Running Head: UNDERSTANDING BISEXUALITY

Understanding Bisexuality
Gustavo Ramirez
University of Texas at El Paso

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Understanding Bisexuality
Bisexuality, a topic that many find a taboo since unbelievers like to believe that it does
not exist: since in their minds there is only two sexualities, homosexuality and heterosexuality.
Throughout time many people, both homosexual and heterosexual, have discourage and shun
those who have come out bisexual. However these people (unbelievers of bisexuality) are not
doing it because they feel that bisexuality does not exist, but because they do not understand the
complexity that is bisexuality. They have not the slightest clue as to what it means, what it
implies or what it has to do with sexuality. Understanding bisexuality takes an open mind and
understatement that there is more than what meets the eye. Everything is not just black and white
there are some areas that are grey. With a broad word attached to Bi there are many things that
are left uncertain. As to what exactly does a bisexual person want, are they just being greedy, can
they be satisfied with just a single gender? But, through all that one thing is very clear;
bisexuality exist and the people of the world need to get a better understanding of it. Their needs
to be a basis as to what bisexuality is to have a better understand of it so that bisexual people do
not have to be alienated from the rest of the world. This literature review will be examine four
questions that can help better understand bisexuality so that there is a foundation as to what it is
so that people start better understanding what bisexuality is.
1. What exactly is bisexuality?
2. When was the earliest recorded bisexual person?
3. Does bisexuality happen in anything other than humans?
4. Is there scientifically proof of bisexuality?
What exactly is bisexuality?

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According to the Bisexual Resource Center, bisexuality has many definitions depending
on who you ask (Bisexual Resource Center 2016). If you ask a certain person you might get the
definition of the sexual desire or love of both the male and female body, and if you ask
someone else they might give you a different definition, such as the love or sexual desire other
than the opposite gender. Now the basic definition of bisexuality, according to the Meriam
Webster dictionary, is [sexual] attraction to both men and women (Meriam Webster 2016). In
accordance to this definition, it means that no matter what gender a person is, whether male or
female, the person will be attracted both sexually and physically to both genders. (This would be
the perfect definition if people didnt identify as genders other than male and female, such as
transgender and gender fluid.) Now in accordance to the urban dictionary definition by The
Chickedude, who posted their definition of bisexuality as the gift of nature to love both genders
indiscriminately posted on August 24, 2010 (The Chickendude 2010). Now this definition might
be similar to the Meriam Webster definition but this one is more correct. This is because it takes
into account other people who dont fall into male or female. It does this by including love both
genders indiscriminately (The Chickendude 2010).
Since the word bisexual has many definitions depending on the person someone asked: it
creates a problem because thats when it falls into different categories such as pansexual
(exhibiting or implying many forms of sexual expression (Meriam Webster 2016)). Since
bisexuality has many definitions people start to misunderstand the meaning of the word and what
it implies. They start questioning the validity of the word since both homosexuality and
heterosexuality have a definite definition that no matter where a person is at the world the
definition will be the same. According to BuzzfeedYellow video, Things Bisexual People are
Tired of Hearing, one misconception of bisexuality that comes from having many definitions: is

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that a man who is bisexual is just really a homosexual trying to fit in and has not decided to
finally come out (BuzzFeedYellow 2014). However, according to the article Bisexuality: What
is it by Toufexis, Bloch, Donley, Lafferty, and Linden, there are bisexual men who are happily
married to someone from the opposite gender for many years and are openly bisexual
(TOUFEXIS, B. A., Bloch, ,. H., Donley, M., Lafferty, E., & linden, b. E 1992).
People like to wonder what bisexuality is. In simple terms it means loving more than one
gender. It means that you might be a man who loves both men and women. Or a women who
also loves men and women. Bisexuality means many things to many different people, it might
mean loving both men and women or it might mean to them being free to be themselves with
whomever they please without having to use a definition word for themselves like homosexual or
heterosexual. According to Homicide from the urban dictionary, bisexuality mean being free to
be with whoever they want and being completely happy with whatever they find in their pants
(Homicide 2004). Bisexuality has many forms and meanings that the word bisexual has little
validity in the eyes of the masses, since it is a very broad word that many say covers so many
others like bi, byke, trysexual, hasbian,
gay-for-pay, and gray-a. However to a
bisexual it just mean they love who
they love and noting.

