How do you feel about the terms "straight" "gay" and "lesbian" being applied to acts and relationships when they involve bisexuals?

submitted by usehername from self.Bisexuals

Inspired by discussion on this post on s/LGBDropTheT

I think the terms are fine as is. When applied to a person, the labels "gay", "lesbian", and "straight" imply exclusivity, as they are qualities of a person. When applied to something temporary like a sexual act, they imply nothing about a person's orientation, only the sexes of the people engaged in the act. The same is also true for relationships. If I call a straight relationship an "opposite sex relationship", that's just the same thing in different words. The word "heterosexual" just means attraction to the opposite sex, and only implies exclusivity when applied to a person, in which case it would be describing their immutable orientation. Sexual orientation labels are mutually exclusive. When a person says they're heterosexual, they mean it as opposed to the other sexual orientations, in this case homosexual and bisexual. A bisexual person experiences both heterosexual and homosexual attraction without being a (/n exclusive) heterosexual or homosexual.

What do you think?

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[–]MarkJefferson 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Hmm, I think I missed that post the first time around.

I'm gonna have to go with u/PenseePansy's take there, and with everyone in that image who pointed out how the use of the word "Straight" doesn't apply to a relationship with a bisexual in it. I have already went a bit into the monosexual-dominated labeling issue here and here. These semantic particulars may not matter much to most people, but to me this is a prime example of Gays and Straights putting us into the dichotomy that they have constructed to suit themselves, bi's going along with it because it's already well entrenched in the lexicon, and once again not bothering to build our own things(in this case non-physical but linguistic) but relying on the devices of others. This is our community-specific insanity of doing things the same way and somehow expecting a different result. The habit of believing that keeping on this pre-curated path will get the Bisexuals of the world a community to call their own, though it never will.

Pronouns are Rohypnol and so are these Adjectives. When someone hears "Straight relationship" the latent implication there is gonna be that both people are Heterosexual. The average person and unaffiliated bisexuals are not gonna be mulling through all the potential nuances of this term like any context-sensitive individualized meanings. Yeah, some will ignore this probable human tendency and say any misunderstandings would "simply" be assumptions and only snowflakes would say that people would "definitely" make those assumptions and not to be so anal. And that's because they either have nothing to lose or think they have nothing to lose if it were to happen. But the fact of the matter is that Homosexuals are kneecapping themselves every-time they enforce this dichotomy on Bisexuals. It's their community-specific iteration of the Surprised Pikachu face. Incentivizing bi's to identify as gay for their own mental convenience(and Bi's cooperating with them just so they can have the peace and acceptance that comes with identifying as something actually formally recognized by monosexuals), only to Jaw Drop when bi's actually identify as gay, with all the consequences associated with that. Then comes the inevitable indignation stemming from these nearsighted decisions..