Female bisexuality from adolescence to adulthood: Results from a 10-year longitudinal study.

TLDR

Debates persist over whether bisexuality is a temporary stage, a stable third type, or a heightened capacity for sexual fluidity. The study uses five waves of longitudinal data from 79 lesbian, bisexual, and unlabeled women to evaluate these models. The longitudinal data support both a stable third‑type and fluidity models, showing that over ten years two‑thirds of women changed identity labels—most commonly adopting an unlabeled identity—while bisexual/unlabeled women exhibited greater attraction fluctuations yet stable overall distributions, all participants showed declining same‑sex to other‑sex behavior ratios, and the results indicate that lesbianism and bisexuality differ in degree rather than kind.

Abstract

Debates persist over whether bisexuality is a temporary stage of denial or transition, a stable "3rd type" of sexual orientation, or a heightened capacity for sexual fluidity. The present study uses 5 waves of longitudinal data collected from 79 lesbian, bisexual, and "unlabeled" women to evaluate these models. Both the "3rd orientation" and "fluidity" models had support, but the "transitional stage" model did not. Over 10 years, 2/3 of women changed the identity labels they had claimed at the beginning of the study, and 1/3 changed labels 2 or more times. Yet, contrary to the "transitional stage" model, more women adopted bisexual/unlabeled identities than relinquished these identities; few bisexual/unlabeled women ended up identifying as lesbian or heterosexual. Overall, the most commonly adopted identity was "unlabeled." Bisexual/unlabeled women had stable overall distributions of same-sex/other-sex attractions but greater absolute fluctuations in attractions from assessment to assessment than lesbians. All women reported declines in their ratio of same-sex to other-sex behavior over time. These findings demonstrate that the distinction between lesbianism and bisexuality is a matter of degree rather than kind.