It’s so rare to read a coming out narrative by someone coming out as bi, much less as a bisexual man, but this one covers a lot of interesting ground, including why it took him so long to come out. But these two paragraphs – and sexual orientation and self determination, and about the fluidity of orientation over time, are particularly fascinating:
If you search the internet for “self-identified bisexual men,” you mostly get results questioning (or validating the question, which is almost as bad) of whether they even exist. Even Savage validated this bullshit at one point, though he doesn’t seem to be doing so any more, and since he’s Dan Savage, maybe I want to forgive him more than I should. It’s hard for me to read these things without wanting to break out into tears — it’s taken me a long time to figure out my identity, and to have someone casually take that away from me as if I’m lying…that isn’t ok. Just to pretend that the question of whether bisexual men exist is a legitimate one to ask is abhorrent — to come to the conclusion that we don’t is nothing less than a self-aggrandizing denial of reality. I know who I am now, and who I’ve always been, and no one has the right to take that away from me. No one ever has the right to tell anyone else who to be.
It’s certainly possible for a person to change their position on the spectrum over time. When talking about this with a friend of mine who only recently came out as gay, he freely admitted that earlier in his life, he had absolutely been attracted to both genders, and was never forcing it for the sake of acceptance. As time has gone on, he’s become less attracted to women, and more to men (he currently put himself at a 5 on the Kinsey Scale, but said that in 6 years it’s likely he will have moved even further). That’s not the case for me, though. I’m not “transitioning” to being gay — I will always, always, ALWAYS be attracted to women. I can’t express strongly enough that the day I stop being attracted to either gender is the day my heart stops beating. I’m at the exact same point on the Kinsey Scale (a 2) that I always was. For anyone to insist that I’m just pretending to be one or the other for the sake of acceptance is the height of arrogance and idiocy.
& Here’s Endymion coming out of his favorite corner, between the nightstand, the bedroom window, & the cozy radiator.