@>IMPLYING , thank you for posting those excerpts! I should really read that book.
In other words, does anyone else imagine themselves as a "straight" guy doing obviously gay things with other "straight" guys, denying it to the max (they're both boys right?), but gradually succumbing to lust or love? It seems like some cliche forbidden relationship plot point, but I think it could be done sooooo right given the circumstances. Like is that even a kink or is it just some yaoi-like trope?
Because uhh....... I kind of want to be like that. But, I dislike how a lot of gay porn is either really masculine (muscular black men, bara, big dudes, bears) or very feminine (femboys, traps, crossdressers, TS doujins). Twinks and more geeky types are my thing.
Sincerely, A Confused Bisexual
Like how I approach philosophy, with psychology I also employ the same sort of dilution. There might be a lot of truth to something, but given the conclusions are typically decided in advance of evidence/proving precedent, especially when it comes to psychology, the conclusion is typically decided in its most solid state as to not weaken the overall point. Something you disagree with that's being argued as a universal truth doesn't mean the "truth" isn't true, but it can hold
some truth. There's some assessments in the book I think are/can be true, but it's only their universal applicability or how intensely this "addiction" manifests I'm a tad sceptical on, but I digress.
I think there's a sort of baseline people are attracted to universally that's rooted in instinct (fertile/virile-looking "mates") hence the existence of sexuality at all, and a development of individual aesthetic influences what you do or don't find attractive. (So yes, being attracted to "fertile women" i.e. 12-14 year olds still makes you a pedo. It means you developed an aesthetic attraction to extremely young girls, you're not feeling what "nature intended", and if that's the case, go live in a cave somewhere far, far away from the rest of unnatural civilisation)
As for everything after: well, the frankness is appreciated. Assuming you're not a troll, I'll try to answer the "why?"
First off, it depends on the nature of your bisexuality. The traits you're attracted to are usually lifted from the origin of what "awoke" you.
If you're primarily attracted to "twinks"/"Geeky types" are you put it that points to some early teens/high school/college "awakening" for you, assuming it wasn't a porn + tolerance/acclimation = bisexual/homosexual result.
That above equation is a potential sexuality-warping pipeline for some people, but is generally accepted/known about on kiwifarms because it's the commonly accepted cause behind the influx of trannies.
Traps (boy indistinguishable from a girl, even in voice)->Femboys (male who looks female)->Crossdressers (men who dress as female) -> Twinks (less overtly masculine-looking men) is a potential pipeline for avid porn consumers because the exposure sort of builds up their "tolerance" to men in a sexual light*. This is probably the most common reason for the rise of bisexuals amongst the (male) youth since if they watch porn from an early age, and then chance upon certain categories or examples, then it may warp their degree of tolerance/revulsion** for certain things.
Even straight porn exposes you to a man in a sexual light, desensitising you to the sight. There are self-professed male bisexuals who still get revulsed at the sight of two men kissing, which hints towards this, since their acclimation to men sexually came purely as a result of straight porn exposure and then applied with retrospect—that word is important here: retrospect.
Homosexuality can develop "naturally" when it's paired with infrequent or little positive interaction with girls/women. You might see male affection/love/sex*** as being the exact same conceptually as with a woman since you have sparse frames of reference. Physical touch and closeness at younger ages affects people more intensely than older people (more on this in a moment), which can yield immediate change or cause change when viewed in retrospect.
However, if you're applying retrospect on those events rather than it being concurrent, this can pose a potential issue. But like I said above, it's not universally applicable, so I won't jump to any assumptions. As it goes into potentially pedo-sounding territory (if I haven't skirted over it already) I'll drift into an IRL example of what I mean.
The issue your attraction to twinks/"geeks" potentially poses is that the traits you find attractive might be/tend to be heavily associated with the age of those who typically have them. Using a real life example, Stephen Fry discovered his sexuality (gay) in an all boys school. His current husband is 20/30 years younger than him. There's a similarity to the new and old partners which is rather obvious.
That means he carried the general aesthetic appreciation (youth + masculinity/boyish) well into old age. When applied a lack of contact with women + retrospect, he concluded he's gay and always was. Or he had lots of physical closeness, perhaps even of a sexual nature, with other boys in the complete absence of girls**** and thus concluded he was gay at a young age (12-16). Retrospective homosexuals (those who come out of the closet later in life) tend to end up being molesters ala Kevin Spacy in order to vindicate or prove the validity of what they're feeling. However, it's possible he's like other wealthy people, and simply has his pick of the litter so to speak, and opts for younger men.
