WEBVTT 00:00:02.930 --> 00:00:04.438 - Or thinking they're lying. So with men... I wrote a book called Bi: 00:00:04.522 --> 00:00:04.887 The Hidden Culture, 00:00:04.970 --> 00:00:08.727 History, and Science of Bisexuality, and I did that after I created a 00:00:08.810 --> 00:00:12.610 bisexual research group. So, I wasn't a sexuality researcher, but as a bi 00:00:12.710 --> 00:00:16.527 person and a scientist, I was interested in the science of bisexuality, 00:00:16.610 --> 00:00:20.430 and I couldn't really find it. It was really hard to figure out what 00:00:20.860 --> 00:00:24.730 people were actually learning about bisexual people in 00:00:25.270 --> 00:00:27.790 comparison to other kinds of queer people. 00:00:28.700 --> 00:00:32.406 And one of the things I found is that the terms that are used are not necessarily 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:36.467 bi. And so it could be things like plurisexual. So, if you type into Google 00:00:36.550 --> 00:00:40.357 Scholar the word bisexual, you're going to get a lot of confusing things also because 00:00:40.440 --> 00:00:43.964 bisexual is used for, like, two sexes where you have multiple sex or you can 00:00:44.048 --> 00:00:46.577 change, and so they're bisexual. 00:00:46.660 --> 00:00:50.950 - Right. - Yeah, which is different entirely. And so I think partly 00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:54.407 out of that, researchers started using words like plurisexual, and 00:00:54.490 --> 00:00:57.865 omnisexual is another one. And so if you're looking for research on this, 00:00:57.949 --> 00:01:01.177 plurisexual is probably the word. But - What does omnisexual mean? 00:01:01.260 --> 00:01:02.907 - It's just the same. It's just another- - Okay. Got it. 00:01:02.990 --> 00:01:06.000 - another word where it's all. Sometimes pansexual is also 00:01:06.140 --> 00:01:10.937 used. And again, the idea being that it's all genders. 00:01:11.020 --> 00:01:18.020 - So how should we think about bisexuality? Is it fluid, like 00:01:18.750 --> 00:01:22.477 day to day, month to month, year to year fluid who you're attracted 00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:26.167 to? Or is it at the same time have the capacity to be attracted to 00:01:26.250 --> 00:01:30.697 anyone or attracted to everyone? What's the right way to think about it? 00:01:30.780 --> 00:01:34.441 - I think the right way to think about it is that I'm not attracted to most people, 00:01:34.525 --> 00:01:34.607 but 00:01:34.690 --> 00:01:38.497 I can be attracted to people regardless of gender, much like you're probably not 00:01:38.580 --> 00:01:42.280 probably not attracted to most people, but you are attracted to people 00:01:42.450 --> 00:01:44.167 of a certain gender, maybe. And so that's... 00:01:44.250 --> 00:01:46.027 It's the same as being heterosexual in terms 00:01:46.110 --> 00:01:49.977 of potentially my pool of people whom I might be interested in. It's 00:01:50.060 --> 00:01:52.137 just that the gender is irrelevant. 00:01:52.220 --> 00:01:55.807 - What's the biggest thing that people misunderstand about bisexuality? 00:01:55.890 --> 00:01:59.277 - The biggest thing that researchers find people misunderstand about 00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:03.027 bisexuality is that it's a phase and that it's this 00:02:03.110 --> 00:02:06.807 idea that it's transient, that it's always changing, and that it's a 00:02:06.890 --> 00:02:10.097 stepping stone. So, I think a lot of people still see bisexuality 00:02:10.180 --> 00:02:14.047 as on the way to Gay Town, sort of like you're, 00:02:14.130 --> 00:02:17.880 you're on your way, but you haven't quite committed and you're still stuck 00:02:17.970 --> 00:02:21.257 in expectations of society. You haven't quite let go yet, but really you're 00:02:21.340 --> 00:02:25.297 gay. And that's especially true for men. So when you look at research 00:02:25.380 --> 00:02:29.197 on bisexual men, which is actually how the research started. So, I 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:32.607 think now when we think of bisexuality, we think of women. And it's true that 00:02:32.690 --> 00:02:36.087 today twice as many women identify as bisexual as 00:02:36.170 --> 00:02:40.007 men. But if you look at the history of this and the research on 00:02:40.090 --> 00:02:44.030 bisexuality over time, it was the other way around. So someone called Alfred 00:02:44.130 --> 00:02:48.067 Kinsey was one of the first sexuality researchers in recent 00:02:48.150 --> 00:02:51.987 history certainly, and he, after World War II, did this really big 00:02:52.070 --> 00:02:55.787 study of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, it was