There’s a reason why I try my hardest in life to not have a routine or schedule – taking a break. God damn it’s hard to get back into the swing of things you want to do after a few weeks of not really doing much (apart from turning a year older, a holibob […]
I grew up in a small town that was very white, Christian, and straight so unsurprisingly in my teenage years there were not many options for a bisexual to share affection, kiss, or have sex with apart from cisgendered boys. Though once when I was 14 I snogged a girl in the year below me … Continue reading Had more sex with cis-men than any other gender..?→
Dr David Ley’s recent Psychology Today article, which argues that closeted bisexual men are being incorrectly diagnosed as sex addicts, raises an issue of relevance to all bisexual people: namely that suppressing unwanted sexual desire can seriously impact our health and wellbeing. Ley details his clinical experience of bisexual men, married to women, who are troubled […]
Dr David Ley’s recent Psychology Today article, which argues that closeted bisexual men are being incorrectly diagnosed as sex addicts, raises an issue of relevance to all bisexual people: namely that suppressing unwanted sexual desire can seriously impact our health and wellbeing. Ley details his clinical experience of bisexual men, married to women, who are troubled […]
I was born the year before Section 28 was introduced, so with two exceptions, nothing LGBT+ was ever shown or mentioned by teachers at school. There was nothing in the syllabus either. Before I write about these two exceptions though, let me take you through a brief history of my education… In primary school nothing LGBT+ was ever mentioned. … Continue reading My Harmful Heteronormative Education→
Fifteen thousand people around the UK aged 16-74 were interviewed about various aspects of their sexual behaviour in 2010-2012.
This survey – the third, following previous surveys held 20 and 10 years ago – has had its headline results published in the Lancet.
Out of all the interesting research published in the survey, the aspect that has been both under-discussed and is relevant for this blog is this: women are now four times more likely to say they had had same-sex activity than they were 20 years ago. (4% in 1990 to 16% in 2010)
Director of the research, Professor Kaye Welland, was reported in Pink News as saying that this was too big a change to be simply a difference in what women said. In other words, it was not just that they had changed their way of gathering data, or that the women were being more honest. Women actually ARE having more same-sex behaviour than they were 20 years ago. Much, much more.
It is not that women are necessarily having what they coyly describe as “genital contact” – that is only 8% or half of the women reporting same-sex contact - so what does “sex” mean here? And what’s behind the increase?
Here are eight (connected) reasons why I think more women are having sex with each other. They are only theories, but they sound right to me. If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. (I have comment moderation on, so please be patient if you post!)
Increased acceptability/less prejudice against women-women relationships
As well as the rates of same-sex going up, according to this survey, the percentages of people thinking same-sex relationships were always or sometimes wrong have gone down a great deal too. Women are more likely than men to think such relationships are acceptable – this has gone up from 28% in 1990 to 66% now. Relationships between women are more accepted than are those between men, especially by men, with 52% of men thinking that same-sex relationships between men are always wrong, and 48% that those between women are always wrong. In 1990, those figures were 78% and 76%.
More same-sex couples and individuals in the media
Oh yes. I mean, there’s even a UK bank ad featuring female identical twins one of whom has a female partner, the other a male. This is presented as no more of an issue than whether she does or doesn’t like swimming.
Lesbian power couple: Alice Arnold (left) and Clare Balding
There are more lesbian celebrities (Clare Balding, Sandi Toksvig etc) who are just there being presenters, comedians, newsreaders, and so forth. There are also bi celebrities (Jessie J et al) speaking about their interest in women.
More sex in general
Women are having more sexual partners in general than they were 20 years ago. The average for women aged 16-44 in 1990 was 3.7 and now is 7.7. So if there is more sex, there is also likely to be more same-sex too. There’s no research (that I know of, although you might) showing that women are more open and assertive in their sexual desires than 20 years ago, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Internet dating
You are 25, you live in a tiny village where everyone knows everyone and no one available is of interest to you. But pop online, and dozens of potential partners of whatever gender you desire are just waiting. And you know they are interested in people like you – in terms of gender, looks, interest, what-have-you – because they say so. There may be problems of course, but “do they want to have sex with someone of my gender” isn’t one of them. There is a whole pool of sexual partners who simply would not have been available before. For older people, I think this is much more difficult but for reasons of age, not gender.
The lesbian community
Not so long ago, women usually had to be part of a lesbian community if they wanted women to be their sexual partners. Of course, some women didn’t do this: they happened upon each other by accident, or maybe were part of other radical political movements, or met through friends. But most did. While of course many women were happy in their lesbian community, it had its political, social and sexual norms which you had to adhere to. It didn’t always (and still doesn’t) welcome women who didn’t agree with those norms. Bi women in particular.
