LogFAQs > #942534540

LinkPizza posted...

I never understood why people didnt think men could be bisexual.

There was a strong push from the gay community for years against the idea, because they preferred the idea that bisexual men were just gay men who weren't confident enough to come out.

Acknowledging the idea that sexuality is more fluid than a single either/or switch creates problems and makes the "born gay and you'll never change" narrative harder to accept. It also potentially opens the door to accepting something like the Kinsey Scale, but assuming that people can slide up or down the scale over time (which then opens the door to revalidating things like conversion camps).

Acceptance of bisexuality was always a touchy subject with a lot of gay people, even after it sort of became the third prong in the trident (before trans moved in to become letter number four in the acronym). Some thought it detracted from their own struggle (in the same way a lot of black people have always had issues with lighter-skin blacks who can "pass"), though others saw it as a way to break down the idea of only two possible alignments (with one the "normal" one and the other being an "alternative lifestyle").

That kind of divisiveness has never really gone away in the movement as a whole - there's always Ls and Gs who dislike being lumped together with Bs, people who are fine with LGB but kind of draw the line at T, and for a while LGBTs who were pushing back against including I, A, Q, or whatever initial people want to add in any given week (which led to the + just being a stand-in for "anyone who doesn't fit into traditional assumptions of sex and gender identity").

And if people who themselves have life experience being confused or harassed for their preferences or sense of identity can't agree on how to feel about the issue, it's not like mainstream straight society is going to have a much more nuanced view of things.
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