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Also late to the party. I self-identify as bi, although I've never been in a relationship with a girl. I certainly didn't mind kissing them, though. Anyways, I'm happily married now, so the point is sorta moot. Still get to look at girls, though.
I tell my friends that I'm bi, if they inquire, but I've never told my family (other than said husband), and I certainly don't intend to - it would be all sorts of awkward, and possibly include yelling and hurt looks. Does that make me closeted, or just reasonably intelligent?
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Personally, I would say the latter. I am not one of those people that believes that the truth will always set you free. Sometimes the truth complicates matters, or no really *needs* to know.
This isn't to say that gay people shouldn't come out when it is best for them. I just think that sometimes there's a better time and place, if that makes sense. I also think that it's the person's own decision, and that not all gay people have to be soldiers in the gay army that have to carry the standard with them wherever they go.
This is probably, I'm guessing, a source of some discussion in the gblt community. So, I'm sure my little nuggets of straight wisdom are either blindly ignorant, or simplistic. If so, feel free to set me straight. So to speak.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Heh, yeah, Stormie, I agree with you. I'm of the opinion that if someone asks me outright, I'll tell the truth, and I'm open about supporting the cause of gay rights- but I don't go around wearing my sexuality on my sleeve.
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I'm as straight as they come, and people of any persuasion who wear their sexuality on their sleeve quietly annoy me.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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Not to speak for others, but I've come to realize that for people who are in committed relationships with someone of the same sex, often "wearing their sexuality on their sleeve" is as simple as having a picture of yourself with your sweetie on your desk. Or mentioning a vacation you went on together. Or just a kiss on the cheek when your love drops you off at work.
And so the simple becomes more complicated than one might think.
(Not that this is necesarrily what anyone meant above -- it was not in response to a specific post, but more in addition to the ongoing conversation.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I meant "wearing my sexuality on my sleeve" as things like randomly bringing it up in conversation for no reason whatsoever. I remember being highly annoyed by a girl in my early years of high school... when she moved here, the first thing she said to anyone was "I'm bisexual, and I like vampires." It was... creepy, I guess. Nothing wrong with honesty... but there's a time and a place for that, and blurting it out as soon as you meet someone is just wrong, IMHO.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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CT, yeah. Sometimes I won't hold hands with my boyfriend depending on where we are. Other times I don't care, but it kind of sucks that I feel like I have to censor myself like that.
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quote:Originally posted by Tinros: Wow. Honestly, I'm surprised this thread got as many responses as it did. I didn't know we had such a large GLBT community on here.
Really? I kind of assumed that everyone here was gay.
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Jhai: Every one of us that come out touches dozens of people who learn that we're not so bad as we have been painted to be.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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In my case, I know I need to come out to my parents one day if I'm going to start dating someone and live a relatively normal life. It's just that I'm not a very social person, I don't have that many friends, and at the moment my family is in many ways all I have. Now, my Dad thinks gay people are all pedophiles and my Mum thinks they're all terribly self-obsessed. (On top of that my Dad is involved in the local politics and it would hurt him there having a gay son, and even if I'm not exactly planning on telling all his friends I know it'd still be a big thing for him.) I know that if I came out to them they'd eventually accept me, but I also know that it wouldn't happen straight away. It could take years. So I suppose this is extremely selfish reasoning from me, but as long as I'm still forming my circle of friends outside the family I'm not planning to tell them... because if they abandoned me right now I'd have no one to fall back to.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Dec 2006
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Snail: That's why I didn't come out to my parents until I finished grad school. I didn't have anyone to fall back on during the "Come around to accept it" years either.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Now, my Dad thinks gay people are all pedophiles and my Mum thinks they're all terribly self-obsessed.
Give your Dad a dictionary, and you've got one problem licked. I've heard of people thinking homosexual behavior is deviant, but he's way off base if he thinks it's the same as pedophilia.
The definition of 'bi' that several of you appear to be using means there are a whole lot more bisexuals than I'd ever imagined.
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Statistically speaking, heterosexual men are more likely to be child sexual predators than homosexual men. Just a little something I picked up in a psych class...
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That statement, as written, could not be affected by changes in the proportion of homosexual and heterosexual men.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Yes, Lisa, it is based on percentage. It would be pretty silly to just say that most child sexual predators are heterosexual because there are so many more heterosexual men. Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Silliness abounds. I would have figured it'd be about equal. I'm kind of surprised that there's any difference based on orientation.
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I suspect that, once the uncertainty in estimating the homosexual male population is factored in, the difference is not statistically significant.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Yes, Lisa, it is based on percentage. It would be pretty silly to just say that most child sexual predators are heterosexual because there are so many more heterosexual men.
But that type of reasoning is applied to arguments on both side of the aisle all the time. Not that you do it, but I hear it all the time from people who are just trying to justify a pre-determined stance.
Shoddy logic doesn't seem to worry them at all, so it was a valid question, although I got what you meant right away. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Give your Dad a dictionary, and you've got one problem licked. I've heard of people thinking homosexual behavior is deviant, but he's way off base if he thinks it's the same as pedophilia.
Which is why I think that, given time, he will come to see things my way. It seems to me to be actually quite common here in Finland for people to see a connotation between the advancement of gay rights and the increase in pedophilia cases. (Though the latter, I've understood, is largely due the fact that stuff such as that didn't really get reported so easily in the past decades, so the increase is simply in the reported cases as parents have become more conscious of these issues, not the cases themselves.) My Dad's opinions are largely based on ignorance and the fact he doesn't really know any homosexual people, but he's not an irrational person. It just wouldn't happen overnight.
quote: Snail: That's why I didn't come out to my parents until I finished grad school. I didn't have anyone to fall back on during the "Come around to accept it" years either.
Yeah... It just feels so bad to be hiding things from the people you love. It's like they have this whole image created of what I'm like and then in the end I am nothing like that.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Dec 2006
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