Or become bisexual. If anyone posted a procedural comment on how to become bisexual, I would upvote it immediately =)
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
I have heard from some people that having a reputation as bisexual has increased their prospects with women. I suspect this is dependent on location, social circle, and attractiveness.
It may also be that a large percentage of women are no longer interested, but enough of the women that remain are significantly more interested- and so you go from, say, 20 women who might date you to 10 women who might date you, of whom 2 want to. Overall prospects down, but easy prospects up.
(I will comment, though, that this probably has to do way more with the masculine/feminine balance of the people in question than their sexual history or orientation.)
For the foreseeable future, I’m going to be exclusively dating poly or poly-friendly girls anyway. I don’t think being bi would hurt me within that subpopulation—does that seem wrong?
(One data point: my girlfriend has only-half-jokingly claimed that if I really want to make her happy, I ought to make out with one of my male friends and send her photos)
Well, it would likely prevent a guy from running for political office or becoming a CEO of a major corporation, for instance. Or at least make it very difficult. There are only a few openly gay politicians, and even then they have to fit certain social ideals.
Okay, I cross that off then.
How about naturism? In east Germany its a trivial part of the culture. In the US it seems to be a highly stigmatized lifestyle.
I didn’t select my friends from (a conservative Christian) college for lgbt-friendliness or non-conformist dating styles or really anything at all, besides maybe an enjoyment of genre television or some connection to friends I already had. And yet it turned out that at least a third of the women in my social circle share my love of hot bi guys and m/m in general. Also, m/m fanservice for the benefit of female fans seems to be rather a common thing for hot young male celebrities to do in certain cultures, such as Japan.
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
I’ve found that just meeting more people solves this one nicely. The percentage difference is not overwhelming, and you really won’t want those people anyway.
I disagree with the “you really won’t want those people anyway.” I suspect the loss of attraction many women feel if they hear a guy has been with another guy has marginal ‘conscious choice’ in it.
But anyway, I’ve followed this thread too long. I don’t really have any expertise on bisexuality—I’ve just heard lots of straight women tell me it turns them off.
I think the reason for that is that so many gay men go through a phase, as part of their coming out, where they claim bisexuality for a while. This, combined with the fact that there seem to be relatively few numbers of truly bisexual men, means that a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay. So going out with a bisexual guy is really risky from the woman’s point of view.
I’ll admit, when I run into people who talk like this, I generally assume that they are weighting the costs of a relationship ending badly due to a boyfriend turning out gay significantly higher than the costs of a relationship ending badly for other reasons.
But perhaps that’s unfair of me; perhaps, as you suggest, it’s really just about probability estimates.
Would you mind putting some numbers around “really risky”?
That is… if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a partner who identifies as bi, what’s your estimate and confidence level for (B-S)?
That is… if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a partner who identifies as bi, what’s your estimate and confidence level for (B-S)?
Well, my numbers would be a bit skewed by the fact that I quite happily date bisexual women (I am one myself). Should I put the non-straight women in S or B? Or make a third category L?
Your skew is fine… I’m just interested in clarification of your original claim, however skewed it may be, that going out with a bisexual guy is really risky because a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay.
That said, given that your original claim was about men, I should have said if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a male partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a male partner who identifies as bi. Point taken.
Well, for S, most relationships end “badly” (in a breakup, at least), so I guess I’ll ballpark that at 90 percent.
For B, I estimate that 34 percent of men presenting as bi are actually gay (going from this study.) I’ll assume that a relationship with the other 66 percent of bi guys would have the same 90 percent failure rate as the S group, but that a relationship with one of the 34 would have a 100 percent failure rate. So B overall is 93.4.
It’s only a few percentage points higher, yes, but the fact that S is already high doesn’t do much to change the fact that if you have one (small) dating pool where fully a third of the dudes are essentially just looking for beards, a straight woman loses little by excluding that pool, and improves her prospects overall.
