Pensioners' wish: to have had more sex
The survey of more than 1,500 pensioners reveals a desire for a more carefree and rebellious lifestyle if they were allowed to time-travel back to their 20s and start again. Typical comments include "I wish I'd stood up to bullying bosses" and "More sex - why did we let them tell us it was wrong?"
Ellie links to the rules for Fever swinging which inter alia state
(On the continent it is widely believed that maybe 80% of women are potentially bisexual whereas at least 80% of men are not).
Last week I left a comment on Clare's teenage diaries
About ten years ago there was a programme on the TV about a lesbian soldier in Northern Ireland. I didn't see it but the next day I was on the train back from an out-of-town client meeting. Halfway along the journey the carriage filled with girls, all about 14 years old it seemed, from a Convent School on that line, a school with a good reputation etc.They were discussing the programme and exclaiming "It was filthy disgusting the disgusting bitch" etc which depressed me.
Then I remembered back to that age and realised that probably our reaction would have been similar because we assumed we didn't know any dykes, they were 'other'.
Looking back I regret that lesbianism/bi-sexuality was so frowned upon. I think if it had been encouraged, or accepted/tolerated as inevitable (as with heterosexual relations), we could have had a lot of fun.
Societal conditioning is strange. I think it's important that there is some adherence to societal norms, eg where it comes to behaviour in public places, and understanding that my freedom only extends as far as where it starts to impact on the freedom of others.
Now, that 80% of women being bi-sexual, I'd like to see the evidence. It was years ago that I read that sexual orientation is a continuum, where very few people are completely straight or completely gay...this was in Guardian Women, and it made sense to me at the time, and it continues to make sense to me. At least in regard to women; male sexuality is as much as mystery to me now as it was when I read that, age 15 or whatever.
If I wrote on this blog, now: "I am bisexual" I don't suppose many of my readers would have a heart attack. That doesn't mean that I have ever actually had sex with a woman, or even snogged a woman, and I am not sure how most of my female friends/colleagues/acquaintances would react if I said "I'm bisexual, are you?" I think a few might say "Yes, but you're only saying that to me so that you can use me." And anyway, what does my 'bisexuality' actually mean? I am in a heterosexual relationship in which I am happy, and have every intention of staying in that relationship for ever. I do not want to embark on a 'bit-on-the-side' relationship with anybody, male or female, except for the curiosity value (and there's also the 'celebrity get out clause'*), and I don't have a burning desire to have sex with any specific woman, but wouldn't necessarily say no to an exploration of bi-curiosity.
I enjoy looking at people whom I find aesthetically pleasing sexually attractive. I don't especially mean people that I know...off the top of my head I can't think of anybody (except my fiancé) whom I find sexy and I have conversations with. Then there are celebrities and chance encounters with random strangers. If I see someone on the Tube or sitting in a choir on a concert platform, I might enjoy looking at them, male or female, but I hardly think it's the basis for saying I fancy them. And there are acquaintances eg colleagues whom I objectively regard as being physically attractive with engaging personalities, but I don't fancy them (I know that because my definition of fancying is either feeling a frisson of sexual tension, or else looking at them/being with them and feeling an exquisite lurch of desire in the pit of my stomach). I often have fantasies about sex with women, but then, I also have fantasies about orgies, and I have no cerebral wish to attend an orgy. I have a theory that if, in the course of conversation with a bloke, I said "Shall we shag?" the bloke being a bloke would say yes (in practice, this doesn't happen, for some reason blokes I have known over the years don't want it handed to them on a plate). They certainly wouldn't be offended, at worst they'd think i was a scary predatory type, and wouldn't be man enough to deal with that. At best they'd be flattered and apologetic. But if I said the same to a woman, I am absolutely certain that her reactions would range from "I didn't know she was a dyke" to "Oh god does she think I'm a dyke" to "I better avoid her in the future" to sheer utter embarrassment.
I ought to write a conclusion, summing up to this post (beginning, middle and end), but I can't think of one. But we are only 27 comments away from the magic 10,000, so the conclusion may be supplied by you...
* shagging a celebrity does not count as infidelity, because they are celebrities (unless you meet them on a friend-as-a-friend basis, and they just happen to be celebrities)
