It's tough to face space. It's challenging to me to face the space of the compose window on this post, because look at the crash up of things we're supposed to believe: 1. People smoke marijuana to deal with their problems (not just for fun or to relax), 2. Being bisexual is a problem, 3. It's okay to talk about sexual orientation as a problem, 4. It's probably the bisexuality causing the marijuana smoking, not the marijuana causing sexual experimentation or a person's liberal-mindedness and pleasure-seeking causing both.
And the "so much" in that "so much weed" is just any marijuana use in the last year. It really should say, at best, "Why Do So Many Bi Women Smoke Weed?" The statistics are: 38% of bisexual women "reported marijuana use in the last year," compared to 20% for lesbians and 5% for straight women. My hypothesis would be that the women who say they are bisexual are just more likely to try different things, to be more adventurous.
But, no, here's a "research scientist," from the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, Dr. Margaret Robinson, "who is herself bisexual": "[B]isexual women are exposed to sexism as well as biphobia and homophobia. It could be something about the anxiety we feel living at the intersection of multiple oppressions that instigates such elevated use of cannabis.”
Anxiety does indeed seem to be a strong undercurrent of bisexual life. The high prevalence of anxiety disorders among bisexual women, in particular, is a well-known psychological truism. Several studies have found that bi women have worse mental health outcomes than straight and lesbian women, including higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. One 2010 study suggests that the poor mental health of bi women could result, in part, from enduring the “psychic toll” of biphobia without having an “identifiable community” to provide support.Robinson is "skeptical of previous research that suggests that bisexual women’s marijuana use could be ascribed to their 'sensation seeking.'" Why? "We have to look at trends in a broader context and the context for bisexuals is generally one of high stigma and social isolation. People rarely thrive under those conditions." I guess it has to be a problem.
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Does it give an age breakdown? Because bisexual women, like bisexual men, are more likely to be late teens/early 20's--which is prime pot smoking age.
So many unfortunate victims facing the sympathy supply shortage...
People who are sensation seekers, risk takers, and boundary pushers in one part of their life show the same characteristics in another part of their life.
Who would have thought?
This is why you don't get along with liberals. You ask too many questions. Questions without pat answers from the liberal catechism cause liberals to either ignore and try to isolate you, or get into a mouth foaming rage trying to put you down with some shopworn rhetorical question that seems to "prove" stuff to them.
It's a problem in all sorts of things. We all have ideas. Our ideas become ideology. And our ideology trumps facts. Too many of us don't look at the facts first, or think about the facts. It's all about us, and our desire to be right.
B]isexual women are exposed to sexism as well as biphobia and homophobia.
This is the way she feels. This is her idea about the world. It's not so much science, or journalism, as an ideological announcement.
We all do this. Smart people in particular are prone to this mistake.
"We have to look at trends in a broader context and the context for bisexuals is generally one of high stigma and social isolation. People rarely thrive under those conditions.""
I'm a victim of myself.
This subject cries out for Laslo..
Why Do Bi Women Smoke So Much Weed?
Because they can't hold their liquor?
If we are honest, it is obvious that a woman who wants love and a partner that she can control, she will use sex, and frankly she doesn't care which sex her current target likes. The Weed is simple her tool to confuse the targets minds.
These are the street smart ones.
Its hard to raise awareness when everybody keeps getting fricking stoned all the time.
The question forces you to use stereotypes to answer it.
And the whole thing is based on a nonexistent premise, that "bi women" smoke a lot of weed.
I don't think having smoked marijuana in the past year, perhaps on just one occasion, means you've smoked a lot of weed. It could just mean you go out to parties or you live in Colorado and there was weed going around and you gave it a try. It's not significant of much of anything.
The question forces you to use stereotypes to answer it.
And the whole thing is based on a nonexistent premise, that "bi women" smoke a lot of weed.
I don't think having smoked marijuana in the past year, perhaps on just one occasion, means you've smoked a lot of weed. It could just mean you go out to parties or you live in Colorado and there was weed going around and you gave it a try. It's not significant of much of anything.
There is a reason that such personality traits were described for so long as "fundamentally disordered."
Unfortunately, in our society today the incentive structure is such that it is far more profitable (in every sense of the word) to get the broader society to treat one's disordered state as causing one to be a "victim," rather than going off somewhere and doing the hard work of sorting one's crazy shit out and becoming a normally-functioning person.
Ann Althouse said...
The question forces you to use stereotypes to answer it.
