Nearly three-fifths of LGBTQ adults in America identify as bisexual, according to a new Gallup poll, a finding that illustrates the extent of a population that some researchers have termed the “invisible majority” of the queer community.
Young Americans, and young women in particular, have widely rejected the notion of sexuality as a binary choice — straight versus gay — just as they have largely abandoned the either-or, boy-girl system of fixed gender.
One-fifth of Generation Z respondents identified as queer, Gallup found, one of the largest generational LGBTQ populations ever documented.
Two-thirds of young, queer adults polled consider themselves bisexual, meaning they are attracted to more than one gender. Most of them are women, who outnumber bisexual men 3 to 1, according to Gallup. Scholars say American society allows women more latitude than men in exploring sexual identity.
“We have a range of sexualities within us,” said Michael Bronski, a Harvard professor who penned a definitive Queer History of the United States. “I think women have far more permission to be open about their sexual desires than men do, no matter how men feel.”
Around 7 percent of American adult respondents overall identified as queer in 2022, according to Gallup. Of that group, 58 percent identified as bisexual.
Researchers increasingly recognize bisexuality as the largest LGBTQ population. A pioneering 2011 study by the Williams Institute, a UCLA thinktank, examined several earlier surveys and found that bisexuals constituted a narrow majority.
A 2011 report from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission termed bisexuals the “invisible majority” of the queer community, calling out a societal tendency to act as if the largest LGBTQ group didn’t exist.
The San Francisco report found that bisexuals are frequently “ignored, discriminated against, demonized, or rendered invisible by both the heterosexual world and the lesbian and gay communities. Often, the entire sexual orientation is branded as invalid, immoral or irrelevant.”
The concept of “bisexual erasure” has a long and growing Wikipedia page.
Meanwhile, the visibility of the LGBTQ community as a whole has been increasing. With polls revealing ever-larger numbers of queer Americans, observers may be tempted to conclude the population is rising. One long-running Gallup survey, for example, found twice as many young, queer adults in 2021 as in 2017.
Researchers see the rising poll numbers more as a journey of discovery.
American society has stigmatized homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality and polysexuality for generations. Same-sex sexual activity remained illegal in parts of the United States until 2003. Federal law did not protect same-sex marriage until 2015.
As society has become more accepting of queer Americans, experts say, more people have publicly identified as queer. Rising tolerance may also explain why the queer community is proportionally larger among younger adults than older ones. Among the Silent Generation — Americans born in 1945 or earlier — only 1.7 percent identify as queer.
“As exciting as it is to see those numbers going up, I think those numbers are still not giving us the full picture,” said V Varun Chaudhry, a cultural anthropologist at Brandeis University who studies gender and sexuality.
Only recently have many surveys and studies focused on subgroups in the queer community, such as bisexuals, along with the total LGBTQ population. Gallup, for one, did not ask respondents to identify a specific category until 2020.
The categories themselves have not been static. The definition of bisexuality has expanded in recent years to embrace a broader view of gender and a growing range of LGBTQ subgroups, populations that don’t always fit within the strictures of a one-word label.
The modern concept of bisexuality dates to the 1800s, and the label is showing its age. “Bisexual” implies an either-or duality of genders that arguably ignores transgender, gender-variant and nonbinary people. A landmark 2021 study found 1.2 million nonbinary adults identify with neither the male nor female gender.
The term “is imperfect at best,” the San Francisco commission concluded in its report.
In recent years, bisexuality has evolved into a catchall that embraces pansexuality and polysexuality, expressing the concept of being physically attracted to someone regardless of gender.
The idea of attraction to multiple genders has seeded both celebration and conflict over the decades.
The 20th century saw brief periods of “bisexual chic,” times of heightened public interest and acceptance, sometimes extending to androgynous imagery in fashion magazines and on runways.
The blues singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay openly identified as bisexual in the 1920s, an era of social and sexual exploration.
Another epoch of bisexual chic peaked amid the androgynous disco stylings of the late 1970s. Elton John came out as bisexual in a 1976 issue of Rolling Stone; David Bowie came out as gay in 1972. Sir Elton later identified as gay, while Bowie settled on a more ambiguous sexual identity.
At the time, celebrities who came out as either bisexual or gay risked fortune and fame. Bowie “said the bisexual label helped sell records in the U.K., but it hurt selling records in the U.S.,” the Harvard professor Bronski said, illustrating how American society resisted accepting queer identities.
Bisexual people have faced ostracism from within the queer community as well as from without.
The modern LGBTQ rights movement struggled for decades to posit the simple idea that some people are born with a natural attraction to others of the same biological sex, a concept that the movement’s opponents have sought to deny.
Many in the movement “felt that people who were saying they were bisexual were being evasive,” Bronski said.
Prejudices persist to this day. A 2019 study found that bisexual people experience “bi-negativity”— anti-bisexual prejudice — “from both heterosexuals and lesbian and gay individuals, as well as the LGBTQ community more broadly.”
Bisexual people are stigmatized over the belief that they are “confused about their sexuality, or that bisexuality does not actually exist,” the study found. They are sometimes viewed as promiscuous or untrustworthy.
“There’s this assumption that you’re either gay or straight and you will ultimately fall to one side or the other,” Chaudhry said. “People might say, ‘Oh, you’re not really committed to this relationship because your last partner was the other gender.’”
To this day, some older lesbian and gay people struggle to accept bisexuality. Younger adults, by contrast, have grown up with “a range of sexualities,” Bronski said, with gay and lesbian just two identities among many.
Survey numbers suggest, however, that young men are far less open than young women to exploring attraction to people of multiple genders. Six percent of American women respondents identify as bisexual, Gallup found, but only 2 percent of men.
Researchers cite enduring masculine stereotypes that associate sexual exploration with femininity. Popular culture is awash in female celebrities who identify as bisexual; male bisexual role models seem fewer.
“If I had to guess, I would say there are more societal constraints around masculinity than around femininity,” Chaudhry said. “There’s a lot more societally accepted fluidity and freedom in so-called female friendships.”
A 2019 Pew Research survey found bisexual people are much less likely than gay or lesbian people to be “out” to important people in their lives. One reason, Pew reported, is that bisexuals are less likely to see sexual orientation as central to their identity.
Bisexual people are far more likely to marry or cohabit with partners of a different sex. A 2021 Gallup survey found 32 percent of bisexual adult respondents had partners of a different sex, and 5 percent had same-sex partners. Some of that disparity, researchers say, reflects enduring prejudice.
“There’s actually enormous pressure from parents to get married,” Bronski said. “Still. Parents who are younger than me. These are mostly younger, heterosexual parents who are invested in heterosexual relationships.”
As it does regularly, Gallup asked Americans last year if they identified as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. About 7 percent of Americans said they identified as one of the latter four categories, essentially the same percentage as identified that way in 2021.
There was an interesting divide, though. When Gallup broke out responses by age, it found that younger Americans were much more likely to identify as LGBT (the Gallup poll excluded “queer,” so no “Q”) than older ones. Only about 2 percent of those in the Silent Generation (born during or before World War II) identified as LGBT. By contrast, about 20 percent of Gen Z (should be known as Lockdowners) chose one of the LGBT options.
This phenomenon is not new. The divide between older and younger Americans on self-identification has been a subject of debate for some time and is often cited in rhetoric targeting the perceived liberalizing effect of education and culture. As Florida considered legislation passed last year that limited discussion of same-sex relationships in schools, the dangerous idea that kids were being actively encouraged to be gay became prevalent in right-wing rhetoric.
There is a simpler explanation, one that grants adults the agency of their choices. Decades of hostility to same-sex relationships loosened in recent years, and younger Americans grew up in a country that was less hostile to gay relationships than it used to be. And, therefore, they’re more comfortable expressing their sexual identities openly.
We can see the trend in acceptance of same-sex relationships in the General Social Survey (GSS), a national poll fielded every two years. (The 2020 survey was postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic.) Since the early 1970s, respondents have been asked how they view sexual relations between members of the same sex. After rising slightly in the 1980s — no doubt influenced in part by the AIDS epidemic — there has been a steady decline in the percentage of Americans who say same-sex relationships are always wrong. Importantly, that decline has been seen in every generational group, even those who haven’t attended elementary school in half a century.
We only have good data for members of Gen Z and younger groups in the past two GSS polls. Since only a relatively small group of members of that generation were surveyed in 2018, there’s a greater margin of error for that year. That probably helps explain the seeming jump in the 2021 figure.
Importantly, there is a correlation between the extent to which generations view same-sex relationships as always wrong and the extent to which members identify as LGBT in Gallup’s data. Gen Z is least likely to view those relationships as wrong (the dot farthest to the left on the graph below) and most likely to identify that way (highest). (The graph also indicates where the Gen Z dot would be using the 2018 GSS data. It’s visible as a light red dot behind the “G” in the label for the vertical axis.)
In the abstract, this could be seen as evidence in favor of the idea that young people were being trained to view LGBTQ relationships as acceptable. But this does not account for the downward shift in opposition to same-sex relationships among members of other generations.
It also ignores other lessons from American history. In 2015, The Washington Post presented this graph, showing how identification of children as left-handed rose during the 20th century and then plateaued at about 1 in 8 kids.
Kids weren’t being groomed to be lefties. Quite the opposite: When my mother was young, she was told to learn to write with her right hand. Over time, that idea fell out of favor and lefties could simply be lefties. The percentage of the population that is left-handed stabilized.
Perhaps what’s happening with LGBTQ identification is analogous. Perhaps the change isn’t that kids are being encouraged to be gay when they aren’t; perhaps it’s that they feel free to identify that way if they are — a freedom older Americans didn’t enjoy. A freedom some still see an unacceptable for themselves or in their peer groups.
Maybe what Gallup is doing, then, is simply more accurately measuring reality.
— In the late nineteenth century, historian John Addington Symonds fought back against his colleagues’ refusal to acknowledge historical same-sex relationships.
In many times and places, people who would fall under today’s LGBTQ+ umbrella have grown up with no framework to understand their identities. As historian Emily Rutherford writes, that was true for Victorian scholar John Addington. But, thanks to Addington’s work, many men who followed him had new ways to put their sexuality in context.
As a student in 1850s Britain, Symonds read Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, encountering paiderastia—the social and erotic relationship between older and younger Athenian men. He later wrote that the concept was “the revelation I had been waiting for”—and something that he literally had no words to describe in his native language. He settled for a Greek phrase meaning roughly “the love of impossible things.”
But Rutherford writes that Symonds soon found his reading of the Greeks wasn’t universal. For example, one of his mentors, Benjamin Jowett of Oxford, dismissed Plato’s and Socrates’s descriptions of ennobling love between men as “a figure of speech.”
