Bisexuality explained by psychologist | Julia Shaw and Lex Fridman

Terminology and research

• Julia Shaw wrote *Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality* after creating a bisexual research group.
• Searching Google Scholar for "bisexual" gives confusing results because the word is also used for organisms with multiple sexes.
• Researchers use alternative terms like plurisexual, omnisexual, and pansexual; plurisexual is the most useful for finding research.

What bisexuality means

• Shaw is not attracted to most people, but can be attracted to people regardless of gender.
• Gender is irrelevant to attraction, unlike for people attracted to a specific gender.

Common misconceptions

• The biggest misunderstanding is that bisexuality is a phase, transient, or a stepping stone toward being gay.
• Today twice as many women identify as bisexual as men, but historically research focused on bisexual men.

Alfred Kinsey

• Kinsey was a biologist researching gall wasps who was asked to teach a class on human sexual behavior after World War II.
• He spent a year collecting students' questions, found the research didn't exist, and then interviewed thousands of Americans.
• His book *Sexual Behavior in the Human Male* was a best-seller for a year; his lectures were so popular extra halls were connected by radio.
• The Kinsey Scale runs from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual).
• About half of men and about a quarter of women fell somewhere in the middle rather than at either end.
• Homosocial environments like prisons and war changed people's available options and behavior.

Social pressures on bisexual people

• In the 1970s the pattern shifted, and bisexuality became seen as more of a women's thing.
• Bisexual men often find it easier to identify as gay or straight.
• Queerphobia exists within queer communities: gay men say "I was bi once" to bi men.
• Bisexual women are often seen as performative, assumed to be doing it for men's attention.