It really is a great idea, I've posted on the thread section, I'm sure you know the thread...is bisexuality nature or nurture due to some childhood sexual abuse, some got offended, so this is a good thing it let's people get a chance to Express how they feel.
Nature or nurture, hmmm? A discussion as old as psychology itself. I haven't yet seen the thread you mention, but it is a question I've wondered about myself, as it relates to my own life. Since reopening the issue of sexual orientation in my own life, after almost four decades of life in the straight lane, I am inclined toward the former, mostly because where I am today seems to feel so natural, and makes me wonder what all the fuss was about. But the circumstances take me back to something I read years ago, that did resonate with me at the time. I mean no challenge or disrespect to those with the opposite opinion, particularly gay folks who've always known they were gay, even before they knew what gay was. For myself, I cannot help but wonder if part of the formative structure of my bisexuality wasn't the nature of my environment when I arrived at puberty. I have been attracted to women all my adult life, from adolescence onward, and still am. Almost universally, in fact. I find women interesting, in part because of the infinite variety they offer. I am attracted to all shapes and sizes, colors, and styles. In most cases, the more I learn about a woman, the more interesting she becomes. And I identify strongly with women's issues, so much so that in recent years I am drawn into activism. (Even to the point of being conflicted--I would pull American soldiers out of Afghanistan tomorrow, were it not for the horrible misogyny of the Taliban. If American fundamentalists had their way, our own female population would once again be chattel--but that's a discussion for another time.) I have little or no information about my natural parents (I was adopted in infancy), though my complexion suggests northern European, possibly Anglo-Saxon. My adoptive parents--the only parents I've ever known, were well-off enough that they could send me away to private boarding school. I don't really believe that I was ever forced into heterosexuality--I love sex with the ladies, but my first experiences resulted in some strange twists. Fact is, when I arrived at puberty, along about age 12 or 13, I was in a strictly segregated all-male environment. I was enrolled at the time in a very strict (and, I think now, repressive) military academy. The fifties, and on into the early sixties, was a very sexually uptight time in this country. Young people today have no idea just how bad it was--the sexual revolution of the mid-to-late sixties was just that, a revolt. The pressures toward conformity in that era were monstrous, and anybody who believes the image of that time conveyed in the TV series "Happy Days" just simply wasn't there. And then, just as today, there was no more repressive or sexually backward institution in American society than the military. To the soldier class, just about any kind of sex (with the possible exception of rape, which is about power, not sex) constituted a threat to military discipline. This school referred to its dormitories as barracks, for Christ's sake! I was in uniform, saluting people, and marching in close order drills with a rifle on my shoulder before I was fourteen years old!
Don't know how it happened, but suddenly my story above is posted--before being half finished. Must have hit a wrong key. Anyway, meanwhile, back in the barracks, the other boys and I (all in the same adolescent hormonal rage) found time to check each other out. What a marvelous discovery the awakening penis is! I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. Oh, wow, look at that, when you touch it it grows ! And it gets stiff ! And, oh my, that feels good ! So, naturally, we began to explore each other. I don't remember which of us first thought about putting one in our mouths, but it progressed to a few furtive blow jobs before we were found out. Now, here's the thing--I guess we knew that we'd get in trouble if we were caught. That first experiment in fellatio was carried out "in the closet," literally. But I had no idea just what a shit-storm would follow. I had landed in this particular school, like my older brother before me, because I presented a "discipline problem." The school was run by all ex-military types, and their unofficial motto was, "There's no such thing as a boy we can't straighten out, and turn into a man." Me? Me they expelled. I don't know what may have happened to any of the other boys--I was whisked away very quickly, considered a source of potential pollution of the student body's moral fiber, I guess. I was sent to another military academy the following year--and after that to a Jesuit High School, where repression was the order of the day. It was hammered home to me for a long while after that such behavior was unacceptable, and I bought into the program. With one marvelous, and terrifying exception, my sex life for almost the next forty years was 100% heterosexual. The exception was, and is, a huge turning point for me, but it still didn't bring me out of that closet. And that is a story I will present in much greater detail in a future post. But for now, I must wonder--if I had been living in today's much more permissive environment, and if there had been any girls around when my little peepee first started its tentative explorations and new feelings, how would my sexuality have developed differently? It's a good question, and I'm glad this site, and this group (thanks, volty) is here so that I may share it. I look forward to feedback.
Thanks for that, sailor. From the aspect of repression of anything but "tow the line---better be heterosexual or else" sexuality---I am glad that I missed that aspect of the past. It had to be hell for anyone who fond that their sexual proclivities was not the straitlaced, conformist, heterosexuality that was stressed by parents, teachers, preachers and priests, the law and even the movies and books of the day. I don't think I would have been able to stand it-----as you can be sure----so many did could not and did not stand---so they found themselves a "way out" of this life. Thanks for sharing.
