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Comment by ibrahim81 | Hacker News Reader

>“Bisexuality refers to an attraction to both males and females,” explains Leila Rupp, a social scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, “while sexual fluidity refers to shifting attractions and desires.”

If you are a man who's always had relations with women and then you've had your butt fucked, you're a bisexual (or a homosexual if you never have relations with women again). This "sexual fluidity" thing just sounds like an excuse. (And, after all, you're just paving the way to destroy your life)

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I can't agree with either the phrasing or the somewhat homophobic undertone, but I do agree that a person who is gay today and straight tomorrow is, overall, just bi. That being said, I see no problem with considering this "sexual fluidity" thing as a subset of bisexuality.

I think that some of the social power of viewing sexuality as an innate characteristic is to respond to discrimination and the work to add sexual orientation as a protected class (along with race, religion, etc).

There are other protected classes that are mutable like religion and creed, but the argument that discrimination based on sexuality should be illegal like race is stronger if it’s not something that people choose.

Of course discrimination should be minimized regardless of innate or not, but the loud arguments I’ve heard are about how sexuality is something born with. The whole idea of sexual fluidity, to me, means that there’s a whole malleability and I assume there’s some conscious ability to impact it.

This is true too. A lot of the quote unquote therapy designed to 'fix' homosexual individuals operates under the assumption that sexuality can be fixed or changed. Which, well, I would hope we would all be familiar with how those programs (don't) work.

“Fixing” sexuality, I believe, is preposterous. I’m sure cognitive behavior therapy can change behavior, like most other behaviors, but I think the issue is that it’s used on people against their will, so the real treatment would be to help people accept who they are, etc etc

> homophobic undertone

Undertone? The whole sentences are designed to be trollish & are _obviously_ slurs & attacks.

The GP account was created 22 hours ago and has already been downvoted to oblivion... It's a pure TROLL, let's not mince words.

So you are buying into the 19th century idea that sexuality is some immutable property - a person is either gay straight or bi, and this cannot change throughout their life.

Given that the research in the article seem to falsify this theory of sexuality, I think you should provide a better counterargument than just restate the apparently falsified categorization as a fact.

Calling it a 19th century idea would be scientifically disingenuous since there's still consensus that sexual orientation is stable and not a choice. Generally it's more common for a person's orientation to be stable rather than change over a long period of time.

Sexual fluidity could be attributed to a larger portion of the population being bisexual. For example I would consider myself bisexual but my preferences over time can shift a fair amount.

The question of choice is orthogonal to the question of fluidity. I don't think you choose who you become attracted to, but obviously it may change over your lifetime.

I call it 19th century theory because this is when the theory originated. Before this "sexual orientation" was not really a concept and words like "homosexual" and "heterosexual" did not exist. Sexuality was something you did, not some inherent "orientation".

Sexual fluidity can be easily attributed to most people being bi and simply changing which side they prefer. I think that is the case for a vast majority of people (>90%). It's like preferring to eat medium steak but then you discover an awesome risotto with chicken and you just pick that as your favorite now. Until you find a better steak again. Rinse and repeat.

Where do you get the 90% number? Not disputing it, just curious.

I do find it interesting people counter such sociological research with "in my opinion...". Sure the research may be flawed or incomplete. So point out the flaws or counter-data. An opinion is not a counterargument in itself.

90% is merely "I think", it's what I experience on a daily basis and what I gather from generic behaviour observed in society (porn, after all, usually contains both female and male actors).

My point-out-flaw is that sexual fluidity and bisexuality do explain the observed behaviour equally well if you consider bisexuality to be similar to having a favorite type of food.

Well using the term bisexuality does not really explain anything. The traditional definition of "bisexual" is someone who is attracted to both genders. But if we accept sexuality is fluid (i.e. you preference may change over time), you can have a bisexual who is only attracted to one gender. So the question is how useful that category is, when there is no observable difference between a bisexual with a preference for the opposite sex vs a heterosexual.

Bisexuality doesn't mean you have to be equally attracted to both genders, there is already a subdivision of bisexuality into "preferably heterosexual", "both" and "preferably homosexual", this is merely more fine grained.

The difference to heterosexuality would be that everyone is a little bit attracted to the same gender or other gender.

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