‘Going both ways’: Young women are increasingly identifying as bisexual, but what does that mean?

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Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.

In March, a Gallup poll of 12,000 Americans made the rounds with a startling finding: “More than one in five Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+.” Per Gallup, “If current trends continue, it is likely that the proportion of LGBTQ+ identifiers will exceed 10 per cent of U.S. adults at some point within the next three decades.”

It’s easy to look at those numbers and imagine a sea change in human behaviour. If you do not follow these topics closely – if you interpret “LGBTQ+” as 2024-speak for “This is about gay people,” you might come away with the impression that everyone is gay now, or will be in about five minutes.

Then you might feel confused. How does one square this with the ubiquity – yes, even in 2024 – of man-woman couples?

Bisexuality. For all the culture-wars fascination with the acronym’s T and Q categories – that is, with transgender and non-binary people, not to mention the proliferating subcategories of “queer” – their numbers equate, in the grand scheme of things, to, like, three people. The breakdown is similar in Canada. Instead, the population driving the increase in LGBTQ+ numbers is young bisexual women. In the Gallup poll, 20.7 per cent of Gen Z women ticked “bisexual,” versus a paltry 9 per cent of millennial women and 2.8 per cent of their Gen X predecessors. (Pity the 0.1 per cent of Silent Generation bisexual women.) Gen Z men are much more bi than their elders, but only 6.9 per cent identify as such. So this is about young bisexual women. Women who, according to Pew Research Center, generally partner with men.

Are we witnessing the inevitable result of a more open society, with more people able to be who they really are? Or are these a bunch of straight women who fancy themselves more interesting, or more politically enlightened, than the square suburbanite that the phrase “straight woman” evokes?

Some are making the case that it’s the latter. The culture writer Katherine Dee posted on X, in response to the Gen Z female bisexuality findings: “This is a meaningless difference unless it’s reflected in their behaviour, not just their identification habits. Ask me how many bisexual friends I have who haven’t so much as seen another woman naked, forget had sex with one. Keep it moving.” Ms. Dee has written about the way that some young people have started to view sexual orientation labels as less about what you’re doing, with whom, in the flesh, than as claims of affinity or belonging – “More internet-based and therefore disembodied.”

Others were more blunt in their skepticism. Writer Park MacDougald quipped, “‘Bisexual’ just means Democrat.”

Accurately measuring the ranks of the functionally heterosexual but queer-identified – as in, not just straight-passing but … straight – is impossible. There is no test for bisexuality. It’s not like when someone claims to be Indigenous, and others can confirm or disprove it. That most bisexuals wind up in straight-appearing relationships speaks to the relative ease of finding an opposite-sex partner, and does not in and of itself suggest that there’s some glut of straight women claiming bisexuality for the heck of it.

I have no doubt that bisexuals are real – some of my best friends, etc. And I am aware of the Kinsey scale, and more broadly, the theory that sexual orientation is a spectrum. But I dispute the notion that everyone is bisexual, or would be if they could shed their hang-ups. As the numbers of bisexual women rise so far beyond what one sees of woman-woman relationships, I do see where doubts come from.

There are reasons, other than sexual interest in both women and men, that might motivate a woman to claim bisexuality. For lesbians, the incentives are clear enough – society is homophobic, and “bisexual” sounds less final. But why would straight women do this? Is it just about wanting to seem interesting?

Some may be finding their identity rooted in post-#MeToo sensibilities – that it is unseemly for a woman to need a man. But more of it is, I think, an internalization of the now decades-long drumbeat of supposed science on how women are inherently bisexual. The regularly issued proclamations that all women are bi always feel a bit too convenient. Even if couched in terms of queer liberation, the all-women-are-a-bit-bi theory has a way of winding its way back to business as usual. (Not least because it suggests lesbians are secretly open to dating men.)

Take the 2022 Men’s Journal headline, “Are All Women Turned On by Other Women? Research Finds Women are Aroused by Sexual Stimuli Involving Both Men and Women.” The research cited – that is, straight women’s pupils dilate for women more than one might expect – does not prove that straight women want to have sex with women. As with other such studies, women’s physiological responses to sexual stimuli are not a proxy for underlying sexual orientation. It may indicate that women respond physically even to unwanted sexual situations as a protective measure (i.e. anticipating assault) or that women are used to seeing sexy images of women, and therefore associate these with sexiness.

Moreover, much of the documented sexual fluidity among women – that is, women dating a man for a while, then a woman, then a man, etc. – can be accounted for by the fact that society is relatively okay with women doing this, relative to the conniptions it gets into about men doing the same. Homophobia, biphobia, or some mix thereof prevents “straight” men from acting on same-sex urges, or from labelling it as LGBTQ+-related when they do so.

A woman who exclusively dates men being amenable to same-sex encounters is a non-threatening form of sexual adventurousness. For many straight men, it’s a plus. At any rate, it will not have the degree of negative impact on her straight-dating prospects as would an equivalent announcement from a man. However much Harry Styles fanfic she may be reading, a straight woman will hear “I’m bi,” from her husband and – maybe unfairly – assume the other shoe’s about to drop and that he’s about to leave her for his business partner Steve.

Another factor here is the end of the “straight ally.” Remember those? Sometimes allyship manifested itself in cringe ways, like the proverbial straight ally who shows up at Pride holding his girlfriend’s hand, lest anyone get the wrong idea about where he stands. The ally concept also gave plausible deniability, in the bad old days, to the kid who joined his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. (I remember telling myself a high-school crush was just a really fervent ally, but alas.)

Today, you effectively cannot be a straight ally. Consider Taylor Swift, a public figure who has (publicly, at least) only dated men, and who has conveyed ally-type messages in her work and public statements. There’s a gigantic New York Times essay about how Ms. Swift is sending secret coded messages about being not-straight herself, because what other explanation could there possibly be for a woman wishing her queer friends well?

I can see why, if you are – like so many straight women – drawn to environments less rigid about gender roles, you might want to avoid standing accused of appropriation for being there to begin with. If you’re a straight woman at a gay bar, you’re invading a queer space. If, however, you are a bisexual woman, you are a community member.

In 2024, in some circles, to say, “I’m straight,” comes across as borderline aggressive. As if you’re expressing not merely your own inclinations but a principled opposition to other ways of being. It could be, then, that bisexuality itself has changed, as a category, from indicating that someone actually experiences sexual attractions to men and women and perhaps non-binary people, to including those who are not, in principle, opposed to developing such attractions.

Paradoxically, my skepticism about the all-women-are-bi hypothesis comes from reading the testimony of women who tried sex with women because this was something they felt they ought to enjoy, only to realize it wasn’t for them.

I’m thinking of the polyamory memoir More, wherein author Molly Roden Winter tries a threesome with another woman, realizes women aren’t her thing … and then, years later, tries another two-women threesome, with the same result. “Maybe an FFM threesome would be a safe way to test the depths of my bisexuality,” writes Ms. Winter of her thought process, although the depths are those of a puddle in a draught.

For entirely different reasons – a political opposition to heterosexuality – Nona Willis-Aronowitz attempts to extricate herself from the ranks of the heterosexuals, only to conclude, in her book Bad Sex, that cisgender men are the people who do it for her. Per their books, neither Ms. Winter nor Ms. Willis-Aronowitz conclude that they are in fact bisexual. But had you polled them on this, mid-exploration-journey when the college tries were still continuing, who can say?

My interest is not in how these authors specifically would have responded, but rather in what these stories suggest about bi-identified women in the aggregate. Some who tick that box are probably indicating something other than a desire for women. And maybe that’s fine! But it’s not the step toward recognizing female sexual autonomy it might seem.