BISEXUALITY AT YALE: From the Yale Daily News

...Many students and professors dispute the clinical definition of "bisexual," which assumes only two genders. Critics of the term call this two-gender assumption a social construct -- and one that is based on incorrect premises; instead they prefer the term "queer." But beyond politics, they said, the term "bisexual" is vague, amorphous and rampant with stereotypes. ...

William Summers, a professor in the School of Medicine who teaches the class "Biology of Gender and Sexuality," agreed. One exercise he does with his students, he said, is asking them to imagine they will sleep with someone that night. They then have to picture everyone they know, of both sexes and all levels of attractiveness, and organize them from most sexually desirable to least. Even straight students, Summers said, will mix the sexes along the line -- the most heterosexual guy, he said, would still prefer to sleep with Matt Damon than, say, his own grandmother. Sexuality depends on context.

"You may be bisexual at one time, and monosexual at another time and polysexual at another," Summers said. "I prefer to think of people as just sexual." ...

Justin Ross '07, also a head of the Yale Co-op, agreed that the term "queer" is often more appropriate to describe alternative sexualities. In high school, he identified himself as gay, Ross said. He had a boyfriend; he fit in with the gay community. So when he arrived at Yale, he assumed he would continue primarily dating men.

Instead, he found himself occasionally attracted to women. His most meaningful relationships, he said, have been with females. ...

Gusman has felt similar pressures to be either gay or straight. Even though he began his time at Yale by dating both women and men, he said, he continually feels pushed to identify himself as homosexual.

Now that he is in a relationship with a man, he worries he won't be able to go back to dating women. Girls seem to have more of a problem with having a bisexual boyfriend than guys do with a bisexual girlfriend, Gusman said.

He knows only two male students who were able to foster relationships with women after starting their Yale careers seeing men. It is as though people are not supposed to vacillate in their sexuality, he said.

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