Symonds pushed back, arguing that historical accounts of same-sex relationships could provide guidance to men of his own time. His 1873 essay “A Problem in Greek Ethics” described love and sex between men in ancient Greece as well as different ethical structures governing same-sex relationships in other times and cultures. He was interested in a distinction between “common” and “heavenly” loves made by an Athenian named Pausanias in the Symposium. In his own culture, Symonds argued, the denial of public recognition for same-sex love reduced homosexuality to mere sexual gratification.
In 1878, a move to the Swiss Alps put Symonds in contact with a growing body of sexological literature published in German, much of which was unavailable in Britain due to obscenity laws. This research demonstrated the prevalence of men who had romantic and sexual relationships with other men in the present day. Toward the end of his life, he collaborated with doctor and sex researcher Havelock Ellis on a book that would eventually be published as Sexual Inversion.
But, unlike Ellis, Symonds viewed same-sex love as something that transcended unusual neurology. Rutherford writes that he sought to understand “how homoerotic love might be part of a wider, chivalric ideal.” He spent much of his life obsessed with Walt Whitman’s poems about comradeship—though Whitman, who had no concept of sexual orientation as a fixed identity, disavowed his interpretations of the poetry.
Rutherford notes that Symonds was married to a woman for much of his life, and his sexual encounters with other men were “fraught with class inequality and exploitation.” Yet he provided a new vocabulary for other men to talk about their intimate relationships. Oscar Wilde read Symonds with fascination and is said to have explained his love for Alfred Douglas with references to Plato, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare apparently cribbed from his work. E. M. Forster also wrote that reading Symonds helped him recognize his own homosexuality reflected in men from other times and cultures. Symonds’s work helped set the stage for a new flourishing of self-identified gay men in the twentieth century.
As far as LGBTQIA people are concerned, what is old is new again. Recent pushes to restrict classroom representation of sexuality and gender identity, to intimidate libraries out of queer-friendly programming, and to legislate away the right to choose gender reassignment might appear new on the surface, but they reflect anxieties that have been part of Western culture for centuries, and that have everything to do with what we consider natural.
The last time sexual anxieties in the USA ran this high was in the 1990s. Back then, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, the military instituted its controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and a “gay gene” was falsely reported as having been discovered in fruit flies. In that decade RuPaul’s gorgeously Amazonian presence made a lot of heterosexual men wonder about their sexuality, and Ellen DeGeneres came out, only to see her sitcom promptly canceled. Amid all this, under the guise of “protecting family values,” in 1991 the US government shelved an $18 million survey on teen sexual health, and another study of adult sexual diversity.
It amounted to a moratorium on all government-funded research into sexual identities and desire, with one notable exception. The governmental agency that was permitted to continue its research on homosexuality was … the Department of Agriculture. They’d been looking into what was known among farmers as the “dud stud” phenomenon: 8.5 percent of rams would choose only other males as sexual partners, time and again. He might be healthy and virile and have plenty of sperm to spare, but without any desire for females a “dud stud” wouldn’t sire lambs, and the farmer would be out of their investment (from $350 for a cheapie to $4,000 for a prize stud).
Bovid homosexual desire has long been familiar to ranchers, who watch out for females mounting other females as a simple way to determine when they’re in heat, and use steers to arouse bulls before artificially extracting their semen. Valerius Geist, a prominent mammologist, realized in the 1960s that wild bighorn sheep live in “essentially a homosexual society,” the males and females coming together only during the relatively brief rutting season. That means spending the rest of their lives in sex-segregated herds, where they engage in homosexual sex—not just quick mounting but full-on intercourse. He didn’t publish the research at the time, noting later that it was too difficult to “conceive of those magnificent beasts as queers.”
Geist probably assumed he was encountering an anomaly, but homosexual behavior in animals had been befuddling observers for centuries. Some ancient Greek thinkers believed hyenas had a special orifice for homosexual encounters, and in the 7th century, theologian Isidore of Seville was troubled by the homosexual activities of partridges, “for male mounts male and blind desire forgets gender.”
Reports of such homosexual behavior didn’t stop Thomas Aquinas from arguing, in the 13th century, that homosexuality was unnatural precisely because it did not occur in animals. His rhetoric about the “unnaturalness” of homosexuality, historian John Boswell notes, was politically useful and aligned with another moment of sexual anxiety: a surge in anti-gay legislation throughout Europe between 1250 and 1300, in which the death penalty for sodomy was introduced in country after country.
The assumption that homosexuality doesn’t exist in nature has led to very real consequences, such as the Bowers v. Hardwick Supreme Court case of 1986, which upheld the conviction of two men for sodomy, whose sentencing had cited the “unnaturalness” of their behavior. (The last sodomy law in the US was struck down only in 2003, and it remains a criminal, and sometimes capital, offense in parts of the world.)
During the last gay panic in the 1990s—and certainly back in the 13th century—we lacked today’s mainstream scientific acknowledgment of animals’ same-sex encounters. It’s been an important three decades for zoology. As a recent study in Nature Ecology & Evolution pointed out, the number of animal species with substantiated same-sex sexual behavior is 1,500 and counting.
For our near relative the bonobo, female-female genital rubbing is the most frequent sex act, one that takes place amid a matriarchy of sexually connected mothers. Shorebirds like albatross, gulls, and terns have same-sex parents in up to a third of nests; male bottlenose dolphins bond for life, cementing their union through frequent, and acrobatic, sex. Overturning long-standing assumptions that homosexual behavior was an evolutionary dead end, a growing scientific openness to animal bisexuality has resulted in compelling new theories. Foremost among these is the idea that oxytocin-producing sex is a powerful tool for reconciliation and alliance formation, whether that sex is hetero- or homosexual.
During my closeted teenage years in the 1990s, I would covertly look up “homosexuality” in encyclopedias, only to discover that it was a psychological failure of humans with bad parental attachments, without analog in nature. That echoed the rhetoric of otherwise kindly adults around me, who were grateful the “gay plague” of AIDS was getting rid of a social problem. I made it to the other side of my shame by coming to accept and even love my “unnaturalness.” It was only years later that I discovered the diversity that had been in nature all along. In writing my most recent book, Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, I chose to make it accessible to teen readers, for whom internalized messaging about “unnaturalness” can be a life or death concern. (A survey last year by The Trevor Project found that 45 percent of LGBTQIA teens have seriously considered suicide.)
I made it to the other side of my shame by coming to accept and even love my “unnaturalness.” It was only years later that I discovered the diversity that had been in nature all along.
I had these concerns on my mind when I spoke to a young wildlife ecologist, Logan Weyand, who, while working with various bovid species, has observed plenty of same-sex mounting, intersex animals, and individuals that eschew sex altogether. Though Weyand was assigned female at birth, he never felt comfortable in his body and transitioned to male during his freshman year of college. He’s still on a journey around his gender identity, selectively closeting himself, especially at his research site in Idaho, where passing can be a safety concern.
Amid the need to navigate others’ judgments about LGBTQIA identities, Weyand finds himself longing for the times when he spends weeks away from civilization, “with the animals totally by myself, and not being judged. When I’m watching animals, I can go sunrise to sunset and not take my face away from the scope for hours.” Out there in the field, mud up to his ankles, Weyand worries only about getting good data. The sheep and moose he studies don’t care one bit about his sexual identity.
It’s a recurrent theme for many of the LGBTQIA scientists I’ve spoken to for my research. In a world where queer humans are often asked to identify or explain themselves, the radical acceptance of nature is a relief. In the animal world, everything just is.
For every date a heterosexual woman goes on there is, for better or worse, a man there. But while women produce a wide and varied literature about this experience, from dating columns to films, there is hardly any personal writing by straight men about their sex, dating and relationship lives at all. There’s Karl Ove Knausgård. But you could list women writing in this genre for hours. Nora Ephron, Anaïs Nin, bell hooks, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dolly Alderton, Candace Bushnell, and so on.
Men date. Men fall in love. So where is the writing from men about these experiences? There are a few basic dating and sex advice columns aimed at straight men. Rhys Thomas writes Hey Man for Vice, Justin Myers wrote one at GQ for a while. Perhaps this is the masculine mode: anonymously ask a question, get a straight answer. Elsewhere, it feels like affairs of the heart are snuck into writing directed at straight men like vegetables into a child’s dinner. A recent New York Times article about the podcaster Scott Galloway noted that he smuggled relationship content into advice about career paths. And of course, as so many young men are doing of late, you can dive headlong into the cesspit of woman hacking, care of professed misogynist Andrew Tate. But that isn’t exactly what I had in mind.
It may be that the only group of people gagging for a dating column by a straight man are the women who date them. I know that men have fascinating thoughts about their romantic lives, and I love talking to my straight male friends about it. Recently I’ve been talking to them about the difference between what a man “settling” and a woman “settling” might look like; someone’s theory that culture has massively overstated the degree to which straight men want to have sex; someone else’s that straight men are talking about a different experience when they use the term “heartbreak” than women are, and so on.
When I asked them why they think the straight man relationship writing genre doesn’t exist, they were unanimously of the view that it just wouldn’t work. “I would see a dating column by a straight dude as undignified,” one said. “If it’s going well, it comes off braggy and vulgar, and if it’s going poorly, stop whinging in print.” So maybe it’s not surprising that a lot of male writers wouldn’t touch this subject with a bargepole. “Paradoxically, the sort of men who have the insight and sensitivity to write well about that experience preclude themselves from doing it exactly because of the sensitivity and awareness that would make their writing insightful,” another friend argued.
There are reasons to do with the history of this particular literary form, as well. It may be that, for a number of fair reasons, women are allowed to denigrate men in print, but not the other way around. “I think some of the things I get away with saying about men would seem a bit gross from guys, because of the obvious power imbalance,” Annie Lord, British Vogue’s dating columnist, told me. Women can write about dating because on a heterosexual date, society generally accepts that women are the underdogs.
Men are, in fact, talking about their sex and dating problems, but they’re not doing it in the media under their names. It’s happening anonymously on places like Reddit. A lot of this stuff is toxic garbage, yes, but plenty of it isn’t. The question may be more why no man has stepped forward to do this under his own name, in public.
Do I think a trailblazing men’s dating column is going to suddenly solve the so-called crisis in male emotional communication? No. And I confess to feeling a bit sorry for straight men in this regard. I love the way women talk freely about this stuff. But not even an imagined – and it seems pretty impossible – golden age of personal writing by men is going to force straight guys into hand-holding, tear-shedding summits with their friends when the truth seems to be that, whether for societal or biological or whatever reasons, they don’t want to.
