
Beyond Sexual Orientation (2016) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/63/horizons/beyond-sexual-orientation-rp
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nxc18
This is very interesting stuff. I'm a man and have identified as gay for most
of my awareness of my sexuality, but started experiencing attraction to women
sometime in college. I think I'm bi now, but preferences seem to vary
considerably month to month. It was pretty confusing for a while before I
stopped trying to put labels on it and just went with it.

The biggest thing I've realized is that in the ways that count, I really
actually just like people. There seems to be a small aspect of sexuality
driven by visual attraction ("wow he's hot") but really the person inside
(behavioral identity) seems to be more important.

I wonder how many people (especially men) might have expressed sexual fluidity
if it wasn't for the societal idea that you're gay/straight/bi and that's
that...I know I wasn't too open to being attracted to women for a long time,
and I don't think that's a healthy place to be.

~~~
zaarn
personally, I'm fairly certain that 99.9% of the population is to some degree
bisexual, though most people fall on an extreme where they prefer one gender
over the other a lot (but you could convince them to say someone of the same
gender is hot or someone of the other gender is hot or whatever you land on)

~~~
ashleyn
This is my personal experience and yet I'm careful not to put my own
experience onto anyone else. I've met more than enough people, gay and
straight, who seem genuinely repulsed by one or the other. I don't purport to
know what they feel like, nor can I.

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hasanas
I feel like all people would be "sexually fluid" without social pressure. If a
person can reach sexual gratification with nothing but their own fist, they
can do it with anyone else's.

I don't think attraction is exclusive to physical appearance or genitalia.

~~~
growlist
I really don't give a shit what society thinks about who I sleep with, but
there's a type of basic, visceral 'punch in the gut' feeling I get when faced
with a very physically attractive woman which never happens with a man. The
idea that but for societal pressure I would start fancying men just does not
match my experience at all.

~~~
TheBeardKing
It's hard, as a straight male my whole life, to tell whether personal anti-
homo feelings are completely natural or the result of an ingrained societal
bias. I wonder if there's some sort of pyschological test for that.

~~~
krapp
Societal bias. "Homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are, mostly, modern
inventions. The line between "normal" and "deviant" behavior as regards
relationships between the same sex has varied drastically over time and
between cultures. In antiquity, such a distinction didn't even exist in many
cases, and it wasn't that long ago that men kissing one another was considered
perfectly in line with what we would now classify "heterosexual" behavior.

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throwayaw4354
I used to consider myself straight, and then I got into the sex scene (think
kink scene, but with less kinkiness, and the same amount of sex). After some
time, I realized that I could be having fun with people of the same gender as
me, and boom, suddenly I had no idea what my sexual preferences identified me
as. I have fallen in love with people of both typical genders, and also people
across the spectrum of sexuality. I like peoples' personalities, not their
genitals. Everyone's got holes, and everyone has things to stick in them. If
you need some more holes or some better things to put in them, there's a whole
industry waiting to help you find a solution to that problem.

> Sexual fluidity is also not the same thing as bisexuality, which is another
> sexual orientation.

This kind of thing triggers me now. Sexuality is not a category. It's the
relationships you have. If we want to categorize this, then there are
effectively an infinite number of sexualities. How would you categorize me? I
am currently in a relationship with a person of the opposite gender, but we
both enjoy having sex with people of all kinds. I have fallen in love with
people of all kinds. Does that make me bisexual? Pansexual? Sapiosexual? An
adventurous asexual? Sexually fluid? My point is that it doesn't matter! It is
what it is.

Go experiment and learn about yourself. You might be surprised at what you
find

Edit: I would also like to add that you are never too old to experiment with
this. And! The "sex scene" is probably the safest place to have sex that I can
think of because everyone that I've met in it is open and honest and
respectful

~~~
iMark
I experimented and eventually realised I'm asexual.

I'm not depressed, or ill. All my parts function. It's just that I'm not
sexually attracted to anyone.

I'm still perfectly capable of having, and enjoying, sex, but it's been a long
time now. Even before I realised I was asexual, I was still aware of an
asymmetry in what was going on, that I wasn't experiencing things in quite the
same was as my partner.

I still like the idea of love and partnership, but I've let this get in the
way of my finding it.

~~~
mr_overalls
And that's okay. And _you're_ okay.

:-)

Just wanted to say this, because it seems like aces are still one of the most
misunderstood groups out there.

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cowboysauce
I got a feeling of incredulity from reading this article because it seems like
the article is saying that sexual fluidity is a sexual orientation, you can be
asexual, gay, straight, bi or fluid. But that seems like falling into the same
type of rigid thinking that the article decries. I think sexual fluidity is
orthogonal to sexual orientation. If right now you're attracted to both men
and women, you're bisexual. If, in a few years, you find yourself attracted
only to men (as a man), then you'll be gay.

I think the problem arises because most people consider sexual orientation to
be an identity, instead of a description. Some languages have multiple verbs
that are covered in English by 'to be'. In Spanish, for example, there's ser
and estar. Ser is used for things like inherent characteristics, while estar
is used for temporary conditions, moods, etc. If you say "I'm tall" you would
use ser, if you said "I'm tired", you'd use estar. People tend to think of
sexual orientation in the ser sense instead of considering that it can be used
in the estar sense.

~~~
mr_overalls
I had the same impression. I think the authors are taking what's simply a
previously-unacknowledged dimension of sexuality (time) and reifying it into
an orientation in and of itself.

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TheBeardKing
The most interesting statistic I found in this article is that nearly three
times as many women as men have had a same sex encounter according to a 2016
survey of 10k US adults - 17% vs 6%.

~~~
Doxin
It seems to me that same-sex encounters are _way_ more acceptable among women
than among men. If a woman has such an encounter the peer group would classify
it as a once-of experiment. If a guy has such an encounter you can be sure
he'll be called gay bob for as long as he stays in the same group of friends.

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magicalhippo
tl/dr: Different people like different things, and sometimes that changes over
time. Huge surprise, or?

I imagine attraction is a non-trivial function of multiple variables for most
people. As such it doesn't seem that surprising that for some certain
variables have more (or less) influence than for most others.

On a somewhat related note, I truly cannot imagine why anyone would put jelly
on a peanut butter sandwich. The thought seems utterly gross to me. But as
long as I'm not forced to eat it, I no problem with others having a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. Why should I?

~~~
0xcafecafe
>On a somewhat related note, I truly cannot imagine why anyone would put jelly
on a peanut butter sandwich. The thought seems utterly gross to me. But as
long as I'm not forced to eat it, I no problem with others having a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. Why should I?

Same with me except replace PB & J with pizza & pineapple respectively.

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alex_hitchins
Title says 2016 but article is from 16th August 2018.

Edit: I now see the article was reposted from a 2016 issue.

~~~
LarryL
The last line of the article:

> This article was originally published in our “Selection” issue in October,
> 2016.

~~~
alex_hitchins
I didn't spot that, sorry.

