As Bisexuals Get Older, They Act Straighter - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
As Bisexuals Get Older, They Act Straighter
by

Many bisexual people speak as though they are equally divided in their sexual behavior. But that does not match the reality. People who identify as bisexual are much more likely to have sex with an opposite-sex partner than with a same-sex partner. And that trend becomes even more pronounced as bisexual people get older.

That was the finding of Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a sociology professor at the University of Utah. Wolfinger wrote a fascinating deep dive on bisexuality among young people that was published Monday by the Institute for Family Studies. (READ MORE: Thirty Percent of Young Liberals Now Identify as LGBT)

The finding comes at a time when identification with bisexuality is exploding. According to 2022 data from Gallup, 0.7 percent of Baby Boomers identify as bisexual, followed by 1.6 percent of Gen Xers, 6.9 percent of Millenials, and 13.1 percent of Zoomers.

Bisexuals Increasingly Prefer Heterosexual Sex

Young Millenials and Zoomers have sex with opposite-sex partners over same-sex partners at a 2–1 ratio. Meanwhile, older Millenials and Zoomers have sex with opposite-sex partners over same-sex partners at a 2.5–1 ratio.

This means that although bisexuals adopt a queer identity, the majority of their sexual behavior on the whole is heterosexual, and their behavior becomes even more heterosexual as they get older.

This change was demonstrated to have occurred in bisexual-identifying Millenials and Zoomers in just the past decade, the same period during which identification with bisexuality has exploded.

Wolfinger used data from the National Survey of Family Growth from the years 2011 through 2019. The data shows differences in sexual behavior as people age, he explained, because there were not significant trends in sexual behavior during those years.

Bisexual Zoomers Are Having More Sex

Among Millenials and Gen Xers, most everyone, regardless of orientation, reported having sex in the past year. However, among Zoomers, there was a difference in sexual activity between people of various sexual orientations. Zoomers who identified themselves as bisexual were significantly more likely to report having sex in the past year than their peers who identified as gay or straight.

Wolfinger found that 67 percent of bisexual members of Gen Z reported having sex in the past year. This compared to 60 percent of gay or lesbian members of Gen Z and 49 percent of straight members of Gen Z.

Bisexual Zoomers Have More Heterosexual Sex Than Straight Zoomers

In fact, the difference in sexual activity was so pronounced that bisexual Zoomers were actually more likely than straight Zoomers to report having sex with an opposite-sex partner in the past year.

Wolfinger speculates that this could possibly mean that bisexuality today is partially an expression that a person is more interested in sex: “[O]ne thing seems very clear: Zoomer bisexuals are young people who are more interested in sex than their peers, whether it’s gay or straight sex.”

“Why else,” he asks, “would bisexuals be having more straight sex than straight people themselves?”

Indeed, in order to adopt a bisexual identity, a person must state publicly that he or she has multiple sexual proclivities. That would seem to denote that a person is interested in sexual experimentation with a variety of different people.

Still, Zoomer bisexuals are less likely to have sex than other generations of all orientations were at their age. Thus, it’s not as though the increase in LGBTQ identification causes sexual activity to societally increase; instead, an LGBTQ identity causes individual young people to be less affected by the general societal decrease in sex among all young people.

That means that for young bisexuals, most of whom are women, a queer identity is correlated with having more straight sex.

READ MORE:

Glamour UK Introduces Pregnant Trans Man as Cover Model for Pride Month

Notre Dame Goes All-In on Pride

Fox in the Henhouse

Ellie Gardey
Follow Their Stories:
View More
Ellie Gardey is Reporter and Associate Editor at The American Spectator. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where she studied political science, philosophy, and journalism. Ellie has previously written for the Daily Caller, College Fix, and Irish Rover. She is originally from Michigan. Follow her on X at @EllieGardey. Contact her at egardey@spectator.org.
Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!