Being a bisexual man is a strange experience. On the one hand we’re like day walkers, able to blend in with (or, to put it blunt, metaphorically fuck) gay/bi men or straight/bi girls. And that aspect is awesome. In the same breath, as of now there isn’t even consensus bisexual dudes exist.

A quick search of Google news’ results for “bisexual male” will bring up plenty of studies done to test if male bisexuality is a possibility. One that I remember reading taped a sensor to dudes’ dongs and told them to watch gay and straight porn. The premise was that if men who claimed to be bisexual watched porn ‘it would move’ for both. Check television and we had one dude on Game of Thrones and a few on True Blood. In movies the bisexual love interest is never a good thing. Ever. It’s either someone who’s lying, oversexed, or maybe if you’re really lucky spreading AIDS from the gay community to the straights. That is a real thing bisexual men were blamed for, too, so that’s great.

If you check historically there were a smattering of rock stars, most notably Freddie Mercury (who relentlessly shrugged labels and probably doesn’t count), and… not much else, if we’re being honest here. Most recently some have pegged Frank Ocean as bisexual after he admitted to having loved a man. As an aside, it was surreal and heartwarming to watch Tyler The Creator, who uses the word “faggot” like a chef uses salt, have Frank’s back at every opportunity. The word may make me cringe, but I will always take that sentiment. 

The rarity of gay and especially bisexual men is strange, because studies have reported up to 11.6% of the male population of the United States being bisexual, a perfect 3 on the Kinsey Scale (to say nothing of all the 1’s, 2’s, 4’s, and 5’s who are potentially bisexual). The Kinsey Scale, for those of you who don’t know, is a scale of 0-6, with each number corresponding with a general sexuality. A zero is perfectly straight, a one is someone who would only ever be “incidentally homosexual”, a two is someone who is slightly more inclined to homosexuality than that, a three is perfectly bisexual, and then a 4 is someone mostly homosexual but more than incidentally homosexual, and so on and so on. You’ll notice that for the majority of numbers the potential to be bisexual exists, and for the 2-4’s you could probably fairly say that they are bisexual. Bisexuality doesn’t require an equal attraction to both genders, just that you identify as willing to have sex with both genders. The study that Kinsey Scale is based on maintains that sexuality is fluid, and people tend to bounce around numbers to a degree through life. Though, in fairness of full disclosure, an awful lot of that study included prisoners and male prostitutes, so it is likely biased towards more open people, sexually speaking. With that said, most of the Kinsey Scale is not occupied by the exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. But then you look and see no one who actually lives this, at least not as a man.

Female bisexuals have other erasure problems, mostly linked to their over sexualization, but at least they exist in popular culture. Because I can tell you, unlike some (looking directly at you, Dan Savage, fight me) have implied, there is a population of men who are attracted to both genders. I would know. I am one. I have had sex with woman, I’ve enjoyed it, and I’m certain I’m not just a closeted gay man.

In the same breath I know, in the same way a straight kid knew he liked girls before he ever had sex with one, that I am attracted to men too. In crude terms “it will move” when I see a hot guy. I just wish I knew about anyone else like me. I’m getting pretty tired of feeling like a freak.