I don't know if I buy that gender roles are entirely social constructs. I can just look to the animal kingdom at mine, my friends, and families dogs, and see that gender roles are absolutely innate. My dog is a male, and I just laugh every day at how very feminine my friends dogs are who are females. Yes, dogs and other animals are social creatures just like people, but they don't have conscious social hang ups like we do. That being said, I absolutely agree that there are enormous societal pressures to fit your gender role. I see men and women, gay and straight, struggle with this constantly. Children especially seem to be much more fluid with their gender identity. Different cultures around the world also have vastly different ideas of what's feminine and masculine. But I still believe we're born with certain gender characteristics. My brother has both a daughter and an son, both young toddlers. Way before either could walk, talk, or even crawl, they had mannerisms distinct to their gender. That being said, as a gay male I absolutely have feminine qualities and sensibilities most straight men lack. There have even been studies proving that gay men and straight women's brains operate in the same fashion (same goes for lesbians and straight men). Even so, I'm distinctly and thoroughly male... I just have the good fortune of having female traits and sensibilities to compliment my masculine ones!
I definitely agree with the Kinsey scale. I think human sexuality is way more fluid than the majority of the population will confess to. Admittedly, most people fall into the extreme ends of the scales (exclusively hetero or homo), but I think sexuality is much more complex than just hetero and homo (or even hetero, homo, and bi). Bisexuality however, is a bit of a cloudy subject in my mind. I dated a guy who was bi for a couple of years in college. I think he was bisexual in the most basic sense... he could pleasurably have sex with both men and women. But I think he was only capable of having
relationships with men. One of my Mother's friends dates only women, but he will occasionally have sex with men. The women I've known who have had bisexual tendencies have been much the same way. I keep thinking about what Carrie Bradshaw said about bisexuality in Sex And The City: "it's just a layover on the way to gaytown." I hate to say it, but I pretty much agree with that. I think bisexuality is absolutely a healthy part of human sexuality and experimentation during adolescence and early adulthood, but I've yet to encounter someone who I can truly call 100% textbook bisexual (meaning they can both have sex AND relationships with either men or women, at any stage in their life). I know you can argue that society doesn't accept bisexuality, and eventually the said person feels pressured to fit into a box, but I just don't buy that 100% either. I think much like gender, we are born with a strong leaning of whether we are gay or straight, masculine or feminine).