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[–]MarkJefferson 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a limitation of perspective. The single-sex attracted(monosexuals) can have a harder time wrapping their heads around the attraction to both sexes and aversion to none, as they lived with this aversion their whole lives. Kind of like how Bisexuals may not fully understand the gay and straight repulsion to one sex or the other due to their personal experiences liking both. Due to the former limitation, gays and straights can have an inclination to "round" Bi's up or down(to 0 or 6 on the Kinsey scale if you follow that metric) to align people they encounter to a more easily understandable 'black and white' worldview. In which direction they round depends on how "gay" or "straight" the person presents(who they have relationships with, how gnc they are, which sex they say they prefer), what sex they are(males are more likely to be rounded-up than females if they express/demonstrate same-sex attraction), and the mindset the monosexual has towards bisexuals in general and their larger motives/agenda/hang-ups. It's not always a case of someone being bigoted.

-"Bisexuals are just straight people who are either trying to be hip or watched too much porn"

and

-"Bisexuals are just gay people who can't come to terms with their homosexuality and are pretending to have heterosexual tendencies"

Anyone who says either doesn't view bisexuality as a real sexuality and so are ignorant or plain biphobic.

So why is it that these beliefs are so unfortunately common? what causes people to believe it and why don't you ever see the same kind of misconceptions being directed at gays and lesbians?

In addition to what I wrote above, I'll point out that homosexuals have very well established cultures and definitions that are already heavily imprinted in the public consciousness(The former almost to a fault because it's now very hard to move away from any of the more negative aspects of gay culture). In contrast, Bisexual culture is relatively underdeveloped due to a much later start, with development being mostly stalled out by the Trans surge, and therefore highly misunderstood and underrecognized like the middle child of the LGBT.