Then the woman looked at him. He’d recovered somewhat and began to speak for himself. “I’m bisexual. For the longest time I had these fantasies about getting emotionally and physically close to a male. I thought I must be really homosexual but I still liked women, especially Debbie. I mean I really love Debbie and I desire her in every way, so how could I be homosexual? My need to be close with a male never sidetracked me away from my real feelings and my fantasies when it came to women, but I had this other need and it was driving me crazy. I sat on it and sat on it until, I don’t know, until I couldn’t any more. Anyway I had this really close friend. We had been friends for about six years. So about a year ago I told him how I felt. I told him I wanted to…you know, get closer, and he ran…the friendship was over. He just didn’t want to see me anymore, and I thought I must be some kind of monster because he really ran. I haven’t seen him since and we were really close. So anyway I told Debbie. I had to tell someone. She was wonderful. She is wonderful. She said in time I would make another friendship. She was right. About three months ago I met this man and he came to dinner and we really hit it off. Only two weeks ago the same thing happened as with my friend, and this guy also took off. He hangs up when I call him on the phone. I was hurt, I felt guilty. I said to Debbie I must be a homosexual, and she said if anybody knew I wasn’t a homosexual it was she. And then she said”–at this point he choked up once more–”I must be bisexual. And when she said it I knew it was true. It was just true. Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”
Research into bisexuality is hampered by three basic difficulties: the myth of nonexistence; the difficulty in interpreting sociological findings; the confusion of labels and identities, including the one of self-identity.
What are some of the sociological findings? What sort of population have we been describing? How many bisexuals are there? How many of those are active bisexuals, how many historical bisexuals? How many have had actual bisexual experiences and how many bisexual fantasies only?
In Chapter 2 we described Kevin and the difficulty in interpreting his statistics. As we saw on the seven variables of sexual orientation he turned out to be a: 6, 4, 1, 1, 4, 2, and 5 (see ). These numbers only describe Kevin at the present time. His past history and his ideal would most likely give us still different sexual orientation values.
To complicate matters even further, sociosexual studies of bisexuals are extremely difficult to obtain, and the interpretations of the results of those that are available are full of problems. Sampling methods and interviewing techniques yield different results even with the best of intentions–and even when done by brilliant researchers. And yet the studies are useful. When interpreted conservatively and wisely they can lead to knowledge and give us working bases. Let’s set aside for the moment the problem of measuring the infinitely varied degrees and shifts of individual bisexual behavior, and look instead at the “bisexual community” in terms of overall numbers.
How many bisexuals are there? What percentage of the population is bisexual? There are a number of popular notions on this question. Some say there are no bisexuals at all (the nonexistence theory), others count fewer bisexuals than homosexuals, and still others believe everyone is bisexual. Actually, around 15 percent of the male population is definable on the Kinsey scale as bisexual if we look at a three-year period in the lives of his respondents; and half that percentage of the female population, i.e., 7-8 percent. This means that, conservatively speaking, there are 25-30 million bisexuals in the U.S.A. A detailed look at these figures can be seen in at the end of the chapter.
In 1993, John Billy et al. found in a survey of over 3,300 men between the ages of 20 and 39 that 2.3 percent of the men had engaged in same-gender sexual activity during the last ten years and that 1 percent reported being exclusively homosexual during this interval. This is much lower than what Kinsey found and is some-what lower than some of the recent studies conducted in Britain, France, and Denmark which found that between 3 and 4 percent of men had had a homosexual partner at one time.
The figures support the finding that there are more bisexuals than homosexuals–between twice and eleven times as many, depending on who is counting and how (see ). Whatever the exact figure, in my view it is extremely large–probably between five and ten times as many bisexuals as homosexuals.
, describes studies suggesting that 50 percent of “homosexual” males and over 75 percent of “homosexual” females have had sexual experiences with members of both genders.
A bisexual who relates on an emotional and sexual plane to both men and women would, in many if not most cases, desire to and actually enter into marriage. On the number of married people who are bisexual, the figures vary between 2 and 10 percent of presently married people, with men carrying a higher percentage than women. Of those separated and divorced, the percentages that are bisexual approach the total percentages of men and women that are bisexual (see ).
The married bisexual who wishes to remain monogamous must refrain only from extramarital relations with the other gender, but with the same gender as well. Does the bisexual actually do that? Does he or she practice fidelity as often as the married heterosexual? One myth about bisexuals holds that they share the sexual bed indiscriminately and often with others of the same sex. Exact statistics are not available, but in general one can say that bisexual men and women probably do have more extramarital affairs than their heterosexual counterparts. For the population as a whole the figures show that 50 percent of all men and 20 percent of all women have at some time during their marriage had sexual relationships on the outside. From my experience the figures for bisexuals are definitely higher. The married bisexual man who has outside homosexual contacts is relatively common. The married woman who has an affair with another woman is not quite as common though in a non-random sample, Janet Bode’s study, View from Another Closet, found that only 33 percent of the women surveyed admitted to monogamous serial relationships.