For a more extreme position, Rieger, Chivers, and Bailey (ETA:here) find that 75% of self-identified bi men get erections from gay porn, 25% from straight porn, though reported arousal is bisexual.
ETA: that is a quote from press coverage. It pushes a bit farther than the paper and does not match the data. The direct quotes in the press coverage suggest to me that the fault is the authors, not the reporters. The text of the paper is more cautious, but I think also misleading.
Eyeballing the data, I would say that 1⁄2 of bis respond only to gay porn, 1⁄4 only to straight porn, and 1⁄4 uniformly. Also, 1⁄4 of straights and gays respond uniformly. (this is after removing 1⁄3 of all orientations that have no genital response)
What is more interesting is that reported arousal to the porn fits self-identification pretty well. It would be interesting to how the gap between genital and reported arousal varies across individuals. Some patterns would suggest that people are lying to themselves while others that the gap is due to sexuality being complicated. I was amused that straights admitted to being aroused by gay porn, while gays did not admit to being aroused by straight porn; but I suspect that the sample of straights was pretty biased.
One of the things that amused me about that report when I read it was realizing that while I am often aroused by actual women, most mainstream straight porn does nothing for me.
I can only assume that many straight men find porn more arousing than actual women, since the whole point of porn is to be a superstimulus, so there seems to be a difference there.
while I am often aroused by actual women, most mainstream straight porn does nothing for me.
One of the numerous problems with that study. I consider it completely worthless.
I can only assume that many straight men find porn more arousing than actual women, since the whole point of porn is to be a superstimulus
Wait, what? No! Not at all! The point of porn is to help you when you don’t have an actual woman to have sex with. It’s never as arousing as an actual woman. It’s like a microwave dinner when you’re hungry but don’t have the time or money to cook or go to a restaurant.
I didn’t mean ”...to have sex with.” I meant actual women. Who can sometimes be arousing even if I’m not having sex with them. As can men. Others’ mileage may, of course, vary.
I suspect mileage varies a lot here. But I’m a little confused. You’re comparing porn, which depicts people without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts, with people in general? With clothes on? Do you mean just someone walking down the street? Obviously someone without clothes, or in a sexual position or activity, is generally going to be more arousing than a person in a non-sexual situation: this seems like it would be fairly robust across all genders and orientations.
Do you mean arousal from women in non-sexual situations? Or do you mean arousal from women in sexual situations but not from photos or videos or textual depictions of women in sexual situations? Or is this just about “mainstream” vs. alternative depictions? I’m curious what you mean.
I’ve noticed that people critical of porn (I don’t mean you) have a very narrow view of what “mainstream” porn is that doesn’t match my experience; it’s very common for someone to complain about porn in general because they object to a few specific things that are only in some porn.
Yes, I was saying that I often find actual women, even those in non-sexual situations, even those wearing clothes on, more arousing than women in porn, depicted without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts.
I hope that clears things up.
I can easily see where this might be an artifact of a relatively narrow porn sample; I’m not especially a connoisseur of porn.
The point of porn is to be as arousing as possible so people want to watch and hopefully pay for it. I doubt that nobody finds it more arousing than having an actual partner, because it can depict things they’re unlikely to be able to see or do with a partner. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone claiming to find live action porn more arousing than real sex, but 2D complexes appear to be a real thing.
I doubt that nobody finds it more arousing than having an actual partner, because it can depict things they’re unlikely to be able to see or do with a partner.
True. Also, sexuality is one area in which...your mileage may vary. It’s a big world. I’m pretty sure that if you looked hard enough, you could find someone for whom X is more arousing than Y for quite a few values of X and Y.
I think I’d split the difference. Porn can’t give you interactivity or a lot of partner stimuli, so it attempts to compensate by superstimulating what it does have access to. It would of course be good for porn producers if they came up with something that was better than actual sex for most people, but thanks to the format’s limited sensory bandwidth that’s probably impossible.
