Straight or gay people men and women EXPERIMENT. i.e. what KINSEY was referring to. It doesn’t make them bisexual and if there was more acceptance of the fluidity of SEXUAL BEHAVIOR then “bisexual” wouldn’t be appropriate or acceptable to use as a temporary phase of curiosity or questioning. THAT is the biggest issue.

As an identity, as a pansexual or bisexual (bisexual was what I knew it as), I think those of us who are pan/bisexual only oriented and are probably the biggest hope for setting some ground to have our own community. We may be both gay or straight but we are also neither and bisexuals who are the biggest problem to this are ones who think they are x% one and y% the other. That is self hate and often a way to lord over and divide. We also need to own that there are bisexuals that do this shit. I was outed in the grade school crush days and never came out so I have lived this my whole life and one thing I can say, even with the what they call “the unicorn” of bisexuals, we aren’t taken seriously.

This to me is more of the straight and gay battle, we are unfairly sucked into this and we are our own orientation altogether need to stop doing this… we are splitting hairs these days too much and the gay, straight and bisexual communities are all part of the problem. I was never out so I come from the position of knowing personally. I tend to feel a feeling from bisexuals that are different than they do with eachother even because we are as a community, saying more gay or more straight to conform to a paradigm that we are not even part of. Our orientations have become such hair splitting that it is nuts and diminishes us and we go for it.

Engaging in sexual experimentation or even in some cases falling for one same/opposite sex person is often not bisexuality and straight men and gay men especially have this insecurity about their own orientation’s status and so they are the first to feel this way too but it hurts us all in the long run and this hairsplitting of orientations is not helping. It is about identity for us who complain.

Gay men deny the rather large rate of chicken hawks that are the old school 50 year old chasing 14 year old boys but I have seen these types everywhere and they sell themselves like angels. Straight people are different to us but it is because they acknowledge that we are different.

I have bisexual privilege and I mock gay and straight people all the time, homphobes are like little boys going eeew cooties and y’all are insecure drama queens… chick fil-a, Duck Dynasty… you fuckers went to war over that for months and allies are not allies, they roll in like they know it all and gay people bow to them. I went to help a trans friend of mine at an LGBT center and it was crowded and I had some straight bitch on a power trip giving me the 3rd degree when trying to kick out the straight people and she was trying to order me around and we need to stay out of that shit, as do straight people. Allies being authorities in the LGBT community is bad.

Bisexuals, grow some balls if you want shit to stop and get your own community. I grew up bisexual, I was always seen as someone who never felt like they had any place in the identity world from lived experience. I see this all the time. Straight men are the easiest to get along with for me. Even in same sex relationships because I date my type myself and stick to my orientation although If I fell for any other orientation and the person via experimenting or even a one time love or wasn’t insecure because they are both in love and have the same values then I would be glad to. Those are very very rare in my view.

Gay people have no place to speak for anything other than what they observe. I am noticing a bisexual oriented movement separate from that but the whiny victim stance gay people use won’t work. They have a stranglehold over the media and they have adopted a lot of tricks from the jewish community to guilt trip via propaganda and fits. One should ever feel shame for their orientation but people who aren’t bisexual shouldn’t be seen as relevant and tolerating the intolerable appears to work but many of my straight friends are “homophobic” but really because of a lack of respect. I see it in the body language and it is both. \

Many bi friends of mine will be negative about gays, including myself. I don’t date bi guys who were with gay guys because call it what you want, it is how most of them get aids. High risk nasty ass gross behavior is the cause of it. But we mock what we hate about certain stereotypes… my friend was asking about how something looked and it was an all bi audience and I came out with the lispy Perez voice and said, “oh my god guurrrrl, he’s transitioning!!!!” So even our more bi-centric folks do the same. It is natural and while gay people refuse to accept reality, the reality is there will always be some that hate us regardless and we should educate, set a good example because they control the victim train for all of us as LGBT and us and trans people and even gay people who aren’t white and stereotypical in many ways are left out in the cold. I am glad to find militant bisexuals because that aspect of our rights being our main focus were great although their use of breeder and dyke/faggot I didn’t like at all. I was able to help from my experience.

