[inportb]

Facebook used to have a "looking for" field, and I always thought "interested in" modified that. I'd always been interested in men and women for friendship (on Facebook), before that field disappeared.

... and I still find men and women interesting. Why does it always have to be about sexual preference?

[ebiester]

Simple: You ask the wrong lesbian (or gay guy, if you're a straight woman) if she's interested in dating, she'll tell you off. At worst. Most of the time, it's not nearly that dramatic.

If I ask the wrong guy, I get into a fight. Most straight men are still offended at "being mistaken for a gay man." I can short circuit this by pre-checking something like Facebook.

[stcredzero]

Most straight men are still offended at "being mistaken for a gay man."

I'll note that this even happens with freewheeling Discordians who pretend to flirt with men and pantomime kissing them for lulz. Sure, they can flirt with you and everyone else in some outrageous, campy way, and brag about doing anything on two legs with a hole, but then you extrapolate that to mean they're bisexual (omnisexual?) -- and you get genuine and incongruously out-of-character offense.

[dpark]

> Why does it always have to be about sexual preference?

Because otherwise it's not a meaningful field. If you're just talking about interest in the sense of "I find people of this sex to be interesting", then 99.9% of people would select "both" and the other 0.1% would just be advertising their misogyny/misandry.

[stcredzero]

I used to be interested primarily in socializing with women. This had nothing to do with sex at the time, because my sex life at the time was nonexistent.

[pagekalisedown]

This "confusion" isn't unique to Africa, just ask my parents. :)