And the whole thing is based on a nonexistent premise, that "bi women" smoke a lot of weed.
I don't think having smoked marijuana in the past year, perhaps on just one occasion, means you've smoked a lot of weed. It could just mean you go out to parties or you live in Colorado and there was weed going around and you gave it a try. It's not significant of much of anything.
Would it mean anything if you'd smoked weed on ten occasions over a one year period?
No, except that you got high ten times and probably ate too much, enjoyed music too much, giggled too much, enjoyed sex too much, enjoyed nature too much, etc. Damn enjoyers.
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Other than those cheating on spouses, does anyone care about women who are bi, other than in a Laslo sort of way?
I also have biphobia because there are two things I am scared shitless by. One is progressives in power and the other is schlocky science. So this lady is a two-fer for me.
Bi women better be careful of morgellons. That pot smoking is going to have them thinking stuff is growing out of their skin.
The question appears to assume some sort of cause-and-effect scenario.
Does it assume that smoking weed increases the odds of a woman becoming bisexual?
Or does it assume that bisexual behavior increases the odds of a woman smoking weed?
There may be another factor.
@Althouse mentioned that "smoking weed" may have been once-a-year, @timinvermont notes other factors.
I have a deep suspicion of simplistic "Action A correlates with problem B", unless there's an easily-describable path from cause to effect.
SJ said...
...unless there's an easily-describable path from cause to effect.
There's always and easily-describable path from cause to effect. It's almost always wrong. It frequently ends in ism or phobia.
How many subcategories of abused women are there these days? I've honestly lost count.
I kept thinking of that line from "The Graduate"
"Mrs. Robinson, You're trying to seduce me ..aren't you?"
"It could be something about the anxiety we feel living at the intersection of multiple oppressions."
Yeah, that's definitely it. Multiple oppressions will do it every time.
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...
How many subcategories of abused women are there these days? I've honestly lost count.
I don't know. I've got at least three in my basement alone.
Thrill seeking? Proclivity to the sensual? To rebellion?
Or boredom?
Or relationship pressures? Are bi women likely to stick to one sex or another for a period of time in committed serial monogamy? Or are they trying to keep several balls in the air? All those balls tend to be stressful.
As Woody Allen said, the good thing about being bisexual is it double your chance for a date on Saturday night.
Allen may be creepy, but he could be very funny!
Slow news day for the Beast? Not much else to report on if you don't want to write about Clinton scandals or Muslim attacks on art shows, I guess.
All women are buy sexual.
How long until anything but straight will be considered a risk factor?
A bisexual has access to six sexual orifices and protuberances (male mouth, female mouth, male ass, female ass, penis, vagina*) and they STILL think they are oppressed?
Maybe too many choices available on the cereal aisle.
*I am leaving out the ear-fuckers. They have their own problems.
I am Laslo.
In college I had a female friend that briefly dated an ear-fucker.
She'd be giving him a blow-job and he'd slide his cock out of her mouth and position it in her ear, little pushy circular movements as she described it.
She'd pull the cock from her ear and put it back in her mouth, but thirty seconds later he'd try it again, right back to the ear. Push push, circle circle.
One time he was able to successfully ejaculate in his preferred orifice, and my friend consequently suffered a nasty sexual version of 'swimmer's ear' -- it screwed up her equilibrium for weeks. That was the last time she had anything to do with him.
Ear-fuckers: I have no sympathy for them.
I am Laslo.
Laslo Spatula said...
Ear-fuckers: I have no sympathy for them.
Anxiety brought on by audiophilophobes such as Laslo are why we ear-fuckers smoke so much pot.
Interesting. And esp. to see who is pushing this.
The problem, in my view, is that a much larger percentage of women are really bi than men. You hear about LUGs (Lesbians Until Graduation), but I suspect that there are maybe more who go the other way - have a family with a husband, then go lesbian. And, yes, what I am saying is that a lot of the lesbians out there are probably really bi. How do you tell? One is that there is sexual tension between straight males and straight OR BI women. Mostly, in my experience, with divorced lesbians, it is sometimes an almost palatable dislike, based solely on sex/gender. But, still a sexual tension that you don't have with homosexual women. And, secondly, how easily you get their lesbian girlfriends jealous. A girlfriend of a homosexual lesbian doesn't get jealous of guys. Girlfriends of bi lesbians do. My personal survey of lesbians over the decades would suggest that over half are really bi - which means that (contrary to males), for many lesbians, homosexual behavior is probably a choice, and not a mandate. This is the deep dark secret that feminists in general, and lesbians in particular, would like to hide.
