Are aspies more likely to be bisexual?

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I'm asexual but biromantic. To be honest, I don't think there's any more autistic bisexuals than there are neurotypical bisexuals. A person's choices are a person's choices. Choices are based on experiences and personal preference/bias.

nobody can deny tht bisexuality is "trendy" among teens. girls especially but its just for attention. it doesnt bother me tht they're doing it, but it bothers me tht they do it for attention. being someone theyre not. eh it dont matter. their love life. i think it mite b more in aspies due to our lack of exposure to the world will make us more prone to being "anti-traditional"

I thought I was in high school but I was just too open-minded? I could never do that but am very supportive of gay "issues" or whatever.

On the "bisexuality is trendy" topic: Please keep in mind that among certain teens and young adults, other things are also considered trendy, including but not limited to eating disorders and mental conditions. You can't make a rule based on people who are trying to establish who they are by experimenting with different personalities. You have to overlook that percentage of people in favor of considering individuals who are established and secure.

im sorry i didnt specify. its just a small group of ppl. ppl who go around flaunting it for attenion or out of desperation. im sorry if ive offended anyone but thts not the message i was trying to get across

There was nothing offensive in what you said. I just wanted to toss out that disclaimer since it's become a well-discussed element in this thread that many have had strong opinions about. And nobody is wrong in their opinions. You can go to Livejournal.com and see dozens upon dozens of people self-identifying with a bunch of things that you just know they don't have. They want attention. They want to seem interesting. They see themselves, as they understand themselves, to be boring. So, despite negative or skeptical opinions about these types of people being justified, I don't want it to become an understood part of what we conceptualize as bisexuality.

Then there's situations like with Drew Barrymore. She stated in an interview (over ten years ago) that she went through "a bi phase" and was "over it". A bunch of people got upset about this because her statement carries the implication that bisexuality is just a phase that people get over. For Barrymore's self, it was a phase and she did outgrow it. She wasn't trying to speak for anyone besides herself. Sexuality is so personal that we can't draw absolutes... despite that the purpose of this thread is to draw some absolutes and form statistics based on it.

I am bisexual but I think mostly out of confusement with socialness in general. I have had straight and lesbian sex. I don't find either very easy but that's just me with everything and everyone!

Happily bi, but also monogamous. My mate is the same. (I think there is a big cultural misunderstanding that being open to both means you necessarily need both at the same time, and so you can't be monogamous.)

As I look at sexuality, I don't accept 'straight' to be the default 'healthy program' in a person. Also, I don't accept that gays are simply born gay.

(I think some attention has to be given to de-constructing that argument, as it's become a gay battle-cry of sorts. I think gays were actually forced to take on the genetic predisposition argument for political expediency, to deflect nasty Stonewall-era rhetoric about them being willful sinners. Sure, it deflected the rhetoric, but it has turned a debate about rights into one of evading culpability for what the Right describes as evil actions. So we have allowed value to be taken away from our choices of who to love and how to love them, corrupting gay sexuality into some sort of imperative, derived from a genetic defect that forces us to sin. My genes are not defective, and my love is a choice, not a sin.)

No, I think we are born with the capacity to love others regardless of gender, and to be attracted by any number of things in our environment, and that we make conscious decisions on how to act on those drives; we are not simply puppets. There is a large amount of socialization that directs us to express these drives toward members of the "right" species, age group, social class, ethnicity, and apparent sex... rather than shoes or diapers or cartoon characters. Obviously, interesting things can happen in this socialization that yields variations. Although this identity is still a bit flexible down the road, it becomes pretty firmly entrenched. So I can see how a person might consider their sexuality genetic, due to its apparent permanence.

I'm pretty sure that if humans were raised without any socialization, they would be much more indiscriminate about their partners. Dogs can form a similarly deep affection for furniture and guests' legs until they meet with a rolled-up newspaper or spray bottle. I'm sure wolves learn appropriate targets from their pack as they grow up. Really, if people would speak more in terms of the choices they are making, instead of what their genes (or jeans) are telling them to do... it'd be better all around.