If the Rieger/Chivers/Bailey results are reliable, this might suggest that male bisexuality’s associated with a preference for sexual stimulation other than what straight porn gives you. This ought to be testable, but I don’t know of any studies that have made the attempt.
In the study, 1⁄3 of the men, uniformly across all orientations, had no genital response. Also, 1⁄3 had no subjective response, though I don’t see any indication in the paper whether they were the same people.
(nods) I would also be interested to see what the correlations were between response-to-porn and response-to-people. Lots of interpretations of studies of this sort seem to treat the former as a proxy for the latter, so if it turned out that they were not strongly linked the interpretations might be misleading.
I would say, speaking from other bisexual men I know as well as myself, that if bisexuality turned someone off that would in fact reduce their attractiveness, in the general case.
But yeah, we both only have anecdotes at this stage :-)
I’m reminded of coming out as bi to a high-school friend of mine, who allowed after some consideration that he was pretty squicked by the notion, but he saw no particular reason why either one of us should pay much attention to that reaction.
Which I can respect, actually.
Though admittedly it would turn me off in a prospective partner.
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
Nobody is required to signal their sexual preferences far and wide. That is personal information, to be revealed if and when you deem it appropriate or beneficial. This means that becoming bisexual merely gives you more options, without interfering with your existing options unless you choose to let it change your signalling strategy. That said, humans are notoriously bad at making decisions when burdened with extra choices!
Also, a lot depends on whether the people I am approaching for dates share a social community.
If they do, then if I want to keep control over who becomes aware of my sexual preferences, I need to expend additional effort to prevent that information from traveling through that community… that is, it stops being “private” and starts being “secret.”
This is otherwise known as “being in the closet” in some communities.
This is otherwise known as “being in the closet” in some communities.
Fortunately it is a closet full of beautiful women who you find highly attractive. Such a better closet to be in than the one homosexuals have had to hide themselves in at times. :)
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better. Agreed.
Of course, even better is to not have to keep any of them secret, and to instead be able to reveal whatever information about my sexual preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
All of that said: perhaps I’ve lost track of context.
MBlume’s parent comment framed bisexuality as an improvement, and lukeprog warned that there were costs to it. You countered that those costs can be averted by keeping one’s bisexuality secret. But that seems to completely subvert MBlume’s original point… if I’m in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better.
It seems the choice is, instead, between having your attraction and sexual appreciation mechanism biologically crippled so as to halve the potential partners or to give yourself the option of specialising your signalling as to optimise your chances within a specific target niche or of seeking more diverse experience.
But that seems to completely subvert MBlume’s original point…
Neutral returns as a worst case makes the point a good one. :)
Well, in my own life, the additional option of living in a social context in which honest signaling about gender-selection with respect to attraction and sexual appreciation doesn’t have especially negative consequences became available, and that has worked pretty well for me.
I’ve lived the “specializing my signaling” lifestyle before; I don’t prefer it. The returns of such signal-specialization can be worse than neutral in some cases.
Alas, a process by which I can modify myself to broaden the scope of those to whom I am sexually attracted is not available to me—I can’t give testimony either way. But I can always wish for it.
if I’m in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
You don’t have to be in the closet with everyone. Just treat it as something personal that you only tell people once you know them and trust them enough, and you’ve gauged their reaction to casual mentions of bisexuality.
Agreed that avoiding keeping just most people from knowing about my relationship preferences isn’t as difficult as keeping everyone from knowing about them.
Of course, as above, even better is to be able to reveal whatever information about my relationship preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man’s prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
I have heard from some people that having a reputation as bisexual has increased their prospects with women. I suspect this is dependent on location, social circle, and attractiveness.
It may also be that a large percentage of women are no longer interested, but enough of the women that remain are significantly more interested- and so you go from, say, 20 women who might date you to 10 women who might date you, of whom 2 want to. Overall prospects down, but easy prospects up.
(I will comment, though, that this probably has to do way more with the masculine/feminine balance of the people in question than their sexual history or orientation.)
