sexuality

[desh]

Inspired by today's Gene Weingarten chat and by talking to a few friends of mine, here's a poll:


But first, to define some terminology: "Gal" is what I'm saying since neither "woman" nor "girl" is as age-nonspecific as "guy". Please ignore whatever patronizing connotation you may think "gal" has.

If "gay", "straight", and "bi" aren't specific enough for you, then consider "gay" to be kinsey 5-6, "bi" to be kinsey 2-4, and "straight" to be kinsey 0-1.

There are limits to the number of choices any poll can give (especially on LJ), but not limits to the number of different answers that are actually possible, especially with a charged question like this. Please, wherever possible, choose the closest answer even if it's not perfect. Feel free to elaborate in comments.

Now, then:
[Poll #1104392]
(As always, LJ lets you edit your poll results if you misclicked or something.)

Comments

[evr1bugsme.livejournal.com]

I've only ever met on guy who was actually bi. Most who identified as bi were actually in the processing of accepting their homosexuality.

Same here. And I agree that the social/cultural issues are seriously muddying the waters.

The identifying lesbian piece is interesting. I was really frustrated with a friend who would still talk about how hot guys were and how interested she was in them, but she identified as a lesbian. Like, if you are openly talking about how you are attracted to guys....doesn't that make you not solely interest in girls and therefore not a lesbian? But I think the social pressure is heavy for lesbians as well to be absolute in their identity, even if it their feelings are not as absolute.

I think these social pressures are why you cannot always take someone's self-identification at face value. And I also think it's perfectly understandable to self-identify in ways that don't perfectly match your feelings or to self-identify as different things at different times in your life or at different points in the discovery of your sexual orientation.

But, since it is a huge social leap to identify as bi, without more information, I would assume he was processing.