I also don’t understand those norms and wish I could write a book based on being a lifelong outed bisexual because the way I experienced the true things that we deal with is deep and I remember at gay straight alliance that I went to we were doing exercises and one was gay and straight where one went to one side and the other and I walked out and said fuck off the math teacher, my lesbian mother’s friend because I refused to sit on either side and my mom got pissed too.. I also excelled in martial arts and was a tad of a bully and even in my goth, genderqueer stage of life, where I looked like a pretty goth teen girl without boobs and rocked goth female clothes, I never experienced homophobia and I was still just as straight as I was gay but I became the head of that clique and our school had this head of the clique popular clan which was drama, entitlement, we all slept with each other and no being at the top isn’t anything special but I got bashed for that from them a lot.

Just my input. Bi people, stop being victims and splitting hairs and understand what I did from life, we are not percentages of one or another. Staying in their paradigm forces these beliefs a lot. Also, the come out of the closet later as gay folks are fucking gay and were closet cases. Those examples need to stop representing us.

Just my take… I grew up knowing I was neither one and didn’t understand how to or why it was necessary to be part of a 2 sided issue that is between them

Ha, I just read this again for kicks. It’s still hilariously stupid.

Why would you choose to write about a subject that you didn’t research and do not understand.

There is an amazing amount of ignorance in this article.

Please spend some time googling the next time you decide to write about a subject you don’t understand.

Who’s the editor and why didn’t he or she catch this bold and glaring example of horrible journalism?

I would like to say, that this is an offense and ignorant post. I am a bi-sexual man.

For the longest time, I struggled with whether I was gay, or straight. I always had feelings toward females and males. I would think “Oh, there is a hot guy” and then “She is a cute girl!” I recently came to terms with who I am, and that is I am neither gay nor straight, but bisexual.

I am attractive to both sexes.

Today, I am in a relationship with a wonderful man. And everyday, I feel our love grow stronger and stronger. However, I still see women who I am attracted to.

I could date either way, hoping that whoever I date is accepting of who I am. If they are not, then they don’t deserve me.

I feel that as humans, we are constantly evolving and changing who we are, but we stay within a parameter. We experiment, which helps us decide who we are and find out who we are.

To the two men quoted in the feature story, Hagan and Tittle, I believe you are wrong.

Almost everyone (who, was a gay male) I’ve heard say that bi-sexuality is an “excuse” to not come out of the closet has always said it in a bitter and angry way. You are the ones who are un-comfortable with who you are.

I can’t help who I am attracted to. But I can choose who I want to love and fall in love with.

You don’t even know what bisexuality is and you decided to write an article on it? Bisexuals are attracted to both genders; it doesn’t mean we want to date both at the same time… And a bisexual is still a bisexual regardless of the current relationship he/she is in.

This article shows a strong ignorance by the writer toward its subject matter.

Not to mention you used first person throughout much of it… unprofessional and poorly written.

This is so filled with ignorance, and is incredibly frustrating.
I can assure you, that bisexuality is not polyamory, and that as a bisexual man that I am a monogamist. I’m not any less bisexual because I don’t date men and women at the same time.

Hello.

I am a bisexual male, aged 43 years old. I have been happily married to a wonderful woman for the last 16 years and have two beautiful children. Since I have been romantically involved with my spouse, I have been entirely monogamous. This does not mean that I am not bisexual; I am still attracted to both genders and still ‘notice’ both men and women, much in the same way as straight people in committed relationships ‘notice’ attractive people of the opposite sex.

I find it concerning that a seemingly respectable university has allowed this article to be published on their website, when it offers nothing of worth and only serves to propagate false, negative stereotypes of bisexual people. I trust that future articles will have more substance and basis in truth rather than ignorant, uneducated opinion.

As an aside, the grammar and structure of this piece is truly terrible.

Regards.

I agree with everything said by Cebus, but there’s some more things that the author has messed up! I am polyamorous. I am also bisexual. These two things have nothing to do with each other. Lets talk about them separately.

First, you are still bisexual even if you “pick” a single partner to spend the rest of your life with. You say that you have friends who “claimed to be gay and then later confessed they were bisexual. Now they are in a heterosexual relationship” It is possible to be in a committed, monogamous, heterosexual relationship and still be bisexual! My best friend is happily married to a wonderful man, will never sleep with anyone else, has no interest in cheating or even flirting with anyone… but still identifies as bisexual, and always will.

As for claiming to be gay first – well, considering the amount of biphobia evident in this article alone, I think I might well have come out as gay to you and your friends too! Furthermore, being bisexual can be confusing. It can take a while to come to terms with the attraction you feel to both genders, especially when you have people (like you!) constantly telling us that we need to pick one.
I will never pick one gender. I will always be attracted to both.