When was the earliest bisexual

person recorded?

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Bisexuality is not a new thing that arouse in the 20th or 21st century. It is a thing that it is
as old as time, there might not have been a word for it in the ancient times but it did exist back
then. The closest thing to the word bisexual in ancient Greece (Between 800 B.C to 500 B.C) is
pederasty. This word was the practice of young boy falling in love and or a relationship with a
more mature young man (who has a relationship with woman or not), so that they obtain
educational and relationship knowledge (Mitchell 2016). Now it is not always clear if the
relationships ended when the young boy entered adulthood, since it was practice that way,
however there are some cases were the relationship between the young boy and the young adult
continued after the boy reached adulthood (Thorpe 2014). This practice in the ancient times was
not shamed upon, but they encourage and even push the young boys in to relationships so that
they could experience the world even though they were just very young boys.
In ancient Japan there was a similar practice but with very subtle differences, their
practice of bisexuality was called shudo. In this practice according to JR Thorpe from the
website BUSTLE, was common among the famous samurai, or warrior class to have Young
boys would be trained by older male samurai in the complicated codes of honor and battle and it
was expected that the two would become lovers (Thorpe 2014). In this practice it was expected
that their relationship ended when the young boy would become an adult or seeked to have a
wife. Shudo was a very common and popular way of becoming someone in ancient Japan, that
according to Georgy Pflugfelder book, Cartographies of Desire: Male-male Sexuality in
Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950, one cannot [analyses] the Ero-period erotic discourse, without
taking in to account the construction of male-male eros (Pflugfelder 1996). (The definition of
eros according to the Meriam Webster dictionary is love conceived by Plato as a fundamental
creative impulse having a sensual element) (Merriam Webster 2016). At the same time the

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concept of shudo also happen in Buddhist monasteries, were monks would educate and have a
relationship with young monks, acolytes (Thorpe 2014).
Putting it all together, there is not one single case that records bisexuality since it was a
very common practice in the ancient times that there is no real record selecting just one. It was so
popular that there are poems about great and powerful people that suggest that they were in
intimate relationships with both male and female genders like Alexander the great, Roman
emperor Hadrin, and even the almighty Zeus (Thorpe 2014). This all means that bisexuality has
been with the world since a very long time that it even was a very common and open thing to do
in the ancient times. It is only recently that their there is a stigma that comes with being open
about being bisexual with the masses. If people go back to the old way of thinking like in the
ancient times everything could be much simpler and more peaceful than what it is now. Because
there would not have to be a constant struggle of people trying to gain acceptance in the world,
people would just co- exist in this world without any problems.
Does bisexuality happen in anything other than humans?
In this modern age there is so many unbelievers of bisexuality, both homosexuals and
heterosexuals, however there are more unbelievers in the heterosexual world because of their
religious beliefs. This is a problem, according to Zane`s article 10 Animals You Didn't Know
Are Proudly Bisexual from the pride website, because they like to say anything that does not
come in their respected deitys bibles and that it is unnatural. But they would be mistaken
because bisexuality happens in more than the human kingdom (Zane 2015). An example of this
according to the A-Z Animals website is the Bonobos (scientific name Pan Paniscus), who fall in
to the category of chimpanzees and are believe to be the closets living relatives to the humans,

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since they share 97% of the same DNA make up as humans (A-z animals 2016). According to
Ryan O`Hanlon from the website Pacific Standers and Zachery Zane from the website Pride,
bonobos have sexual relationships with both male and female bonobos out in the open without
the predisposition that they are doing something wrong ( O`Hanlon 2013 & Zane 2015). This
would mean that if it was unnatural, wrong and unreal why would the closets relative to the
human species practice it?
In the world there are countless more example of other animals other than humans that
are practicing bisexuality. Just to name a few, according to Zachery Zane from the Pride website,
Bottlenose dolphins, Humboldt penguins, Black swans, Chilean flamingos, giraffes, western
gulls, African lions, etc. all have bisexual relationship with both males and females genders of
their particular species (Zane 2015). Now bisexuality in the animal kingdom as we have seen
happen everywhere a person looks from the closest relatives to the human species
(chimpanzees), to the birds like black swans and penguins, so there are many places were
bisexuality exist in this world not just in the human species.
Is there any scientific proof of bisexuality?
Many people in the world follow the logical side of things, using science to understand
the world. It is no different when people are trying to understand bisexuality. The proof that
bisexuality exists using science started with the Kinsey scale. What the Kinsey scale is according
to the Kingsley institute in the Indiana University is a scale developed by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell
Pomeroy and Clyde Martin in 1948, whos finding found that people [do not] fit into neat and
exclusive heterosexual or homosexual categories (Kingsley Institute 2016). According to
Theodore Brown and Elizabeth Fee from the US National Library of Medicine and National