I am not bisexual, no way, mate!! !

Although I've been a tomboy all my life, I will have love feelings for men. I always will.

Sorry to quote from way back, but I thought it was pretty interesting...

BBC article: Male sex hormone testosterone 'interferes with empathy'

I know people give hundreds of reasons for why people get ASDs, but I thought this followed from your point - it says the standard 'men get it more than women' but also talks about how women with high testosterone are more likely to be on the spectrum. Maybe that's something to do with the 'androgyny' in women? And if so, would high testosterone make a woman more likely to be bisexual?

As an aspie bi woman myself, I think this is interesting because I do have a standard 'male finger' from testosterone (where your ring finger is longer than your index finger) but I don't think of myself as particularly androgynous.

I think that we make a mistake when we lump together sex characteristics, social sex roles and behaviours and sexual orientation. The three are interlinked, certainly, but a variation in one does not necessitate a variation in all three. More importantly, the causes of a variation in one are not necessarily the cause of a variation in another.

Certainly hormone balance in utero affects fetal development--that's axiomatic. Sex hormones affect human behaviour--equally true.

But to suggest that the same differences in hormone balance could be responsible for differential development of the hippocampus, of finger length, of sex role behaviour and of sexual orientation seems to me to be uncritical.

But steering back to the original question, I subscribe to a view that the general tendency for Aspies to be more socially isolated also creates a disconnect for teen and young adult aspies from social conditioning. Differences from typical sexual orientation may be viewed much more objectively by Aspie youth than by NT youth. Indeed, I suspect that for many Aspie youth who are undiagnosed, they may ascribe their social isolation to their sexual orientation, rather than to other reasons (that was most certainly the case for me).

But...not all Aspies are bisexual, right? I've just checked my fingers and my ring finger is shorter than my index finger and middle finger. Yes. And I never have feelings for women - not like I do men. I go about the normal behaviour of females with other females. Us females are very critical of eachother, and we also admire eachother too, but that doesn't make us lesbians - no way. I often hear the other females in my family talking about different size breasts on different women they know, and they also take a lot of notice of eachother's body size and figure. That's not homosexuality - that is normal. I have strong feelings for men, but they are completely different to what I have with my female friends. With females I just have friendship feelings. But I could never fancy a woman, or have any sexual feelings for them, even if someone was really beautiful. I might say, ''she's pretty'', or even, ''she's beautiful''. But no feelings are there like they are for men. I think it's childish to call someone a lesbian just because they say a woman is beautiful.

Am I the only Aspie who is not bisexual?

Last edited by Joe90 on 10 Apr 2011, 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

No. I am exactly the same as this only I'm male.

I think it's just that Aspies are more likely to be honest with themselves about who they really are instead of who they ought to be. This doesn't make them more likely to be bisexual, it just makes them more likely to understand what bisexual is. For every Senator caught sending e-mails, there are probably 10 more who don't get caught. I think other people gave an answer of this variety.

Im bisexual I prefer women though I will have sex with men I just will not date them

Interesting discussion. I'm not sure if I would say that Aspies are more likely to be bisexual but at the same time, I'm completely not surprised by the amount of bi threads here. One poster mentioned the Kinsey study, which found that very few people are completely gay or completely straight so on that level, it seems that there wouldn't necessarily be a correlation between autism and bisexuality. But at the same time, from what I can tell, we Aspies tend to be very honest with ourselves and less constricted by social norms so perhaps there's something to it.

And in the interest of full disclosure, yeah, I think of myself as bi but made a conscious decision to lead a straight life in my early 20s mostly because I always wanted a family. I almost abandoned ship so to speak in my late 20s when the likelihood of getting married started to seem like a longshot but then the perfect woman walked into my life.