But to be fair, I think it is also true that some parts of the lesbian community, anyway, are more tolerant towards women who aren't 150% lesbian, though understandably perhaps not towards women who are "experimenting".
There are also now many more same-sex friendly communities – queer, poly, bi, kink, swinger, pagan, goth, BDSM, etc etc – where women can meet each other. Many of them were around 20 years ago too, but they are much easier to find now. And if there are more women having same-sex, the chances of you just coming across them in everyday life are that much greater.
Pornography
I have no idea what proportion of women look at any kind of porn, but some of them will see other women having sex with each other on screen and start to fantasise about it themselves. I know this to be the case, because some have told me so. Of course, maybe their boyfriends have fantasies about this, or maybe they both do. Or maybe they think their boyfriends want them to (whether they actually do or not). But maybe they have turned on their computers, gone actively searching for porn or found it by accident, and seen a woman who made them think…
For all of these reasons, women may feel it is less of a big deal to think about having sex with another woman and possibly to act on it.
Katy Perry
“I kissed a girl and I liked it”
According to today’s colloquium on the survey, which I followed on Twitter through the hashtag #NATSAL, the increase in same-sex between women is because more of them are experimenting, rather than changing their identity [Though I don’t see why it is either experimenting OR changing your identity, or indeed what identity per se necessarily has to do with it at all]. Maybe they listened to the Katy Perry song.
Experimentation
In principle, I am in favour of young people experimenting, with the normal provisos of openness, honesty, safer sex, respecting your partner, and so on. But I still think the concept needs much more unpacking if nothing else than because “experimenting” implies something very trivial and meaningless. While sex can be both trivial and meaningless (as well the reverse), experimenting can be pretty damn serious.
Some women who start off with experimenting will go on to have more, deeper, relationships with other women. They may not call themselves lesbian, or bi, or indeed have the remotest interest in sexual identity or community, but “experimenting” doesn’t always start and finish with a bit of pawing in a club (pleasant though that might be).
Experimenting is just that – trying something out. You don’t necessarily know what the result will be. Your desires and fantasies are not always enough. You need to see whether what you have thought about really works for you – at this place, with this person, at this time in your life.
Performing bisexuality
I think some observers might count this as experimenting too. Yes, some heterosexual women are definitely kissing and groping each other in public, probably for attention, mainly from men. This was first spotted as a phenomenon around 15 years ago, and now seems pretty ubiquitous. The expectation is that this is all a bit of a joke, and that no “real sex” will occur.
But women who are doing this are not necessarily experimenting or even not properly into women. I was shocked (yes reader, I can still be shocked) by women I know to have had genuine relationships with women setting out to torment/arouse men by kissing other women in front of them.
So while I don’t dispute that more women may be sexually experimenting… can this really account for such a vast increase? It doesn’t seem likely. I think it is all of the reasons listed above.
Just for the young?
Given that I have, as I said in my last post, changed the focus of this blog to be on ageing, I do want to touch on what this might mean for us older women.
To start with, are these just young women having all this same-sex? Mostly, yes.
According to the statistics, when asked whether they’ve had any sexual experience or contact with another female, only 3% of women aged 65–74 said yes. It’s 7% for those aged 55–64, 9% aged 45–54, 12% 35–44, 18% women 25–34, and 19% 16–24. If the prevalence of same sex was constant, it would increase with age, based on the accumulation of experience. But the opposite is true. So among younger women, it’s either more common, or more honestly reported, or (as I would guess) both.
But I wonder whether older, previously heterosexual, women will start experimenting too (if not to such a great extent) as we grow and change and explore different opportunities in life. I have certainly read about women having their first female partners when they are 50+ and I am going to write about this phenomenon at some point.
In this survey, women did report “less sexual anxiety” as they got older, which can only be a good thing!
Men
Another thing coming out of this survey is that men are now far less likely to report having same-sex behaviour than are women (7% - the same rate as in 1990 – compared to 16% for women). This seems very low.
So what does this figure mean? As the (male) commenters on the Pink News site above mention, that depends on so many things. One is certainly: “what counts as sex?”
To quote one commenter:
“In my experience more men than ever are having sex with other men. These men do not regard themselves as gay at all - they just think they are sexually adventurous. As for the anal aspect [there were very low rates of penetrative sex between men] that’s just a distraction thrown into the argument by heterosexuals. Most men who have sex with men have non-penetrative [sex].”
Many other men have said this to me over the years, and I’ll be writing about all of that in some future post.
When bisexual people are told we must spend all our time having sex with lots of people, it can a) be hurtful if we are also celibate or asexual, and b) leave us open to unwanted sexual advances from others. It’s horrible to get this stereotype pushed on us by monosexual people, but it’s depressing when we start to feel we should be this way ourselves.