Would many straight men even read this fabled column? Again, I asked some friends. “I probably wouldn’t be interested in reading a column by some dude cos I’d just think, well, that’s him I guess. I can’t imagine finding it useful or applying it to me in any way.”
Which made me question, what do women get out of reading dating and relationship columns? I like reading dating columns mostly because I’m nosy. But I do also think there’s something about reading other women’s experiences out there in the trenches of dating men that can feel reassuring, like talking in the “no boys allowed” treehouse. And it’s nice to go to the treehouse, so it’s sad to me that boys don’t have one of their own. Maybe some brave man will find a way to build it.
As Pompeii’s House of the Vettii finally reopens after a long process of restoration, news outlets appear to be struggling with how to report on the Roman sex cultures so well recorded in the ruins of the city.
The Metro opened with the headline “Lavish Pompeii home that doubled as a brothel has some interesting wall art”, while the Guardian highlighted the fresco of Priapus, the god of fertility (depicted weighing his oversized penis on a scale with bags of coins) as well as the erotic frescoes found next to the kitchen.
The Daily Mail, on the other hand – and arguably surprisingly – said nothing about the explicit frescoes and instead centred its story on the house’s “historic hallmarks of interior design”.
As a scholar who researches modern and contemporary visual cultures of sexuality, I was struck by how the heavy presence of sexual imagery in the ruins of Pompeii seems to confound those writing about it for a general audience.
Rethinking Roman sexuality
As a gay man and a researcher on sexuality, I am all too familiar with the ways modern gay men look to ancient Rome in search of evidence that there have always been people like us.
It is now clear among the research community that such straightforward readings of homosexuality in classical history are flawed. That is because same-sex relations among Romans were lived and thought about in very different ways from our own.
Roman sexuality was not framed in terms of the gender of partners but in terms of power. The gender of a free man’s sexual partner was less relevant than their social position.
Frescoes from the House of the Vettii.Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii
Socially acceptable Roman sexuality was about power, power was about masculinity – and Roman patriarchal sex cultures were assertions of both. An adult free man could have sex as the penetrating partner with anyone of a lower social status – including women or slaves and sex workers of both genders.
Despite this, I understand how politically important and strategic it was for the early homosexual movement to invent its own myth of origin and to populate history with figures that had been – they thought – just like us.
The flip side of modern notions of homosexuality being read into Roman history, is the way in which the widespread presence of sex in ancient Roman (including in the graffiti and visual culture preserved in Pompeii) has been disavowed or – at least – purified by mainstream modern culture.
Pornography in Pompeii
This phenomenon started when sexually explicit artefacts were first discovered in Pompeii, propelling archaeologists to preserve them due to their historical value, but to keep them hidden from the general public in “secret museums” on account of their obscene content.
Indeed, the coinage of the word “pornography” was a result of the archival need to classify those Roman artefacts. The term “pornographers” was first used to designate the creators of such Roman images in Karl Otfried Müller’s Handbook of Archaeology of Art (Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst), from 1830.
A fresco of Priapus in the House of the Vettii showing the god’s oversized penis.
The news coverage around the reopening of the House of the Vettii is one such example of mainstream modern culture sanitising Roman history.
When focusing on the fresco of Priapus, for instance, news outlets are quick to claim that the god’s oversized penis was merely a metaphor for the wealth accumulated by the men who owned the house. The pair had made their fortune selling wine after being freed from slavery.
This reading of the fresco, while not necessarily incorrect, overlooks the more complex – and for that reason, more interesting – role of phallic imagery in Roman culture.
As classicist Craig Williams writes, the images of a hyper-endowed, hyper-masculine Priapus that were widespread in Roman culture functioned not only as a source of identification but also as an object of desire for Roman men – if not to be penetrated by the large phallus, then at least to wish it was their own.
Priapus, with his large manhood and unquenchable desire to dominate others through penetration was, Williams tells us: “Something like the patron saint or mascot of Roman machismo.”
What’s missing from the story?
News coverage of the erotic frescoes found in a smaller room of the house has been similarly too straight forward in claiming them as evidence that that room was used for sex work.
While some scholars have certainly argued that perspective, others believe it unlikely. Some academics suggest that the erotic frescoes in that room (which probably belonged to the house’s cook) had more likely been commissioned as a gift to the Vettii’s favourite slave and very much fit the wider aesthetic of quirky excess that marks the house as a whole.
A courtyard in the House of the Vettii.Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii
In a culture where sex was not taboo but instead promoted as a sign of power, wealth and culture, it is fair to suggest that erotic images wouldn’t just belong in brothels. Sex was everywhere in Rome, including in literary and visual arts.
When reading the recent news stories, I could not help but think that their interpretations, while not wholly wrong, were too skewed into presenting the explicit frescoes as either metaphors for something more noble, or as something that was restricted to a specific site of Roman life – the brothel.
Perhaps these readings are privileged over others because we’re reluctant to accept that sex in ancient Roman culture – a culture we so often mythologise as our “origin” – was performed in ways that we are uncomfortable with.
— From anxiety to abuse, how to better protect yourself and seek support
by Jamie Windust
Open dialogue around mental health is becoming more consistent every single day. Whether it be in the workplace or at home, as a society we are learning to talk more about what’s going on in our minds.
But what if you’re LGBTQ+? Often we face specific challenges that our non-queer counterparts don’t face. Anxieties around coming out or transitioning can make life hard in ways that we can’t always openly share.
To help out, GAY TIMES sat down with LGBTQ+ psychiatrist Dr David McLaughlan to ask some of the most common questions LGBTQ+ people have surrounding their mental health. See this as a resource to save and keep handy whenever you feel like there isn’t a space to have your questions answered.
Is there anything LGBTQ+ people should avoid doing if they’re struggling with their mental health?
Be wary of ‘quick fixes’ or self medicating with drugs and alcohol. It almost always makes things worse. I’d also avoid bottling things up. If something doesn’t seem right, don’t just leave it and hope it gets better by itself. Sometimes it can feel frightening asking for help, but almost no one regrets it once they’ve done it. It’s a bit like coming out – liberating and a relief.
Who should LGBTQ+ people try and speak to if they’re worried about their mental health?
You should speak to anyone you feel comfortable with. The most important thing is just speaking to someone. It could be your best friend, your sibling, a neighbour or even a stranger. Sometimes just hearing yourself acknowledge your own mental health out loud can be the first step. I’ve had patients who told me that they began by journaling first. This helped them reflect upon their thoughts and feelings by themselves before they felt confident enough to talk about it out loud with another person.
What do you see most in LGBTQ+ people who come and speak to you about their mental health?
Lots of my LGBTQ+ patients have experienced trauma or adverse life events. Sometimes there is a significant event which triggered an initial deterioration in their mental health, such as an assault. However, there often is an insidious accumulation of trauma or adverse life effects which accumulate over time.
These are things like bullying, discrimination or micro-aggressions. It can happen anywhere; at home with family, in the workplace or out in public when using public transport for example. On a cellular level, trauma or an adverse life event exposes our neurons (the cells in the brain responsible for receiving sensory input from the external world) to the stress hormone cortisol, which is cytotoxic. This means that stress literally kills brain cells… In studies, scans have shown that people exposed to trauma or repeated adverse life events have structural differences in their brains.
In terms of diagnosis, I see a lot of anxiety disorders within the LGBTQ+ community. Anxiety disorders are a diverse range of conditions which include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Panic Attacks as well as Generalised Anxiety Disorders and specific phobias. For example, Agoraphobia.
I also see lots of substance misuse. There are specific trends and patterns of substance misuse within LGBTQ+ subcultures. For example, the use of Crystal Meth within cis-gay men engaging in chemsex compared to an older cis-gay woman may be more vulnerable to alcohol abuse, often characterised by drinking alone at home.
One of the things I always try to communicate and recognise is that we are a really diverse community, with diverse biological, social and psychological experiences and accordingly, our needs are really diverse which makes it tricky sometimes to understand and support everyone. However, the key is to continuously listen and actively seek opportunities to learn.
What are your top tips for handling anxiety around coming out?
It’s okay to feel anxious about coming out. It can be a really big deal for some people and it’s not always easy. Each of us has a different set of circumstances that we have to navigate when we come out. Our families, friends, homelife, cultural background, careers and environment all play a big part in the experience of coming out.
However, sometimes when we are really anxious we imagine that things will be much worse than they really will. These negative predictions about the future can be affected by a cognitive distortion called ‘catastrophisation’. In this situation, our mind goes into ‘what if’ mode, automatically imagining the worst possible thing that could happen.
It might be worth gently challenging some of these predictions. Ask yourself, ‘Is it possible that I could be catastrophising?’, ‘Are there other possible outcomes which aren’t as bad?’.
The most important thing is doing it when you feel safe and ready.
What should LGBTQ+ people do if they’re struggling with alcohol or drug dependency?
LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by drug and alcohol misuse as well as mental health difficulties. Despite this, they’re less likely to ask for help, with 14% reporting a fear of discrimination as the barrier to seeking mainstream support.
1 in 6 LGBTQ+ people said they drank alcohol almost every day over the last year
1 in 5 Gay, Bisexual or Trans men drank alcohol almost everyday over the last year compared to 13% of LGBT women and 11% of non-binary people
52% of LGBT people experienced depression in the last year
LGBT older women are almost twice as likely as heterosexual women to have harmful drinking habits.
This was, in part, why I co-founded Jitai – an app which helps people reduce or cut down drinking. I felt passionately that everyone who wants to reduce or quit drinking, should be able to access support, regardless of their sexuality, gender or financial status.
The app will offer a range of personalised tools and techniques such as mindfulness, breathing exercises and its own unique motivation board to help beat temptation. In our first pilot study, 90% of our users told us that we had helped them achieve their goal of cutting down or quitting drinking.
We’ve had some really incredible feedback from users which was amazing and made me realise that we are really helping people.
What’s the best way to deal with social anxiety as an LGBTQ+ person?
A lot of LGBTQ+ people experience social anxiety. We grew up in a world where being ourselves was potentially something dangerous or put us at risk of bullying or social exclusion.
One of the exercises that I do with my patients at The Prior Hospital in Roehampton is an attention training exercise. I ask my patients to practise shifting the focus of attention away from themselves and onto the world around them.
Stage 1 is to recognise when you are experiencing self-conscious thoughts, feelings or bodily sensations. For example, thoughts such as ‘everyone is staring at me, I sound so stupid’.
Stage 2 is about shifting the focus of your attending away from our internal world and fixing it onto the world around us. Start by taking a few deep breaths, then looking around you. What can you see? Do you notice anything interesting about the shapes, colours or textures? How would you describe an object you’re looking at to someone who had never seen it before? Can you take a curious, non-judgemental approach and work through each of your five senses to draw the focus of your attention away from yourself and onto the world around you?
