Excellent that bisexuality is being noticed. Because there are only two sexes - Stonewall's comment in the linked BBC article is so disingenuous

[bellinisurge]

Bisexuality more visible but 'work to do' on safety www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63121245

Here our good friends at stonewall are pretending that they believe there are only two sexes.
Instead of saying people are sexual racists for acknowledging this .

"When asked about which sex they are attracted to, without labels like "straight", "gay" or "bi", just 66% of people in the study said they were only attracted to people of the opposite sex."

What a lovely clear question. V different to their redefining of being gay to "same gender attraction" in their usual communications....

"In terms of gender identity, fewer than 3% who took part identified as transgender or as non-binary."

This absolutely baffles me too.

Why on earth has everyone's use of language had to completely change to accommodate such a tiny minority of people? Why are articles, adverts, communications, product packaging, questionnaires, forms etc ALL changing to be "more inclusive" of less than 3% of the population when vast numbers of people are made to feel less comfortable or more excluded? What is it about that tiny number of people that means their needs and wants absolutely trump everyone else's?

I would be really interested to know what other population groups match this one for size and how much accomodation is made for them?

It's almost as if Stonewall have been reminded of the existence of LGB people because of the creation of an alternative charity, and have commissioned a largely pointless but media-friendly survey so they can claim to their donors that Stonewall still works on LGB rights.

(And that is not to say that I think that the needs and requirements of certain groups should be ignored at all, even if they are a tiny group by number. I wholeheartedly believe all groups should have their individual needs considered and accommodated where possible. But it is really interesting to see that some minority groups have so much more success in being heard and effecting change than others, and I'd love to understand why that is.)

Delighted that people are comfortable enough with themselves to wonder or decide they are bisexual. Particularly younger people. That's all grand as far I'm concerned. But Stonewall is clearly trying to rebrand themselves back to what they were set up for. I remember reading some bs of theirs or Pink News which said that bisexual was an old fashioned term and really they are pansexual. Doesn't that LibDem dolt Layla Moran call herself pansexual. We don't forget what shit you were spraying around before.

They can see what way the wind is blowing and want to keep the money coming in. Its my opinion that this is why they pulled out of the case against LGBA.

Stonewal et al have taken in recent years to using 'bi' instead of 'bisexual'.

I remember reading some bs of theirs or Pink News which said that bisexual was an old fashioned term and really they are pansexual

So why haven't they changed it to LPGTQ++++?

Yes, checking the article, Nancy only uses 'bi', never 'bisexual'.

'"Bisexuality is a real identity, it's not being half gay, half straight."'

How's it an identity? Really, why is everything turned into an identity? It's who you feel attraction to. Not necessarily an identity. What even is an identity, anyway?

This was my first thought.

Nancy can say "bi" as much as she likes because it means bisexual. She can't try and argue it means bigender because that suggests there are only two genders.
And the article very clearly says BISEXUAL. Which means any reader might wonder what all the other bollocks is. Or, to quote Belissa Cohen, everything to the right of LGB is straight people. Unless they are also lesbian, gay or bisexual when they are ... whatever the fuck TQ+ means.

The mad thing is that Stonewall has essentially been saying since 2015 that exclusively same sex attracted people MUST also be opposite sex attracted. This is what happens when you pretend humans can change sex!

I don't mind the use of the word bi and a shorthand for bisexual. Just as straight is means heterosexual and gay means homosexual. When I first talked to DS about sexualities, I talked in terms of 'falling in love' rather than about sexual attraction. Tbh, he's 9, so I still don't tend to talk about sexual attraction with him. I use gay, straight and bi, when talking to him about it as I think it's better than having to use the word sexual. I think that it's also useful to have a word that doesn't have the word sex/sexual in it when talking to co-workers of family members about our orientation or relationships. I don't want to inadvertently make people think about me having sex or describe myself as '----sexual' in general conversation.

Note the definition in the Stonewall report:

The prefix pan- means “all”, so pansexuality is an attraction to all gender identities or attraction regardless of gender identity, while bisexuality is the attraction to multiple gender identities.

Oh BBC, have you misrepresented the report??

Bisexual (as with all sexual orientations) is WHAT you are not WHO you are.

Although now I'm finding that a lot of people who think they're bisexual when they're not. I see this in a lot of autistic individuals, they think that just because you can tell the difference between an attractive individual and an unattractive individual that that is indicative of sexual attraction, also I've seen "my (opposite sex) partner says they don't have a gender, therefore that must make me bisexual".

