Bisexuality and its Possibilities as a way of Life

by John Burnside

In Dr. Kinsey's monumental work on that complicated and fascinating animal, the human male, we find over 5,000 men from all walks of life counted and classified according to their preferences in that most secret and intimate aspect of life, sexual behavior. Six varieties of sexual expression are distinguished by Dr. Kinsey as peculiar to the activities of his specimens, and we learn that not just a few of the male population engage regularly in two kinds of these. The two classes found most often together in the same person are the heterosexual and the homosexual. This means, to quote Dr. Kinsey, that ". . . many males combine in their single histories, very often in exactly the same period of time, or even simultaneously in the same moment, reactions to both heterosexual and homosexual stimuli."

What is astonishing is the number of men involved: the study shows that 50% of the male population is exclusively heterosexual and 4% exclusively homosexual. Hence the number who have psychic reactions or overt sexual activity with both men and women is 46 out of 100 on the average of the men that you pass on the street.

Most of us are so accustomed to dividing people sexually into three kinds heterosexuals, homosexuals, and those puzzling bisexuals that we are a little unprepared for Dr. Kinsey's careful, scientific method of classification. For him, there are five degrees of bisexual behavior, in a range from those who are only incidentally homosexual in their experiences to those who are only incidentally heterosexual. If we take adults only, and restrict the number to those who, for a period of at least three years in their lives, have had more than incidental and passing experiences with partners of both sexes, we find that some 10% of the men of our society are left in the class of those who must be regarded as thoroughly "bisexual" in their choice of partners. You will find all this fully discussed on page 655 of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

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Thus, one man in every ten, on the average, fills the bill so far as our ordinary idea of the bisexual is concerned. This leaves the remainder of the 46% about one man in three of the population unaccounted for. We are compelled to accept the fact that very many men indeed are partly bisexual. Perhaps the word "deviant" could be applied to this group in a sense that is more accurate and appropriate than the common use of this term.

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