I call myself “Kinsey 2” as well. There seems to be this attitude that “bisexual” means “equally attracted to both genders”. I am attracted to both, but not in equal proportions.
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I scored a 0, which seemed not quite right…
Makes me think there’s a couple of dimensions; biological and philosophical. I feel like I’m wired to be almost entirely straight, but that gets occasionally overridden because I’m bi in principle.
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I wasn’t able to complete the test, because it insisted I select myself as “male” or “female”, which wasn’t going to happen!
But I didn’t find the questions numerous or deep enough to be interesting. I am so annoyingly non-binary that I can easy write an essay explaining my position for every true or false item on a form, about anything. I just don’t think in those those terms.
My own thoughts about the real nature of sex, gender, identity, and preference are rather unusual. I don’t recall anyone ever having agreed with them!
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Fellow failure.
F in Sex.
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I do think a couple of those questions are based on your cultural background to an extent. I also answered no to the question about finding sex with someone from the same sex repulsive - that’s quite a strong reaction when I can’t logically explain why I like what I do and don’t like what I’m not into. I also think that I should have some idea about what is attractive in men if I’m going to be in a relationship with someone who’s into them.
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Who puts the F in fuck sex?
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What about individuals who feel as if they are entirely gay, but override that because they are pressured by society to be straight in principle?
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I almost didn’t enter this conversation because I make a point of not talking about my sex/gender online or correcting anyone’s assumptions about it. In fact, I think doing that taught me a lot about myself. But we’re all here, so what the hell.
Julia Serano has this thought experiment to teach cis people that being cis is a thing in itself, not just an absence of being trans. Basically, the question is, would you switch your gender permanently and live as the other gender for $10M. Most people hear this and think, “no way,” and that’s the tip off where they think, “wow, I guess I really do feel like a man/woman, it’s important to me.”
My response to that thought experiment is, “Oh my god I wish that was real, I would be so happy to have that money.” There is no way I’d choose to transition my gender without some incentive because transitioning would be a lot of work and it could cause me a lot of problems in my personal life that I don’t need, and I don’t think I would be especially happier having transitioned, I just don’t think that I’d be less happy (aside from the challenges it would create in relationships - but that would be extremely offset by $10M). In my dreams I often have different bodies and I’m not troubled by that. I think the term I’ve seen that fits me best is “two spirited” but I usually think more along the lines of “in the trough of the bi-modal distribution of gender identities along the traditional male-female dichotomy.”
Well, it is a test to see if you are homosexual or heterosexual, which are terms that only have meaning if you are male or female. That’s sort of a problem with a lot of these terms for sexual orientation. With the Kinsey test, if I make the assumption that when they ask a question like, “I am more attracted to [men/women] than I am to [women/men].” they mean “I am more attracted to [male genitalia and secondary sex characterisitcs/female…] than I am to …” then I get a 2 as one sex and a 6 as the other (sorry people of unspecified gender who I don’t find physically attractive). But then, how can I actually rule of the possibility of a sexual partner who isn’t a particular way if I don’t regard myself as being any particular way?
Anyway, as a person in a partnership raising two kids with a combined 60-ish months of life between them I don’t find myself having to worry my pretty head about who I’m going to have sex with right now. Carrying children downstairs for a 5 AM fire alarm isn’t very sexy no matter who you are with.
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F in sex, how does it work?
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Honestly, and considering @anon50609448’s brilliant response, I really don’t know.
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I’m pretty sure I got an Incomplete.
True Dat. But I could argue that it might be so intensely badass as to make one sexy. Perhaps not in the moment, but long term. Protecting our most vulnerable is just plain cool.
