In light of being in college, a time in our lives during which we should all feel liberated to explore our identities and sexualities, I think it's only appropriate to discuss something that, in my opinion, is often terribly misinterpreted: bisexuality. According to Anatasia Toufexis's article in Time Magazine "Bisexuality What Is It?", many people have the common perception that bisexuals are basically "just straights with a taste of exotic adventure or essentially gays who are unable or unwilling to acknowledge their true orientation" (Toufexis).
For people who identify as being bisexual, myself included, those comments tend to hit a nerve. That said, it's definitely not a surprise that many people have adopted this notion—there are plenty of reasons why: Think about all the girls you've seen making out together at a party. Many often come to the conclusion that they are only doing so for attention or to please men. Song lyrics like "I kissed a girl and I liked it," certainly feed into this whole idea that bisexuality is an impulsive way of acting on one's sexual desires and fantasies. While I wouldn't deny that there are certainly individuals who might choose to sexually engage with people of the same sex merely for fun and to please others, I still believe that it is not legitimate to write anyone off as simply being "hyper-sexual" or "in the closet" about their true sexual identities even if their actions appear to imply this. After all, for many people it takes actually having a same-sex experience in order to realize that bisexuality, or homosexuality for that matter, might well be another dimension of their true identity.
Despite its prevalence in our society—Alfred Kinsey's studies tell us that even in the '40s and '50s, 46 percent of interviewed men and 12 percent of interviewed women admitted to having sexual experiences with both sexes—bisexuality still has not been given the same kind of independent status of sexuality. Instead, many consider it to be more of a "phase" that is easily controllable. What is most interesting about this view is that it fails to acknowledge the reality of how human beings have acted now and in the past. In other words, it is still very mystifying for some to grasp the concept that it is incredibly common to experiment and fall in love with people of both sexes.
In many cultures around the world, not only is such behavior common and often label-free, but it is also encouraged from generation to generation. For example, the people from the Sambia Highlands in Papua New Guinea support teenagers who engage in sexual practices with individuals of the same sex as a formal rite of passage towards adulthood. This is just one example of the many ways in which people from different cultures around the world have experimented with both sexes in socially accepted ways where the term "bisexual" is often not used.
So you might be thinking, "what the heck?" Are people straight or gay? Is bisexuality a new third orientation? In truth, more of us are finally starting to believe in the idea that "sexual identity is a complex weave spun of desire, fantasy, conduct and belief, and pulling on any one thread distorts the fabric" (Toufexis). If defining one's identity, sexuality and attraction to both sexes seems to feel limiting with terms like bisexuality, here's one more that could actually make things better: It's called pansexuality. In recent years this term has been growing for many people as a way to better denote their own sexual identities. Put simply, pansexuals feel that they have the ability to become attracted to and fall in love with others regardless of their gender identity or biological sex. In other words, a pansexual could potentially be open to someone who is male, female, transgender, intersex, agendered or genderqueer.
So, you might be thinking, how is this different from bisexuality? "Pan," meaning "all," is open to people who fall at all points, or even outside, the gender continuum (i.e. not just the typical binary of male or female that we are accustomed to hearing about, particularly in the gender binary world that we live in). So whether you identify as being bisexual, pansexual, gay, queer or straight, being aware of these terms and their meanings is important. Moreover, being aware of all these terms should, if anything, serve as a reminder that it's not worth your time, or anyone else's to decide that you fully understand someone else's sexuality simply based upon what they do or how they act. We should remind ourselves that college is a place where many people have had the ability for the first time in their lives to explore an aspect of their identity that they were unaware of. So even if you think it's just a simple she "kissed a girl and liked it," it very well may not be.