[Dimensio]

"Behaviour is irrelevant; someone who remains celibate their entire life could be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. If a man has a monogamous relationship with only one woman in his entire life but he is still sexually attracted to someother men (in addition to women) then he is bisexual. Refusing to accept those definitions simply because you don't like them is absurd."

And your supreme authority over the English language comes whence?

I never claimed to be an English major, but I have studied the accepted definitions regarding human sexuality.

Attraction is a vague concept, and without any hope of objective proof.

Your point being? So because we cannot objectively "prove" something, we shouldn't have words for it? That would throw out all of science, as scientific theories are never "proven objectively".

Your definition leaves 'homo-, hetero- and bi-sexuality ' solely to be defined by the individual him/herself.

No, it's based on the individual, but it's not a matter of someone getting up and deciding "I think I'm attracted to men today."

I would submit that both usage and logic favor behaviorally-determined categorization. It makes no sense to categorize, say, a woman who has had sex only with men but has occasionally found another woman attractive as bisexual.

What's this about "categorization"? Do people need to have their sexual orientation cleanly defined before they can go about their lives? A woman who is attracted to both men and women is bisexual even if she never has a sexual encounter with another woman. It implies nothing else about her life.

I get just as annoyed with people trying to relegate definitions of human sexuality to pure behaviour as I do with people who think that their less-common sexual orientation is some cause for celebration, festivity and focus for their entire life. I like to think that I can base my life on a little more than what happens to turn me on.

[Right Wing Professor]

I never claimed to be an English major, but I have studied the accepted definitions regarding human sexuality

Accepted by whom? My dictionary (American Heritage, 1976) gives two definitions for homosexual, one defined by attaction, the other defined by behavior. I would submit there is no single 'accepted definition', and in trying to impose one you are trying to limit the parameters of the discussion.

What's this about "categorization"? Do people need to have their sexual orientation cleanly defined before they can go about their lives? A woman who is attracted to both men and women is bisexual even if she never has a sexual encounter with another woman. It implies nothing else about her life.

No. Clearly not. We divide things into categories because they're useful tools for generalization. A categorization is better or worse purely on how useful it is. If we want to say 'bisexual men are more likely to get AIDS than heterosexual men', the behavioral categorization of bisexuality is obviously more useful. 'Bisexual men' in this case is a shorthand for the list of all men who have had sex with persons of both sexes. There may be circumstances in which it might be more useful to categorize bisexual men by attraction than behavior, although I suspect in general it is less useful. But insisting that one or the other definitions is 'correct' is attempting to win an argument by begging the question.