The "more on this later" from before is the affect of "touch" on younger people. Molested boys usually end up gay because it's how they cope with it—turning a negative experience into a "positive" one. (Milo Yiannopoulos telling people his own molestation/relationship with an older man was a positive experience comes to mind) There's a squeamish scenario of molested young boys growing into men then pairing themselves off with older men because of how that experience has been internalised to them. Or they themselves become the molester of another young boy once they're older because they've coloured that past experience as a positive one. In the book, it makes mention of young men seeking older men to "make up for inexperience" or some tosh, indicating the ultimate harm that comes with spreading the idea that people are "born gay".
The basic trend here you can see here is how heavy a role a particular memory/event plays in shaping someone's sexuality, especially if it affects them at a young age, and how they view it retroactively.
Why you're bisexual:
1) Porn
2) Frequent close physical if not intimate touching with other males while young ((in non-sports contexts) with potentially infrequent or overtly negative female interaction
3) The above, except you are thinking back on those events retroactively, recontextualising them
4) You got molested, and so also the above
The most generous, least harmful circumstance is 2). It's somewhat described in the book here.
Onto the kink/fetish (it's more a trope really)
With stories, there tends to be some degree of immersion/self-insertion on the consumer's part with varying degrees of intensity that depend on the person. A person will either want to:
1, see themselves as a character
2. to be the character
3. empathise with the character
Stories with zero immersion tend not to achieve any of these, since without immersion the main value is spectacle, which still titillates and derives enjoyment. Most stories probably aim for 3, but 1 is aimed for in certain contexts, and 2 is heavily subjective and can sometimes result in real world action (dangerous, funny, or cringe).
1) This is more heavily assumed in the context of a retroactive sexual awakening but can also be a concurrent one. Potentially creepy depending on how strong the wish fulfilment fantasy aspect is. You're viewing your past closeness to another male as being an early sign of your sexuality rather than couched in its non-sexual context. Similarly to Stephen Fry, assuming your older rather than younger, you're carrying your youth-rooted sexual background well into adulthood and so, in a way, fetishize (sexually or non-sexually—it holds great importance to you) that part of your life and that type of story captures the essence of your memory.
Essentially, that potential scenario is a way for you to have a do-over via the characters acting as proxy. A "what could have been" had things turned out differently when you were younger. A chance to re-live a certain time of your life with events going perfectly and in your favour.
Does the attempt to live out this proxy have "you" and another irl person in mind who does not share your sexuality? And both characters who are denying their feelings, and eventually come to accept them, represent you and this other person? And so such a story is effectively a means for you to experience something you never had, but also implicitly paints the other person as a closeted gay IRL and are simply denying it or haven't realised it yet?
Assuming you view that scenario as an echo of your memory, and you're not 2. or 1, from above, then it could simply be 3) in conjunction with your own experiences. You wish to view a (maybe idealised) account of past events with two characters who are going through what you did once.
2) This isn't just exclusive to bi/gay stories but I think such physical closeness without sex or such obvious attraction being called out/realised isn't all that tenable in straight contexts without extremely dense characters or the attraction not surfacing late into the story. This trope does see life in straight romances (
The Proposal lmao) but tends to overstay or simply doesn't make as much sense to go on long as it does if it's the main trope underpinning the romance. The Japanese do this shit all the time, supposedly.
Covertly, and it's a more generous outlook on self-inserting into the story, I think you either
want to or are fond of the idea of such frank affection/love/care before it's realised sexually. In the book, there's one notable part about "married" gay couples that may be applicable here.
In the colloquial "gay society", there's an abundance of sex, but not so much "love" and affection for either men or women.
This can be an issue because there's a potential cadre of homosexual men and women who
want love and affection, but primarily encounter homosexuals who are the way they are due to fetishization in lieu of development. Molested individuals or people exposed to porn or other sexual activity whilst young are more likely to become hypersexual growing, resulting in them seeing sex and affection in a fundamentally different light from everyone else. (I have an anecdotal example below of a relationship between a potential hypersexual and a non-hypersexual)
So your value on such a premise could be rooted in two characters expressing/feeling love and loved
before sexual congress or out loud confessions because it represents a love coming from somewhere deeper in a sense than lust or physical attraction.
