This is the first part of a three-part series on bisexuality. This article explores bisexuality from a scientific viewpoint.

Image taken from biflag.com

Not gay, not straight. The never-never land between heterosexual and homosexual: the B word.

What does it mean, specifically? The dictionary defines it as a person who is attracted to both males and females. To what degree, it has never specified. The Kinsey scale hypothesises everyone as innately bisexual, except for a minority on the extreme ends of the scale.

Image taken from iss.co.za

While the Kinsey studies have their own opponents, it has proven to be a fair approximation of the ground situation. The distribution would not look like a normal one, where intermediate values are most common, but (according to this author's untested hypothesis) more like this.

Bisexuality, along with homosexuality is a well-documented phenomenon in the animal kingdom. [Click here for an exhaustive scientific paper on this] It is common, in fact, for most animals to engage in bisexual behaviour than exclusively homosexual or heterosexual. The bonobo chimpanzees, in fact, are 100% bisexual, as stated in the paper.

But how is it possible that one is attracted to both sexes at the same time, some might ask.

Ok ok, the time is here again! Yes, it’s the 19th Singapore International Film Festival! So, is anyone out there who is excited? (Waiting and tapping finger on the table)…

All right I know the SIFF isn’t something which is terrbily exciting to everyone, but here is a little insider’s story that might help you appreciate this yearly local film event a little better…

Just not too long ago, like maybe last year? A friend told me that the SIFF might not happen this year because their main sponsor Asia Pacific Brewery, had been warned by the government not to fund the event. The reason? I think a documentary on Chee Soon Juan was made and the SIFF tried to screen it in the local short films competition non-finalist screening. That made’YOU KNOW WHO very, very much unhappy. Moreover there was the Royston Tan’s fiasco a few years back when he made ‘Cut’ to poke fun at the film censorship here. Yes,’’Cut’ was screened in the festival.

Then rumours surfaced that the men dressed in white wanted to stop the event! Horrors! What will happen to the future of Singapore film-makers?! Wait, I need to take a deep breath to calm down…

Fine, fine…’dramatics aside, the government isn’t that bad afterall, they are pumping money to fund local talents here to encourage film-making via the Singapore Film Commission funding programme. We are a developed country so how can we do without the arts right?

Anyway, came DHL to the rescue. Phew! Fortunately for them , the SIFF is still running. So let’s get to the main point here: FILMS.

The film festival has been a yearly pilgrimage for me since it’s tenth run in 1997. I saw numerous films and was a huge fan of Hou Hsao Hsien, Tsai Ming Liang and Edward Yang. Yes, but that only lasted two years, because I could no longer keep up with their soporific films with incomprehensible meanings. Except for Edward Yang whom I still admire, years of SIFF experience has thought me to pick films carefully. To date, I think out of ten films I saw, probably only two were worth the time.

Morals:

1. Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
2. Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a moral lesson.
3. Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior; virtuous: a moral life.
4. Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong: a moral obligation.
   http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=morals

Morals are part and parcel of our lives. We function through the lens of our principles and values.

Lens:
Some are fairly clear lens- explored and based on well-reasoned grounds
E.g. “It is immoral because the child is too young to understand the meaning of consent. The power is unbalanced and incidents in reality has shown that consequences are deleterious.”

Some are milky lens- semi-explored with superficial reasoning.
E.g. “It is immoral because it is unnatural and what is unnatural is not good.”

Some are opaque lens- unexplored.
E.g. “It is immoral because so-and-so said so.”

Morals- a powerful tool wielded in politics. Beneath the convenient patina of traditional values and playing on humans’ natural aversion to the unfamiliar. It appears that most reasoning employed by the government fall into the milky lens category.

In the 19th century in Bengal, cultural nationalists insisted on child marriages. At this time, women were considered as part of the private sphere and men (as well as religious authorities) had absolute power over them. Children were betrothed from infancy especially among the Brahmins. The sexual abuse and premature deaths of these female child-brides from violent sexual penetration were overlooked- in the name of upholding tradition. Hindu scriptures were reinterpreted to glamourize the burning of widows together with the corpses of their husbands- conveniently for male relatives who stand to gain for the widow was left the property of the husband. Needless to say, many were drugged and hurled into the flames.

Their rhetoric at that time:
1. Girls who do not have sex at the first sign of their blood flow will have polluted wombs.
2. The virtuous woman will burn herself willingly at the pyre of her dead husband.
3. An educated woman is immoral, subject to divorce by her husband.

Coming back to more recent times and to the local government. When Singapore first became a nation, the population growth was worrisome. What did the government do? They encouraged abortion. Where do you think pro-lifers were at this point- would they have been granted a voice? The campaign was so successful that, eventually, for every child that was born, one was aborted. The figures, alarmingly high, then ceased to be reported.

However, pro-lifers are in full force today. Women who wanted to go through with an abortion have to view a video on the horrors of abortion- alluding it to murder. This is done despite probable pre-existing anxieties that women who are in that situation feel. Once again, population checks by the government influenced what reasoning is used and what cannot be used.

Sometimes morals are tied in with traditions.
Cofucianism is hailed as the roots of Chinese. Give birth- for it’s your duty to the family; your duty to the nation.
As women today, would you once again allow your identity to be determined by external factors- the man who fathered you; the man who married you; the man you bore?

Morals- selected, adapted and reinterpreted to suit the agenda of those in power.

The gay people in society are resented by many because of unfamilarity, misconceptions and blind faith. Building on the anxieties in this uninformed majority, those in power wield the naturalistic fallacy- whatever that is unnatural is unacceptable morally.

Why is it immoral when:
1. Gay people, like straights, have been shown to be capable of maintaining monogamous long-lasting relationships? The till-death-do-us-part sort.
2. Gay people, like their straight counterparts, are capable of being good parents- their children are well-adjusted.
3. Sexual orientation is not a factor of promiscuity, sexual diseases etc.

Show me a list of negative societal outcomes that is solely and exclusively caused by one’s sexual orientation- being gay.

It appears that morality in the realm of politics is employed solely to maintain or enhance the position of those in power.

So much for morality.

This is a monthly column by Pureego, an ego bursting, movie maker, Gen-X bitch who needs to rant about films, love & life every now & then.

Being born in the 1970s, I grew up with a certain set of values and a way of seeing the world shaped by my upbringing, culture, and influenced by the friends I am surrounded. In my point of view, I am considered open-minded to a lot of things. I mean come on, I am part of the Gen-X; we are the cultural liberators and innovators! We crave and are open to freedom and are not chained to the stringent values and circumstances that our baby boomers parents were subjected.

Not to mention having come a long way to being more comfortable with my sexuality, and not flinching from the countless accounts of luscious love affairs which I have heard in the community.

But I forgot about the generation Y, a group of people whom I realise has grown up and will very soon take over what my generation has carved out for them. And recently, encounters with the generation Y has left me rather flabbergasted, that I might after all be a conservative oldie! GASPS!

First up, I must confess- Yes, I have not watched ‘The L-Word’. Somehow that confession makes it feel as if it is a mortal sin for a gay person not to have caught the series in which the whole community has been raving on about.

So I met this rocker chick in her early twenties, who told me she watched ‘The L-Word’. She empathised with most of the characters in the series and she even wrote a song on what one of the characters was feeling in the show. In my mind, I thought to myself, ‘Is she gay?’ Don’t ask me why I never clarified with her.