Maybe we’re a little behind the curve (it happens), but we just caught on that “flexisexual,” as a label to describe, you know, folks, who are flexible about whether they’re attracted to men or women, at any point in time, seems to have gone mainstream, though it’s not really in any dictionary but the Urban Dictionary yet. It entered the language there in 2009, we see; it seems to have made the news a bit in the UK in 2010; and today we see “Flexisexual” is gaining in popularity according to a TV station in Texas: Are More Women Flexing Their Sexuality?
We’re thinking that when a new word makes it onto TV in Texas, that means it’s pretty much loose in the wild, gaining currency, slipping into the lexicon. The next thing you know, “flexisexual” will be everywhere. But the current pop-cultural news references, if you hit the links above, seem slanted toward defining “flexisexuals” as, you, know, those college girls who are just sort of playing around with a little bit of the “bi” thing. Which we’ve got nothing against at all, mind you, but we wonder if the mainstream media is already sort of cheapening or short-changing the new word. “Flexisexual” seems to us, perhaps, as being a word that could express something more fluid and inchoate than “bisexual,” which sounds a little more like a final destination than it does something that is subject to change … and perhaps “flexisexual” can be that word that is somewhere in-between “bi-curious” and “bisexual”?
Just sayin’. Maybe we’re taking all the fun out of it, the way English-major types sometimes will, with their dictionaries and all. But we thought we’d throw it open to the crowd: “Flexisexual”—Do we need it, do we embrace it or do we just let it slide on by and see what happens?
We’re thinking that when a new word makes it onto TV in Texas, that means it’s pretty much loose in the wild, gaining currency, slipping into the lexicon. The next thing you know, “flexisexual” will be everywhere. But the current pop-cultural news references, if you hit the links above, seem slanted toward defining “flexisexuals” as, you, know, those college girls who are just sort of playing around with a little bit of the “bi” thing. Which we’ve got nothing against at all, mind you, but we wonder if the mainstream media is already sort of cheapening or short-changing the new word. “Flexisexual” seems to us, perhaps, as being a word that could express something more fluid and inchoate than “bisexual,” which sounds a little more like a final destination than it does something that is subject to change … and perhaps “flexisexual” can be that word that is somewhere in-between “bi-curious” and “bisexual”?
Just sayin’. Maybe we’re taking all the fun out of it, the way English-major types sometimes will, with their dictionaries and all. But we thought we’d throw it open to the crowd: “Flexisexual”—Do we need it, do we embrace it or do we just let it slide on by and see what happens?
New word to make it okay? Hmmm. I'm happy with my own word adopted a few years back and popular with the swingers crowd, or was, bi-sensual. We are quite happy with our spouses and being heterosexual's, or what ever, but that like to have non-gender bias fun.
I like bi-sensual. there. I didn't think in terms of "making it okay" really ... was more like, "Does this give us anything worthwhile and new, and if it does, is it already being hijacked and twisted by the media."