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A review by lpm100
Bisexual Married Men: Stories of Relationships, Acceptance, and Authenticity by Robert Brooks Cohen
medium-paced
2.0
Book Review
Bisexual Married Men.
2/5 stars
"Save your money"
*******
This book had the potential to be a lot more.
I count the stories of 11 men and 2 couples over 231 pages of prose. (Each case was *exactly* 12 pages, for some reason.)
That should work out to about 156 pages, or about 2/3 of the book. But, it was effectively significantly less than that because the author kept inserting points about his own personal experience within the text of the people's stories.
Most annoying. (It's like "You had 1/3 of the book to say what you wanted to say; couldn't you just let these guys tell their stories uninterrupted?")
Another aggravating thing was to keep trying to put "intersectionality" (critical race theory) into the stories of these men; it compromises the integrity of the work, because I don't know how much it is representative examples versus the amount that is someone else's political agenda.
The upshot is that I just really don't see that much helpful information in this book.
1. If there is a straight couple husband and wife couple, and the husband has other women / outside children (I've seen this happen so many times that I've lost count), then that husband and wife will come to some sort of equilibrium that makes sense only to them. And it doesn't matter, because it's a relevant concern *only* to them.
Another couple might have different conclusions, or any of the partners in the aforementioned marriage might have a different conclusion with another partner.
And it really just is what it is.
2. A lot of books about non-monogamy / open marriages have been written (the one that I remember best was Jenny Block's "Open"), and it is also very complicated negotiating an open marriage even in the context of a straight marriage. The fact that these happen to be marriages in which one of the partners is bisexual is a red herring.
The negotiation process in this case has to be done the same as it is for a straight marriage, which is: CAREFULLY. (I have seen marriages where husband and wife brought in a third party and that is what broke the marriage up-- one of the marital partners was MORE attracted to the outside partner than the inside partner.)
4. I know it happens a lot, but I don't understand what is this BIG LIFT that everybody gets from making sure that everyone around them knows about their sexual orientation.
If a friend or a relative told me that he was interested in his wife and occasional guys, my next question would be...."Okay, so now what? How is this any more useful than my knowing that you are allergic to cats or do not like cilantro?"
*******
At least a couple of these stories have me wondering: "WTF is the point? WTF is this?!?!"
1. Stanley and Christine met at a bisexual Play Party, and both of them are too old to have kids at this point. And as you age, in reality, you have a lot less to choose from. If you have a wife with a bisexual husband in the context of marriage, and they have children (and the children have children), then it seems to me like that's some more valuable memory of a relationship than trying to reach back always further in the past to recall memories of sexual encounters.
2. "Carter" was both trans and bi. I've never understood this: I have met a person that grew up as a girl, and then it decided that it was a boy. And then its dating choices were men. (It had its breasts surgically removed and was given male hormones. A side effect of that is vaginal atrophy and a cooter that is probably drier than a bucket of sand.)
Carter started out as a girl and decided to become a man, but now has sex with boys and girls?
But then married a white lady, and they're expecting their first child together. (But the child cannot belong to Carter because he doesn't have the equipment to make children????)
Then, Carter and his white wife decided to use a black sperm donor. (Why did it have to be that way? How many times have we heard the joke that the best way to get rid of a black boyfriend that you don't want is to just tell him that you are pregnant?)
3. The author himself is a "WTF?" He started out with a person who was a man, and then identified his non-binary, and then decided to transition to be a woman. So, Moxie's going to go through all of this surgery and construct a pseudo-vagina. (Wow, do I hear stories about how difficult they are to maintain.)
But then the author claims to be interested in real women, and they have ladybits that require no surgery to create and an absolute minimum of maintenance.
*******
I would be very interested to see if there were significant differences in children that were raised by gay parents.
"Bennett" was raised by a lesbian feminazi, and he just assumed that he would be gay. But, his longest term relationships were with women. (First story I've ever read where a guy has to "admit" to himself that he is straight.)
13 couples turns out to birth 14 children. 8 out of the 13 had 0 children, meaning the 5 people accounted for all 14. The counting gets kind of thorny, but there are 14 women in here (in one way or another), and this is almost exactly 1.0 children per woman. (An evolutionary dead end, to be sure.)
