Bisexual Men Exist: A Handbook for Bisexual, Pansexual and M-Spec Men

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Rieger, G., Chivers, M.L. and Bailey, J.M. (2005) ‘Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men’, Psychological science, 16(8), pp. 579-584. Furthermore, bisexual people can also experience multiple discrimination based on ‘the intersections of gender, race and ethnicity, disability, class, and other factors’ (Hayfield, 2020). A 2019 study by Doan Van and colleagues found that bisexual people’s discrimination experiences could be ‘additive’ and based on other marginalised parts of a person’s identity. Bisexual people have to navigate their other stigmatised identities, such as a person of colour or a trans individual. This discrimination that comes on multiple identity fronts is detrimental to an individual’s mental health (Ross et al., 2010). There is very little research surrounding multiple discrimination and its effects on bisexual/plurisexual people, and it is vitally important that there is more research into multiple and double discrimination.

Furthermore, according to a Stonewall School Report (2017), 76 per cent of LGBT students did not know what bisexuality was. To put that in context, in a school of 1000, if 20 per cent of the students were LGBT, 152 of those LGBT students would not know what bisexuality was. The same report also found that one in three bisexual students (35 per cent) are bullied for being bisexual in school. This indicates a crucial need to create a comprehensive sexual health education curriculum inclusive of bisexual, plurisexual, LGBTQ+ and heterosexual identities. House et al. (2011) suggest that community education on gender and sexual orientation-based discrimination and its negative impact on bisexual people would positively increase the trend towards greater acceptance. Social and psychoeducational awareness programs in schools and colleges, illustrating the damaging effects of anti-bisexual discrimination, could transform a monosexist culture to make it more accepting of non-monosexual people. Men, they say, are different. The current study, reported in the current issue of Psychological Science, enrolled 30 heterosexual men, 33 bisexual men, and 38 homosexual men. Nine of the heterosexual men, 11 of the bisexual men, and 13 of the homosexual men did not become genitally aroused by the videos and were dropped from the final analysis. Honestly there’s some stats in the papers but who really cares. The data is combined across 6 studies that cover two different types of stimulus (but it’s not clear how this was taken into account). The data also has about 270 straight(-ish) people, 200 gay(-ish) people, and 100 bi people, so, you know, balance. He said: “People who are purely straight or purely gay can tend to generalise their own experience and think all other people must be just one or the other. There are bisexually aroused men and women, even if for different reasons they choose to pass as just straight or gay.”Andrew used the word “scientism”, which is an excellent way to describe the leap from the measurement scenario to claims about the validity of bisexuality (two of the authors have gone both ways on this). The paper is about patterns of arousal. The idea that a single common pattern of arousal can be used to categorize a sexual orientation is reductive to the point of absurdity. Bisexual people noted this and started creating their own spaces, and there are a ton of great spaces online and in person for bisexual people. The Bisexual Index, Bi Survivors Network, Biscuit, London Bisexual Meet-up, Bi Pride UK, Bi Community News, BiCon, to name a few. But then a new issue arises: funding. There are reports in the US that show that, despite bisexual people making up roughly half of the LGBTQ+ community, less than 1 per cent of funding goes to spaces specifically made for bisexual people. The fact that you’re unable to distinguish between these two statements is a statement about your obtuseness, not anyone else’s.

Implementing programs to give HIV self-testing kits to gay and bisexual men who may not have access to in-person testing services. I have been loath to deviate from house style, but if you’re willing I would happily remove or edit (with commentaries on top and a notated removal of the worst content) future posts on here. I would certainly never have posted this if I’d expected it to garner transphobic comments. I just scanned the comments and didn’t see this stuff – I was looking for good jokes etc.The study methods are poor," she says. "It is such a small sample size. To make these conclusions on so few people, that is not good science. Unfortunately, this has gotten much more media play than it deserves. If you torture the data, they will confess to anything. It does not mean there are no bisexual men." Mereish, E.H., Katz-Wise, S.L. and Woulfe, J. (2017) ‘Bisexual-specific minority stressors, psychological distress, and suicidality in bisexual individuals: The mediating role of loneliness’, Prevention science, 18(6), pp. 716-725. It's also worth defining the ‘four monos’. Monosexuality relates to an attraction to a single-sex or gender, while non-monosexuality is an attraction to more than one sex or gender. Monosexism describes the negativity shown to individuals who do not identify with monosexuality (Hayfield, 2020). Finally, mononormativity refers to cultural or social norms which assume that everyone is or should be monosexual (Hayfield, 2020), and it’s also used around the assumption of monogamy.

The authors say “the aim of this study was to examine the extent to which men who self-report bisexual orientation exhibit bisexual genital and self-reported arousal patterns” and “The primary question motivating this research is whether men who identify as bisexual have sexual arousal patterns that are also relatively bisexual,” which seems fine. It’s possible that people self-report bisexual orientation for reasons other than sexual arousal, so the *extent* to which these empirically relate is a fair question. It’s particularly puzzling since we would expect these to relate VERY strongly even in the presence of other reasons to ID as bisexual (even to the point that most of us wouldn’t bother studying this question)- around the “Notably” quote, apparently previous research does not provide consistent evidence of this relationship, at least depending on whether sexual arousal is measured subjectively or via physiological response, or possibly related to sampling concerns. Perhaps previous research suffered from underpowered studies (low N), which they argue they rectify. Carey, K.B., Norris, A.L., Durney, S.E., Shepardson, R.L. and Carey, M.P. (2018) ‘Mental health consequences of sexual assault among first-year college women’, Journal of American college health, 66(6), pp. 480-486.This often fuels the biphobia and bi-erasure that bisexual men receive. Bisexual men are often told that they do not exist. They are told that they are secretly gay and need to come out. Those in a relationship with a woman are told that they’re living a lie and should let their partner be free. I don’t agree with you here. I don’t think this blog is a place for racism, antisemitism, homophobia, or transphobia. And I’m extremely aware of just how marginalized and oppressed trans people are both in the US and around the world. So I don’t think it’s neutral to leave these posts for other people to comment on. I don't often see myself in TV and film. When I do, I am actively objectified, and my sexuality is painted negatively (Glee, Sex and the City, Insatiable, The Real O'Neals). All this comes together to form a mess of internalised biphobia. Am I being gay enough? Am I being straight enough? All I am is 100 per cent bisexual.