Two-thirds of straight women and one-third of straight men are unwilling to date a bisexual person of the opposite sex, according to a YouGov poll published today, during Bisexuality Visibility Week. The poll illustrates how lingering stereotypes negatively affect people’s impressions of bisexual individuals.
The poll — which surveyed 5,983 Britons during late March, including 2,031 straight women and 1,517 straight men — found that 48% of all respondents had positive views of bisexual people and only 8% had negative views. The remaining percentage had neither a positive nor a negative view of bisexuals.
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When the survey asked straight women and men why they were unwilling to date a bisexual person of the opposite sex, most (16% and 19%, respectively) said they “just don’t” or claimed, “It’s just a preference.”
A nearly similar portion, 17% of straight women and 16% of straight men, said they felt like bi people are more inclined to cheat, or that they themselves would feel insecure that they’d be unable to provide a bi partner whatever they get from a same-sex partner.
Interestingly, 9% of straight women said they feel disgust or discomfort towards men with same-sex experiences, 8% worried about possible sexual health risks, and 10% of straight men said they considered bisexuality to be either religiously or morally “wrong.” Approximately 12-13% of all straight respondents said they just wanted their dating partner to be heterosexual.
And they, too, are engaging in biphobia with that logic.
Not sure that’s how a “phobia” works.
Sociology concepts named “something-phobia” are not the same thing as the similarly named concepts (classified in the “phobia” family) in psychology and psychatry.
Usually, meaning can vary with context. The discussed field in such a context.
So what you’re saying is that enough people couldn’t care less for the actual meaning of the word that we’re all now supposed to accept it. Gotcha.
“Chocolatine”, “pain au chocalat”, “croissant au chocolat”, ou “petit pain”? (Edit to answer: all are valid, it is simply a regional dialect thing.) Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? (Edit to answer: it depends on the field. A vegetable in gastronomy, a fruit in biology, where “vegetable” doesn’t even exist.)
Your interventions on the topic of biphobia are as valuable as these pseudo-debates. Keep your language normative freezing for your own expression, instead of policing the language of other people, and diverting from the heart of the discussed topic (again, biphobia).
EDIT: and I will not engage with you anymore.
Removed by mod
Your submission in “Most straight women don’t want to date bi guys, but most straight men are open to bi women” was removed for Shit-stirring.
If someone meant something in particular by the words they used, your preference for different word definitions/usage does not change what they meant. So yeah, accepting that people mean what they mean is good, because the options are just understanding or not understanding.
Well yeah, that’s how semantic drift happens and it only seems weird because you’re thinking about it,so much of the core of our language exists because of historic examples just like this.
Except that this is not some new meaning or word. It’s just misuse.
Bi-phobia encompasses negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours towards bisexual individuals. It manifests in various forms, including erasure of bisexuality, stereotyping, harassment, and exclusion. This prejudice often stems from misconceptions and societal stigmas surrounding non-monosexual orientations.
Exactly, negative attitudes. Being polyamorous, liking threesomes or being promiscuous is not a negative thing, it’s just a preference. Hence why this is just simple prejudice, not “biphobia”.
Encompasses negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors towards bisexual individuals.
negative
I know it’s just one word but it’s not that hard to miss.
That’s one part of the sentence, not the whole thing.
Almost like languages change over time, amiright?
Doth thou jest with me?
It’s biphobic to assume that bisexual women all want threesomes.
We can debate about if there’s a better word for leaning into harmful stereotypes of bisexual people, but the closest term we have currently is biphobia.
would downvote if i could. potustheplant didn’t say that “all women want threesomes”, only that some men hope that some women want threesomes.
His argument is that it isn’t biphobia to assume bisexual women want threesomes because “phobia” means fear of.
Those men are being biphobic if they are dating a bisexual person with the express interest of them being a sex doll willing to do threesomes with them because of their sexual orientation.
Those men in the example are also misogynistic at the same time.
Nothing surprising, since different kinds of scorns, hates, discriminations, etc often come together.
According to some of these comments, it’s not discriminatory as long as it’s a man desiring his partner to perform threesomes because it’s positive discrimination or some shit like that.
From what I know of the word “discrimination”, potustheplant probably is pedantic about one specific definition of this word, which is the legalese one in some places : take the #2 definition in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/discrimination, then require that the author is a company or an administration (or any of their representatives).
I looked at their post history, and they seem to often post condescending comments.
Anyway, when responding to a critic of harmful behaviours, one should not forcefully displace the focus from said harmful behaviours to the pedantics of the vocabulary used to describe them. That’s just a diversion tactic to avoid discussing the subject’s core. Those who do it, like potustheplant : cease !
That’s stereotyping or prejudice. Phobia (in its origin) means fear or dread. Maybe prejudice too but specifically in a negative way (no, prejudice doesn’t always have a negative connotation).
If prejudice doesn’t always have a negative connotation, then the assumption that all bisexual women are into threesomes still falls under ‘biphobia’.
When referring to phobia yes, it does have a negative connotation. Use it however you want I guess. People misuse words all the time.
When does a use different from the most ancient one stop being called a “misuse”? Especially talking about not a word, but its etymology?
Pretty sure a significant quantity of the words you use were at some point described as “misuses”, “mistakes”, or something similar.
I say that as someone who hates seeing/hearing scandals be called “something-gate” in reference to Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Same with “something-ception” in reference to the movie Inception. So I understand the feeling, but this kind of take mostly contribute to elitism.
What matters most in any language is the ability to communicate, not the conformity to a (potentially idealised) static snapshot of the language rules.
Well, in this case we already have a word with a prefectly appropriate meaning. Misuing a different word is kinda dumb but ok.
“Well, in this case we already have a word with a prefectly appropriate meaning.”
For the common meaning of “biphobia”? Which preexisting word is perfectly appropriate to describe the exact same concept that the word “biphobia” was coined for?
Yeah, it’s biphobia.
Word meanings also evolve over time and usage. They’re not static.
I mean if you’re consistently wrong then yeah, I guess. Doesn’t make you any less wrong though.
I’m so glad you came into this discussion to be pedantic about the kind of discrimination bisexual people go through. Good job, buddy.