Innate/latent bisexuality?

[Anhedonic Lake]

Freud argued that everyone is born bi sexual but turns to various orientations due to empirical persuasions and life experiences,but the innate bisexuality remains latent. Leaving aside some of Freuds more dubious assertations for a moment, what do you think of this theory?

[LCJ]

Freud is often dismissed on this forum and rightly so. For my part, I believe that all relationships have a sexual element to them. It does not mean that they would ever lead to a sexual response, but it is always present on some level. To that extent I concur with Freud. I do not think that everyone is bisexual at birth, in the sense that I don think that people are equally weighted to be hetero or homosexual. I believe that there is a bias in favour of one or the other. The extent of that bias is different from person to person and a number of life factors influence those factors to ultimately determine one's sexuality.

[Mader]

I do not agree.

However, our culture is highly sexualized so there is some influence there.

[rbc]

Alfred Kinsey's work on taking sexual orientation as a spectrum shows an interesting sexual dimorphism. That is, among males, bisexuals are very rare - men are usually completely straight or completely gay. Among females, however, there is a much more uniform distribution, and bisexual females are more common than complete lesbians. Unfortunately, we have no way to know how much reporting bias entered this conclusion, and it is difficult to separate reported desires from socially supported desires, especially when being interviewed by a stranger about a subject as sensitive and culturally fraught as sexual orientation.

[LifesEcstasy]

Freud argued that everyone is born bi sexual but turns to various orientations due to empirical persuasions and life experiences,but the innate bisexuality remains latent. Leaving aside some of Freuds more dubious assertations for a moment, what do you think of this theory?

I think the part about basic bi-sexuality is plausible. But only plausible not necessarily certain for every individual. There are certainly a lot of individuals very strong on a hetero or homo orientation who simply would not consider the opposite to their orientation no matter how attractive the package.

For myself I'm not so sure. I always counted myself as a strong hetero but some recent experiences are challenging that. The now concrete realisation that I am only attracted to men when they sit firmly in the region of androgyny and the realisation that the idea of having sex with a women isn't a turn off to me. Certainly I would prefer it if the other person had a penis (for convenience sake) but overall it's not a dealbreaker. My personal preferences do tend to indicate an attraction closer to female than male, yet I'm only hormonally affected by an attractive male not a female.

The only way to truly prove latent bisexuality would be to find someone counter to a person's accepted orientation that they feel sexually attracted to. I've yet to find a genetic female sexually attractive.

[Kmal]

Freud argued that everyone is born bi sexual but turns to various orientations due to empirical persuasions and life experiences,but the innate bisexuality remains latent. Leaving aside some of Freuds more dubious assertations for a moment, what do you think of this theory?
a better way of saying it, imo, would be that everyone is a blank slate (why even call it bisexual if there IS no orientation?) and you develop your own sexuality through your life.

honestly, i think everyone is born to want to mate with the opposite sex, yet they can consciously choose what they want to do.

[Dasein]

frequently, females wish to initiate sexual relationships with me. I have wondered if they do so due to my natural proclivity to flirt with EVERYONE, or if i am somehow giving off a lesbian vibe. I do find women very attractive, but the thought of putting my hands or lips on them leaves me kind of neutral; not disgusted, but not excited. Thinking of men well thats another story, completely. I hope my attraction is not reducible to cultural norms... how trite.
I would like to think I am able to think independently of cultural conditioning {wouldnt we all} and am a heterosexual, both by choice and by nature..