For the foreseeable future, I’m going to be exclusively dating poly or poly-friendly girls anyway. I don’t think being bi would hurt me within that subpopulation—does that seem wrong?
(One data point: my girlfriend has only-half-jokingly claimed that if I really want to make her happy, I ought to make out with one of my male friends and send her photos)
It won’t hurt in any way. The pure heterosexual or pure homosexual are slightly odd in most poly scenes.
And everyone knows about straight guys kissing to get the chicks …
I actually know a girl who succeeded in getting male friends of hers to pose for that kind of picture.
I suspect it would be trivial to do so in most modern US college-type situations.
Don’t do it!!!!
She definitely wants to have something she can blackmail you with if the need arises!
He can only be blackmailed with such photos if he would mind having them displayed to some third party.
Indeed.
Mother: Mildly awkward conversation
Boss: “Mike, that was kinda TMI”
Brothers: “Ewwwww”
Randomly Chosen Singularitarian Friend: High-Five
...that’s all I can really think of.
But he might benefit from having her think she’s blackmailing him.
No such luck—I’ve already e-mailed her this thread.
I do not get how making out with a male is considered a blackmail worthy offense.
Well, it would likely prevent a guy from running for political office or becoming a CEO of a major corporation, for instance. Or at least make it very difficult. There are only a few openly gay politicians, and even then they have to fit certain social ideals.
I’m already quite publicly a polyamorous sex-positive atheist, I’m not running for political office any time soon
I wonder which you would get the most flack for. Reminds me of this one. (!TVTropes-link!)
Unfortunately, in the US today, probably atheism.
Okay, I cross that off then. How about naturism? In east Germany its a trivial part of the culture. In the US it seems to be a highly stigmatized lifestyle.
I’m trying to picture this scenario and can’t stop laughing =P.
Poly-friendly != bi-friendly, necessarily, but I’d definitely agree that your odds are better than in the mainstream community.
I didn’t select my friends from (a conservative Christian) college for lgbt-friendliness or non-conformist dating styles or really anything at all, besides maybe an enjoyment of genre television or some connection to friends I already had. And yet it turned out that at least a third of the women in my social circle share my love of hot bi guys and m/m in general. Also, m/m fanservice for the benefit of female fans seems to be rather a common thing for hot young male celebrities to do in certain cultures, such as Japan.
I’ve found that just meeting more people solves this one nicely. The percentage difference is not overwhelming, and you really won’t want those people anyway.
I disagree with the “you really won’t want those people anyway.” I suspect the loss of attraction many women feel if they hear a guy has been with another guy has marginal ‘conscious choice’ in it.
But anyway, I’ve followed this thread too long. I don’t really have any expertise on bisexuality—I’ve just heard lots of straight women tell me it turns them off.
I think the reason for that is that so many gay men go through a phase, as part of their coming out, where they claim bisexuality for a while. This, combined with the fact that there seem to be relatively few numbers of truly bisexual men, means that a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay. So going out with a bisexual guy is really risky from the woman’s point of view.
I’ll admit, when I run into people who talk like this, I generally assume that they are weighting the costs of a relationship ending badly due to a boyfriend turning out gay significantly higher than the costs of a relationship ending badly for other reasons.
But perhaps that’s unfair of me; perhaps, as you suggest, it’s really just about probability estimates.
Would you mind putting some numbers around “really risky”?
That is… if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a partner who identifies as bi, what’s your estimate and confidence level for (B-S)?
Well, my numbers would be a bit skewed by the fact that I quite happily date bisexual women (I am one myself). Should I put the non-straight women in S or B? Or make a third category L?
Your skew is fine… I’m just interested in clarification of your original claim, however skewed it may be, that going out with a bisexual guy is really risky because a significant percentage of the pool of men presenting as bisexual are actually gay.
That said, given that your original claim was about men, I should have said if S is the chance of a relationship ending badly with a male partner who identifies as straight, and B is the chance of it ending badly with a male partner who identifies as bi. Point taken.
