Decades-long study illustrates bisexuality boom

A number of public opinion surveys over the last few years have suggested that more and more people are reporting being lesbian, gay, or bisexual than ever before. Even so, research on bisexuality is lacking, leaving us with less knowledge about the full extent of our society's sexual experiences and identities, and leaving bisexuality frequently misunderstood — even within LGBT+ circles.

In a new piece published in the Journal of Sex Research, a University of Portland team explores the rise in bisexuality in recent years, as well as sexual behaviours amongst people with different orientations. They find an increase in people reporting both male and female partners over time, as well as increasing identification with the bisexual label. The rates of bisexual identification change significantly across age groups, potentially suggesting that more accepting attitudes and legal protections are allowing for freer expression of sexual desire. 

Data used in this study were gathered from a social survey tracking social trends in the United States over the course of five decades; 34,524 responses between the years 1989 and 2021 were analysed in this study. Due to society's changing understanding of sexuality through the years, four measures of sexual orientation were used to classify participants across the decades. 

Firstly, respondents were asked how many male and female partners they had had sex with since the age of 18. Those who had reported having sexual partners were then asked if their recent sexual partners had been exclusively male, male and female, or exclusively female. From 2008, the study also included a question about orientation. This question included three options: 'gay, lesbian, or homosexual', 'bisexual', or 'heterosexual or straight'. Information on sexual behaviours was also gathered. 

The results found a threefold rise in the number of participants reporting partners of both genders. Between 1989 and 1994, 3.1% of respondents said they had had partners of both genders, while in 2012 to 2018, this rose to 9.3%. By 2021, this figure was 9.6%; however, data from 2020 to 2021 are difficult to compare to previous cohorts, due to significant changes in polling methodology during the pandemic, which may limit the validity of comparisons.

Sizeable changes in the number of respondents identifying with the label of bisexual also happened over shorter time frames: respondents from 2012 to 2018 were more than twice as likely to identify themselves as bisexual than those from the 2008 to 2012 wave, with women more likely to identify as bisexual than men. These respondents were also more likely than their predecessors to be bisexual than they were to be gay. 

Age also played a significant role in analyses. Younger people were more likely than their older counterparts to report partners of both genders and to identify as bisexual. This is perhaps unsurprising; acceptance of LGBT+ identities has increased over the last several decades, making it far safer for people to be themselves. Though it is perhaps likely that this is the main contributing factor, it is also worth noting that many of a recent generation of LGBT+ people were also lost to the HIV/AIDS crisis, further limiting numbers who may have identified as bisexual in the older cohorts of this study. 

The authors suggest that there is a "necessarily social" aspect to this increase in bisexual identities; that is, we think of ourselves in different ways based on wider social understandings of gender and sexuality. As non-heterosexual identities have become more mainstream and more accepted, the categories with which people are willing to define themselves have expanded. 

While expanding on our understanding of an understudied sexual identity, this research is limited in several ways. The focus on binary gender and sex is one such limitation, which the team themselves acknowledge: "This way of conceptualising sexual orientation and others inevitably fail to fully capture the range and diversity of human sexual desire, behaviour, and identity," they write. Trans, intersex, and non-binary people were not explicitly included in the study, with bisexuality defined here as attraction to (or engaging in sexual relationships with) people of "different sexes." Though the LGBT+ landscape is vast, and difficult (if not impossible) to capture in a single study, it is likely that future research will expand our understanding of these identities in relation to bisexuality.

Similarly, understanding that having sex with people of different genders may not make one necessarily bisexual has evolved over the decades. For example, categories such as hetero/homo-flexible or bi-curious have also increased in prominence over the investigated timeframe. Future research looking more closely at these different ways of understanding sexual behaviour, identity, and desire would provide a richer picture of how sexuality is developing in the both US and beyond. 

Read the study in full: https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2225176