[210/366] bisexual science

[cosmolinguist]

So I wanted to talk about that "scientists prove bisexual men exist!" story we all rolled our eyes at the other day. At the time I just rolled my eyes too, but today when I saw this article shared with a quote that told me what it was actually talking about, I thought it was worth a little more investigation.

But first, I want to say that the dismissive reactions are totally valid and you don't need to care or read another damn word about this if you don't want to. Bi men exist, they know it, a bunch of us non-bi or non-men people know this too. Science is not objective truth; it can only be done by humans who can't help but come to it with our biases and those of our cultures. Plenty of marginalized and minoritized people are used to not finding their attributes described very well, if at all, by science and any amount of frustration with that is valid.

And the scientists agree that you don't need anyone's permission to roll your eyes or not care about this science. One of them, this paper's first author, said "If you identify as bi or pansexual, I don't think you have to wait for a scientist to validate you and tell you that your identity or your lived experience is real."

So why is this worth talking about at all? A notorious piece of research in 2005 got reported as "Straight, Gay or Lying," a phrase that'd plague a lot of bisexuals then and afterwards. I was pretty new to thinking of myself as bi in 2005, and two or three years later when I started meeting other bisexuals and then doing bisexual activism, this idea that women might be able to be bi but men could not be was causing ripples through the bisexuals I knew.

The guy who did that paper? Is also part of the team that did this new work. It's directly overturning his original conclusion that bi men don't exist.

This paper reviewed 8 earlier studies. These results are considered much more definitive than the previous stuff because this statistical analysis was much more thorough. Previous studies had methodological problems, small sample sizes, and apparently "some arcane problems with quadratic regressions." I can't get over the sample sizes; even from eight earlier research projects, this team only had the data from 500 people to work with. I haven't read enough to know if the eight earlier studies did involve more than a total of 500 people and some of them were just deemed unsuitable here for some reason, but even if that's so we're still unlikely to be talking about very big numbers. This number feels well in the realm of "amount of bi men I might have talked to," when you include not just my friends and a few BiCons but like outreach at Prides and people in my social media circles.

The study is far from perfect: it seems to be limited to cis men, it seems to acknowledge only binary genders, and it doesn't engage with dimensions of attraction or sexuality outside of physical arousal. Analyzing earlier studies inevitably means it's stuck in the past.

But incorporating the more robust data gives science better tools to do better work in future. Treating sexuality as a continuum rather than a dichotomy might make it easier to treat gender that way too, and to incorporate people from the various points on the romantic continuum who may be, say, biromantic and asexual.

This study corrects a flawed historical record that used science to invalidate bisexuality, and this is incredibly valuable not for queers to be patted on the back by Science and reassured we exist, but to throw at bigots who love to use "science!" to invalidate us. While yes we know the significant flaws with assuming that willy-twitching is either sufficient or necessary for "male biseuxality" to exist, that's all they think it is and there's no point trying to engage bigots on more complicated terms while they're still stuck on this. And if the science is going to get it wrong about us, even by its terrible metrics, it is nice to see science get it right and overturn that.

Comments

[dracolosses]

”If you identify as bi or pansexual, I don't think you have to wait for a scientist to validate you and tell you that your identity or your lived experience is real."

this is absolutely right, but man, i can’t help but feel vindicated when research says something i’ve know about for years is true. even with all the shortcomings of the new study, the fact that the same scientist admitted they were wrong before kind of makes me smile a bit? it’s like there’s still a wee bit of hope left in all of this!

[cosmolinguist]

Oh definitely! The vindication is delicious.

[silveradept]

It's nice to see that science does go back and correct itself, even if science could do some work in getting a better picture of what it needs to know. In that regard, science seems to be like everything else: progress, if not at the pace that it should be going.

[swingandswirl]

I'm glad for that statement by the author, and for that scientists are willing to say, 'Sorry, we got that one wrong, our bad.' Considering current politics, it's very refreshing.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I thought so too. :)

[wolby]

I appreciate you doing all this digging and reading the study text! I do want to add that J Michael Bailey is perhaps even better known as the author of a rancid 2003 book on trans women (major warning for transmisogyny), which to my knowledge he hasn't changed his views on, so I don't know that he deserves much credit.

[cosmolinguist]

Ugh, the stuff I read didn't mention his other work so I didn't know about this. I hope he gets his comeuppance there just like he has here! Thanks for flagging it up.