Well, for S, most relationships end “badly” (in a breakup, at least), so I guess I’ll ballpark that at 90 percent.
For B, I estimate that 34 percent of men presenting as bi are actually gay (going from this study.) I’ll assume that a relationship with the other 66 percent of bi guys would have the same 90 percent failure rate as the S group, but that a relationship with one of the 34 would have a 100 percent failure rate. So B overall is 93.4.
It’s only a few percentage points higher, yes, but the fact that S is already high doesn’t do much to change the fact that if you have one (small) dating pool where fully a third of the dudes are essentially just looking for beards, a straight woman loses little by excluding that pool, and improves her prospects overall.
Agreed.
For a more extreme position, Rieger, Chivers, and Bailey (ETA: here) find that 75% of self-identified bi men get erections from gay porn, 25% from straight porn, though reported arousal is bisexual.
ETA: that is a quote from press coverage. It pushes a bit farther than the paper and does not match the data. The direct quotes in the press coverage suggest to me that the fault is the authors, not the reporters. The text of the paper is more cautious, but I think also misleading.
Eyeballing the data, I would say that 1⁄2 of bis respond only to gay porn, 1⁄4 only to straight porn, and 1⁄4 uniformly. Also, 1⁄4 of straights and gays respond uniformly. (this is after removing 1⁄3 of all orientations that have no genital response)
What is more interesting is that reported arousal to the porn fits self-identification pretty well. It would be interesting to how the gap between genital and reported arousal varies across individuals. Some patterns would suggest that people are lying to themselves while others that the gap is due to sexuality being complicated. I was amused that straights admitted to being aroused by gay porn, while gays did not admit to being aroused by straight porn; but I suspect that the sample of straights was pretty biased.
One of the things that amused me about that report when I read it was realizing that while I am often aroused by actual women, most mainstream straight porn does nothing for me.
I can only assume that many straight men find porn more arousing than actual women, since the whole point of porn is to be a superstimulus, so there seems to be a difference there.
One of the numerous problems with that study. I consider it completely worthless.
Wait, what? No! Not at all! The point of porn is to help you when you don’t have an actual woman to have sex with. It’s never as arousing as an actual woman. It’s like a microwave dinner when you’re hungry but don’t have the time or money to cook or go to a restaurant.
I didn’t mean ”...to have sex with.” I meant actual women. Who can sometimes be arousing even if I’m not having sex with them. As can men. Others’ mileage may, of course, vary.
I suspect mileage varies a lot here. But I’m a little confused. You’re comparing porn, which depicts people without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts, with people in general? With clothes on? Do you mean just someone walking down the street? Obviously someone without clothes, or in a sexual position or activity, is generally going to be more arousing than a person in a non-sexual situation: this seems like it would be fairly robust across all genders and orientations.
Do you mean arousal from women in non-sexual situations? Or do you mean arousal from women in sexual situations but not from photos or videos or textual depictions of women in sexual situations? Or is this just about “mainstream” vs. alternative depictions? I’m curious what you mean.
I’ve noticed that people critical of porn (I don’t mean you) have a very narrow view of what “mainstream” porn is that doesn’t match my experience; it’s very common for someone to complain about porn in general because they object to a few specific things that are only in some porn.
Yes, I was saying that I often find actual women, even those in non-sexual situations, even those wearing clothes on, more arousing than women in porn, depicted without clothes, in explicitly sexual positions and acts.
I hope that clears things up.
I can easily see where this might be an artifact of a relatively narrow porn sample; I’m not especially a connoisseur of porn.
The point of porn is to be as arousing as possible so people want to watch and hopefully pay for it. I doubt that nobody finds it more arousing than having an actual partner, because it can depict things they’re unlikely to be able to see or do with a partner. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone claiming to find live action porn more arousing than real sex, but 2D complexes appear to be a real thing.