Your mind is like a muscle. This exercise can be tricky at first, but gets easier with practice.
E. M. Forster’s friends tried more than once to persuade him to publish “Maurice.” The novel, which he wrote when he was thirty-five, moldered in a drawer for decades afterward, with a note attached that read, “Publishable. But worth it?” In other words, was it worth the risk to career, friendships, and family for someone with his literary reputation and social standing to publish a novel whose main character was an “unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort”? “I am ashamed at shirking publication,” he told Christopher Isherwood, “but the objections are formidable.” One friend put it to him that the French writer André Gide’s memoirs made no secret of his homosexuality. “Gide hasn’t got a mother,” Forster replied ruefully.
He meant, of course, a living mother, to be shocked and anguished by the revelation. But the death of Forster’s mother made no difference. Formidable new objections arose, concerning the risks to the reputation of Bob Buckingham, the manly policeman who was Forster’s almost-lover for many years. As the Freudians have long told us, the real censor isn’t so much the flesh-and-blood mother as the one inside. Meanwhile, cowardice is good at masquerading as prudence or social responsibility or simple kindness. Whatever will the neighbors think? What about the children? And what will it do to poor Mama?
One of the ways in which the internal censor makes itself felt is through the familiar prickings of shame, an experience that has linked gay people across generations. And when moral modernizers, in the late nineteenth century, began to argue that homosexuality was no reason for shame—and when, conversely, the perils of their stance were made clear by the public reaction to the trial of Oscar Wilde—gay writers had to confront another, more complex feeling: shame at feeling ashamed, at being afraid, at being a liar.
Tom Crewe’s début novel, “The New Life” (Scribner), is a genealogy of both kinds of shame, tracing a line back to the first generation of men to seek a way out of these burdens. A Victorian historian by training, Crewe makes it clear that his two principal characters are modelled on real figures. One of them, John Addington, is drawn from the life of John Addington Symonds, an independently wealthy scholar, poet, and critic. Symonds published the first complete translation of Michelangelo’s sonnets, which was based on the original manuscripts and did not evade the fact that many were love poems addressed to a man. He was also among the first to insist that Plato’s celebrations of male-male love were entirely in earnest, and reflected a historical reality of (aristocratic) life in ancient Athens. By the time Crewe’s story begins, in 1894, his Addington is about to take a grave risk, by publishing a book that he knows is bound to occasion scandal.
That book, “Sexual Inversion,” was real; Symonds wrote it with the pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis, helping him collect the set of anonymized case studies it presented. In Crewe’s novel, a Havelock Ellis-like character appears as Henry Ellis, and ends up playing sense to Addington’s sensibility. Both men are married, not quite happily. Ellis’s wife, Edith, like her historical counterpart, is a “female invert” who maintains an independent household with another woman; Addington’s wife, Catherine, is resigned to the fact that her husband insists on bringing his lovers home, only because she has no power to stop him.
“The New Life” immediately announces the liberties that a novelist enjoys and a historian does not: it opens with a wet dream, in which Addington finds himself wedged intimately against the body of another man in a packed train carriage. When Addington awakens, spent and vaguely ashamed, he apologizes to his wife for the “spill,” a “soft, married word, evoking nothing of its violence, the stuff that was wrenched from him.” “Wrenched from him”: Addington experiences his sexuality, in these moments, as something entirely external, a compulsion, a necessity.
Why else would he dare to let his eyes linger on the bodies of strangers, collecting material for future fantasy from the paltry images that Victorian male dress codes allow him: “the twist of hair on a nape; the way loose collars sometimes showed a glimpse of naked shoulders; the way trousers encircled a waist, brought out its beauty, like a bracelet on a woman’s wrist”? Why else would he risk exposure as a voyeur in arcadia? Watching in open-mouthed wonder the bathers in London’s Serpentine Lake, he sees an almost classical scene: “The dance of light, the sound of water; men in the company of men, nakedness carelessly worn; everything natural, pure.” The men he ogles are, of course, nearly all working class, “their physiques molded and stamped by labor.” Addington idealizes even as he objectifies, seeing in them the possibility of “another kind of life.”
“Another kind of life” hints also at Crewe’s title. The New Life is, among other things, the name of a reformist society to which Henry Ellis and his wife belong. Its historical counterpart, the Fellowship of the New Life, sought to transform society by transforming individual character. In Crewe’s novel, the Society of the New Life is what brings the two together in the first place. For Ellis, who is almost certainly what came to be called “heterosexual,” the topic of nonstandard sexuality is related to the problem of Edith and her possessive female lover; the book he is writing with Addington is a way of trying to understand his wife. There is also what Crewe terms Ellis’s “peculiarity, tickling, warm” (and shared by his historical counterpart): prone to impotence, he is aroused by the spectacle or even the thought of a woman urinating.
Addington lives out, in his own small, somewhat squalid way, his vision of the future. He picks up, or, rather, is picked up by, a man of a lower social class, a Mr. Feaver, who works in a printing shop as a compositor. Open about his sexual desires, Feaver is too comfortable in his own skin to occupy a permanently inferior position in their relationship. Feaver is installed in Addington’s house and is allowed to befriend his daughters; Catherine Addington is left simply to put up with the situation. She must, in her husband’s self-lacerating assessment, be sacrificed “on the altar of his integrity.” If he is to address the world, Addington believes, “he must further shed the disguise it had bid him wear in the years of his quietude.”
The “new life” is not just a vision of liberation. Addington has already known sexual freedom of a sort, in childhood, when the hairy older boys at his boarding school made “tawdry playthings” of younger ones. What Addington wants is a sexuality that belongs within a larger picture of the good and the beautiful, something he gets only from his classical studies: “He read the Symposium; he fell in love with the possibility of love between men, chaste, clean and elevating.” Like Forster’s Maurice a few decades later, he disobeyed his tutors’ injunction to disregard the text’s celebratory portrayal of “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks.” The historical Symonds was the author of the pioneering, though privately printed, pamphlet “A Problem in Greek Ethics,” which made the case for not ignoring the homoerotic parts of Plato’s Symposium. Its companion essay, “A Problem in Modern Ethics,” was—as Shane Butler observes, in “The Passions of John Addington Symonds” (Oxford), a monumental new monograph—“the first to import a recent German coinage into English print, as ‘homosexual.’”
Still, Addington, like his historical model, cannot subsist entirely on Platonic abstractions. Earlier in his life, he found himself paying a soldier to undress for him. Crewe’s laconic monosyllables evoke the full pathos of the situation: “That was all. He sat in a chair and watched him undress; made him stand there, turn about. He lived on it for a year.”
Symonds, with his privilege and filigreed verse, was a very odd type of social prophet, and so is his fictional counterpart. Living half openly with a male lover is one thing. It is quite another to enlist Ellis in producing a book of case studies on “inversion.” Yet Addington’s hopes are high. Such a book might achieve in England what the writings of the German jurist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs—notably the twelve-part study “The Riddle of Man-Manly Love”—did in Germany: set forth a non-pathological language for talking about what Plato had once described, and show, in Addington’s words, that homosexuals “are neither physically, intellectually, nor morally inferior to normally constituted individuals.”
Ulrichs’s scientific sexology provides one model for what needs to be achieved; Walt Whitman’s poetic effusions provide another, offering a vision of homosexuality as what Ellis terms “the normal activity of a healthy nature,” without the old shame at its heart. If the book succeeds, Addington reflects, it might convince at least a few people that the sex instinct can assume “countless forms, all within the range of human possibility, all conducive to happiness.”
Addington is enraged and distressed that the first man to draw widespread attention to his cause is, as he sees it, an unworthy standard-bearer. Like others at the time, he recognizes Oscar Wilde’s stupidity in suing his lover’s father for defamation when Wilde had made it so easy to establish the truth of the supposedly defamatory epithet (“somdomite”). But Addington’s anger goes further: Wilde, in his wantonness, had no standing to “invoke the Greeks in his defense. To drag idealism into it. Shakespeare and Michelangelo. A pure and perfect affection, indeed. The love that dare not speak its name, indeed. He has brought each and every one of us down with him.”
In fact, one of the historical Symonds’s most important achievements was distinguishing that morally neutral predilection “homosexuality” from the tendency with which it was often conflated: “pederasty.” Wilde notoriously blurred the lines in his own conduct, a fact that any attempt to make a gay saint of him must face up to. Crewe’s Addington recoils at seeing Plato invoked “to justify the man who pays a boy drunk on champagne to share his bed, who deals with blackmailers as others do with their grocer.” In his more honest moods, Addington decides that his sharp distinction between the good invert and the bad, like that better-known Victorian distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, will not stand the test of reality. There is no such thing as a blameless life: “It is all furtiveness, lies, greed, vice, hurting other people out of fear.”
Certainly, there are excuses, some of them good ones: “It is all an effect of the law.” But the fact that one hurts other people out of fear of the law, Crewe makes plain, hardly changes the fact that one does hurt them. When Catherine reads the account in Addington and Ellis’s book that is clearly by and about her husband, she is understandably unforgiving: “I was not free to go into the streets, to go with soldiers to their dirty lodgings. I was not free to bring strange men to this house. I was not free to install in it a man of another class, twenty years younger. But it is you who have been lonely. It says so in your book.”
Addington’s mode of self-reproach has a different sting. Every so often, he has a crisis of faith: “Irrumatio, fellatio, paedicatio. For these he had eschewed study, art, friendship; he had sacrificed all the comforts of a home, the dignity of a marriage.” The Latin euphemisms are one sign of the shame, as is the idea that sex must contrast with, not complement, both comfort and dignity. Crewe is drawing on Symonds’s own yearning for purity. Symonds once declared his personal motto to be In mundo immundo sim mundus: “In an impure world, may I be pure.” In a memoir intended to be published many years after his death, he wrote of how it was through reading Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium that he “discovered the true Liber Amoris at last, the revelation I had been waiting for, the consecration of a long-cherished idealism.” Plato made him see “the possibility of resolving in a practical harmony the discords of my inborn instincts.” It “filled my head with an impossible dream, which controlled my thoughts for many years.”
Crewe has written another Liber Amoris, another “book of love,” that spells out more precisely than Symonds ever managed to do how Platonic idealism, as Shane Butler says in his monograph, “gives even as it takes away.” Helpfully, this idealism allowed Symonds “to distinguish his desires from the crass and often violent homosocial rites of passage of the British ruling class.” Yet, Butler adds, “it was mapped across a dualism” that he could not transcend. Symonds’s desperate desire for cleanness coexisted, after all, with the fantasy he recorded in his anonymous case study for the book he wrote with Ellis: to service a group of sailors and to be their “dirty pig.” His Platonic ideal of love, in any case, contains a large non sequitur. Why must love be chaste to be clean, clean to be elevating? Why must it be elevating at all?