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Institute of health website, the research made to obtain the Kinsey scale was a sexual history of
over 5000 males for the research on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and 6000 females
sexual historys to obtain his research for Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Brown & Fee
2003). Both research were synthesis in to what the world now knows as the Kinsley scale that the
world now knows.
Kinsey Scale

What the Kinsley scale shows after all the research according to the Kinsey Institute from
the University of Indiana was done was that:
For many people, sexual behavior, thoughts and feelings towards the same or opposite
sex was not always consistent across time. Though the majority of men and women
reported exclusively opposite attraction, thoughts and behavior, and a percentage reported
exclusively homosexual behavior and attractions, many individuals disclosed behaviors
or thoughts somewhere in between (Kinsey Institute 2016).

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Now the rating in the Kinsley Scale is 0- Exclusively heterosexual with no homosexual, 1Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual, 2- Predominantly heterosexual, but
more than incidentally homosexual, 3- Equally heterosexual and homosexual, 4- Predominantly
homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual, 5- Predominantly homosexual, only
incidentally heterosexual, 6- Exclusively homosexual (Kinsey Institute 2016).
A more recent study that showed that bisexuality exist is Sexual Arousal patterns of
bisexual men revisited by A.M. Rosenthal, D. Sylva, A. Safron, J.M. Bailey, publish in the
Biological Psychology journal in 2011. In this study scientist gaged penile erections and arousal
by showing bisexual, homosexual, and heterosexual men pornographic videos of both
homosexual and heterosexual content (Rosenthal, Sylva, Safron, Bailey 2011). Participant in the
study had to have proven that they were what they were clamming to be, bisexual men had to
have been at least in two relationships (both physical and sexual) with females ad males and at
least one had to have lasted at least three months (Rosenthal, Sylva, Safron, Bailey 2011). The
result of this study and research was that bisexual men had both arousal by the homosexual and
heterosexual videos enlightening the truth that bisexuality in men exist their by proving that
bisexuality exist with the arousal of bisexual men.

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Conclusion
This literature review was about understanding bisexuality. This was done so by
trying to answer four simple questions. One, what exactly is bisexuality, two, when was the
earliest recorded bisexual person, three, does bisexuality happen in anything other than humans,
four, is there scientifically proof of bisexuality? The first question was answered with bisexuality
is not a simple word to explain the simplest way to put it is that bisexuality means loving
(physically and/or emotionally) more than one single gender. Now the earliest bisexual person
recorded cannot be found since bisexuality was openly practice in the ancient world (ancient
Greece and ancient Japan). In the world bisexuality happen in more than humans there is
countless number of animas that have bisexual relationships within their own species. The fourth
question was answered with, yes there is scientific proof that bisexuality with the help of many
studys and just to name two the Kinsey scale and the Sexual Arousal patterns of bisexual men
revisited study. With this new information people can understand better bisexuality.

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References
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Bi Magazine. (2012, February 16). [Bi Magazine]: Important new research report on bisexuality
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Brown, T. M., & Fee, E. (2003, June). Alfred C. Kinsey: A Pioneer Of Sex Research. Retrieved
March 09, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447862/
BuzzFeedYellow (2014, December 9). 17 Bisexual Guy Problems [Video File]. Retrieved from
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Merriam Webster (2016). Bisexual. Merriam Webster. Retrieved, from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/bisexual
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O`Hanlon, R. (2013, June 11). Bonobos Have Lots of Sex, Are Awesome, May Hold Key to Our
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