Bisexuality

January 1st, 2013
gender
We treat sexual orientation as categorical in a way that we don't treat other mate preferences. If Pat is most strongly attracted to mid-30s atheist Greek-American men who are witty and good swing dancers, one of these is a sexual orientation while the others are just "turn ons" or "having a type". Our expectation is that if Pat met someone who was perfect in all other ways except that they were female that would be a absolute deal breaker in a way that being the wrong age would not be. Being the wrong race or ethnic group might be -10 points but being the wrong gender is something like -10,000. Why is gender preference special? Is this just cultural? Should we stop? In the ideal future is everyone bisexual?

(I can imagine a society where the idea of being attracted to people of a different race/caste is like being gay in our society. Do any like that actually exist?)

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Microfictions 2

A few more microfictions, still no LLMs.

via Evan Fields August 7, 2026

Linkpost for August

Announcement: for the next while, I’ll be writing the Effective Altruism Newsletter!

via Thing of Things August 6, 2026

Using AI to analyze life patterns

If you’re anything like me, you may have a lot of notes from various introspective activities – annual / monthly reviews, worksheets, therapy notes, etc. Often these notes are just gathering dust in a paper folder or some forgotten corner of Google Drive.…

via Victoria Krakovna July 30, 2026

more     (via openring)