I reckon if the survey (which being Stonewall will be deliberately skewed to get higher numbers) was to ask "would you consider a sexual relationship with either sex" the numbers would be a lot lower than "are you bi?".

But ... if you're talking about being bisexual, you're talking about your sexuality.

I actually think too much avoidance of the word 'sex' can potentially lead to fudged boundaries and some of the issues we're seeing with 'gender' being misused where people actually mean 'sex'.

Not sure why my statement contradicts your view @TheStoop . Of course there are only to sexes and bisexual means you can be attracted to someone from either sex.

This is a big issue with a lot of the thinking by groups like SW. Partly it's happened because there are lots of people who are gay or lesbian who do think of their sexuality as an identity more than as just who you happen to be attracted to. And groups like SW, or Pride groups, tend to be dominated by those people.

People who are same sex attracted but don't see it as an identity at all don't often spend as much time in activism, or getting involved in social groups relating to sexuality, etc.

But 9 times out of 10, when you see things that activist groups do that seem kind of odd somehow, it comes from a place where they are seeing the identity element as the main thing, and the sexual attraction part as almost a supporting part of that. From education of young people to bringing your whole self to work to the way Pride month works to drag queen contests for youth, it's all about shoring up and shaping identity.

Although now I'm finding that a lot of people who think they're bisexual when they're not. I see this in a lot of autistic individuals, they think that just because you can tell the difference between an attractive individual and an unattractive individual that that is indicative of sexual attraction, also I've seen "my (opposite sex) partner says they don't have a gender, therefore that must make me bisexual".

Yeah, I think this is true. And also younger people (early teens) seem to be a little confused about it along similar lines. I also think where you have younger people especially who aren't sexually active, and they see very attractive movie starts, or explicit material in films, or porn, and it's arousing, that often does not really correspond to adult sexuality in a clear way. So you have a teen girl maybe watching porn that involves women and finding it arousing, but really it's because porn is designed to push certain buttons.

Finding a young movie star sexually attractive at some level is not the same as being potentially interested in a regular middle aged woman later in life, if that makes sense? In the same way that your average straight woman is often interested in your average straight man, even if he is not young and hot.

I really think this is part of the reason so any more young people tend to identify as bi-sexual but later it falls by the wayside.

On the other side of it though, there are some older people who kind of wilfully ignore their bisexuality and focus completely on their opposite sex attraction for decades. Then at some point in their late 30 or 40s/50s get hit with it. Either through an attraction to a person of the same sex or just eventually realising that they don't just find other women aesthetically attractive but are actually feeling attraction.

You'll see it quite a bit in the sex and relationships forums here. I do wonder if there is a biological mechanism that makes it a relatively common thing for bisexual women to subconsciously ignore their attraction to other women until after they have had children/peri-menopause.

Gay men and lesbians will use the words gay and lesbian far more than homosexual. Straight people tend to say straight in general conversation rather than heterosexual. And bi is the equivalent of that. There is a time for specifying the type of -sexual that you are with the specific word sexual, but most of the time people really do have a preference for gay, lesbian and straight. Yet bisexuals, who already have a stereotype of being over-sexed, are the ones who are expected to never have a preference for a word without sexual in it. We should either all be expected to use --sexual all the time or we should all have a commonly understood alternative.

Who are you attracted to is a good question for making it look as if being bisexuality is 1/3 of the population.

I have found men and women attractive. Have I done anything about women, except for saying a female celebrity is hot? No I have not.

I don't think this qualifies me as bi.

That was not meant to be struck through. My use of --- caught me.

Maybe? Or I suppose there are a ton of hormonal changes during that period, and maybe they account for it sometimes. I found menopause quite the opposite experience, my interest in men because a lot more like I suspect men's interest in women is often experienced, but it was undoubtedly a significant change in perception on my part. Or some people are looking for very different things at that point, in terms of the relationship part especially.

I think there is actually quite a lot of reason to think that sexuality isn't nearly as fixed as has been accepted in recent decades. Not that it's totally amorphous either, but it can evolve over time, and it clearly is experienced very differently where it's perceived differently by culture too. And people's reasons for forming relationships are often as much about things like family life as about anything else, which is a lot more straightforward in a heterosexual relationship. I know gay men who in middle age still regret not being able to have kids, enough so that they might have opted out if that had been workable for them. And women are often more interested in kids overall.