Bi-phobia

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That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

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Well, I'm glad to see someone else admit that when it comes to George Clooney, Even the Guys Want Him.

"Well, it's a lifestyle."

I roll my eyes at all the people on internet who say "I would go gay/straight for [Insert Celebrity Here]". I wonder how many actually would if you put them in a hotel room with the person in question.

Kind of have an experience with this. When I was in Year 11 a kid at school came out about being bi and there was a video involved of him kissing a guy. You could probably imagine the reaction amongst all the other boys (I go to an all boys school). Most of it was ignorant drivel and it seemed quite a lot of people couldn't distinguish between bi and gay =/ but the point I'm making is the general consensus at the time was he was attention seeking, mainly due to the fact that he had mainly and since then dated girls exclusively. I'm ashamed to say I conformed to that view as well at the time (though as a closet gay at the time I think I was just trying to figure stuff out in my own head) but since I've come to ease with my own sexuality I've come to understand not to judge others based on theirs. Not saying that I've ever had a huge problem with the idea of bisexuality just that initially I came to the conclusion that they were just being greedy. I'm glad I've grown out of that idea since then.

Speaking as someone who once identified as bisexual and still doesn't really mind being classified as such — all aspects of biphobia bug me. I absolutely abhor how bisexuality is seen and used as a sort of "throwaway sexuality" or a cry for attention.

I think that owes a great deal to how confusing the idea of sexuality is. It's a massive gradient, and it's hard to pin down anywhere. People usually view straight/gay as two ends to the spectrum, and bisexuality to be damn near anywhere in between. So those that are actually attracted and get involved with both sexes and those men/women that occasionally kiss someone of the same gender both classify themselves as equally bisexual.

However, problems arise because most people feel the need to defend their sexuality, be they straight or gay. So of course, bisexual people are going to give it a go to defend their sexual preferences as well, and since most people view it as "anything in between", it becomes a total crapshoot to determine if someone saying if they're bisexual or not is an actual fact.

As far as I can see, whether a friend of mine is bi or not isn't any of my business. I don't discuss sexuality a lot with my friends. If they're in a same sex-relationship at that time, I assume they gay, if they're in a hetero relationship I assume they're hetero. Why is it my business if they're not?

edited 10th Mar '11 2:35:43 PM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

It's more than just a gradient, but yes, sexuality can be very confusing. I'm not sure what else to say about this though.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

Humans by nature are most likely pansexual or bisexual, scientifically speaking.

That out of the way, I'm in an area where the there are more Bisexuals than gays, but still less than straights. I've maybe met 5 gays in my entire life in this city but at least 20 bisexuals. As for Bi-phobia I get it mostly form straights but then again some straights are more accepting for it.

Granted some people consider Bisexuality worse like my parents, they think Gay is a sin but they have nothing wrong with people being gay it's their life. Bisexuals on the other hand are just sexual deviants who are mentally screwed up and should be institutionalized. Have I mentioned I am bisexual.

"Every anime character is bisexual until proven otherwise." - A comment a found on youtube.

Can we reduce Bi-Phobia to Pervert-Phobia, which is merely a subtrope of Different-phobia?

"Sweets are good. Sweets are justice."

I'm not sure if a pervert-phobia would qualify as a different-phobia, and I'm not even sure you'd qualify it as a different-phobia. Usually, people fear those that are different about them because they don't understand either what makes them different from themselves and others, or the idea in question.

Of course, that's not to discredit an actual phobia for difference; I wouldn't be surprised if it existed, but I've just never heard of it, and a phobia of difference doesn't really stack up against being unaccepting of something that's different since it's a phobia in the first place.

... Please rephrae that, I didn't understand. Maybe I was confusing as well:

• People are afraid of the unusual, of that which doesn't fit the patterns they know. They are clueless on how to act around that. Very healthy evolutionarily: if people spent al their time trying new and unusual stuff in the wild, they'd die horrifying deaths very quickly, starting with food poisoning.
• Perverts, sexual deviants, people with unusual sexual tastes, are unusual in a partiularly unsettling way, since people are extremely vulnerable during sex and until extremelyrecently in human evolution sex has been kind of a huge deal. A matter of life and death, in fact.
• Among perverts, bisexuals are a paricularly unrecongized, undeclared, debatably rare variation that does not fit the classic mold, nor the increasingly accepted homosexual mold. Hence biphobia.

"Sweets are good. Sweets are justice."

I think Newfable was being more clear than you were, Ardiente.

Perhaps we are using different meanings for the same words, and his meanings are the most common ones?

"Sweets are good. Sweets are justice."

I think that the OP's use of biphobia may be the same way we describe homophobia: it's not an actual phobia, where men and women freeze up in uncontrollable subconscious terror whenever they see or hear about a homosexual person, but more along the lines of being mentally unaccepting of that which is different. In that same line of thinking, we can assume that most straight and gay people are a bit more unaccepting of bisexual people because it can range from everything in between a clearly defined straight person and a clearly defined gay person.

I don't think these same groups of people (those that are scared to accept differences) are scared of perverts or perversion though. Mostly everyone has some kind of perversion here or there, and may just find it hard to bring it to light in public since (at least here in America) we tend to keep sex and sexuality to the bedroom and the bedroom alone. That doesn't stop people from being a little grossed out by some perversions or perverted lifestyles/activities, but I don't think it's linked to homo/biphobia in any way.

edited 10th Mar '11 6:13:22 PM by Newfable

Really? I used to find homosexuality frightening mostly because of how gross I thought it was. I still do, to an extent. I mean just look at the page picture for Bara, don't you want to just get some Brain Bleach?

But perhaps by homophobia people don't mean fear of the homo, but loathing and hatred of the homo. There is the sort of hatred that comes from fear, and then there's the sort that comes from righteous indignation. Are you saying it's the latter that moves people to have a good old-fashioned fag-drag and beat gay people to death?

"Sweets are good. Sweets are justice."

Well, '-phobia' has long since been diluted from a strict reading anyway, and generally I find someone who fusses about that too much online is either clueless, a crazy degree of pedantic, or (most frequently) detests homosexuals but doesn't want it thought of as a 'phobia'.

It generally denotes at best someone who's never really argued their position before.

One thing I've heard gay people express is 'you get it easier than us, because if things got really bad you could just have an opposite-sex relationship and hide, while we couldn't'. Pretty dumb argument, in my view; for one thing, if you already love someone of the same gender you could only take "advantage" of that by breaking things off, and for another, you don't get extra points by having a harder time staying in the closet, thanks. It's not a competition.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Nothing wrong with an actual uncontrollable fear of homosexuality, but most people that'd label themselves (or, for that matter, have other people label them) homophobic usually tend to have a immense distaste for homosexuality, which does little more than dilute the idea of a phobia in the first place. For the sake of this discussion though, I'm mainly discussing people's distate for homosexuality or, in this case, bisexuality. I doubt actual hatred comes out of fear though; I've a fear of heights and spiders, and while I'll claim to hate both because of my phobias, that doesn't mean I actually hate both heights and spiders on their own, but more on the merits of how they relate to me.

Though there is a point to be made in that most people fear that which they don't understand, which I believe to be one of the primary causes for such distaste to certain sexual prefrences.