Let me start by acknowledging that I don’t know if the Jordan Peterson tweet screencapped in this Michael Hobbes tweet is real. I mean, it definitely could be — it’s sure in keeping with the weird little reactionary slam poems Peterson has been posting on Twitter (sorry, X) of late — but also I couldn’t find any evidence of its existence outside of the Hobbes post, so… I don’t want to mislead anyone.
But to be honest, it doesn’t really matter to me if the tweet is genuine or not, because this essay isn’t really about Jordan Peterson, and regardless of whether or not Peterson believes this (and it wouldn’t surprise me if he does), there are certainly people who do. The idea of bisexuality as the end product of a kind of sexual accelerationism is not a new one, and… boy do I have thoughts.
I mean firstly: I don’t actually believe this to be true. You knew that, right? But also, I still had to say it. This idea of sexual accelerationism pops up in a bunch of places — especially in discussions of porn viewing, where people will talk about how any porn consumption will eventually lead you down a path to harder and harder core material until eventually you can only come to horse bukkake — and it always strikes me as bunk. I spent years as a professional porn viewer, and it did not really change my sexual tastes. I did not become “addicted” to porn, and I certainly didn’t develop an interest in horse bukkake.
Similarly — well, there are a lot of people who’ve had a lot of sex with a lot of different partners and never once thought, “Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to do a bisexuality?” Many people — even the most hardcore thrill seekers — stay in one lane their whole lives, even if they do follow a path that that leads them to try gradually more taboo sex acts. Bisexuality — even just the experimental, “I mean what is it like?” type — tends to be reserved for a specific subset of folks.
But also, I mean: what if it were true, you know? Does it actually really matter? Who cares if a dude starts fucking other dudes because he’s bored of fucking women? Who cares if someone expands their pool of potential partners because they got bored with just the one gender?
There is this vein of morality to a lot of biphobia that I will always find baffling, and not just among straight people. I don’t know why bisexuality specifically triggers it — why people who are fine with all manner of casual sexual fun suddenly draw the line when someone pursues it with more than one gender — but I just think it’s so odd. Who cares if someone’s having gay sex out of boredom? Who cares if someone is just in it for the sex with one gender and while they seek romance with another gender? Standard “only consenting adults” disclaimer aside, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. Have whatever sex you want, and may it enrich your life in new and surprising ways. Truly, life is too short to get hung up on things like this.