MJ Porzenheim Evolution is a scientific theory, meaning it’s well substantiated. It is as valid a theory as the theory of gravity. However, some people don’t believe in evolution (not that evolution is really a matter of belief…). Bisexuals are like evolution. They are like every other sexuality- they can’t be “proven” really, but that’s true of all sexualities, just like it’s true of all theories. But evolution and bisexuality aren’t considered valid in some groups, even in groups that accept other scientific theories and other gender and sexuality minorities (GSM). So the CAUSE, our lovely little LGBTQQIPA (more on the mouthful later) club had a talk about it on Thursday, February 28th. To give you a taste of what it was like, I’ll be asking you to play along at home. Try this: If you love music, raise your right hand. If you love chocolate, raise your left. You must raise one and only one hand up, and you must raise that hand fully. To agree with one statement is to disagree with the other. You must disown either chocolate or music. At this point you may put your hand down. People are probably staring. Anyway, we did this at the bi talk, only we had a line of duct tape down the middle of the room. Participants were asked to choose between being artistic or athletic, liking blue or red, having math or English as a favorite subject. It was a bit of a mess, with people trying to stand on the line only to be informed that it was not an option. Then we all sat down, and talked about the myth of the bisexual as a slut, the myth of the bisexual as a confused homosexual, and a number of other things pertaining to bisexuals. Also we talked about what LGBTQQIPA stands for. (If you know, just keep scrolling). L stands for lesbian, and G stands for gay. Hopefully you don’t need those explained, but a lesbian woman loves women and a gay man loves men. B stands for bisexual. I’ll talk about them when I get to P, so stay tuned. T stands for transsexual, who is someone whose sex (their parts) does not match his/her/zher (a gender neutral possessive pronoun) gender (who they actually are inside). The Qs stand for queer (which is a lovely umbrella term for all of the gender and sexuality minorities) and questioning, which is, unlike some jerks will tell you, a perfectly fine way to be. I stands for intersex, which just means that you have a phenotype or genotype that isn’t precisely male in sex or female in sex. The P stands for pansexual. Now pansexuality and bisexuality are similar. In fact, it’s quite hard to distinguish between the two. One way I’ve often heard them distinguished is that pan people love regardless of gender, whereas bisexuals love to some extent because of gender. It’s really hard to define them, though, which is why some people might just prefer the term queer, though it is highly general. There’s a range of bisexuality as well- Alfred Kinsey, a man noted for his studies of human sexuality, published with others the Kinsey scale in his books. The scale goes from 0 to 6, with a 0 being totally heterosexual and a 6 being exclusively homosexual. So there’s a gray scale of bisexuality- you could be, say, a two, with most of the people you fall for being of the opposite gender and some others being the same gender. Anyway, it’s sticky. A stands for asexual. They don’t experience sexual attraction. (There’s an ace gray scale too- you can be a little ace, not wholly ace. Also, for those of you feeling aces are left out of the Kinsey scale, don’t fret. They’re denoted with an X.) This is not to say they’re necessarily celibate, as that depends on the person. Also, it should be noted that not all asexuals are aromantic- this is to say one can experience romantic attraction but not sexual attraction. We could definitely write a GSM ABC book. A is for asexual, B is for bisexual, C is for cisgender… I was there when we decided what to cover in the talk, and it was hard, because gender and sexuality are incredibly complex like the rest of the human experience, and just like the binary of being homosexual or heterosexual doesn’t work for people, the binary of female and male doesn’t work, and none of the binaries work for everyone. Binary only works nicely for computers. Let’s leave it there, LSOC.]]>