*******
A couple of good quotes:
(p.112): "When you have a self-interest in something, you have to be careful that you're reading the other person the correct way."
(p.109): " I have regrets, 100%. I should have been more open. I should have dated more women. I should have allowed myself to date guys. It's not been all bad - - but you never get those years back and you never get those experiences back.". [Mark Twain has been quoted as saying: “Never regret anything that made you smile”]
VERDICT: Save your money and read the short attention span summary, below.
*******
Short attention span summary of the book, and based on information that was published by a psychologist JR Little:
Alternating bisexuals: may have a relationship with a man, and then after that relationship ends, may choose a female partner for a subsequent relationship, and many go back to a male partner in the future.
Circumstantial bisexuals: primarily heterosexual, but will choose same sex partners only if they have no access to other-sex partners, such as when in jail, in the military, or in a gender-segregated school.
Concurrent relationship bisexuals: have primary relationship with one gender only but have other casual or secondary relationships with people of another gender at the same time.
Conditional bisexuals: either straight or gay/lesbian, but will switch to a relationship with another gender for a specific purpose, such as young straight males who become gay prostitutes to make money or lesbians who get married to men in order to gain acceptance from family members or to have children.
Emotional bisexuals: have deeply intimate emotional relationships with both men and women, but only have sex with one gender.
Integrated bisexuals: have more than one primary relationship at the same time, one with a man and one with a woman.
Exploratory bisexuals: either straight or gay/lesbian, but have sex with another gender just to satisfy curiosity or “see what it’s like.”
Hedonistic bisexuals: primarily straight or gay/lesbian but will sometimes have recreational sex with a different gender purely for sexual satisfaction.
Recreational bisexuals: primarily heterosexual but engage in gay or lesbian sex only when under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.
Isolated bisexuals: 100% straight or gay/lesbian now but has had at one or more sexual experience with another gender in the past.
Latent bisexuals: completely straight or gay lesbian in behavior, they have strong desire for sex with another gender but have never acted on it.
Motivational bisexuals: straight women who have sex with other women to please their male partner who requests it for his own titillataion.
Transitional bisexuals: temporarily identify as bisexual while in the process of moving from being straight to being gay or lesbian, or going from being gay or lesbian to being heterosexual.
Bisexual Married Men.
2/5 stars
"Save your money"
*******
This book had the potential to be a lot more.
I count the stories of 11 men and 2 couples over 231 pages of prose. (Each case was *exactly* 12 pages, for some reason.)
That should work out to about 156 pages, or about 2/3 of the book. But, it was effectively significantly less than that because the author kept inserting points about his own personal experience within the text of the people's stories.
Most annoying. (It's like "You had 1/3 of the book to say what you wanted to say; couldn't you just let these guys tell their stories uninterrupted?")
Another aggravating thing was to keep trying to put "intersectionality" (critical race theory) into the stories of these men; it compromises the integrity of the work, because I don't know how much it is representative examples versus the amount that is someone else's political agenda.
The upshot is that I just really don't see that much helpful information in this book.
1. If there is a straight couple husband and wife couple, and the husband has other women / outside children (I've seen this happen so many times that I've lost count), then that husband and wife will come to some sort of equilibrium that makes sense only to them. And it doesn't matter, because it's a relevant concern *only* to them.
Another couple might have different conclusions, or any of the partners in the aforementioned marriage might have a different conclusion with another partner.
And it really just is what it is.
2. A lot of books about non-monogamy / open marriages have been written (the one that I remember best was Jenny Block's "Open"), and it is also very complicated negotiating an open marriage even in the context of a straight marriage. The fact that these happen to be marriages in which one of the partners is bisexual is a red herring.
The negotiation process in this case has to be done the same as it is for a straight marriage, which is: CAREFULLY. (I have seen marriages where husband and wife brought in a third party and that is what broke the marriage up-- one of the marital partners was MORE attracted to the outside partner than the inside partner.)
4. I know it happens a lot, but I don't understand what is this BIG LIFT that everybody gets from making sure that everyone around them knows about their sexual orientation.
If a friend or a relative told me that he was interested in his wife and occasional guys, my next question would be...."Okay, so now what? How is this any more useful than my knowing that you are allergic to cats or do not like cilantro?"
