this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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As a bi person, it definitely was. It's a common joke bi people tell each other to make fun of bi erasure, that never lands outside of bisexual circles and yet we keep trying.
With the caveats that (a) I strongly disagree with their tone/framing and (b) I'm aro/ace with absolutely no qualifications to stand behind on the matter, I honestly actually kinda agree with that idea
The way I see it, the existence of trans/nonbinary and gender non-conforming people create a bit of a gray area that I don't think the contemporary definitions of straight/gay are equipped to handle
If you're a man, you're straight if you're attracted to women. But what about a trans woman? Does it make a difference if she's had bottom surgery? What about an enby who presents fem? What about a femboy who presents more fem than even some cis women you've seen, but still fully identifies as male? What about the opposite, a cis woman who presents strongly masc? At what point does still/not being attracted go from straight to bi? (Again, I've never experienced attraction to anyone regardless of anything, maybe there are actually very obvious answers to these questions, i genuinely don't know. If you think you do know, please share! I'd love to learn more and gain a better perspective on this)
Assuming I'm right the answers to the above questions aren't very clear, I think it's realistic to say everyone is at least a little bi. But, it's not realistic to say everyone should identify as bi. Really anything greater than, say, a 90:10% ratio is enough to still be considered straight/gay for all intents and purposes, at most maybe with a little asterisk. (Although tbh I think we could just do away with gay/straight entirely and just do relative attraction to masculine-/feminine-presentation, from neither to either, but that's probably less realistic in practice)
The answers to your questions are actually more of a depends on the person thing. If you're a man attracted to trans women, that's still heterosexual, because a trans woman is just a woman. It doesn't matter what her genitals are because genital preference is a different thing than gender preference.
However, beyond that, it gets blurrier. I've seen many, many varying opinions from enbies on how sexuality applies to them, but I can't comment not being one. It's possible for a straight person to be attracted to say, a femboy, but become repulsed upon realizing they are a man, however, there's an increasing number of people who aren't repulsed by this fact at all, caring only that they look feminine. In fact, it would seem the way we define sexuality does drive peoples preferences to a larger degree than we may expect. There were societies (I'm half pulling this out if my ass, but I vaguely remember seeing a video on this) where your sexual orientation wasn't whether you were into men or women, but whether you were a top or bottom, and in such societies homosexual relationship were dramatically more common.
In fact, it's been purposed nowadays that to reflect our culture it may be worth redefining sexuality not as attraction to one gender or the other, but to masculinity, femininity, androgyny, or any combination.
Personally, I'm a bigger fan of keeping the current labels and adding the new labels on top. I think truly straight and truly gay people genuinely exist, who weren't just a result of our culture shoving them into boxes, but I do think it's rarer than it appears.
I would argue that the first use cases for sexuality were explicitly about genital preference though. Social identity discussion has advanced since then, but most peoples idea of sexuality ultimately aligns with which genitals they are most comfortable engaging in sexual acts with
I think that was the intention, but it had unintended consequences. When people described themselves as straight for a long time, their intention certainly was to say "I am a man who prefers people with female genitalia" or "I am a woman who prefers people with male genitalia," but regardless of the intent, it didn't stop many people describing themselves as straight from being attracted to people of their preferred gender without their preferred genitals, or not being attracted to people who were not of their preferred gender but did have their preferred genitals. It just made people who did end up feeling this way less comfortable admitting to themselves that they felt that way. That's why the distinction between gender preference and genital preference is important IMO.
Thats a fair point!
i'm a big supporter of redefining sexuality as being attracted to masc/fem/andro people. I'm 95% attracted to masc/slightly andro presenting people who could Dom me. Without much care for their genitals. I usually just say I'm bi because I feel like more people get that
For me, I'm much more into feminine people than anyone else, but genitals oddly do matter to an extent. A feminine person, either genitals work, but a masculine person, gotta be male genitals. However, it's significantly rarer for me to be attracted to masculine people than feminine people, even if it does happen and the intensity isn't any different. Androgynous people my brain just gets confused and goes with whichever it assumed first when it comes to attraction.
Because of how complex that is to say, I don't think those labels really work for me. Just saying I'm bi is much simpler and I can just elaborate if needed. Even if there was a label for "attracted to all 3 presentations" it doesn't really fit for me because even though I am technically attracted to androgynous people, it's only because my brain shoved them into a masculine or feminine box.
That's why I'm a fan of keeping the old labels too. There's people like me they just work better for.
Idk I'm ace and I thoroughly enjoyed it