called. He was a 00:02:55.870 --> 00:02:59.567 biologist himself, so he thought of taxonomies, and he was doing research on 00:02:59.650 --> 00:03:03.167 gall wasps, so insects. And this idea of human 00:03:03.250 --> 00:03:06.547 sexuality was sort of thrown at him after the war because 00:03:06.630 --> 00:03:10.067 there's also this whole move to get people 00:03:10.150 --> 00:03:17.150 to, well, reproduce and to rebuild America. So sexuality was partly, and sex, 00:03:17.750 --> 00:03:21.487 specifically, was becoming more of an area of interest, both in terms of 00:03:21.570 --> 00:03:25.350 research and in terms of policy and funding. So Alfred Kinsey was 00:03:25.450 --> 00:03:29.230 asked, "Do you want to do a class on human 00:03:29.730 --> 00:03:33.647 sexual behavior?" And he was like, "I know nothing about this." So he spent about 00:03:33.730 --> 00:03:37.707 a year just listening to students' questions about what they want to know 00:03:37.790 --> 00:03:41.687 about sex, and he realized that 00:03:41.770 --> 00:03:45.507 he was looking for research to try and build up this course that he 00:03:45.590 --> 00:03:48.877 was probably going to teach, and he realized that he couldn't answer most 00:03:48.961 --> 00:03:49.287 of their 00:03:49.370 --> 00:03:52.747 questions because the research hadn't been done. So a lot of the questions were 00:03:52.830 --> 00:03:55.307 around, "What is normal?" 00:03:55.390 --> 00:03:59.167 You know, "If I feel this during sex, is that normal? How often do people have sex? 00:03:59.250 --> 00:04:02.078 Should I want these? What about these fantasies? What does it mean? 00:04:02.162 --> 00:04:05.274 What if I have homosexual fantasies? What if I engage in this kind of..." 00:04:05.358 --> 00:04:06.687 And so he was looking at all of 00:04:06.770 --> 00:04:10.207 these questions and collating them, and then he went out and did these 00:04:10.290 --> 00:04:14.107 huge studies, and he interviewed thousands of people himself, but 00:04:14.190 --> 00:04:17.407 also had all these research assistants who were out there interviewing people in 00:04:17.490 --> 00:04:21.027 America about their sexual behavior, 00:04:21.110 --> 00:04:25.010 which, I mean, just picture the time. This is the 1940s. 00:04:25.710 --> 00:04:29.487 This is quite a conservative time. I mean, certainly more than we might 00:04:29.570 --> 00:04:32.407 expect now. And here's this researcher asking 00:04:32.490 --> 00:04:36.327 incredibly personal questions about thousands and 00:04:36.410 --> 00:04:40.167 thousands and thousands of people, and he ended 00:04:40.250 --> 00:04:44.127 up finding, and this is one of the big findings in this book that 00:04:44.210 --> 00:04:47.167 he published called "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," which was a 00:04:47.250 --> 00:04:50.750 best-seller for an entire year. He sold 00:04:50.890 --> 00:04:54.797 out auditoriums. They had to sometimes add the room next to 00:04:54.880 --> 00:04:58.187 the room he was in because there was so much desire 00:04:58.270 --> 00:05:05.270 to go to his lectures about sex that they had to connect radios to 00:05:05.990 --> 00:05:09.487 other halls to give people enough space to sit 00:05:09.570 --> 00:05:12.730 down. He was basically a rock star. And 00:05:13.650 --> 00:05:16.970 again, I think this challenges the misconception we have about 00:05:17.390 --> 00:05:20.627 sexuality, that we think of it as this sort of woke thing now. 00:05:20.710 --> 00:05:24.147 that the rainbow flag and all this stuff is sort of this modern 00:05:24.230 --> 00:05:27.927 invention almost. But this is the '40s. This was 00:05:28.010 --> 00:05:29.872 happening. People were going to these talks. 00:05:29.956 --> 00:05:31.947 People were having these conversations, and he 00:05:32.030 --> 00:05:35.900 created something called the Kinsey Scale. And so the Kinsey Scale is from 00:05:36.030 --> 00:05:39.807 zero to six, and he found that it was not useful 00:05:39.890 --> 00:05:43.247 to apply a binary to people's sexual desires and sexual 00:05:43.330 --> 00:05:47.007 orientation. It was more useful to put them on a continuum because most 00:05:47.090 --> 00:05:50.247 people were not exclusively homosexual or exclusively 00:05:50.330 --> 00:05:54.307 heterosexual. Most people were somewhere in between. And so zero 00:05:54.390 --> 00:05:58.327 was exclusively heterosexual tendencies, and six was 00:05:58.410 --> 00:06:01.894 exclusively homosexual, and he would place people based on all of the things they 00:06:01.978 --> 00:06:06.370 told him somewhere on the scale, and about half of men were 00:06:06.470 --> 00:06:10.690 somewhere in the middle, not exclusively either, and about a quarter of women. 