You know what, I’m just going to take these one at a time as a demonstration of how use of language doesn’t have to be brain-rapingly complicated.

If a woman has many girl on girl make out experiences but then marries a man and has children and leads a happy life for the rest of time… is she bisexual or a heterosexual that had lesbian experiences?

When she was having girl-on-girl experiences, bumuming she was into it (and not just drunk or coerced or whatever) then her behaviour suggests she was a lesbian. If she later loses all interest in other women and marries a man, she is then a heterosexual. If at either point she was also attracted to the other sex, she was a bisexual at that point. People change over time, nothing hard about that unless you think people are supposed to have one fixed definition, or ascribe more to the definition than belongs there.

If a man has one gay sex experience and later marries and has kids and also has a happy successful marriage; is he bisexual or a heterosexual that had a homosexual experience?

Likewise, he’s a guy who changed. Maybe he retained a little homosexual feeling despite his heterosexual marriage… maybe not, spectrum.

If someone only wants to be with someone of the opposite sex IRL but constantly fantasizes about someone of the same sex, but doesn’t consider themselves bisexual as it is just that particular fantasy… are they bisexual?

Cut through the confusion inherent in trying to firmly delineate one way or the other and actually describe the situation the way it is – they’re primarily heterosexual but have bisexual fantasies.

If I had to pick one or the other (I don’t think we do, but if) then I’d say heterosexual iff they don’t think they could ever actually be attracted to a member of the opposite sex, but I’d have to ask… what if the object of their fantasy showed up in real life, surely then they’d have to consider themself bisexual.

And again, if homosexual is describing a conduct that is easy to label, what about people that ‘identify’ as homosexual but have never ever even kissed someone of the same sex? Are they homosexuals or just homosexuals in thought? What is a homosexual if it is not just the conduct? If it is an identity, then obviously social construction plays a role.

I would place the emphasis on what people want or are attracted to. If they “do the deed” for whatever reason but don’t enjoy it, want it or feel attraction towards their partner then their conduct is irrelevant. If they want it but aren’t doing it (maybe they can’t find a willing partner, or other things are more important) then they’re still whatever orientation they identify as.

Either way I just illustrated quite easily many ways in which lines are blurred all the time. You could say homosexual means someone who thinks a certain way about someone of the opposite sex – in which case there is no conduct to focus on. Or you could say it is just the conduct, but conduct doesn’t always reflect identity.

People are going to lie across the lines however sharply or fuzzily you draw them, but a sharply drawn line is less confusing and more useful when you want to talk about things, we just have to put a little more effort into describing the complicated feelings we can have than sticking a single word to them.

”The point of critiquing gay identity was not to disqualify it, or to do away with sexual labels altogether, or to advocate some avant-garde suspension of all sexual meaning and all sexual categories. Rather, the point of critiquing gay identity was to open the way to the formation new multiplicities of gay identities which the insistence on a singular, already established and defined gay identity served to impede.”

I’m starting to suspect that on the important things we actually agree, but some difference in wording/reading/thinking is preventing that from becoming obvious.