Accounting for margin of error it may be more accurate to say there are roughly equal numbers of self-identified gay and bisexual men. Even still, this looks very little like the trend for women and would seem to go against the common idea of how people are distributed along the sexuality spectrum. Why do you guys think this might be?
Source is a Gallup poll from 2021. You can find their write up here: https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx
It’s not just a problem with our community being unaccepting or calling us fence sitters. Most men will not identify as bisexual due to the much different overt homophobia that men deal with imo (not to diminish hate against women which is a big problem).
I’ll give examples. Guys will often be perfectly fine dating a bisexual woman and tend to think that they’re more adventurous or that it’s more attractive because they fetishize lesbianism. Whereas with women, women just assume all sorts of stuff and tend to not want to date you if you’re a bisexual guy. They’ll think that being gay is gross, that you’ll cheat on them, that maybe you were submissive (gasp), etc.
At the end of the day, they’ll say they aren’t homophobic and support lgbt issues as an ally but the moment a bisexual man wants to date them it makes them uncomfortable. This makes me want to hide who they are.
I think it’s similar for a lot of bi men too when their family gets involved. A lot of toxic masculinity means that if you can choose to identify as straight and hide it, you might as well.
Yeah. I feel like I left a lot of this unsaid in my comment that I meant to say, so thank you for expanding. Heteronormative people just see us as icky and gay. So bi men are incentivized to lie to themselves to get through the day. I think a lot about the conservatives who talk about how you must not let yourself fall into the temptation of gay stuff and its kinda like… It seems like if they admited they wanted to get dicked down, and then got dicked down, the world would be a better place
I should also mention that the other dominate force is misogyny. It’s the icky part you’re alluding to.