MrE β¦. I think you and I interacted briefly in my thread about "pretty twinks" and Frank Wolf. I can't believe I missed this thread of yours, because it speaks to me!
Look at my avatar, and I think you'll have the answer about me. I do hate labels ... for a long time, I felt uneasy about revealing what I really am to either gay or straight people, because the few times I had tried when I was young and naive (and believe me, I've had a difficult time "choosing" a gender to be attracted to since my very first grade school crushes) ... I always met with confusion, resistance, and even (especially in the gay community) outright hostility. I eventually learned that most gay people (and a lot of straight people) have known at least one guy that at one point used the "bisexual" label as a sort of stepping stone on their personal path of coming to identify as 100% gay. Unfortunately, it has also been my experience that this fact has lead a lot of people to draw blanket conclusions and assume that any male that claims an attraction to both sexes is "lying" or "in denial." Β I mean, we've all heard of that biased, bogus study that _**"PROVED" that there was no such thing as a bisexual man, right?
I actually just now tried to find an old Family Guy joke I remembered, where some random character desperately tried to assert that there was a big difference between a "gay" guy and a bisexual guy. I couldn't find it β¦ but it always did speak to me. I know that kind of desperation. There's a kind of identity crisis that people with a strong enough preference to pick a side can never understand, when it comes to that. They rarely have to face accusations that they don't even exist. Β :afr:
As I got into my late twenties, I started to realize that even "bisexual" was a label created by a society that obsessed with putting people into little, neat, categorical boxes. I'm very much with you -- I like a person, not a gender. I do like different things in men and women on a superficial level, and I imagine different things with them sexually when I fantasize, and have done different things with them when I've been with them ... but all the same, I can work in that range and find myself pretty open to adapting.
My sexuality is absolutely fluid. I've only realized this very recently, within the last couple of years or so, because I was also obsessed with finding the best label to put on myself. At the end of the day, though, as I fluxuated between attractions to someone of on one gender, then someone from the opposite ... I realized that I was nothing more than a completely blank slate. I tend to be most attracted to whatever gender that represents THE PERSON that I'm most attracted to in that point in my life. We all have these little mini-crushes that mean little, I think ... but in my singleness, they can actually influence the kind of stuff I jerk off to.
I like a person first ... and of course, like any man, I like sex ... but the details of the kind of sex to have with that person generally follows my attraction to the person. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's how I feel. Β
I've found that many people are surprised to learn that all of that fluidity doesn't necessarily mean that I want to fuck around with anything and everything. My ideal of a "good" relationship is monogamy. I'm a romantic softy! It's just that I want the human being, not necessarily the details of how we fit together physically ... and as I can find both genders beautiful, it's pretty easy for me to adapt my sexual role to fit.
I generally like to see myself in a dominant, masculine role at least 70-80% of the time, though, male or female partner. I'd be curious to know how many men there are out there like myself and MrE ... I think there are for more than will admit it. Society's pressure to "pick a side" has claimed so many of us. :-(**_