*******
At least a couple of these stories have me wondering: "WTF is the point? WTF is this?!?!"
1. Stanley and Christine met at a bisexual Play Party, and both of them are too old to have kids at this point. And as you age, in reality, you have a lot less to choose from. If you have a wife with a bisexual husband in the context of marriage, and they have children (and the children have children), then it seems to me like that's some more valuable memory of a relationship than trying to reach back always further in the past to recall memories of sexual encounters.
2. "Carter" was both trans and bi. I've never understood this: I have met a person that grew up as a girl, and then it decided that it was a boy. And then its dating choices were men. (It had its breasts surgically removed and was given male hormones. A side effect of that is vaginal atrophy and a cooter that is probably drier than a bucket of sand.)
Carter started out as a girl and decided to become a man, but now has sex with boys and girls?
But then married a white lady, and they're expecting their first child together. (But the child cannot belong to Carter because he doesn't have the equipment to make children????)
Then, Carter and his white wife decided to use a black sperm donor. (Why did it have to be that way? How many times have we heard the joke that the best way to get rid of a black boyfriend that you don't want is to just tell him that you are pregnant?)
3. The author himself is a "WTF?" He started out with a person who was a man, and then identified his non-binary, and then decided to transition to be a woman. So, Moxie's going to go through all of this surgery and construct a pseudo-vagina. (Wow, do I hear stories about how difficult they are to maintain.)
But then the author claims to be interested in real women, and they have ladybits that require no surgery to create and an absolute minimum of maintenance.
*******
I would be very interested to see if there were significant differences in children that were raised by gay parents.
"Bennett" was raised by a lesbian feminazi, and he just assumed that he would be gay. But, his longest term relationships were with women. (First story I've ever read where a guy has to "admit" to himself that he is straight.)
13 couples turns out to birth 14 children. 8 out of the 13 had 0 children, meaning the 5 people accounted for all 14. The counting gets kind of thorny, but there are 14 women in here (in one way or another), and this is almost exactly 1.0 children per woman. (An evolutionary dead end, to be sure.)
*******
A couple of good quotes:
(p.112): "When you have a self-interest in something, you have to be careful that you're reading the other person the correct way."
(p.109): " I have regrets, 100%. I should have been more open. I should have dated more women. I should have allowed myself to date guys. It's not been all bad - - but you never get those years back and you never get those experiences back.". [Mark Twain has been quoted as saying: “Never regret anything that made you smile”]
VERDICT: Save your money and read the short attention span summary, below.
*******
Short attention span summary of the book, and based on information that was published by a psychologist JR Little:
Alternating bisexuals: may have a relationship with a man, and then after that relationship ends, may choose a female partner for a subsequent relationship, and many go back to a male partner in the future.
Circumstantial bisexuals: primarily heterosexual, but will choose same sex partners only if they have no access to other-sex partners, such as when in jail, in the military, or in a gender-segregated school.
Concurrent relationship bisexuals: have primary relationship with one gender only but have other casual or secondary relationships with people of another gender at the same time.
Conditional bisexuals: either straight or gay/lesbian, but will switch to a relationship with another gender for a specific purpose, such as young straight males who become gay prostitutes to make money or lesbians who get married to men in order to gain acceptance from family members or to have children.
Emotional bisexuals: have deeply intimate emotional relationships with both men and women, but only have sex with one gender.
Integrated bisexuals: have more than one primary relationship at the same time, one with a man and one with a woman.
Exploratory bisexuals: either straight or gay/lesbian, but have sex with another gender just to satisfy curiosity or “see what it’s like.”
Hedonistic bisexuals: primarily straight or gay/lesbian but will sometimes have recreational sex with a different gender purely for sexual satisfaction.
Recreational bisexuals: primarily heterosexual but engage in gay or lesbian sex only when under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.
Isolated bisexuals: 100% straight or gay/lesbian now but has had at one or more sexual experience with another gender in the past.
Latent bisexuals: completely straight or gay lesbian in behavior, they have strong desire for sex with another gender but have never acted on it.
Motivational bisexuals: straight women who have sex with other women to please their male partner who requests it for his own titillataion.
Transitional bisexuals: temporarily identify as bisexual while in the process of moving from being straight to being gay or lesbian, or going from being gay or lesbian to being heterosexual.