Cringey? Your whole post is awkward as fuck, Yo.
I just feel it becomes cringey once anyone starts using their subjective experiences, examples of toxic users who happen to identify as bisexual on this social bubble of an internet messageboard, your immediate environment offline, etc as quantitative evidence that bisexual men are inherently not worth dating due to their bisexuality, as though the toxic prominent members on this site are indicative of everyone who is bisexual.
This is the exact opposite of what either of us wrote. You are projecting. First of all, I am not heterosexual. I also never even suggested any preference regarding a level of masculinity I prefer in a partner or playmate.
I recognize in others (and in myself) a blend, and even sometimes, a balance of masculine and feminine energies. While I do revel in the maleness and masculinity-forward energy (when present) of the men I care about, I do not shun that which is feminine (to my perception) about them. I do not even actively, or consciously assign gendered categories to what they say, do, or project beyond the very obvious fact that a man has said or done whatever thing. Thinking about it as a mental exercise right now, I cannot easily even make such a distinction consciously.
For one thing, the concepts of masculine and feminine are just social constructs, the boundaries between which become blurrier every day. So in this mental exercise, if I think about my little brother, I get tripped up right away. One might perceive my brother's scrappy nature as masculine, because of the raw physicality associated. But I know how his observations of me colored his perception and morals regarsing getting into fights. One day, after I took him to see a movie he says has been his favorite ever since, he witnessed me becoming aggressive with a much larger guy. He observed that inwas willing to deliver a wholesale whooping, or take whatever lumps I had coming to me. (What he forgets is that I saw that guy do something sneaky and despicable to an old man, and I was prepared to defend that elder's dignity and honor, and that I was a flighty, stupid 18 year-old.) Anyway, he saw me willing to fight over disrespect, and became willing to fight over disrespect too. Now, is that a masculine trait because of the raw physicality involved? Or is it feminine because at its core, the goal of that kind of violence is to nurture, protect, and care for a wizened old granddaddy in the community? When he adopts this attitude from his sister, is that an example of him playing to his feminine side by emulating a woman he admires? Is it inherently masculine because the attitude is now his, and he has become a grown man? Is it just the natural order of things that he, the youngest of 11 siblings, develops his personality through our examples of how to be first, one of the big kids, and later, how to adult? I didn't know his mother well, and he never met mine. Were his mother's principles similar to mine? I didn't know our father well. Was he prone to romantic notions and foolhardy battles over disrespecting senior citizens? How do the answers to these questions, whatever they are, aid in the determination of the masculinity or femininity of the trait?
Monkeywrench: My mother was always interested in absolutely any excuse to throw hands. Is that her masculine energy? I never have liked violence. I was willing to have a fist fight with that guy, but that wasn't my intention. I confronted him about his foul (ageist? racist?) behavior, and wanted only that he put trash he'd hidden among an old Chinese guy's parcels into the proper waste receptacle. When he refused, I grappled with him, opened his backpack, and returned his fucking garbage to him. Afterwards, I retreated to the other end of the subway platform, to keep my little brother and his friend safe from retaliation. The whole act, to my perception, was the flexing of every ounce of my femininity. So. Os it feminine when my brother immitates me? I have no idea. I only know if any strange man fucks with me in his presence, Baby Bro will put them down with one punch. That's how he rolls. Society says punching people is masculine. All I know is the women in my family are not even remotely about tolerating gross disrespect.
So, if I cannot readily identify that which is masculine and feminine when exhibited by so intimate an associate as my only, and beloved brother, how can I claim to consciously identify it in men I do not know nearly as well?
I do not give one limp shit about how masculine or feminine my partners and playmates are, or may be perceived to be. Yesterday was my husband's birthday. I gave him a sewing machine. He usually borrows mine, but mine isn't heavy-duty enough to handle his bookbinding hobby. His is. He is the same kind of man as when I married him a decade ago. I can't imagine that any woman has ever been more attracted to a man than I was to my husband when I married him. I don't need him to be either more or less feminine. I need him to have understood his sexuality BEFORE asking me to marry him, BEFORE I unwittingly agreed to live in his closet. The nature of our mixed-orientation marriage? I'm bisexual. He's gay (and in denial). You haven't the hint, of a whisper, of a rumor of an idea what you are talking about. On this website, my life is an open book. There is no need for you to make wild assumptions. Read the forum!
You know what offends me most? When you make the laughable assertion that my real problem with bisexual men is that I prefer more masculinity, YOU are disrespecting ALL bisexual men, and using (internalized?) misogyny to do it! You are defining bisexual men as inherently unmasculine. Such characterization of non-heteronormative men historically (though perhaps not from you) has its roots in the misogynistic idea that men and manliness are superior to women and womanliness.
At last, my second point. There is no way in this life, or the next, I would EVER deign to speak for other women. I'll add here that I don't appreciate your attempts to speak for me either. You and anyone else who would like to try, can cut it out, or fuck right off with that. Therefore, any implication that I would suggest that anyone else base their decisions regarding whom to date, whom to fuck, and whom to leave alone, on my observations and experiences, is purely a construct of, and projection from your mind. You need to own that which is yours. I will continue to own what is mine.
Your refusal to acknowledge the validity of my observations far beyond this website's reach is almost as interesting to me as it is disappointing. My observations include my own experiences, the reported experiences of the tens of thousands of members of my international, multi-cultural support group for the "straight" spouses in mixed-orientation marriages, personal ads posted on every dating and hook-up site where men seek sexual encounters with other men, public venues where men seeking men convene, and my more than a decade as a phone sex operator. But sure. Keep framing it as limited to one thread (it's actually scores of them) on an obscure website (that has been featured on Cracked, BBC channel 4, and elsewhere). If you want to consider two women living in separate countries, belonging to separate generations, having completely dissimilar experiences, but happening to have drawn similar conclusions about what choices to make for themselves (and not anybody else) Groupthink, fine. But I see you, and get the distinct impression that every ridiculous accusation and flawed assertion is a hysterical reflex born from insecurity, fear and, perhaps, outrage because of prejudice you've endured and observed as a pansexual. If I'm not off the mark, I would like to add that I am saddened you were subjected to anything like that.
Do you know what I blame for my observations and experiences regarding bisexual men? I blame homophobia, and the ongoing toxic social trend of bi-erasure. I blame the attitude that heterosexual men are the manliest, most masculine, and best. These are the issues that create liars. Liars build closets and force themselves to live in them. The same issues cause others to shield themselves behind layers of denial. These people are not liars; they are traumatized, and afraid to know themselves.
I know myself. I'm not extremely insecure, but I have been traumatized personally, and I have observed much that reinforces my impressions and concerns from my experiences. I would never again entertain the possibility of a sexual relationship with any man who was not heterosexual. Not "hetero-leaning". Heterosexual. The sole exception is one man who has been among my closest friends for 21 years. Anyone else who was not heterosexual would trigger every single one of my insecurities. Why would I subject myself to that? Your permission to properly maintain my own sanity is neither required, nor desired.
