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It’s possible that because black women are, as a group, more likely to live in areas with smaller “ pools of marriageable men,” they’re more open to bisexuality. A traditional marriage isn’t as necessary as it once was since women have more educational and economic opportunities, they can afford to be pickier or, possibly, to explore same-sex relationships.Īnother aspect of the hypothesis involves the disproportionately high rates of incarceration of black men in the U.S. This too might explain why young black women, in particular, seem more willing to explore bisexuality.Īccording to this argument, fewer “marriageable” men create a need for women to consider options beyond heterosexual relationships or marriage. Others have pointed to the shortage of men hypothesis to explore young black women’s decisions about relationships and marriage. Since masculinity and heterosexuality are closely intertwined, men might believe they’ll suffer a higher social cost for identifying as bisexual. They argue that these shifts speak to a larger truth about American culture: It’s more acceptable for women to spurn gender norms because femininity isn’t valued as highly as masculinity. Yet they discovered a similar pattern: Young black women were more likely to engage in same-sex sexual behavior than women and men in other racial and age groups. Rather than study sexual identities, they studied sexual behavior. Caudillo also analyzed the General Social Survey. Sociologists Emma Mishel, Paula England, Jessie Ford and Mónica L. If that’s the case – and if this trend continues – we might expect women of other races to follow suit. Perhaps when it comes to sexuality, black women are also ahead of the curve. Eventually, more unmarried white women started having children, too. It wasn’t until a decade later that white women started earning college degrees at a higher clip than white men.Īnd in the first half of the 20th century, more unmarried black women started having children. As early as 1980, black women began to outpace black men in completion of a four-year college degree. In other trends, black women also led the wayĭata like these help us to establish a shift is occurring, but they don’t really explain why it’s happening.Įxploring the “why” requires different methods of analysis, and existing studies – like Mignon Moore’s research on gay identity and relationships among black women – can provide some clues.īut beyond this, other demographic research shows that black women have led the way in other trends related to gender.Ĭonsider the gender gap in college attendance. And the majority of that change can be accounted for by bisexual-identifying black women. That rate was more than two times higher than for white women or other racial groups – and almost four times higher than for men of any racial group.īy 2018, more than 25% of young black women identified as lesbian or bisexual. That’s a large shift – and it all happened in a relatively short period of time.Īdd race to the figures and you’ll see that young black women, in particular, account for a disproportionate share of this shift.Ī few years ago, we wrote about how approximately 18% of young black women identified as lesbian or bisexual in the 2016 General Social Survey sample. There were more than twice as many young female bisexuals as there were young lesbians, gay men and bisexual men combined. In the 2018 sample, more than 1 in 8 women from the ages of 18 to 34 identified as bisexual.
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The most dramatic shift among bisexual identifying women is happening among young people. Of all of the women who responded to the 2018 survey, more than 1 in 18 identified as bisexual. haven’t changed much.īisexual identifying women, on the other hand, account for virtually all of the growth among those who say they’re lesbian, gay or bisexual. In the 10 years that the General Social Survey has included a question on sexual identity, rates of identification among gay men, lesbian women and bisexual men in the U.S.