Bisexual Agnosticism

Not bisexuals who are agnostic; the agnosticism (or rather denialism) about the existence of bisexuals. I’m constantly amazed people still deny this. To me it’s not different to denialism of Copernicanism, evolution, global warming, relativity, AIDS etc. Except unlike many of the others it’s still considered acceptable to say “I don’t believe bisexuals exist”.

People often deny this simply because they can’t imagine (read: choose not to imagine) that sexuality can be anything than binary. The best part is they usually admit this! A non-verbatim quote from the Shebang radio show: “I just don’t believe bisexuals exist because I think you’re either straight or gay”. (Interestingly when I looked up the show page to get the link, it said Fifi went on a lesbian date because her boyfriend was sick.) This is yet another direct case of blatant wishful thinking: something is true because I wish it (or in this case because I’m more comfortable imagining it) and I admit this. Of course the evidence for bisexuality is overwhelming from many disciplines:

• History: we know many societies (Greeks, Arabs, Chinese) had institutionalised male-to-male relationships on a major scale. Often whilst having a wife and kids. The pervasiveness of these relationships (eg. the fact that they were an ideal) suggests that they weren’t simply all gay, but that the human has a high potential for bisexuality. There’s no reason to think this should apply to men only; women were invisible for much of recorded history and the other bits of evidence suggest it’s lack of records rather than lack of occurrence.
• Biology: our closest living cousins are chimps including bonobos. They’re known for all-pervasive bisexual orgies and use of sex as a tool to achieve any/all social means from ostracism to solidarity. This doesn’t prove anything but since we share most genes it suggests the existence of “true” bisexuality in some people is very reasonable. Of course human relations are much more complex (someone once told me bonobos must espouse the a-hole-is-a-hole theory). Even so, the most “advanced” human relationships must stem from underlying biological urges — as does everything we do. (Actually a great deal of species have prominent bisexuality, more here)
• Sociology: in Kinsey’s investigation of sex he found the standard gay/straight orientation simply doesn’t hold. The “they’re only experimenting” cry is no answer either. A non-zero proportion of people were reasonably equal in attraction/relationships with both sexes. Despite many problems with Kinsey’s studies, I don’t think this conclusion has been contradicted. (Please tell me if you know otherwise.)

Enough people are bisexual to make mockery of claims it doesn’t exist. There’s also a dehumanisation in this denialism — it’s saying to someone quite literally “you don’t exist” (more here). People may not always mean it that way but that’s exactly what it comes to. Personally I look forward to a day when bisexual agnosticism is met with the same hooting ridicule as this gem of a quote from dear old Mahmoud:

In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it. (Source)