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I’m pretty invested in being male, and I wouldn’t be interested in a sex change, but that’s only because we can’t do them properly. If you were to offer me a brain transplant into a female clone of myself, I’d be willing to raise $10M for it. Forget penis envy - clitoris envy is the real deal. I’d probably be a pretty blokey chick, and I’d be totally bi, but I’d forget about being male in a heartbeat if I could have a real female body. So fucking envious of all those ridiculous orgasms. Can’t hold a damn candle to that : (
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Actually, most of my initial thoughts about that have nothing to do with whether I would prefer being a woman or could cope with it in myself. It’s generally issues about existing relationships - family, circle of friends etc. I only work online, but that would be an important factor if I had colleagues. I’m pretty sure my relationships with a number of people would be pretty irreparably broken or fundamentally changed. It’s one thing to consider going back in time and being born female, or rewriting everyone’s memories so they already treated me as a woman, but it does make you think about how isolating transitioning would be for many people. If I felt I had to transition, that would be pretty scary.
But yeah, if I could actually become a woman (say my wife and I switched consciousness and everything else in our lives stayed the same). Hmm. Probably not. It isn’t as easy as “as many mindblowing orgasms as you want”, and I’ve gotten used to not bleeding from my genitals and generally feeling in control of my own body’s functions. I think again, it’s easy to imagine an idealised experience without the other crap you’d have to put up with in society too. For $10M though, sure. If (s)he’d agree, I’d agree. I’d definitely live as a woman for a couple of months though, just out of curiosity (not as much sexual as seeing the world from a different perspective).
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I don’t mean to be an ass, but do any of you have kids? Children completely changed the way I think about a lot of stuff in my life. Including sex, gender, relationships, love, the purpose of being alive, etcetera. And I don’t mean that in a “I wanted to have kids, and you should too, now let’s all sing that Whitney Houston song together” way because I am not sure I ever did.
Other people fuck you up, and the people who will absolutely fuck you up most of all, are your kids. The human animal, from day zero, at a primal level.
And at some level it still feels like a giant biological trick. Sex, sexuality, a billion years of this stuff being pounded into our proto-brains, because the human race, because evolution, because you and I are the (current) end result of one long continuous string of life going back to the dawn of primordial life.
That’s one hell of a trick, sexuality.
It’s downright romantic.
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Well… We got along just fine for about a billion years without sex… Then some freaky bacteria decides to take conjugation waaaaaay too seriously, and then we come up with all these specialized organs and stuff…
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Contraception is a better one. Take that, evolution!
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Yeah, I don’t know… I’m pretty sure most of my relationships don’t depend on my being male. And pretty much everyone would be interested in my unique perspective, I’d wager…
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Contraceptives are just one more form of selection though… And really, if everyone on the planet used them, there’s bound to be people who can naturally get around it. Eventually you’ll get this:
Via SMBC, of course
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Yeah, I mentioned mine above, but I don’t think they radically changed the way I think about much, except that it’s so much harder to think about anything because I haven’t fucking slept. And sex is just the last thing on my mind most days*.
I’ll be interested to see who I end up being when I come out of the other side of the kids-take-up-all-my-time years and into the kids-don’t-want-to-spend-time-with-me years. I think I’m probably poly. I wonder if my firmly-one-sex to two-spirited trajectory will continue towards firmly-the-other-sex over the next few years. I feel like kids are a forced break from being concerned about this stuff so that my unconscious mind can meditate on it.
- I note this phrase could be read to mean that I fall asleep every night thinking, “Damn, another day without sex” or even that I have sex most nights and fall asleep shortly after.
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But what does that really mean?
Does that mean you have to have surgery to switch your genitals, but your brain stays the same? Or vice versa? Do your childhood experiences transform so that you have the “memories” of growing up as the other sex?
For example, would a former man start apologizing every time he spoke, and passively accept being interrupted constantly? (Hint: among the trans people I’ve known, only one has made that transformation.)
Or, would that mean you’d have to accept that if you used to be hetero, now you’re gay, or vice versa? Or would your sexual preference also change to match the new identity?
In academia, gender and sex have different definitions which I find don’t always translate well into everyday usage, but would apply here.
I just question whether sexuality is really the core of one’s gender. Most people have many years of early childhood solidifying their gender identity before awareness of sexuality becomes a thing.
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