^Then perhaps you should open your mind a little more. That ought to help.
Friend, in the six or so years I've been here, few things have been called into question less of me than my openmindedness.
I see however that you are a new poster, and that my glib jib has brushed you perhaps a bit the wrong way, so let me explain:
As I see it, the gay/straight divide is and has been seen as a categorical division; meaning that these two categories are marked by exclusion from each other, the property that produces this exclusion being exclusivity of desire for partners of the same sex, or for partners of a different sex. So far, so mundane.
The problem as it is, is that there are substantial numbers of people whose behavior does not fall into the "exclusive" category in either direction. So portraying the gay/straight divide as a dichotomous chasm between opposites, with nothing else, is severely problematic and pretty much impossible to defend at this point. However, if you conceptualize a set of two poles on opposite extremes of exclusivity, with an area of gradations uniting these poles on a continuum...then you have something closer to what most here would likely subscribe to. I myself fall into this camp. Obviously the biggest problems here is what this "gray" area in between the poles is, what constitutes the borders of this area and the poles, and what to call those who fall into it. "Bisexual" works in general, casual discussion but in practice usually needs modifiers as there are so many differing shades of behavior that can be fit here. Still though, I find this much more satisfying than attempts on the hardline conservative side of things to maintain a binary dichotomy and on the other side the more postmodern attempt to redefine the sexual orientation divide of gay/straight into being whatever each particular individual speaker on the matter says it means. But this is getting into semantics and the social construction of language and meaning, which is great and all, but I have an anatomy test in the moring in five hours i should be studying for, so this will have to wait. :biggrin1::tongue:
I'm quite happy, therefore, to accept exclusivity as being a prerequsite for acceptance in either polar extreme, straight or gay. I'm also quite happy to acknowledge that the number of people falling into either extreme end is in practice much lower than popularly imagined, though I think the numbers on the presumably "straight" side will take the biggest hit. I'm also quite happy to acknowledge that the gay/straight/bi paradigm is probably not even the best paradigm to view sexual behavior; I have some sympathy for radical queer theory and attempts in general to get out of that box. I just don't think ultra-subjective (re)defining of words and terms is getting out of the box, except maybe in your own head.
