Miss Staten Island banned from St. Patrick's Day parade when she comes out as bisexual

Based on my “research”, I’d think most people would agree with you.

It stands to reason if there are straight biphobes, there can be gay biophboes, who both share the inability to not understand how someone could be attracted to both sexes. Not saying that makes it ok.

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No, Montreal

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That makes more sense.

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The other one I’ve heard, when talking about a bi friend of mine is, “Bi now, gay later?”

snappy line, but seems like a lot of gay men don’t believe strongly in truly bi guys.

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I also don’t like the “You’re half gay half straight” thing. I’m not half anything. I am entirely a person who doesn’t fit into clean categories. Most people don’t.

And the bi now gay later thing is a product of gay people actively participating in bi erasure.

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I say this as a native NY’r myself (born and raised) Staten Island has never been better than that. Hell, most of NY and the tri-state area is not really that liberal if we’re being honest.

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The parade organizers are wrong but the outpouring of support by the people of Staten Island for the group that was shunned has been beautiful to see. Businesses at the start of the route decorated with rainbow balloons and many were donating to the group on what is their biggest business day of the year. People waved flags in rainbow instead of just green.

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That’s very good news indeed.

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From what I’ve seen with friends that eventually plonk down in the “solidly gay” zone, many first go through a “I think I’m probably bi” stage when they’re still dealing with accepting the reality of the situation. (mind you, at my age, this was mostly in college, and back in the 90’s, so a bit of a different time acceptance wise). They’d been dating the opposite sex, and that definitely wasn’t right, and they’re attracted to their own sex, so… middle stage “bi” right?

Unfortunately, I think this lends a lot of (especially older) gay people to view bi people as “not fully committed” or thinking that they somehow aren’t able to move past some developmental stage to being a “true” gay. Seems like both sides of the rainbow are just as guilty of seeing human sexuality as black or white and not a spectrum.

and semi-related: one of the funnier bits to come out of the whole Jeff Foxworthy “redneck comedy” crowd (Ron White):

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I have a cousin who’s a lesbian trans woman. That was a real head-scratcher for my folks. Somehow they managed to fall on the sensical side but for a while there they fell prey to the social conservative’s disease of non-empathy. Until of course they had a concrete example in their own lives.

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That’s so Boston.

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Have you tried pointing at the LGBTQ Flag and saying, “Its a spectrum!”

@mike_olsen Welcome aboard, comrade. The out pouring of support from the general population sounds great. Hopefully the kind of thing to act as a wake up call to the commitee behind the parade.

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There is a lot of pressure on them right now, I hope this is the breaking point and they see that they are doing a disservice to the parade, themselves, the community and most importantly the groups they are discriminating against. Id rather it be a learning experience instead of them straight out removing the head of the organization because while that remedies the situation it doesn’t bring the change the world needs. or I could be wrong and a regime change to make the parade better is the way to go but either way next year we should see more acceptance towards participation in the parade.

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I was puzzeled by your photo, so I clicked on it, then I realised, “Guy Gardner! The one true Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814!” :smiley:

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Yep.

Not lesbians, but “lesbians”.

And for values of “everyone” approaching “horny straight men”.

To be fair, straight people do the same thing. Either bi men are in denial about being gay, or the act of a man having sex with a man is so egregious that it automatically catapults one into “gay” status even if it only happens once.

Right up there with “you can’t be bi because you don’t cheat on your wife with men”.

These arguments are basically saying you can’t have your identity because you don’t fit their conception of what your identity is.

Attracted to women. Identifies as a woman. Was not assigned female at birth.

Not exactly rocket surgery*

*#SorryNotSorry

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There’s also that shitty paper written by J. Michael Bailey which said there are no bisexual men because there were no men who were exactly Kinsey 3 in his self selecting group of 100 (all readers of a gay magazine who replied to an advert). He is also a believer in autogynephilia, if you need any more evidence that he is an arsehole.

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I don’t think the Kinsey scale is about judging how straight or gay (or how in between you are) but showing that it’s a continuum rather than binary.

I think sexuality is more an X-Y grid, how much you like something versus how much society approves or disapproves.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” comes a!ong, and it becomes more acceptable. Studies say that women are more “fluid”, but men give constant approval to the idea of two women together. It’s changing, but not many women are vocal about seeing two men together.

So without society’s approval, it leaves only the people who can’t live without the desire. If society loosens, more people will try something, and leading away from the extremes to somewhere in between. And it’s recursive, as people change, approval changes too. There will always be people who only like one flavor of ice cream (and nobody demonizes them) but when there’s less demand to be one or the other, many may give up the “extremes”. It’s less important where someone fits on the scale than that there are people somewhere in between.

I’m not disagreeing with this, it’s Bailey.

I’m a transgender woman who has a fluid sexuality (constantly moving between Kinsey 2 and 4), but Bailey says I can’t possibly exist. His entire view of sexuality and gender identity collapses because of people like me, and if you bring it up he does not handle it well.

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I don’t particularly like the opposite sex, but opposite-sex attraction is off the chart in the public’s opinion.

I don’t particularly like the same sex either, but same-sex attraction is crazy forbidden when compared to how society treats heterosexual attraction.

TIL I’m gay, according to this metric.

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I posted a lengthy stream-of-consciousness essay on this topic in another thread, which I will not try to reproduce here, but my opinion is that human sexuality and identity is an amorphous thing that does not easily conform to any sort of box system, regardless of how many boxes you use. Some will fit comfortably, some barely and some not even close. Easier to just do away with boxes and enjoy your life, and allow others the same opportunity.

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