Bisexuality almost DOUBLES in last five years, study reveals

MORE and more people are now identifying as bisexual, especially women, a new report has found.

 

Two women hold hands

 

A study examining the sexual orientation of 9,000 US adults found that 5.5 per cent of women now identify as bisexual, compared to two per cent of men.

It’s a notable rise from the previous study, conducted between 2006 and 2010 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when 3.9% of women and 1.2% of men said they were bisexual.

 

LGBT flag

 

Stephanie Sanders, an associate director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University, who was not involved in the research, said: “As bisexuality is becoming more visible, it appears more women with bisexual behaviour and attractions are embracing that label over a lesbian one.”

Furthermore, almost a fifth of the women involved in the study said that they had engaged in some sort of sexual intimacy with someone of the same gender, compared to just 6.2% of men

 

Are more people bisexual or is it just more acceptable to come out?

 

Ritch Savin-Williams, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University, who has authored several books on the subject of sexual orientation, said that its not necessarily that more people are gay or bisexual, but rather that people are more willing to be open about it.

He told NJ.com: ”I never take this as a change in actual sexuality. I always think of it as reflecting permission – that women now have greater permission to say they have some sexual attraction to other women."

  

Pride

 

Contrarily, 92% of men and 82% of women were strictly straight, but these statistics differ a fair bit when looking at the UK.

According to a 2013 Office for National Statistics Survey, 1.1% of Brits identified as homosexual, and just 0.4% as bisexual.