Heteroflexibility

By Laurie Essig

Published November 17, 2000 8:46AM (EST)

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"Heteroflexibility" is just another term for bisexuality, but it's a more honest and accurate term. Most so-called bisexuals have never had enough same-sex experience that was publicly visible to get them convicted of sodomy in Georgia, and that is the only definition of bisexuality that I will accept. So, go ahead, use the term "heteroflexible" to weed out the weenies. Save the term "bisexual" for those notorious flaming swingers who scare the pants off of everybody -- gay and straight.

(From a butch lesbian.)

-- Suvius Bartone

Are any of Essig's students calling themselves HOMOflexible? No? I didn't think so. Know why? Because there's still a stigma attached to being gay -- homo in any sense is not cool.

Way back in the early '90s, when I was in college, I knew a lot of guys who called themselves bisexual. They could have girlfriends and still have sex with men in the Denny Hall bathrooms! It was a convenient term for closeted guys to use until they were ready to come out. And they all did, eventually.

Don't kid yourself, "heteroflexibility" is exactly the same thing.

-- Brett Glass

Heteroflexibility is a neat term, but one I've heard that I like more is "happysexual." By moving the determinant to the fore and including "sexual" in the word, we go back to the root of the discussion: sexuality.

By defining oneself as "happysexual," politics, inclusive or divisive, are avoided. One can be straight, flexible, rigid, gay, participatory or nonparticipatory and, yes, born before 1970 and still be happysexual.

Happily.

-- Gavin Grant

Someone needs to tell Laurie Essig that she does herself and her article a disservice when, in the first paragraph, she expects us to believe no one in her Yale college class knew who Elvis Presley was. I understand she was trying to make a point about how unhip she was, and indeed that I believe, but where exactly did these students spend their lives that none of them ever came across Elvis Presley?

The heteroflexible term was interesting, but having never heard it before, I'm suspicious it was created by Essig and this is her way of getting it out to the masses. As soon as Essig gives her readers a little credit, I'll return the favor.

-- Adrian Rudloff

Laurie Essig's article on the hip new terms for sexual preferences in college reminded me why I never went to graduate school. Her agonies over the stupid terms college kids use to describe the extent of their libidos could convince anyone that the standards for what constitutes a quality liberal arts education vanished a long time ago.

In short: None of that is important; it's all a dumb argument about which label is new. Grow up and get a life.

-- Keith Schuerholz


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