others. Remember that there is A LOT of variance in humans. From my observation, while there are some elements of commonality with trans people, there are so many different starting points, paths and goals. In other words, each person's journey has a high degree of uniqueness about it. For some people, an intellectual understanding is not enough. They need something more concrete.

More specifically, it is a trial period (often one to two years) in which you learn if you can deal with the world in a very different way from what you had previously experienced as well as handling any negativity that people wish to visit upon you. Unfortunately not everyone can go the distance.

I would not call it a gender. It is the lack of a clearly defined gender. Similarly, bisexuality is the lack of a clearly defined preference, but it isn't the absence of sexuality.

I wouldn't put it that way. I would not say because you have a vagina. I would say that the external world perceives you as female, for whatever reason, and the treatment you received is based on that. It is an assumption because no one has asked you to describe your genitalia. How you look, how you interact with others, etc. all give clues as to what your gender is without having to ask (which would be pretty inappropriate anyway, but it is something that many trans people experience). Remember the old saying: "If it walks like a duck... etc.", then it must be a duck. When I go out dressed as female with makeup, heels, appropriate undergarments, jewelry, etc. while I may not be preceived as exactly female, it is clear that I'm way beyond male. I can only assume that the thought process is "OK, close enough". For me, there's more beyond an essentially intuitive thought process. As a child I learned a lot about women's fashion. I didn't consciously set out to do that, but evidently I absorbed a lot unconsciously. By the time I was in junior high, I knew about peplums, dolman sleeves, cowl necklines and many other things. But, while I knew what they were, I also knew what they were intended to do or disguise. That took it out of the realm of spurious information.

In some ways, the intersection of L's, G's and B's with T's is a bit of an uneasy alliance. While there are some similarities, it has been a very, very long time since gays were marginalized to the extent that trans people are. In terms of personal violence, it is almost like open season on trans people. Cathedral City, where I live, is adjacent to Palm Springs. A trans woman was mudered in Palm Springs in 1999, but she was not identified until 2015. I won't go into the exceedingly gruesome details, but no one has ever even been arrested for the crime. While we like to think of this place as a bastion of progressive thought, the truth is that shit happens here also.

So, one final thought for tonight...
I have often heard trans people say that they were really disappointed by the lack of understanding, and sometimes even open hostility, by the L's, G's and B's. Personally, my experience is a bit of a mixed bag. I have been fairly well embraced by the gay women I've met. It surprised me a bit at first, but I was very pleased by it. On the other hand, not so much for gay men. What I've seen is that so many times when the topic of transgenderism comes up, they think DRAG. That is so depressing; to the point that I wonder if they will ever really understand what the difference is.