In “The New Life,” Addington’s academic friend Mark Ludding presents him—as the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick presented Symonds—with the utilitarian case against public candor. Addington can try all he likes to portray himself as nothing but “a disinterested sympathizer, determined on reforming the law,” but, after the Wilde trial, who will believe him? How, in any event, would such candor make him, his family, the world happier?
Ludding, looking at the situation impartially, from “the point of view of the universe” (to quote Sidgwick’s most notorious coinage), has arrived at a simple injunction: never to act on his own feelings. Thinking about his wife, Ludding can say to Addington, “I have not given her all of myself. But I have given all that I could. I can say that before the universe.” That remaining part of himself he has given to no one. Addington isn’t persuaded by the argument. He’s convinced that the universe, or at least their corner of it, can and will change: “I listened to him too long, balancing the one thing against all the others. Now I understand that life is absolute. It is the only interest.” He adopts as a utopian credo, in defiance of Ludding’s stern counsels, a line he has borrowed from Ellis: “We must live in the future we hope to make.”
In “The New Life,” Crewe distinguishes himself both as novelist and as historian. He has clearly done what G.M. Young, the great scholar of Victorian England, once recommended: to read until one can hear the people speak. Crewe’s Victorians do indeed sound like human beings, not period-piece puppets. He has, more unusually, found a prose that can accommodate everything from the lofty to the romantic and the shamelessly sexy.
His way into the history avoids the riskier project exemplified by such novels as Damon Galgut’s “Arctic Summer” (2014) and Colm Tóibín’s “The Magician” (2021), which fictionalize the desires and repressions of, respectively, E.M. Forster and Thomas Mann. The use of the men’s real names makes the authors straightforwardly accountable to the known facts of the historical record in a way that Crewe is not. At the same time, Crewe’s project is distinct from that of, say, Alan Hollinghurst in “The Stranger’s Child” (2011), which traces the life and shifting posthumous reputation of a minor First World War-era poet who is evidently inspired by the handsome, bisexual Rupert Brooke but is ultimately very much an invention.
The relationship of Crewe’s novel to history is somewhere between these two models. The real John Addington Symonds died in 1893—of tuberculosis, at age fifty-two—a year after he started work on “Sexual Inversion” with Havelock Ellis, and two years before the prosecution of Oscar Wilde. Crewe conjures a world in which the Symonds character, buffeted by the attendant furor, is forced to confront the consequences of the work’s publication, in an obscenity trial. The element of “alternate history” is all the more potent for its subtlety. Crewe is not trying, wishfully, to give his characters the happy endings they were denied in life. In many ways, his fictional Addington and Ellis have an even harder time of it than their historical counterparts. Imagining them going through the anxieties of a trial becomes a way to probe not only the emancipatory project of Crewe’s eminent Victorians but also the mental toll of their stigmatized sexualities.
While society is arguably more accepting of diverse sexualities these days, figuring out how to define your own personal sexual identity can still be confusing—especially when you’re still trying to make sense of what all these terms mean. Figuring out your sexual orientation might be difficult or take time, and that’s OK.
If you think you might be bisexual, you might be experiencing a mix of feelings: perhaps confusion, a bit of fear, and maybe, just maybe, a bit of excitement as you’re starting to identify this part of yourself. Ahead, we talk about how to know if you may be bisexual and what to do next if that may be the case.
What does it mean to be bisexual?
A bisexual person is someone who is romantically and sexually attracted to more than one gender, which might include women, men, nonbinary folks, and other genders.
Although the term was traditionally associated with attraction toward men and women, specifically, our understanding of sexual orientation and gender has evolved, and today bisexuality is not boxed as binary.
“In the past, we commonly thought of bisexuality as being ‘attracted to both sexes,’ but this more contemporary definition offers and honors gender identity over biological sex and is more inclusive in that way,” Jesse Kahn, LCSW-R, CST, sex therapist and director at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center, tells mbg.
Bisexuality conforms to no rules when it comes to the type or amount of attraction a person must feel to be considered bisexual. It is not a box to fit into but a doorway to discover one’s authentic self.
“Bisexuality can mean attraction to people of your gender and other genders, attraction to multiple genders, and/or being attracted to two or more genders,” Jor-El Caraballo, LMHC, licensed therapist and co-founder of Viva, tells mbg.
According to a 2022 Gallup report, 7.1% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ+. Of those LGBTQ+ folks, a whopping 57% are bisexual, making it the single largest group within the LGBTQ+ community.
There is not one single process for identifying one’s sexual preferences; the experience can vary from person to person. That said, here are some of the most common signs that you may be bisexual:
1. Your feelings confuse you.
Regardless of your identity, feelings in general can be confusing. However, one sign that you may be bisexual is feeling confused about your attraction to other people, especially when it comes to what genders you are or aren’t attracted to. Bi feelings can be confusing—especially if you’ve grown up in a traditional household or have preferred one gender for most of your life.
2. You’ve had confusing friendships in the past.
Have you ever felt a weird connection with a friend but were too afraid to confront it? Do you always find yourself afraid to “cross that one thin line”? That may be a sign of bisexuality. Confusing “nonromantic” or “quasi-romantic” relationships can be a common experience for bisexual people.
3. You’ve felt drawn in by people of more than one gender.
For many people, physical attraction is often the first step when it comes to developing deeper feelings for someone. One of the most common telltale sign that you may be bisexual is if you feel an undeniable attraction toward a person’s appearance and looks, regardless of their gender.
4. Your sexual fantasies aren’t always heterosexual in nature.
Do you fantasize about physically being with people of various genders? Has your porn history begun to expand to include scenes outside of just the heterosexual norm? These are all signs you’re likely sexually attracted to more than one gender.
5. One’s gender doesn’t stop you from wanting a relationship with them.
Bisexuality equips you with the capacity to fully love and date multiple genders (or even all of them!). Visualizing a long-term relationship with someone outside of their gender is a good sign that you may be bisexual. You might be more comfortable with one specific gender over others, but if you could see yourself dating people of different genders, that may signal some bisexual inclinations.
6. You are attracted to fictional characters, regardless of their gender…
…or relate more to bisexual characters on your favorite show, movie, or book. Though this does not immediately confirm you are bisexual, having a sense of attraction, connection, or pride with these characters can be good indicators that you might be one.
7. You have answered lots of “Am I Bi?” quizzes online.
Ever tried to take an online quiz to confirm if you’re bisexual? This could mean that you are having conflicting feelings or emotions over yourself or someone, and finding answers online seems like the only way to help. You may brush it off as a silly little quiz, or you may do it “just for fun,” but questioning to this extent alone is something many LGBTQ+ people experience.
8. The “bi” label resonates.
Labels can be overwhelming for everyone. However, when you read or hear about bisexuality and what it means, you find yourself validated and understood. If you’re comfortable using and being called this label, it’s a good sign that you may indeed be bisexual.
“Many people will also define their sense of bisexuality on their own terms as well, so it’s important to be curious about not just what terms people use to identify themselves but also the importance of that identity to them personally,” Caraballo adds.
Something in you clicks—you just know it. Many recount their experience as just the realization hitting them, like they have known it all along. All it took was one encounter, one experience, or one moment of reckoning, and everything fell into place.
“Ultimately, each person will relate to and define their sexuality differently,” Kahn adds. “It’s about what words mean to you and your communities, and why that word choice is most accurate or meaningful to you.”
I think I may be bisexual — what now?
Bisexuality is a unique identity that is worthy of acceptance and all the same rights as any other sexual orientation. Resonating with this identity may be overwhelming at first, but it is an exciting journey toward self-discovery and self-love.
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you think you may be bisexual:
1. Validate yourself.
“It’s important to people who are learning more about themselves in this area to give themselves a lot of grace and compassion,” Caraballo says. “There are a lot of external messages and voices that contribute to our internal programming and belief systems. This can make feeling secure in your identity difficult.”
While there may be misconceptions and prejudice surrounding bisexuality, know that it truly is something to celebrate. Your identity is valid, and understanding your sexual preferences better is always a good thing.
“If you’re having a hard time figuring out your sexuality, just remember that there’s no rush to figure anything out and that coming into your sexuality is a fluid experience that can change over your lifetime,” Kahn reminds.
2. Don’t pressure yourself to “come out.”
On that note, you may be wondering whether you need to “come out” to others about your newfound identity. Coming out is very personal, and it’s all up to you. Some decide to come out as a way of introducing their true selves, while others don’t feel the need to do so. You don’t have to come out if you don’t want to or before you’re ready, nor do you have to be open about your sexuality and preferences to everyone.
3. Keep learning about queerness and unlearning heteronormativity.
“A large part of realizing one’s sexuality often involves unlearning heterocentric and queer-phobic cultural narratives and beliefs that we’ve all internalized,” says Caraballo, “while creating space in yourself and perhaps with others to explore and stay connected to what YOU like, want and desire.”
4. Find a support system and community.
Of course, not everybody will understand your bisexuality, and you’ll probably receive a wide range of reactions, especially from the people you care about. So surrounding yourself with people who understand, support, and love you is one of the best and more important parts of this journey.
Keep in mind that you need to open up to people you trust and feel comfortable talking with. Caraballo suggests relying on your more accepting friends and family members, as well as therapists familiar with supporting LGBTQ+ people, for ongoing support in your self-discovery process. This support network can help you process new knowledge and emotions that you are unfamiliar with. It is always easier to work it out with someone else.
5. Spend time in queer spaces.
“Spending time with LGBTQ+ folks, or in those spaces, often allows for more clarity and experiences to draw from as you move forward on your journey of self-discovery and acceptance,” Caraballo says.
In all of the confusion, it can be comforting to hear stories from other people’s experiences; knowing that other people may be going through the same things as you are can allow you to gain confidence and find reassurance that everything will be OK.
Caraballo also suggests exploring queer books, movies, and other media.
6. Know how to protect yourself.
Regardless of your identity, knowing how to protect yourself sexually should be one of your top priorities. This involves deciding on your sexual nonnegotiables, identifying what you want and don’t want to do with your partners, and communicating your emotional needs.
Misconceptions about bisexuality:
It’s always just black or white.
Many tend to confuse bisexuality as the attraction to men and women alone. In reality, you can be both bisexual and nonbinary, and being bisexual can include attraction to nonbinary people. Bisexuality is just about being attracted to more than just one gender; it’s not specific to just men and women.
You need to be equally attracted to all genders.