3) It's not that deep. You're a male fujo in a sense and simply find it "cute", If young boys or older pre-adult teens expressing affection for one another is a necessary component then that's more than iffy. But it's at a risk of being infinitely regressive, since it can be made with every potential attribute, characteristic, etcetera, that you can think of.
"Liking girls with short hair" is something I've seen used to argue that a man is either homosexual or a paedophile or both on three separate occasions by different people and in earnest believe it or not. ("Short hair makes a girl look boyish" is the basic premise.)
Fact of the matter is I can't come to any conclusion you can consider concrete or exact, but I can point vaguely in the direction of one with some vague correctness. To argue
certainty requires I know
everything, which I don't, and to argue that your counter-argument in fact doesn't exist or actually supports any I can come up with means I'm arguing something designed not to be argued against in the first place, meaning it's a waste of time to try.
* There's this 40+ lesbian who I inexplicably became acquainted with. She despises trannies but most profound was her hatred of black people, men specifically. (She shared with me the "Shape store" video/tweet before it appeared on here so I trust she has the vein on this sort of thing). I bring her up because if there's retrospective appreciation that can development certain paraphilias/kinks/fetishes/sexualities in people, it's also possible there's
revulsion-based sexuality, where disgust for a certain thing affects you. Similar to a phobia but not as intense. It doesn't logically track for everything, it makes sort've sense that a man is so revulsed by another man in a sexual context he doesn't even entertain the idea, Similarly a man/woman may hate the opposite sex so much they became gay as a result, or a boy molested by a grown woman could end up gay consequently.
I haven't dwelt on it for long enough to put more thought into it. Basically: I found it funny that a woman could hate black men so much, that she ended up a lesbian—just to increase her odds of never interacting with them.
**I've known a homosexual couple where one was fairly conservative by gay standards and the other was far more liberal.
The relationship, last I heard, had a rough patch because the liberal wanted to open the relationship or bring in a 3rd but the conservative didn't.
Just like I would if it were a straight relationship, I would personally advise the other person to break it off just like I would if my SO suggested it, but I digress. Regardless of whether you're a homosexual/bisexual, or heterosexual,
never have lust act as inertia for a relationship, just as a rule. It could work out but it probably won't. Goes doubly for homosexuals since lust tends to spiral into degenerate behaviours.
***
Reinforcement and continued self-exposure can intensify their fixation on various components of a fetish/kink given the actual part they get their rocks off to. This might escalate from traps/crossdressers to fetishist self-emasculators for instance, or the male aspect becomes the part which is intensified, giving way (potentially) to more masculine forms of men over time. People will cope and apply in retrospect something that was ultimately the result of porn, much the same way homosexuals were molested at a young age argue their homosexuality was coincidental to that happening to them, or an autogynephilic transgender argues the same for their porn consumption and their current identity. The Wachowskis are a famous pair of trans brothers who both infamously shared the same dominatrix. One theme of domination is emasculation, meaning if that became the focal point of their kink, it further intensified to the point they enjoyed the idea of not being a man. There's also the auto-erotic component, where sexual deviants may try to bring "fantasy" into "reality" the best way they can, a sexual self-delusion you can see in the likes of the Bjork stalker.
As for other paraphilias, there's some psychological root to be sure but there's likely not a universal one, nor can any be considered "normal". Some of them might have mundane origins within you that aren't really considered. They all sound vaguely pedo in my head when considered, but the most mundane one I think of is diaper fetishists wearing nappies well into memory i.e. wearing diapers up to the age of 4, having only vaguely happy memories of being that age, and so associate "diapers" with "positive feelings" and so on in retrospect. It really does depend on the individual though.
****One could argue against the existence of and for the crackdown on bullying because it can make boys and girls end up gay. Ostracising them from the opposite sex could lead to them placing so much value on their few same-sex friends (if they have any) that they translate those feelings either concurrently or in retrospect to same-sex attraction. And potentially ostracising them or forcing them into isolation from the opposite sex during a time in their life when that exposure is pivotal will guarantee they won't make it out the other end "normal" if they continue to have no interactions with the opposite sex.