Hello! I am not in the UK at the moment. Not, indeed, anywhere with a reliable internet connection, but I read this and thought of you dear followers, regular readers, and people who find this site via Google, Twitter, Sex is Not the Enemy, Bipolar Bisexual,Mark Simpson and other sites that link to me. It's about Michael Bailey, he who has been so controversial in denying that bi men are really bi. The piece below (which was posted on the academic bi yahoo group) begs so very many questions - but I thought it interesting to throw it out there and see what you think. Lots of love and post soon... Sue x
The Daily Northwestern - NU Prof. Bailey researching possible 'gay gene' See piece here
Recent research from Northwestern Prof. J. Michael Bailey raises new questions in the science behind sexual orientation, namely bisexuality and the prototypical "gay gene."
In his studies on bisexuality, Bailey, a psychology professor, and a team of researchers look at sexual arousal patterns to objectively determine sexual orientation in men and women. Bailey tracks the subject's brain activity while they are looking at erotic pictures to essentially determine "what turns them on," he said.
One new finding is in the sexual orientation of women. Bailey said he found most of his female subjects to be scientifically bisexual, even if they subjectively thought otherwise.
"Women don't work in the way we thought, based on a lot of research we did five to 10 years ago," he said. "Women, at least in the laboratory, get aroused to both stimuli."
This changes everything, Bailey said.
"Now I don’t even know if women have something like a sexual orientation," he said.
About two-thirds of women are showing arousal patterns that differ from what they consider to be their orientation, said Adam Safron, a research consultant on the project.
"Women are not being driven in their arousal pattern in the same way as males," he said.
Male arousal patterns were less flexible than female patterns, Bailey said. Men who believed themselves to be bisexual were aroused by both female and male stimuli but exhibited a stronger arousal to males than females. Bailey published a paper in 2005 suggesting bisexual men do not have bisexual arousal patterns. If sexual arousal patterns are the key to sexual orientation and his research is accurate, male bisexuality may not actually exist, Bailey said.
"I never meant to suggest bisexual men were lying about their sexuality," he said. "But there has been some skepticism about if bisexual men are really bisexual in the same way gay men are gay or straight men straight."
Safron said the science behind sexual orientation can get complicated.
"In terms of what people tell you they like, you can't always trust what they tell you, especially with something as emotionally involved as sexuality," he said. ...
Hello! I am not in the UK at the moment. Not, indeed, anywhere with a reliable internet connection, but I read this and thought of you dear followers, regular readers, and people who find this site via Google, Twitter, Sex is Not the Enemy, Bipolar Bisexual,Mark Simpson and other sites that link to me. It's about Michael Bailey, he who has been so controversial in denying that bi men are really bi. The piece below (which was posted on the academic bi yahoo group) begs so very many questions - but I thought it interesting to throw it out there and see what you think. Lots of love and post soon... Sue x
The Daily Northwestern - NU Prof. Bailey researching possible 'gay gene' See piece here
Recent research from Northwestern Prof. J. Michael Bailey raises new questions in the science behind sexual orientation, namely bisexuality and the prototypical "gay gene."
In his studies on bisexuality, Bailey, a psychology professor, and a team of researchers look at sexual arousal patterns to objectively determine sexual orientation in men and women. Bailey tracks the subject's brain activity while they are looking at erotic pictures to essentially determine "what turns them on," he said.
One new finding is in the sexual orientation of women. Bailey said he found most of his female subjects to be scientifically bisexual, even if they subjectively thought otherwise.
"Women don't work in the way we thought, based on a lot of research we did five to 10 years ago," he said. "Women, at least in the laboratory, get aroused to both stimuli."
This changes everything, Bailey said.
"Now I don’t even know if women have something like a sexual orientation," he said.
About two-thirds of women are showing arousal patterns that differ from what they consider to be their orientation, said Adam Safron, a research consultant on the project.
"Women are not being driven in their arousal pattern in the same way as males," he said.
Male arousal patterns were less flexible than female patterns, Bailey said. Men who believed themselves to be bisexual were aroused by both female and male stimuli but exhibited a stronger arousal to males than females. Bailey published a paper in 2005 suggesting bisexual men do not have bisexual arousal patterns. If sexual arousal patterns are the key to sexual orientation and his research is accurate, male bisexuality may not actually exist, Bailey said.
"I never meant to suggest bisexual men were lying about their sexuality," he said. "But there has been some skepticism about if bisexual men are really bisexual in the same way gay men are gay or straight men straight."
Safron said the science behind sexual orientation can get complicated.
"In terms of what people tell you they like, you can't always trust what they tell you, especially with something as emotionally involved as sexuality," he said. ...