True. Also, sexuality is one area in which...your mileage may vary. It’s a big world. I’m pretty sure that if you looked hard enough, you could find someone for whom X is more arousing than Y for quite a few values of X and Y.
I think I’d split the difference. Porn can’t give you interactivity or a lot of partner stimuli, so it attempts to compensate by superstimulating what it does have access to. It would of course be good for porn producers if they came up with something that was better than actual sex for most people, but thanks to the format’s limited sensory bandwidth that’s probably impossible.
If the Rieger/Chivers/Bailey results are reliable, this might suggest that male bisexuality’s associated with a preference for sexual stimulation other than what straight porn gives you. This ought to be testable, but I don’t know of any studies that have made the attempt.
In the study, 1⁄3 of the men, uniformly across all orientations, had no genital response. Also, 1⁄3 had no subjective response, though I don’t see any indication in the paper whether they were the same people.
(nods) I would also be interested to see what the correlations were between response-to-porn and response-to-people. Lots of interpretations of studies of this sort seem to treat the former as a proxy for the latter, so if it turned out that they were not strongly linked the interpretations might be misleading.
Are those sets disjoint?
I would say, speaking from other bisexual men I know as well as myself, that if bisexuality turned someone off that would in fact reduce their attractiveness, in the general case.
But yeah, we both only have anecdotes at this stage :-)
I’m reminded of coming out as bi to a high-school friend of mine, who allowed after some consideration that he was pretty squicked by the notion, but he saw no particular reason why either one of us should pay much attention to that reaction.
Which I can respect, actually.
Though admittedly it would turn me off in a prospective partner.
Nobody is required to signal their sexual preferences far and wide. That is personal information, to be revealed if and when you deem it appropriate or beneficial. This means that becoming bisexual merely gives you more options, without interfering with your existing options unless you choose to let it change your signalling strategy. That said, humans are notoriously bad at making decisions when burdened with extra choices!
Also, a lot depends on whether the people I am approaching for dates share a social community.
If they do, then if I want to keep control over who becomes aware of my sexual preferences, I need to expend additional effort to prevent that information from traveling through that community… that is, it stops being “private” and starts being “secret.”
This is otherwise known as “being in the closet” in some communities.
Fortunately it is a closet full of beautiful women who you find highly attractive. Such a better closet to be in than the one homosexuals have had to hide themselves in at times. :)
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better. Agreed.
Of course, even better is to not have to keep any of them secret, and to instead be able to reveal whatever information about my sexual preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
All of that said: perhaps I’ve lost track of context.
MBlume’s parent comment framed bisexuality as an improvement, and lukeprog warned that there were costs to it. You countered that those costs can be averted by keeping one’s bisexuality secret. But that seems to completely subvert MBlume’s original point… if I’m in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
It seems the choice is, instead, between having your attraction and sexual appreciation mechanism biologically crippled so as to halve the potential partners or to give yourself the option of specialising your signalling as to optimise your chances within a specific target niche or of seeking more diverse experience.
Neutral returns as a worst case makes the point a good one. :)
Well, in my own life, the additional option of living in a social context in which honest signaling about gender-selection with respect to attraction and sexual appreciation doesn’t have especially negative consequences became available, and that has worked pretty well for me.
I’ve lived the “specializing my signaling” lifestyle before; I don’t prefer it. The returns of such signal-specialization can be worse than neutral in some cases.
But if it works for you, that’s great.
Alas, a process by which I can modify myself to broaden the scope of those to whom I am sexually attracted is not available to me—I can’t give testimony either way. But I can always wish for it.
You don’t have to be in the closet with everyone. Just treat it as something personal that you only tell people once you know them and trust them enough, and you’ve gauged their reaction to casual mentions of bisexuality.
Agreed that avoiding keeping just most people from knowing about my relationship preferences isn’t as difficult as keeping everyone from knowing about them.
Of course, as above, even better is to be able to reveal whatever information about my relationship preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
You don’t have to tell them that...