Bisexuality Not Just A Phase

International News, By Christian Taylor, 18th January, 2008

Bisexuality has long been thought of as a transitory state, a temporary stopover on the way to gay town, an experimental phase… While this may be the case for a lot of men, a new study by the American Psychological Association has set out to prove that when it comes to women, bisexuality is actually a sexual orientation.

The Association studied 79 non-hetero women over a decade and they discovered that bi women maintained a “stable attraction” to both sexes over that time.

Dr Lisa M. Diamond, a psychologist from the University of Utah is the woman behind the study. She says, “This research provides the first empirical examination of competing assumptions about the nature of bisexuality, both as a sexual identity label and as a pattern of nonexclusive sexual attraction and behaviour.”

It’s not a huge surprise that the study uncovered that bi and unlabelled women were the group most likely to change their sexual identity – 17% of respondents went from bi to hetero during the study. However, by the end of the study, half of them had gone back to bi or unlabelled again.

What is it about women’s approach to sexuality that allows it to be so fluid?

Diamond says that by the final year of the study most of the women had shacked up in long term monogamous relationships. 70% of the lesbians found love, as did 89% of the bi girls, 85% of the unlabelled and 67% of the girls who had turned straight.

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