00:06:11.530 --> 00:06:14.730 Now, think about the time. - It was a very conservative time. 00:06:14.970 --> 00:06:18.867 - Well, and it's post-war though, so I think that mattered as well. So 00:06:18.950 --> 00:06:21.170 there's something called a homosocial environment, 00:06:21.254 --> 00:06:22.767 which has nothing to do with being 00:06:22.850 --> 00:06:26.667 gay. That has to do with being in a situation where you are with people 00:06:26.750 --> 00:06:30.167 of the same gender as you. So a homosocial environment are things like 00:06:30.250 --> 00:06:33.240 prisons, where you only have men or only have women, 00:06:33.890 --> 00:06:37.787 war, which, at that point, they just had. And 00:06:37.870 --> 00:06:40.738 so you have a lot of men who are exclusively in the company of men, 00:06:40.821 --> 00:06:41.547 and maybe looking 00:06:41.630 --> 00:06:45.507 around going, "Well, now that my options are different, maybe I'm going to choose 00:06:45.590 --> 00:06:49.507 from this pool." Anyway, so he found that 00:06:49.590 --> 00:06:53.360 it was that way around, that a lot of people have these fantasies or 00:06:53.490 --> 00:06:56.357 actions that they've engaged in. And then there are other researchers, 00:06:56.441 --> 00:06:57.367 other male researchers, 00:06:57.450 --> 00:07:01.207 who found similar things, and then at some point in the '70s, it swapped, and 00:07:01.290 --> 00:07:04.787 it felt like maybe more people, more men were identifying as gay, 00:07:04.870 --> 00:07:08.690 and there were maybe fewer people who would have called themselves bi, and 00:07:08.790 --> 00:07:10.743 suddenly this became a thing more for women. 00:07:10.826 --> 00:07:12.707 So I think that there's some social things 00:07:12.790 --> 00:07:16.687 going on. There's some research things going on that actually bi men are 00:07:16.770 --> 00:07:18.487 have been studied for a long time as well. 00:07:18.570 --> 00:07:22.427 - Okay, so you said a lot of interesting things. So there is a difference between 00:07:22.510 --> 00:07:26.187 the truth and the socially acknowledged thing. So 00:07:26.270 --> 00:07:30.530 there's social elements. I don't know, this might be anecdotal, but 00:07:31.690 --> 00:07:32.750 I know a few women, 00:07:33.910 --> 00:07:37.610 friends of mine, who identify as bisexual. I don't know a single 00:07:38.750 --> 00:07:42.430 guy friend who identifies as bisexual. They're either gay or 00:07:42.530 --> 00:07:46.627 straight. So there's still a social thing going on. 00:07:46.710 --> 00:07:47.447 - Definitely. - Right? 00:07:47.530 --> 00:07:51.930 - Definitely, and I think that research consistently shows that 00:07:52.990 --> 00:07:57.990 bisexual men are more likely to identify as, well, as gay or straight. 00:07:58.090 --> 00:08:01.827 And gay, well, it depends. So if they 00:08:01.910 --> 00:08:05.787 have what we might refer to as a homosexual lifestyle, so 00:08:05.870 --> 00:08:09.327 they engage in sort of going to queer parties, 00:08:09.410 --> 00:08:13.347 maybe go on Grindr or other gay apps, that would be much more a 00:08:13.430 --> 00:08:17.447 lifestyle thing, where you've embraced and you see this as part of your identity, 00:08:17.530 --> 00:08:19.295 that you are part of this queer community. 00:08:19.378 --> 00:08:21.247 It's much easier to say you're gay than bi, 00:08:21.330 --> 00:08:25.147 most often, also because there's queerphobia within the queer community. 00:08:25.230 --> 00:08:29.220 And so you might get gay men saying to a bi man, "Oh, come on, you're... 00:08:29.310 --> 00:08:33.097 "I was bi once." That's a classic. "I was bi once," or 00:08:33.180 --> 00:08:36.321 "Come on, you're actually gay." It's the same that you get the other way around 00:08:36.404 --> 00:08:40.687 with bi women, is that because it's seen as performative, the 00:08:40.770 --> 00:08:44.637 idea being that bisexual women are doing it for attention, 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:46.944 but the attention of men, specifically, that, well, 00:08:47.027 --> 00:08:50.578 they're all going to go back to men anyway and they're just doing it. It's a phase. 00:08:50.661 --> 00:08:52.547 It's this thing that they're doing actually to 00:08:52.630 --> 00:08:56.537 be sexy to men, not because they're actually interested in women. 00:08:56.620 --> 00:09:00.167 And so there's this lesbian-bi thing going on, which is often quite 00:09:00.250 --> 00:09:03.930 hostile. Not always, but often. And there's this gay male 00:09:04.290 --> 00:09:08.047 bi thing going on, which is different in nature but is also potentially hostile. 00:09:08.130 --> 00:09:11.580 So in both, saying you're bi can be problematic, but for men more so.