Incidence
The incidence of bisexuality in American men and women is currently unknown. Except among those who constitute a community of bisexual interest, bisexuality is stigmatized by society and the law. Many people cannot, therefore, overtly admit their bisexuality, even if it occurs only in imagination. Others are not so inhibited, but are among those who can actually practice bisexuality, though only when the homosexual component of their bisexuality is situationally evoked—as among teenaged boys reared in a neighborhood in which hustling with older homosexual teenagers or young men is an acknowledged source of spending money, quite independently of affairs with girlfriends— or among men and women who are able to be homosexual while in sex-segregated jails, camps, or schools, but are heterosexual once released.
In some ethnographically reported societies, sequential bisexuality is a universally prescribed way of life. That is to say, young people at puberty and adolescence are sex-segregated and expected to interact homosexually together until, in young adulthood, their families can negotiate a bride price. After the marriage, the predominant and usually exclusive form of sexual expression is heterosexual.
In America today, optional bisexuality among consenting adults is openly discussed as la viable and legal life style. In consequence, an increasing number of people admit their bisexuality. Some may also dare to express it for the first time. There is no evidence, however, that social permissiveness regarding erotic expression actually increases bisexuality. If such were the case, permissiveness would have to encourage a bisexual differentiation of gender identity/role from infancy onward. In actual fact, permissiveness in the spontaneous sexual rehearsal play of infancy and childhood, and permissiveness in sex education, appear to encourage the differentiation of a heterosexual gender identity.
Etiology
The etiology or developmental differentiation of bisexuality follows the same general principles as apply to homosexuality. The evidence from embryonic anatomy and neuroanatomy is that nature’s primary plan is to differentiate a female. Whereas the female pattern differentiates because the male pattern is not activated by something added (the Adam principle), the male pattern is differentiated by the active suppression of the female pattern. For bisexual behavior, one may speculate on the basis of animal experiments, that the female more than the male retains some of the original bisexual potential. The male, by contrast, may become either totally masculinized or only partially so. If this speculation is correct, then it is easier for women than men selected at random to enter into a casual bisexual encounter—for example at a swinging, group-sex party. Some men will be impotent and erotically unable to respond to any stimulus from a person of the same sex. Others will be erotically versatile with both sexes. There is no known single determining factor, prenatal or postnatal, that leads to the differentiation of a potentially bisexual erotic component in the gender identity/role. The first bisexual experience may be preceded by bi-erotic fantasy and desire, a decision for sexual experiments, a change of sexual politics as in the women’s movement, an awareness and admittance of previously covert bisexual orientation, or an alleviation of some traditional taboos among members of the “swinging” and “group sex” subculture.
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