Hunt found that only 20 percent of the spouses of those who had extramarital relations in the general population knew of their partner’s outside affairs. For bisexuals the figure would probably be lower if the spouse did not know at all of the partner’s bisexual inclination, and higher if either the mate knew that fact or if both members of the marriage were bisexual.
However, I’d like to stress that by no means do all bisexuals feel the need to have sexual relations with both genders at any given time. Many homosexuals too, like many heterosexuals, are satisfied with one deep primary relationship. McWhirter and Mattison’s survey of male homosexual couples found that some men had lived with women up to fifteen years before changing to male lovers. As a homosexual group, however, most of the men were openly non-monogamous.
In their survey of male homosexuals, Weinberg and Williams compared them to the bisexuals (6 and 7 vs. 3-5 on the Kinsey scale). They found that bisexuals were more involved with women sexually, were more likely to have been married, and, as might be expected, were less involved exclusively with homosexuals. Bisexuals concealed their homosexual component more than homosexuals and expected narrow discrimination from the heterosexual world. Weinberg and Williams found no data to support the thesis that bisexuals had more psychological problems.
Between 1973 and 1975 Drs. Blumstein and Schwartz interviewed 150 bisexual men and women to study bisexual behavior and identity. Their most consistent finding on both sexes showed that there was “little coherent relationship between the amount and ‘mix’ of homosexual and heterosexual behavior in a person’s biography and that person’s choice to label himself or herself as bisexual, homosexual, or heterosexual.” People with little or no homosexual experience sometimes identified themselves as bisexual, while others with considerable bisexual activity labeled themselves as heterosexual or homosexual.
Not unexpectedly, female bisexuals were found to be more romantic than male bisexuals. When involved with another woman, females labeled themselves lesbian; when involved with a man, heterosexual. When
unattached, they would frequently label themselves bisexual. Males more often continuously identified themselves as bisexual.
Another important if not surprising conclusion of Blumstein and Schwartz’s study was the changeability in sexual object choices. Significant experience with one gender did not necessarily determine future sexual orientation. Bisexuals came to their present state of functioning from extremely varied backgrounds: some early, some late, some changing suddenly, others undergoing a gradual transition over decades.
It was also found that both the heterosexual and homosexual communities generally viewed the bisexual in a negative light. The heterosexual world looked upon the bisexual as a homosexual, while the homosexual subcultures viewed the bisexual as someone just going through a phase; they defined the bisexual’s identity as not real (in other words, nonexistent). Two exceptions were found in the heterosexual world. The libertarian element of the population viewed bisexuality more liberally... the bisexuals “did their own thing.” The women’s liberation and the smaller men’s liberation movements, devoted and finely attuned to the political and emotional needs of their own gender, were in sympathy at least with the idea–if not the reality–of bisexuality.
Charlotte Wolff studied 150 British bisexual men and women. In 1977 she published her findings in her book, Bisexuality, A Study. Some of the major findings were that: (1) the males in her sample had significantly more homosexual lovers, while the females had significantly more heterosexual lovers; (2) though the men and women reported no differences in their numbers of casual heterosexual sex encounters, the males had significantly more frequent casual homosexual encounters; and (3) though the majority of bisexuals felt that bisexuality was a social disadvantage, they nevertheless thought it to offer emotional, mental, and creative advantages.
In 1985 Regina Reinhardt found in a study of 26 bisexual women in heterosexual relationships, that the couples maintained satisfactory relationships. Half of the women were maintaining sexual relationships with other women. They had 1.5 sexual contacts per month with their female partners while having sex 3 times per week with their male partners.
In 1991, as part of a larger study on AIDS in the Netherlands, van Zessen and Sandford interviewed 1001 Dutch people with respect to their sexual orientation. Their findings showed that while only 1.1% had had bisexual experiences in the preceding year, 7.8% labeled themselves as neither exclusively heterosexual nor exclusively homosexual. This figure is nevertheless quite a bit lower than the American statistics mentioned above.
A rather complete literature review on research on the size of the bisexual population, commissioned by the Global Program on AIDS of the World Health Organization, was put together in 1990 by Boulton and Weatherburn in the United Kingdom. It found that due to different definitions of bisexuality and the different populations studied, the results varied from a low percentage similar to that found in the Dutch study quoted above to as high as the Kinsey study done so many years ago. All one can say in summary is that accurately determining the size of the bisexual population is extremely difficult because (1) it is further subdivided into various distinct groups (for example, self-identified bisexuals, closeted ‘heterosexuals,’ married men), (2) there seem to be as many definitions of bisexuality as there are research studies, and (3) different cultures view the bisexual in completely different ways.
In 1991, Rob A. P. Tielman edited a book on the findings of bisexuality and its relation to HIV/AIDS as found in many countries throughout the world.
Two books that portray the life stories of bisexuals themselves have recently been published. In 1988, Bisexual Lives (edited by the Off Pink Collective) was published in England; and in 1991, Bi Any Other Name; Bisexual People Speak Out (edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu) was published by Alyson Publications, Inc.