So, with all that in mind, what we are really asking is whether bi-acting women are more likely to do pot than those who are either completely hetero or homo acting (at that point in their lives). And, I think that there is a possibility. The bi-acting women I have known have been notably more promiscuous than their hetero or homo acting sisters (after all, if you settle down with one person, you will either be hetero or homo acting, as long as you stay monogamous). I can't say though whether pot made them that way, or visa versa, since I have dealt with them primarily through a fog of alcohol instead.
"Ear-fuckers: I have no sympathy for them."
Although I can partially understand the Torment experienced by Ear-Fuckers: all these people in public, casually walking around with their ears exposed and lewdly naked, save for perhaps an earring -- and they think nothing of it, as if they are innocent of the lust their lobes provoke.
Everywhere you look, there is a nude ear you desperately want to fuck: it doesn't matter if you are a left-ear-man or a right-ear-man, there are so many choices on display, and so many earrings that you can imagine dangling down deliciously onto your balls.
So what I am saying is I can see the source of their Torment; still does not give them the right to approach a girl sitting in the bus and begin fucking her ear.
I have standards.
I am Laslo.
"...and so many earrings that you can imagine dangling down deliciously onto your balls."
I don't mean to imply that ear-fuckers are all men. Women can 'scissor' an ear, no problem.
I am Laslo.
Life was so much easier to understand back when we could call these people crazy and the medical/mental health community would agree.
Transsexuals seek to relieve the cognitive dissonance caused by their partisan pro-choice religion -- cult, really -- and pseudo-scientific platitudes repeated by their Democrat Party that selectively normalize orientations and behaviors that are antithetical to evolutionary fitness. Furthermore, being the recipient of a sperm deposit divorced from a loving male relationship doesn't help either the transsexual or the sperm depositor. Choosing and, more so, promoting, dysfunctional behaviors has consequences for both the individual, society, and humanity.
"Excluded by both straight and lesbian peer groups, bi women face one of the most challenging psychological spaces."
But their future is bright. Now that we have gay marriage, polygamy is sure to become the next hip cause. And polygamy works much better if the women are bi.
Excluded by both straight and lesbian peer groups, bi women face one of the most challenging psychological spaces
Because there's nuthin', nuthin', your average straight male hates more to hear from his girlfriend than "Honey, would you mind if we included my girlfriend in some sex?".
Straight guys just hate that! You never see any stuff like that at porn-sites. No sirree, Bob!
It's the anxiety that fosters the hypersexuality not the other way round. In fact anxiety drives almost all human behavior and destructive attempts to bind that anxiety can warp instincts beyond recognition --causing overeating, drinking, insane ideology, etc.
The vast majority of the "oppressed" are merely expressing their own self hatred, an inner rebellion against inner diktats--"the tyranny of the shoulds."
So, if they just stopped shoulding all over themselves they might find some peace.
"Robinson is "skeptical of previous research".."
I sure the people who did the previous research are skeptical of Robinson's research.
Assuming bi women are weed smoking fiends, there is nothing scientific to support any of these hypotheses.
The bisexual lassie's theme song.
Female bisexuals are more honored in the breach than the observance, unless, of course, you're a voyeur.....Bisexuality in an attractive woman is more apt to inspire prurience than phobia. Well, diarrhea in an attractive woman is also likely to inspire salacious thoughts. Very few men are phobic about attractive women,....,Still, it's hard to see how a bisexual woman can remain constant in her affections. I'd probably consider it a deal breaker if she cheated on me with Rosie O'Donnell. I'd be more forgiving if it were Anne Heche.
@William,
I'd probably consider it a deal breaker if she cheated on me with Rosie O'Donnell.
So, bigoted against the Irish, are ye?
There's a long sorry, history of anti-Irish bigotry in American history, young man!
In possibly related news: a study about the irreproducibility of many psychology research papers.
The question forces you to use stereotypes to answer it.
Only in the sense that you're 'forced' to acknowledge that there are statistical differences between bisexuals and other groups, in order to analyze the problem. In other words, it 'forces' you to confront an uncomfortable statistical reality for you to even get to first base.
The bisexual women I've known would all be more likely to smoke weed than most straight women. They were also more sexual individuals in general.
The surprising thing is that this is treated as a problem that needs solving, rather than just an insight into the nature of bisexuality.
Maybe they smoke weed because they like it. Not because they're victims but because the sort of person who's likely to be bi is the sort of person who'll also try pot.
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