Finally, on this topic, bisexuals fight really hard against the “all bisexuals are polyamorous or cheaters” and “no bisexual can be satisfied in a single relationship” stereotypes. They are patently untrue: lots of bisexuals are happily monogamous!! However, there is also nothing wrong with being polyamorous – and bi, straight, and gay people (and everyone else! :)) can allllllll be poly. I am poly; I currently have a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Everyone knows everyone, everyone is happy. We love each other just as much as if we weren’t all dating each other!! I have friends in triads; I have a friend with three girlfriends and her boyfriend; I have a friend who is gay (not bi!) and in a lovely foursome.

So please, stop writing about things you don’t have any experience with. This post is hurtful, biphobic, and polyphobic. You’re confusing very different categories as well as making frankly false statements, and as a Bisexual, Polyamorous person, I found this article really upsetting and unnecessary. Next time you feel like expressing your opinion, please do some research first.

As a journalist, when you assert a fact to support your opinion, you have an obligation to check the fact and then provide the source alongside the fact if you use it. Writing editorials does not give journalists license to make unsubstantiated claims.

The editors also have an obligation to make sure that their writers have properly supported every assertion that requires it, and if the piece does not meet this fundamental tenet of journalistic integrity, then it it their duty to either fix it themselves, tell the writer to fix it, or not publish it.

In this case, the writer and her editors have failed. This happens in the real world, and relax, because it’s recoverable. The ethical thing to do at this point is to issue a retraction that (1) apologizes to readers, (2) corrects the errors, (3) provides sources for unsourced claims that turn out to be correct, (4) responds to any readers who wrote a response that merits a reply, preferably a brief and non-confrontational response.

The fact of the matter is that this editorial will be offensive to many bisexual readers. Even if no insult was intended, the claims that were made about the bisexual community could accurately be described as baseless slander. There’s the false equivocation with unstable love-triangles, the inclusions of phrases like “greed and jealously spin a wicked web” presented in a way that links it to “the bisexual stereotype,” and countless other examples.

The Hawkeye – including not just Shelby, but every individual with editorial authority over her – will be tempted to disable/delete comments or get defensive. I implore you to instead own up to the mistakes in journalistic methodology and in the assumptions about the bisexual community. Accept the feedback you receive, even when it is emotionally charged. Understand how this happened so that it does not happen again, issue an apologetic retraction, and rebuild the journalistic integrity that was lost by moving forward with solid articles and editorials.

Good luck.

This article is extremely offensive to bisexual and polyamorous people. Just because the author can’t handle more than one relationship at a time doesn’t mean a group of people can’t have a happy polyamorous relationship. Telling people that they only need one partner or that having more than one partner makes their other partners unhappy is extremely wrong and insulting to people in polyamorous relationships.

Being in a relationship doesn’t mean that a bisexual person has “chosen” to be gay or straight. It’s insulting to tell a bisexual person that they are not bisexual when they are in a relationship.

It is disgusting that you wrote “And there are those that are married, sneaking around to fulfill their desires.” I can’t believe that you so freely associate bisexuality with adultery, and it is insulting to bisexual people. There are many bisexual people in relationships with partners who know about their bisexuality, and neither partner cheats.

I sincerely hope that you will remove this article and issue an apology for associating bisexuality and polyamory with so many negative stereotypes and behaviors. You are part of the problem. You are the reason bisexual people are afraid to come out of the closet. You are the reason these stereotypes exist because you write articles trying to tell people they’re true. You are wrong, and you must apologize.

Within the first couple of paragraphs the author confuses bisexuality with polyamory:

>>As humans, we weren’t meant to roam the earth alone. We need partners, companions in life, but we don’t need two of them.

The bisexual community is a large make up of love- those that are and always have been bisexual, the phasers, those that have flings and the polyamorous.<<

Well, written like someone who doesn't know many people from the LGBT community.

Bisexual doesn't = polyamorous.
See: http://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory and http://www.reddit.com/r/bisexual

Second, a bisexual person who is in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex does not mean that they are not bisexual. Bisexuality refers to what you are attracted to, not who you are currently dating. The author's presentation of the subject is akin to claiming that a person who is not in a relationship with anyone is asexual.

Lastly, dismissing bisexuality as a phase that needlessly complicates relationships.

I appreciate the author's care in admitting that this subject is not her forte, in addition to being "touchy," but my advice is to not write about subjects you are wholly ignorant of.