There is also a notion that bisexuals’ attraction is split 50/50 (e.g., equally attracted to men as to women). In most cases though, bi folks are more interested in certain genders than others.
Bisexual people are attracted to everyone all the time.
One of the most popular myths about bisexuals is that they’re “playing on both fields” to “take every chance they get.” This misconception attaches a stigma that bisexuals are more promiscuous than others, given their much bigger dating pool–which is false. In reality, just like a straight woman isn’t attracted to every man she meets, a bisexual person experiences attraction only to specific people who fit their fancy.
It’s just a phase.
Bisexuals often hear the phrase “pick a lane,” suggesting that bisexuality is just a phase and they are bound to choose one gender in the long run. On the contrary though, bisexuality is not just an experimental or transitional phase.
The takeaway.
Bisexuality is not only a phase. Bisexuality is not playing on both fields. It is an expression of feelings, identity, and preferences that are not bound by stereotypes.
However, having to define yourself and identify your preferences need not be rushed. You can take it slow. Explore the idea, see how this label feels, and know that at the end of the day, only you can decide if you are bisexual or not. While labels can provide comfort and validation, your sexual identity is just one part of who you are and one single puzzle piece in the journey to loving yourself better.
Telling someone else (or others) about a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity without their approval is also called “outing.” In some cases, it’s not done to harm the person; in other situations, the person sharing the information does so to retaliate or to shame the other person.They may even do it to prevent someone from excelling at work. Whatever the reason, outing someone is a violation of their privacy. And it can have serious effects on their health and well-being.
Outing is different from “coming out.” When a person comes out, they choose who to tell about their sexual orientation or gender identity. When a person who identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer or questioning (LGBTQ) is “outed,” they lose their power to tell others; it’s done for them, against their will.
There can be benefits to coming out – when a person does so willingly. In that case, it can support their mental health (and even lower cortisol , a hormone that affects your body – especially how it responds to stress). But when someone does it without their consent, it can have opposite effects on their mental health and health overall.
How Can Being Outed Harm My Health?
Telling others about someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity may not seem like a big deal, especially if the person has told others about it. But it still violates their privacy. It can have effects on their health and may affect their schooling or professional life.
Outing doesn’t just harm LGBTQ youths; it can affect a person at any age. Outing can affect these things related to your health:
Mental health. Sexual minorities have a greater risk of mental health issues. One thing that may impair mental health is a violation of privacy – as is the case when a person is outed. It can trigger a person to engage in unhealthy behaviors, or lead to issues like anxiety and depression. Not everyone gets help for these issues. One survey found that 48% of LGBTQ youths ages 13 to 24 wanted counseling but didn’t get it.
Suicide. In some cases, being outed has caused people to kill themselves. LGBTQ youths have a greater risk for suicidality. Transgender youths, specifically, are twice as likely to think about suicide or attempt it, compared to cisgender lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning youths.
Homelessness. Whether you come out or are outed, you may be at risk for homelessness – and that can impact your physical and mental health. You can become homeless as a result of being outed if the people you live with reject you after hearing about your orientation or identity. Some parents or caretakers force LGBTQ youths out of their homes after hearing they are sexual minorities – whether from the child or others. This is the case for many young LGBTQ people, who have a 120% higher risk of some form of homelessness. About 28% of LGBTQ youths (ages 13 to 24) dealt with homelessness or housing instability during their lives. These can raise your chances for having to deal with mental health issues, compared to people who have a stable living situation.Substance abuse. Sexual minorities have higher rates of substance misuse and substance use disorders, compared to heterosexual people.
Violence. Bisexual men and women, lesbians, gay men, and transgender people are all at higher risks for violence and injury from violence, compared to others. LGBTQ people are more prone to this, compared to cisgender people. Whether it’s between partners or strangers, violence can still harm your health.
Disease and obesity. LGBT youths are at a higher risk for sexually transmitted diseases, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer. So are LGBTQ adults. Being outed, or the fear of it, could be one reason that sexual minorities don’t seek out care or treatment, or disclose their orientation or identity to providers out of fear of stigma, ridicule, or because they’re afraid their personal information could be shared outside of the doctor/patient relationship.
How Can I Avoid Outing Someone?
The best way is not to say anything about a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
If you do out someone accidentally or unknowingly (like misusing their pronouns), you may want to apologize or discuss it with the other person openly. They may be hurt or angry. If you don’t say anything, it could be even more hurtful. Their identity is their story to tell, and you should respect their feelings.
What Should I Do if I’m Outed?
You may feel like you have no options if someone shares your personal information without your consent. But these tips may be able to support you through the situation.
Scope out resources. If you think you may be without a place to live because you’ve been outed, try to gather what you need to live elsewhere – at least for a while. Pack a bag with medications, clothing, and extra funds if you think you will be removed from your home. While this type of preparation may make you feel anxious, it may also provide you with some peace of mind that you’re prepared for the worst. A local LGBTQ organization or center may be able to connect you with resources.
Know the laws. Schools can’t share a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity to their parents or other staff – even if you’re a student who has told others at school. Companies can’t discriminate against you based on your sexual orientation or gender identity, according to the federal Title VII law. Title VII doesn’t apply to LGBTQ students, but many lower courts have addressed those rights.
Title VII only applies to organizations with more than 15 workers. LGBTQ people still face tough choices to come out (or can feel forced to come out) at work or fear being outed. You may want to see if your company has a policy in place to protect you. Being aware of the legal actions you can take can’t prevent outing, but it can empower you to take action if you’ve been outed.
Connect. Going through being outed can be isolating, especially if you haven’t told anyone else about your sexual orientation or gender identity. But there are some resources that may give you support. The Trevor Project has a hotline and an online community. Your school may have resources to assist you with being outed (or coming out).
Think about how you want to respond. It may not seem like it, but you do have power, even if someone violated your rights. How you react can enable you to make positive changes at school or work, and position you to inspire others.
Same-sex married couples often cope with stress in a healthier and more collaborative way than different-sex couples, according to a new study. The researchers argue that this is perhaps because homosexual couples face unique problems, including stigma, and may receive less support from wider family and traditional institutions compared to heterosexual couples.
To reach these findings, sociologists from the University of Texas at Austin analyzed survey responses of 419 middle-aged couples in both same- and different-sex marriages living in Massachusetts.
The researchers studied their relationships in terms of dyadic coping, the processes through which couples manage stress together through joint problem-solving, communicating empathy, expressing solidarity, and redistributing responsibilities in response to the problem. They also measured negative dyadic coping, in which a spouse reacts ambivalently or even hostilely in response to the other’s stress.
The study notes that women are generally more engaged in dyadic coping compared to men in heterosexual relationships. However, when it came to same-sex partnerships, both men and women were found to be more likely to work together to cope with stress, compared to their counterparts in different-sex marriages.
“While women married to women receive the most positive coping support from their partners, women married to men receive the most negative dyadic coping. Unlike men and women in same-sex marriages, men and women in different-sex marriages are less likely to work toward coping with stress together,” the study concludes.
Furthermore, same-sex marriages were reported to have slightly higher marital quality than same-sex ones, just as previous research has hinted.
“This research shows that while there are some gender differences in dyadic coping efforts, the effects of supportive and collaborative dyadic coping as well as of negative dyadic coping on marital quality are the same for all couples,” Yiwen Wang, lead study author and a PhD candidate in UT Austin’s Department of Sociology, said in a statement.
“Our findings also emphasize the importance of coping as a couple for marital quality across different relationship contexts, which can be an avenue through which couples work together to strengthen relationship well-being,” added Wang.
The researchers explain that not nearly the same quantity of research into dyadic coping has been carried out on same-sex relationships. However, understanding the dynamics of these relationships could hold some real benefits for all couples dealing with problems.
“Same-sex couples face unique stressors related to discrimination and stigma. Coping as a couple may be especially important for them as they do not receive as much support from extended family, friends, or institutions as different-sex couples do,” added Debra Umberson, a professor of sociology at UT Austin.
“Including same-sex spouses and looking at how they work with each other to manage stress as compared to different-sex spouses can help us better understand the ways in which gender dynamics unfold in marriages,” Umberson said.
There’s nothing new about being gay, but that hasn’t stopped scientists from trying to understand it.
Over the past two decades, many researchers have become focused on the notion of a “gay gene” — biological proof that one was “born this way.”
It makes sense: Our genes can influence who we are, and psychologists contend sexual orientation is not a conscious choice. It theoretically stands to reason there might be genetic underpinnings to who we become sexually attracted to.
But more recent research has both confirmed and debunked the notion of a genetic basis for sexual orientation. Instead of just one gene (or one marker on one gene) that determines sexual orientation, there are many genes with markers related to attraction to the same sex.
For example, in 2019, the researchers studying those markers and same-sex attraction told Inverse: “This finding suggests that on a genetic level, there is no single dimension from opposite-sex to same-sex preference.”
But that’s just part of the story.
Two new studies published Monday, one in Nature Human Behavior and the other in Scientific Reports, further illuminate the complexities of sexual orientation and how fraught scientific study of the subject is. They also highlight three key factors:
Our own sexual orientation may be much more fluid than we thought.
The same cluster of genes that may be associated with same-sex sexual behavior may confer some evolutionary advantage.
There are inherent dangers in focusing on genetics in relation to sexual orientation.
Genes and sexual behavior — First author Brendan Zietsch, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, and colleagues attempted to discover why the genes associated with same-sex sexual behavior continue to flourish. Their study was published in Nature Human Behavior.
In a statement, the study authors report:
“Because [same-sex sexual behavior] SSB confers no immediately obvious direct reproductive or survival benefit and can divert mating effort away from reproductive opportunities, its widespread occurrence across the animal kingdom and human cultures raise questions for evolutionary biology.”
Using information from the UK Biobank, and questionnaire responses about sexual behavior from hundreds of thousands of individuals, the study team analyzed the genome of 477,522 people in the United Kingdom and the United States who had only had same-sex interactions.
They compared that data set to the genome of 358,426 people in the same countries who had only had opposite-sex encounters.
The team found the genes linked to same-sex behavior are also found in straight people. This gene profile across groups is associated with having more sexual partners.
A man waves an LGBTQ flag in front of the Bosnian parliament.
The authors posit that the number of opposite-sex sexual partners could be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective, as it could lead to more children.
In turn, they argue their results help explain why same-sex sexual behavior has persisted throughout the evolution of the human species: These genetic effects may have been favored by evolution as they are associated with more children.
Ultimately and critically, the authors claim, the genes may less have to do with sexual preference and more to do with sexual openness/willingness.
The ethical debate — Other scientists caution against extrapolating information about sexual preference or behavior from genes.