In 1991, Amity Pierce Buxton published The Other Side of the Closet, giving the results of a study of hundreds of marriages where one of the partners was gay or bisexual. The book explores the major issues straight spouses confront when their partners declare their homosexuality or bisexuality.
In 1993, Ron Fox completed his study of 835 self-defined bisexuals using a lengthy questionnaire regarding self-disclosure and sexual orientation. His results showed that the greatest number of disclosures were made to friends and relationship partners and to helping professionals.
The 1983-88 studies by Martin Weinberg et al. of close to 800 bisexually indentified individuals is being published in 1994 by Oxford University Press. These studies investigated the characteristics of persons who adopt a bisexual identity as well as give the effect of AIDS on sexual preference.
The social disadvantages of being bisexual are many, as they are for any group living without full recognition and rights. The bisexual, however, because he or she does not live in community, does not suffer the burden of sole identification with any one group, and this of course is often an advantage. For example, the bisexual who chooses to identify with the homosexual community need never be made aware of the sociological problems inherent in his or her bisexuality. He or she also need not deal with the problems of being exclusively homosexual. Despite where they live, they can have, if they choose, a foot in the other camp. This may still cause the individual conflict and pain, even though it is usually blamed on matters having nothing to do with being bisexual.
In the case, for example, of the reasonably happily married man who sleeps from time to time with men, the primary problem is often not seen as bisexuality, but as infidelity or homosexuality–the man’s wife, if she finds out, is probably going to be upset first because her husband has been “unfaithful” and second because he is “homosexual.” This couple may take their problem out of the home and into psychotherapy or marriage counseling without the condition of bisexuality ever being mentioned. If the couple should turn to the church for counsel, the man will almost surely never be advised to atone for the “sin of bisexuality.” His sins will most likely be identified as the sins of adultery and homosexuality.
The bisexual has simply been sociologically nonexistent–the church, the state, and, to a certain extent, science can’t find him or her. What’s needed, it would seem, to end this peculiar limbo state is a valid sense of identity, of community.
It’s difficult to say what will create this. Perhaps the acute sense of isolation common to many bisexuals, especially those who are married, will be a contributing factor. Married bisexuals–such as the man described above–live for the most part with one basic social fear: the discovery of the homosexual component in their natures. They isolate themselves from the homosexual community on a social level while often feeling isolated in the heterosexual community in which they live. They know that if their inclinations are discovered, not only will they be labeled homosexual but their marriages will be seen as a cover-up.
“Marriage as a cover-up” may be true in some bisexual cases, but only a minority. Bisexuals who stray from their marriage beds to sleep with someone of the same sex don’t necessarily lose sexual interest in their spouses, just as married heterosexual men or women who sleep with others don’t necessarily lose interest in their mates. Some homosexual men do marry to prove they are straight when they are not; but 70 percent of homosexuals in the survey by Saghir and Robins (Male & Female Homosexuality) said that they would not consider resorting to marriage as a cover-up, and 83 percent said they would not consider marriage with a lesbian as a cover-up. Most of the married bisexuals had not married to hide a homosexual component. They married because life and sex with a member of the opposite gender had definite appeal.
There are also married bisexuals who are monogamous and would no more “cheat” on their husbands and wives than would heterosexual men and women who hold the same values. If a woman lives in marriage for 20 years with one man, never straying from his bed, is she, one may ask, in any way describable as bisexual? Yes–if, before the marriage, she engaged in sex with a woman; or during the marriage her sexual fantasies, ei
ther masturbatory or during intercourse, had homosexual aspects; or if after her marriage she finds another mate, who this time is a woman, as was the case of Jane O., described in Chapter 7.
In marriage, though, it is the man who is generally more open to explore bisexuality. With the women’s movement and the diminishing “double standard,” this dichotomy is growing less clear-cut, but the fact is that men–homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual–are still more able to openly express their need for sexual fulfillment. And because of this, sex with males is much more easily available than with females. If a heterosexual married male on a business trip to a strange city wants sexual contact, he will more often than not have to pay for it. If a bisexual male on a business trip in a strange city wants sexual contact with a male, he can have it literally within minutes in gay bars or baths for the price of a drink or small entrance fee. In some cities he can go to the parks or other “cruising” spots and have sex without spending a dime (although this “exploitation” of homosexual availability by bisexuals is resented in the gay community).
The lack of a bisexual subculture is being felt, although those who feel it most aren’t always sure of exactly what it is they feel. Words such as “longing,” “diffused,” “something missing,” and “when in Rome” are used by bisexuals, both male and female, to describe their feelings. One of the most telling remarks was made by a young man at a meeting of the Bisexual Forum in New York City. As guest speaker I asked the group, “Do you as bisexuals feel the lack of a bisexual subculture?”
The question seemed to confuse them. Their silence made me realize that the question I had asked was more loaded than I thought.
“What do you mean by ‘subculture’?” a young man finally asked. “You mean like a bar or something? What for? If you want a woman for companionship, you go to a straight singles bar. And if the night is long and you want a man, you go to a gay bar. What would a bisexual bar mean?”
The Bisexual Option Page 13