"Frank J. being my favorite humorist in the blogosphere"

Ahem...

...just kidding. He's mine too. Good points all, Eric!

Um, well, uh, er, ah, let's see....

Here is what I really meant to say (but had to abbreviate for my readers):

"Frank J. being my favorite humorist in the blogosphere, if only because Don Watkins has for the time being deliberately held himself back out of respect for Frank J. (whose fame and fortune Don will stage-manage to the point of super-stardom) following which the blogosphere will witness a gigantic crescendo of humor the likes of which have never been beheld by mere mortals, thus making Frank J. and Don W. the Greatest and Most Funniest Humorists of all places, all peoples and all times!"

(Something like that.)

John Kusch isn't denying the existence of bisexuals. He's just not talking about bisexuals. He's denying, if anything, the notion common among many intellectuals that we are all bisexual. I really don't know what "bisexual" is. Flip of the coin? Men and women are different, physically, visibly, palpably, _aesthetically_ different. Angular vs. curvaceous, hair all over vs. hair on top, etc.. These differences are so great that I just cannot see being indifferent or oblivious to them, unless one is wearing ideological blinders. I would certainly prefer a good- or even average-looking man to an ugly woman, but I still would prefer the most beautiful woman over the manliest man, just because that's just the way I am, the way I was made if you will, a gynosexual man, a Lesbian in a man's body if you wish. I identify completely with the Lesbian I read in one of Dean's threads who described how heterosexual marriage was torture, she had to close her eyes and think of women every night while the hairy lug was on top of her. "Try it, you'll like it" doesn't work, she did try it and she hated it. As she said, she wasn't going to go through that again just to please the Christian Reich.

Men and women are so different that, as I've said before, the real division is between androsexuals and gynosexuals, and I think the ancients would have seen it that way. "Homosexual" means androsexual men and gynosexual women being thrown together by society into the same dungeon. But, actually, even my own neologisms are but rough approximations, for the real division is not binary nor even a spectrum, but idiosyncratic to each individual, as I'm attracted to one set of women whom I see as pulchritudinous, while my equally gynosexual friend Robin Georg Olsen is attracted to a quite different set of women whom he finds pulchritudinous. And that's just the way it should be.

Sorry to be so long-winded, and I didn't mean to quibble or to be argumentative. Just wanted to clarify a few things as best I can as I see them. Wonderful post. I wish gay men like John Kusch would see the value in the right to keep and bear arms -- and those like Clayton Cramer would see what that liberty is that our guns are here to defend, i.e., freedom of worship, the right to privacy. Harold Veit: a guy who's definitely asking for a fisking, and I intend to give him one as soon as I get around to it. Intolerence is good. Provided that it means intolerance of the bad and love of the good. Otherwise, I'm intolerant of it.

I was thinking about this some more, and it came to me, another way in which certain elements of the "Left" dovetail with certain elements of the "Right": I think one main reason why the mantra of the "Left", "we are all bisexual [as distinguished from _some_ are bisexual], there is no difference between a man and a woman, the sexes are equal and interchangable, it is a sin to discriminate or prefer one over the other" infuriates me so (other than it's being so patently false) is that it is totally consistent with the ChristiaNazi doctrine that homosexuality is immoral because it does not reproduce children, i.e., more slaves for Church and State. In the ChristiaNazi argument the only significant difference between the sexes is in their reproductive organs. Thus, the most consistent Communist regimes, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, pioneered the "unisex" look to erase all aesthetic differences between the sexes while at the same time imprisoning or exterminating homosexuals. And, therefore, on these premises, that Lesbian _should_ give up her selfish aesthetic preference for a woman and just lie there and learn to like it while the big hairy gorilla inserts his reproductive instrument in her.
I hold the diametrically opposite premise, i.e., that sex is the deepest experience of a particular type of beauty, it is and should be selfish (even as the two lovers would gladly die for each other!), that it does indeed make _all_ the difference in the world from a selfish aesthetic point of view whether one (you, I, he, she) is with a man or a woman precisely just because men and women _are_ so different in the way they _look_ (as well as in voice, gesture, demeanor, etc.). And, therefore, from my premises, to demand, e.g., that a Lesbian switch, abandon her Lesbianism, and let the man inseminate her is nothing other than rape. Sorry to be so long-winded again but the whole idea just infuriates me.

I'm with you on guns, Eric. In fact I've seriously considered getting one, and taking a safety course. Trouble is, I might need an anger management course too. Well. Maybe owning a gun would be an anger management course.

But I'm leaving a comment because I disagree with a couple of things you said here. Homosexuality is a modern word, a modern concept; but I do not believe it is a modern, culturally-induced condition. Very likely it has some biological basis. And surely it existed before it was named. Indeed, it used to be called the love that dare not speak its name. I have read studies suggesting that true bisexuality (i.e. non-situational) is much rarer than homosexuality. Sorry I can't make any citations without a lot of research which I don't want to do at this moment.