“One can imagine technologically advanced repressive regimes where homosexuality is outlawed requiring genetic testing of embryos and foetuses, destroying those disposed to SSB, or testing children early in life for their propensities. Others will respond that the world (or at least some parts of it) has become more accepting of homosexuality, so perhaps these worries are overblown.”
What matters, they argue, is creating a society in which this kind of genetic research can’t be abused to further harm anyone, much less already marginalized groups.
They write: “Genes shape, limit, and provide opportunities for who we are and who we can be, both as individuals and as members of communities. To prepare for further research into polygenic behavioral traits including SSB, we must reshape society.”
Ilan Dar-Nimrod, a researcher and professor at The University of Sydney’s School of Psychology, tells Inverse “genes are taking oversize agency” in the minds of sexual behavior researchers.
“Genes code for properties,” he explains. “And although they can predict a lot of things, many people have this one-to-one view: if you have the gene, you’re going to be that and you can’t change it.”
That’s simply not in line with what we know about the science of genetics, he says.
On Monday, Dar-Nimrod and his colleagues also published a study looking at sexual preferences, this one in Scientific Reports. This study’s results support his assertion about preferences being more malleable than genes would suggest.
Sexuality is a spectrum
In their study, Dar-Dimrod and colleagues asked 420 cisgender people ranging in age from 18 to 83 to read literature. The study participants identified as exclusively heterosexual.
“We’ve just changed how they look at it.”
One group read literature about sexual preferences as a fluid spectrum. For example, one of the articles discussed gradations of sexual attraction towards men and women and noted that people can fall anywhere along the continuum. Another article explained that sexual orientation can change over time, shifting throughout one’s life instead of being fixed. The control group read unrelated articles.
After reading the literature about sexual fluidity:
Twenty-eight percent of the participants in the experimental group were more likely to identify as non-exclusively heterosexual.
Nineteen percent indicated they would be more likely to be willing to engage in same-sex sexual activities.
The rate of participants identifying as “non-exclusive heterosexual” more than quadrupled after the experiment.
In contrast, in the control group, only 8 percent of the participants identified as “non-exclusively heterosexual” after reading the literature unrelated to sexual preferences.
Dar-Nimrod says there were several results that surprised him:
How many people in the experimental group identified as “non-exclusively heterosexual” following the experiment
People actually expressed a willingness to engage in same-sex activities following the experiment
That even when balanced with literature refuting the idea of sexual preference as a spectrum — one of the articles argued that sexual orientation is indeed fixed — participants still gave more credence to the literature that discussed a sexual spectrum
Dar-Nimord doesn’t believe the literature he had the experimental group read actually changed who the participants were attracted to.
“We haven’t changed the underlying orientation,” he says. “We’ve just changed how they look at it.”
While our genes may predispose us to certain traits and conditions, when it comes to behavior, our society, environment, and relationships all play a huge role in how we behave.
“Do we really need to suggest that [queer people] were born with a certain gene to accept them and their relationships with other consenting adults?” Dar-Nimord says. “I don’t think so.”
Once we realize we’re not in fixed, black and white boxes, we have the freedom to explore the gray area to which most of us belong. At least, that’s what science really can show.
Nature Human Behavior abstract: Human same-sex sexual behaviour (SSB) is heritable, confers no immediately obvious direct reproductive or survival benefit and can divert mating effort from reproductive opportunities. This presents a Darwinian paradox: why has SSB been maintained despite apparent selection against it? We show that genetic effects associated with SSB may, in individuals who only engage in opposite-sex sexual behaviour (OSB individuals), confer a mating advantage. Using results from a recent genome-wide association study of SSB and a new genome-wide association study on number of opposite-sex sexual partners in 358,426 individuals, we show that, among OSB individuals, genetic effects associated with SSB are associated with having more opposite-sex sexual partners. Computer simulations suggest that such a mating advantage for alleles associated with SSB could help explain how it has been evolutionarily maintained. Caveats include the cultural specificity of our UK and US samples, the societal regulation of sexual behaviour in these populations, the difficulty of measuring mating success and the fact that measured variants capture a minority of the total genetic variation in the traits.
Scientific Reports abstract: We examined whether heterosexual individuals’ self‐reported sexual orientation could be influenced experimentally by manipulating their knowledge of the nature of sexual orientation. In Study 1 (180 university students, 66% female) participants read summaries describing evidence for sexual orientation existing on a continuum versus discrete categories or a control manipulation, and in Study 2 (460 participants in a nationally representative Qualtrics panel, 50% female) additionally read summaries describing sexual orientation as fluid versus stable across the life‐course. After reading summaries, participants answered various questions about their sexual orientation. In Study 1, political moderates and progressives (but not conservatives) who read the continuous manipulation subsequently reported being less exclusively heterosexual, and regardless of political alignment, participants reported less certainty about their sexual orientation, relative to controls. In Study 2, after exposure to fluid or continuous manipulations heterosexual participants were up to five times more likely than controls to rate themselves as non‐exclusively heterosexual. Additionally, those in the continuous condition reported less certainty about their sexual orientation and were more willing to engage in future same‐sex sexual experiences, than those in the control condition. These results suggest that non‐traditional theories of sexual orientation can lead heterosexuals to embrace less exclusive heterosexual orientations.
In 1913 George Levick, an explorer, travelled to Antarctica. There, he found something so terrible that he requested his findings not be published. In case the correspondence was leaked or intercepted, he took the further precaution of writing key sections in ancient Greek: these were not letters to be read by the lower orders.
Levick had been studying penguins: birds whose monogamous lifestyle had so impressed the Victorians that they had been held up as models of probity and integrity.
But he had seen something on his trip to the bottom of the world that had caused him to question that assessment. “There seems,” he wrote with palpable shock, “to be no crime too low for these penguins.” Levick’s penguins, you see, were gay.
And if penguins can be homosexual, what was to say that that behaviour, far from being the perversion society presumed it was, was natural in humans too?
These days homosexuals, avian or otherwise, generally have an easier time of it. While we may have accepted that same sex attraction is natural, though, there is a far harder question: why is it natural?
We know that homosexuality is, at least in part, genetic. Studies show, for instance, that identical twins are more likely to be both homosexual than non-identical twins. So it is passed on by evolution. This is a problem, particularly so with men – who for obvious reasons find it harder to fake an interest in sex.
Imagine you had never heard of evolution, and someone described it to you. One of the most basic predictions you would surely make is that a trait that made people less likely to reproduce should die out. Male homosexuality, a trait that, at least among exclusive homosexuals, means people have no interest at all in the act of reproduction, should never have existed in the first place. And yet it does. How?
To answer that question, researchers have gone to a place where homosexuality itself does not exist, at least in the form we know it: Samoa. Here, in the South Pacific, there is a third gender called the Fa’afafine – a group born male who behave as women.
This is not the only place with third genders. There are the “Two-Spirit” people of Native America. There are the Khatoey ladyboys of Thailand. There are the Hijras of Pakistan. In 2004 a Hijra, Asha Devi, was elected mayor of Gorakhpur under the slogan “You’ve tried the men and tried the women. Now try something different”.
Hijra offer prayers on the occasion of Urs festival in Hooghly near Kolkata
Paul Vasey, from the University of Lethbridge in Canada, believes that homosexuality as it manifests itself in most of today’s world is unusual. In more ancient cultures, he thinks you can see homosexuality as it was practised by our ancestors in deep time – as a “third gender”.
And in looking at these third genders – in particular the Fa’afafine – he believes we can find clues as to why this evolutionary paradox of male homosexuality persists.
What is interesting for Professor Vasey is that, firstly, there is no recognised gay identity in Samoa and that, secondly, the Fa’afafine occur at the same proportion as male homosexuals in the west. He believes there is a simple explanation for this.
“I’m gay,” says Professor Vasey. “But if I’d grown up in Samoa I wouldn’t look like this. I’d probably look like a really ugly Fa’afafine.”
Fa’afafine translates literally as “in the manner of a woman”. Boys who appear more feminised in their behaviour will often be classified as a Fa’afafine, and brought up as something between a woman and a man. There is also an analogue for masculinised girls – Fa’afatama.
The fact they also go on to sleep with men is not the only similarity between Fa’afafine and western gay men. “There’s all kinds of traits the two share in common. Both exhibit elevated childhood gender atypical behaviour, both exhibit elevated childhood cross sex wishes, both exhibit elevated childhood separation anxiety, both prefer female-typical occupations in adulthood.”
For Professor Vasey, it seems obvious that being Fa’afafine and being gay is the “same trait, expressed differently depending on the culture.” He even argues that the oddity is the West – that the way homosexuality manifests in Europe and North America may even be an expression of our repression rather than our freedom.
“The part of the brain that controls sexual partner preference, it’s the same for all of us,” he says. “It’s just that if you take that biological potential, put it in Samoa where society doesn’t flip out about male femininity, then feminine little boys grow up to be Fa’afafine. If you take that potential, put it in Canada, feminine boys learn pretty quickly they had better masculinise to survive.” This, he believes, is precisely what he ended up doing.
Whether the “third gender” really is the ancestral form of homosexuality, with the way it is practised in the West today an aberration, is a separate issue. That it can take such widely different forms, shows the impact society can have on sexuality. That its prevalence remains largely the same also shows the limits of such socialisation – that there is something else going on. But what?
Professor Vasey is one of the very few scientists in the world looking at this question, and he does so thanks to the Fa’afafine. There are two specific theories used to explain male homosexuality that he is interested in. The first could be termed the “benevolent uncle hypothesis”.
Alatina Ioelu does not remember not being a Fa’afafine. Yet he does remember not wanting to be one. “You don’t really come out,” he said. “You’re just that. In a way it’s good, in a way it’s not good. When you’re growing up as a kid you’re innocent of your actions, how you move or sound. You’re not aware you are doing something that doesn’t conform to the norms of how society considers boys.”
But he clearly didn’t, because his classmates began to call him a Fa’afafine. “And so you grow up being known as that. I wanted to distance myself from it, I didn’t want to be that.” He couldn’t, though, because he realised it was true. “In the end you’re like, ‘sh*t, that’s what I am.’”
It would be wrong to claim that the Fa’afafine are completely accepted in Samoa. There is a place for them, however, and always has been. “They walk around and nobody says, ‘Oh, that’s a Fa’afafine’. In my family we have a long line going back. I have a great uncle that’s a Fa’afafine, I have four second cousins, a first cousin…”
He realised that this itself was a paradox – all these Fa’afafine going back generations. “How the hell do we have Fa’afafine, and they don’t reproduce? How is it we are still around, when we don’t have children?”
