Do bisexuals have hetero sex?

by Harrie Farrow
Bisexual Columnist

When people worry about coming out to their parents because, “I never talk to them about sex” I remind them that coming out tends to have surprisingly little to do with talking about sex. Coming out about being bisexual involves personal truths about what is in our heads and in our hearts. What these imply about what goes on between our legs does not usually have to be voiced.

Likewise, when people hear I am a bisexual activist, or that I write about bisexuality, they think I spend my days talking, writing and thinking about sex. But the reality is, what I do has appallingly little to do with sex.

I spend my time tweeting about bullying, suicide, and depression, writing a blog with topics such as The Fallacy of Bisexual Heteroprivilege, and Yes, Biphobia is a Thing. If it weren’t for writing sex scenes in my novels, I’d practically never get to write about sex.

In fact, in two years of writing about bisexuality, this is the first time I’m actually writing about sex.

So what is there to say about bisexuals and sex? Bisexuals can have straight sex and gay sex; end of story, right? Wrong! Bisexuals never, ever, have straight sex. Straight sex is sex between a man who is only attracted to women and a woman who is only attracted to men. When one or more bisexuals are involved it’s a whole other deal. Because, bisexuals are also attracted to people who are like themselves.

When you are attracted to people who have similar bodies to yours, you understand so much better what the person you are having sex with is experiencing. You understand their attraction to you and why they find you arousing, and you know what it’s like to experience interacting sexually with a body like your own.

Even though I am a woman who has had sex with men, I can’t imagine what it’s like to have heterosexual sex. If you don’t find your body type a turn on, that has to alter so much the way you experience sexual encounters with people who do. What might that be like? For me it’s easier to imagine what it’s like to canoe down the Amazon, then to imagine having sex with someone whose attractions to my body are a mystery to me.

This is why it’s totally inaccurate to claim that bisexuals have heterosexual sex. The truth is, only the most imaginative among us can even begin to conceive what that might be like.

When two bisexuals have sex together, the experiences of understanding the other’s attractions is doubled. I figure this likely creates a better sexual experience than when one cannot personally relate to their lover’s arousal. But I don’t actually know this, because as a bisexual, I have never in fact had heterosexual sex and thus have no way to compare that to the sexual experiences I have had. Maybe there is something about your lover’s desires for your body being foreign to you that makes sex somehow hotter? I don’t know. As a bisexual, I never could experience the greater joys of - or as the case may be - less hot experience of, or maybe differently but equally arousing experience of, heterosexual sex.

It’s also inaccurate to say that bisexuals have gay sex for the simple reason that they are not gay.  If you have difficulty understanding this, consider the situation when two bisexual women have sex. How can they be having lesbian sex when there are no lesbians involved in the act? Even if there is one lesbian and one bisexual woman, the bisexual is still not having lesbian sex, she is having same-gender sex. Saying it’s gay sex denies her identity, is dishonest about who she is, and erases bisexuality.  

(Editor’s note: The views of this writer are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Gayly editorial staff.)

The Gayly – August 27, 2015 @ 1:30pm.