Some leftist intellectuals try to make a case that sexuality is a polymorphous spectrum, with sexual exclusivity in either direction a kind of aberration. I think this is nonsense, and it may well be what Kusch wants to assail (I haven't looked at that link yet). There are two genders, two polarities in human nature. It makes sense that genuine bisexuality would be rare. The type of male-on-male fooling around that you call bisexual, I would probably call narcissistic.

Wow. Hope I'm not a narcissist! (Just kidding!)

Now, please indulge me in another typical ramble….

I have no quarrel at all with exclusive homosexuality or exclusive heterosexuality, and I do believe that there are biological bases for both. However, because some homosexuals were born that way does not mean all were, nor does it mean that bisexuals must be either exclusively homosexual or exclusively heterosexual. Of course, the problem may be that the "bisexual" label is equally judgmental. After all, who should have any legitimate interest in labeling people on the basis of what they do with their genitalia? To my mind, the only people who have a right to be concerned are one's sexual partners.

The ancients (Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great being two examples) would have laughed at the idea that they had to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Why the need for such labels, and insistence on sexual judgments? I fear it comes from religious taboos -- with natural rebellion having resulted in defensive lifestyle codification which (I hope) will eventually fade into irrelevance.

Not for one minute do I subscribe to the socialist nonsense that everyone is polymorphously sexual, and I think that most Americans are either heterosexual or homosexual. I am merely saying, based on personal experience, that there are many bisexuals who cannot admit it, and are tyrannized into keeping their "homosexual" side secret. To admit to bisexuality in our sexually politicized world is to be labeled (and stigmatized) as a homosexual -- and a rather foolish, closeted one at that. The idea that a single homosexual experience makes one a homosexual (and causes one to forfeit the right to engage in heterosexual intercourse) makes about as much sense as declaring that someone with one-eighth Negro blood is "black." Analysis of sexuality has unfortunately become political instead of logical. And highly emotional. Except for a few nuts like me, people just don't want to talk about it.

Thanks for the link. (Please bear in mind that one of my blog's primary purposes is to fight all types of sexual guilt, defensiveness, and stigmatization. I think the ancients offered a better approach.)

One last thought: for the sake of argument, let us suppose you are right about some male-on-male sex being narcissistic. I think there are more causes for homosexual conduct than prenatal hormones and narcissism, but is sexual narcissism necessarily a bad thing? I don't see why the "causation" of sexuality should matter in any way -- absent harm, of course.

Hmm. I notice that you're very concerned about negative or judgemental labels. Gay people certainly know firsthand the power and peril of labelling. But I'm a word-lover, and I like to have accurate terms for things. "Narcissistic" is a fine word with a rich classical history. I dislike reductionism, and I had no intention of suggesting self-love was per se a bad thing, though it certainly can injure or obstruct relationships. I used the term because I think it affords a useful distinction between behavior that is essentially self-referential and behavior that really originates in alarming or inexplicable attractions to people of both genders. It's late, and I'm tired, or I might pursue this line of thought further. Another time, perhaps.

I think the main reason you felt bisexuals were left out of the excerpted conversation above is that they *were* left out of the discussion.

I realize that this admission is pretty conveniently timed, but I'm technically bisexual: I can have and enjoy sexual relations with either sex.

However -- and this is a crucial distinction in my mind -- I do not fall in *love* with women. While I can have satisfying sex with a woman, I would not want to spend my life is an intimate relationships with a woman, or at least any woman I've met so far. My *emotional* preference has always been exclusively male.

In the above conversation, I don't talk about bisexuals because they aren't relevant to the debate. The woman I was talking to was essentially saying, "If you can fake being straight, then why not just suck it up and suffer?" I wasn't denying the existence of bisexuals, but I also wasn't mentioning them because bisexuals can and often do enter into natural, voluntary marriages with members of the opposite sex. Exclusively gay and lesbian people, however, don't marry members of the opposite sex because they want to. They do so because they feel they *have* to. And that coercion -- whether physical in the case of prison or cultural/religious/social in the case of gay persons "playing house" -- is what concerns me.

I think true bisexuality is rare, and I think it's as fine as homosexuality. I certainly wish there'd been more bisexual men in my high school! But the issue of bisexuality simply wasn't germane at the time.

John,

Thank you for commenting, and especially for sharing that you're bisexual. Bisexuality is extremely frustrating, because most people see it as a "closet" stage in "coming out." Life is supposed to be an either/or deal. Bisexuals are seen as suspect, because bisexuality threatens theories of sexuality which are heavily politicized. Gay activists seem as threatened by bisexuality as groups like Exodus.

For me, bisexuality means unable to be in the closet, and unable to be out of the closet, because human assumptions lurk everywhere, with homosexuals assuming homosexuality and heterosexuals assuming heterosexuality. These assumptions make it tough for bisexuals to lead normal lives. It's much easier (for me it's an honor, as well as a way of thumbing my nose at bigotry) to accept the default label of gay. But is it honest? If you're in the middle of the Kinsey scale, what are you supposed to do? Is there a duty to anyone? It's a little like the "conservative" or "liberal" label; people who are on one side want to label me as being on the other. But why must sexuality be that way? I feel obligated to at least grapple with the concept as a way of expressing my frustration, and I apologize if I came off assuming you were in the "either or" camp.

Thanks again!