He also realised that Professor Vasey may have the answer. Fa’afafine do not have biological children of their own. Conventionally, from the point Alatina realised who he was, he was taking himself out of the reproductive game. Or was he? Perhaps not entirely.
The benevolent uncle explanation is based on the idea that there is more than one way to pass on your genes. The best way to reproduce, in terms of percentage of genes passed on, is to clone yourself through asexual reproduction. Stick insects can do this. Humans, alas, can’t.
The most efficient method we have to perpetuate our genes is sexual reproduction – passing on half our DNA each time. It is not the only option, though. Your siblings, for instance, share half your genes, which means your nieces and nephews share a quarter. To an uncle each of those nieces and nephews is therefore, from a genetic point of view, worth half a child.
Tafi Toleafoa, a fa’afafine living in Alaska, USA, tends to her niece during a family gathering after church
What if simply having an extra man around, a benevolent uncle to provide for the extended family’s children, was enough to ensure more of those children survive to reproduce themselves? This could be where the Fa’afafine come in. Alatina says that there are clear and defined roles for them.
“They become almost like the caretakers of families. They are responsible for taking care of the elderly, parents, grandparents, even their siblings’ children. Because they are feminine they take up this motherly role in families.”
Having an extra hardworking adult without dependants is no minor advantage. Everyone has extra fish, extra firewood – and fuller bellies. It is not implausible that, particularly in difficult times, a childless Fa’afafine could ensure more nieces and nephews reach reproductive age. That is the idea behind the benevolent uncles hypothesis, that good uncling becomes a form of reproduction in itself.
To test the theory, Professor Vasey looks to see if the Fa’afafine are more avuncular – literally, uncle-like. He has found that, compared to single straight men or aunts, they are indeed more likely to want to look after their nieces and nephews. They take more interest in them, babysit more than straight men, buy more toys, tutor more and contribute more money to their education.
Of course, in order for a gay uncle to be useful you need to ensure he actually has nieces and nephews (and preferably a lot of them) to be useful for. There’s no point in being a good uncle with no one to look after. So it would be good for this theory if gay uncles were more likely to pop up in big families. Incredibly, they do.
One of the best-established and more intriguing results in homosexuality research is that the more elder brothers a man has, the greater his chances of being gay. The mechanism, only discovered this year, seems to involve each pregnancy leading the mother to develop antibodies against a protein involved in male foetal brain development.
The result is, as families get more likely to benefit from the services of a gay uncle, the chances of one appearing increases.
Problem solved? Not quite. In order for this to completely explain homosexuality, a lot of extra nieces and nephews would have to be born and survive – probably too many for the genetic mathematics to add up.
But Professor Vasey does not think the benevolent uncle theory needs to be a complete explanation. It can be one of many, and the other leading contender is the “sexually antagonistic gene hypothesis”, more snappily known as the “sexy sisters hypothesis”.
What if the genes for homosexuality persist because despite making non-reproductive (if avuncular) men, when they appear in women they produce excellent breeders? Again the Fa’afafine, and Samoa, have been his laboratory. Professor Vasey took 86 Fa’afafine, and 86 heterosexual Samoan men. He then looked at their grandmothers – who are easier to study than sisters, because all their breeding is already finished.
He found that the grandmothers of the Fa’afafine were indeed better breeders. The theory is simple. By passing on their genes these grandmothers might end up with the occasional grandson who wears dresses and doesn’t reproduce (though always remembers his nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays). But they themselves, thanks to the very same genes, were also better at reproducing – so made enough other grandchildren to make up for it. There is a problem, though, given the way the theory was originally framed. Somehow, the “sexy grandmothers’ hypothesis” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Fewer people know that some men and womenhave same-sex encounters, yet nonetheless perceive themselves as exclusively straight. And these people are not necessarily “closeted” gays, lesbians, or bisexuals.
When a closeted gay or bisexual man has sex with another man, he views that sex as reflecting his secret identity. He is not open about that identity, likely because he fears discrimination. When a straight man has sex with another man, however, he views himself as straight despite his sex with men.
It involves two related but separate issues: first, why men identify as straight if they have sex with other men, and second, why straight men would have sex with other men in the first place.
Skirting around cheating
As part of my research, I spoke with 60 straight men who have sex with other men and specifically looked at men in rural areas and small towns. The majority of men I interviewed were primarily attracted to women, not men. So why would they have sex with other men?
My findings revealed several reasons as to why straight men have sex with other men. Several men explained that their marriages did not have as much sex as they wanted, and while they wanted to remain married, they also wanted to have more sex. Extramarital sex with men, to them, helped relieve their sexual needs without threatening their marriages.
Tom, a 59-year-old from Washington, explained: “I kind of think of it as I’m married to a nun.” He continued: “For me, being romantic and emotional is more cheating than just having sex.” And Ryan, a 60-year-old from Illinois, felt similarly. He said: “Even when I have an encounter now, I’m not cheating on her. I wouldn’t give up her for that.”
These men felt as though extramarital sex with women would negatively affect their marriages, whereas extramarital sex with men was not as much of an issue. Most men had not told their wives about their extramarital sex, however.
Identities reflect sexual and nonsexual aspects of life
In order to answer why men would identify as straight despite having sex with other men, it’s important to know that sexual identities indicate how people perceive the sexual and nonsexual aspects of their lives. Connor, a 43-year-old from Oregon, noted:
“I think there’s a definite disconnect between gay and homosexual. There’s the homosexual community, which isn’t a community, there’s the homosexual proclivity, and then the gay community. It’s like you can be an athlete without being a jock. And you can be homosexual without being gay, or into all of it. It just becomes so politically charged now.”
The men I talked to identified as straight because they felt that this identity best reflected their romantic relationships with women, their connections to heterosexual communities or the way they understood their masculinity. Straight identification also, of course, meant that they avoided discrimination. They felt that sex with men was irrelevant to their identities given every other part of their lives.
Living in small towns and in more rural settings also shaped how the men perceived themselves. Larry, 37, from Wyoming, explained: “I would say straight because that best suits our cultural norms around here.” Most of the men I talked to were happy with their lives and identities, and they did not want to identify as gay or bisexual — not when people asked them, and not to themselves.
It may come as a surprise, but internalized homophobia was not a major reason the men I spoke to identified as straight. Most supported equal legal rights for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. Other research also shows that, on average, straight men who have sex with men are not any more homophobic than other straight men. Additionally, while most men knew bisexuality is a valid identity, they felt that bisexual did not describe their identity because they were only romantically interested in women.
Many factors beyond sexual attractions or behaviors shape sexual identification, including social contexts, romantic relationships, and beliefs about masculinity and femininity, among others. Straight men who have sex with other men are not necessarily closeted, because they do genuinely see themselves as heterosexual.
Sexual encounters with men simply do not affect how they perceive their identity.
‘Same-sex sex can feel daunting even if you’ve had plenty of “straight” sex before,’ sex and relationships expert Annabelle Knight tells Metro.co.uk. ‘The reason it feels so different is because… it is!
‘The idea of first time same-sex can feel scary because it’s an entirely new experience. Nerves are part and parcel of pushing yourself out of your usual space and into something new.’
There’s a lot of fear when trying anything new (including queer sex) that you’ll get stuff wrong, that you’ll be rubbish, that it’ll be embarrassing.
You’re about to do something new – what if instead of viewing that as a scary thing, you see it as exciting?
‘Try to focus on the positives. As with lots of new experiences things can seem daunting, however if you re-package nerves as excitement then you’ll be able to build what’s known as “positive anticipation”, which will help you to really get the most out of the experience as a whole,’ Annabelle suggests.
Reframe anxiety as excitement
Talk about it
You don’t need to pretend to be totally cool or act like you know what you’re doing. It’s actually pretty endearing to openly say that you’re a touch nervous.
‘We can combat nerves by opening up communication with our partner, or if you feel able to, telling them that you might be feeling a bit nervous,’ says Lelo’s sex and relationships expert Kate Moyle.
Redefine sex
You might still be holding on to a traditional definition of sex, viewing it only as penis in vagina penetration.
The reality is that sex can encompass all sorts of joyous things – stroking, licking, caressing…
And the thing is, if you’ve been in ‘straight’ sex setups before, you’ve likely played with all of these bits of sex. Remembering that makes same-sex sex feel a lot less scary.
‘Appreciate that there’s more to sex than penetration alone,’ Annabelle says. ‘This means that everything from kissing, cuddling and sensual massage can fall under the banner of sex.
‘Great sex is how you define it so don’t feel constrained by the idea that penetration = proper sex.’
Be playful
Hey, this is supposed to be fun.
‘Even if we haven’t had a sexual experience with someone of the same gender before, bodies are still sensual and sensitive – be creative and playful with your touch, which will help to build up arousal and desire,’ suggests Kate.
Keep communication open
Bring in sex toys
Sex toys are not a necessity, but they can be a bonus – and can definitely help to relieve the pressure of delivering an orgasm with your hands and genitals alone.
Don’t feel pressured to orgasm every time
Not climaxing doesn’t mean you’ve ‘failed’. It’s the journey that counts, and every bit of sex can be a glorious experience – not just the orgasm.
Annabelle adds: ‘To get the most out of your first same-sex experience make sure you’re in the right head space.
‘You don’t need to have everything figured out, nor do you need to put a label on yourself – instead embrace the fact that you’re ready to experiment and open yourself up to a different type of connection.’
Top tips for great first-time same-sex sex
Trim your nails
‘Long fingernails look great but can be a bit of a pain in the clit when it comes to same-sex experiences,’ notes Annabelle.
Lube
One thing Annabelle recommends for great same-sex sex? ‘Lube, lube, and more lube!’
‘Anal doesn’t just happen, she notes. ‘The anus isn’t self-lubricating and needs a lot of help in that department. A good quality water based lube is a fabulous all-rounder. It’s skin safe, toy safe, and condom safe too.’
Lube is great for vaginas, too, particularly if the woman you’re dating is going through menopause or has given birth (both of which can cause hormones to drop and dryness to occur).
Wetter is better, so feel free to lube liberally.
Stay safe
Pregnancy won’t be a risk during same-sex sex, but make sure you’re still protecting yourself from STIs. Condoms, dental dams – all necessary.
Oh, and ‘if you’re sharing sex toys make sure you give them a clean between uses,’ says Annabelle.
Explore different turn-on spots
‘For women and vulva owners the clitoris is the source of most sensitivity and sexual pleasure, and most women report orgasming via direct clitoral stimulation,’ Kate tells us. ‘But having said that, take your time to explore sensually and not just focusing on the areas of the body commonly associated with sex.
‘This build up gives the body a chance to sexually warm up and become aroused which is key to pleasure.’
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