Talk:Bisexuality

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - RPM SP 2022 - MASY1-GC 1260 201 Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 February 2022 and 5 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): YC5039 (article contribs).

Question

Cite: "The Kinsey scale says that having a higher level attraction to one gender results in less attraction to the other, which some studies do not support.[39]" How does the Kinsey scale say that? It doesn't seem to say anything about "how strong" attraction is, it just measures if its more towards female or male. Does it really say that people in the middle of the scale can't be equally uninterested in men and women? Doesn't the message stay the same? "More people than you'd think are capable of feeling attraction towards male and female bodies."

    -A: The Kinsey scale was made in the 1940s; chances are not everything it says is applicable nowadays (and therefore was also incorrect in the 1940s [it also does not mention aro/ace folks]).

MycaHyphae (talk) 18:29, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

"Ambosexual" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Ambosexual has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 June 16 § Ambosexual until a consensus is reached. —Myceteae‍🌈 (talk) 23:20, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Definition & Blurb Discussion

I am open to discussing why the changes I made were reverted, especially since I believe there may be some bias at play. The way the opening text is at the moment links to archived APA sources that are from 2008, 2009, 2011 - and the current page about bisexuality on the APA doesn't say what those say, so they're outdated. They also reflect one understanding of bisexuality but not the definition of the bisexual label according to major bisexual organizations and activists, past or present, or current studies and bi+ research. I provided many, many sources that were current alongside historical sources with prominent bisexual activists, organizations, and researchers defining the label of bisexuality in many ways - as well as made the text regarding the origin of the term/concept "bisexual" more readily available for comparison.

No one has defined bisexual first and foremost as "attraction to males and females" in decades and you'd be hard pressed to find people who were referring to it as that rather than "attraction to men and women" even at the bi rights movement's inception, since that was the general mainstream understanding of gender at the time, not to mention many bi activists of the 60s and 70s speaking of their attraction as "regardless of sex/gender" or being ambivalent about gender/sex, and having a more esoteric viewpoint especially given the times and hippie-influenced culture. Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s as cultural recognition of gender diverse and transgender people grew, bisexuals were at the forefront of acceptance of that (just look at the history of the Bay Area Bisexual Network, or what any bi activists who were around at the time such as Lani Kaʻahumanu have to say) and "attraction to males and females" wasn't a popular definition even then. Again, not one that didn't exist, but definitely wouldn't have fit with the community's push against clinical definitions at the time.

I am prepared to cite even more historical and current sources if necessary beyond the ten or so I already cited in my edit that was reverted, but I don't think that would matter if someone else editing the article is approaching the idea from their own personal definition of bisexual as "attraction to males and females" first and foremost. That is one way of defining it but hasn't been the mainstream or popular way of defining it (which is "attraction to more than one gender/sex" or "regardless of sex/gender") for a while and you'd be hard pressed to find the majority of the bi community or bi+ organizations/researchers defining the label itself that way rather than it being defined that way by misinformed external sources. People are welcome to use a variety of definitions of bisexuality but that doesn't make them the common understanding or worthy of leading the article, however I've cited as many as I could and found a good citation for the "men and women" definition to add, but even that's a far less common label definition than it was in the 20th century.

I think it's worth noting that homosexuality and bisexuality have been categorized by psychological sources as mental illness in the past but we certainly aren't using those outdated sources as current information. I hope this is justification enough for not including ahistorical misinformation, misleading sources, and bias in a place where people go to learn about concepts they're unfamiliar with in an age of growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment. I'm not saying it's malicious, someone could just be misinformed or biased towards their own definition, but I do think it's a good idea to examine why someone would be pushing for it using out-of-date, archived versions of web pages in particular rather than the live ones.

Note: Edited for clarity. Somethingparticular (talk) 15:38, 14 July 2026 (UTC)