If Your Daughter Says She’s Gay or Bi, She’s Probably Not
CHAT 9 COMMENTS
Lesbian couple on LGBT rainbow steps [Getty Images]
According to 2018 statistics, the millennial generation has the highest number of Americans identifying as LGBT, and it’s increasing every year. Is this simply the result of a more tolerant society freeing people to express their sexual orientation, or is there more to it? I think there’s more to it, and it has nothing to do with sexual orientation.
During the past five years, I’ve heard more parents talk about their children coming out as gay, particularly their daughters, than I’ve heard in the past forty years. According to statistics, this is more than anecdotal. Psychologist John Buss has reported in Psychology Today that, historically, lesbians have only made up approximately 2 percent of the female population. Today, 15 percent of teenage girls and young women identify as lesbian or bisexual, while the percentage of young men who say they’re gay or bisexual is about 3 to 5 percent — an increase, but not far from the historical norm.
What’s going on with our girls? Buss theorizes that girls are turning gay, not because they’re actually gay or bisexual, but because so many guys are losers, particularly those who would rather watch pornography than romance a girl. I agree that many of these girls are probably not gay, but I disagree with Buss’ conclusion that it’s due to porn-obsessed boys driving girls into the arms of their female friends.
I also don’t think it’s because society has become tolerant and permissive of homosexuality, though for those who are truly gay, this has freed them to be open about it. If the striking increase in the number of lesbians and female bisexuals were due to social permissiveness, then we should see an increase in numbers across all generations — maybe not to an equal degree since older people are still influenced by past oppression, but we should see at least some significant increase. We don’t.
According to recent statistics, since 2012 the number of Americans (both male and female) who identify as LGBT has basically stayed the same for Generation X (approx. 3.3%), baby boomers (approx. 2.7%), and traditionalists (approx. 1.7%). These generations also saw declines in recent years, instead of expected increases. Millennials (both male and female), on the other hand, present with much higher numbers and are on the increase: from 5.8 percent in 2012 to 7.3 percent in 2016.
While I concede that there might be a number of reasons for this, one of the most fundamental is a shift in cultural thinking among young people about the nature of sexuality, particularly the conflation of sexuality and sexual orientation. This is especially true for girls because their sexuality is different from boys’.
A premier study on human sexuality by Meredith Chivers, a psychology professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, found key differences between male and female sexuality that had not been fully explained in the scientific community. Daniel Berger of The New York Times detailed her work in the 2009 article “What Do Women Want?”, and other studies in recent years have supported her conclusions.
Chivers found that the physical sexual arousal of her male subjects directly corresponded with their mental sexual preference/orientation. Straight men were only physically aroused by women portrayed in a sexual context, and gay men were only physically aroused by men. This was true for transgender women (biological males) as well. Their responses were the same as other men. What a man wanted and didn’t want in his mind was directly reflected in his body’s response.
Women were a completely different story. Women, no matter their sexual orientation, were physically aroused by all forms of sexual interplay even if their minds were set on a particular preference. Straight and gay women, along with transgender men (biological females), were all sexually excited by both men and women. The women were also physically aroused by animals engaged in sexual behavior. None of the men were even remotely aroused by sexual interplay outside their orientation, and they definitely weren’t excited by animals mating.
While straight women said they were only excited by a man and woman having sex, their bodies told a different story. Gay women followed suit, saying they were only aroused by women having sex, but their bodies were sexually stimulated by everything. Chivers said it appeared as if the body and brain didn’t belong to the same woman.
A lot of explanations for this have been presented, such as a woman’s emotionally connective nature. One thing it doesn’t mean is that a woman’s physical arousal defines her sexual orientation. If this were true, all women would be attracted to monkeys, and they’d all be bisexual. We know from studies and common sense that this is not true.
So what’s going on? One of the most common explanations for a woman’s physical sexual arousal to all things sex, even though her mind isn’t interested, is rooted in evolutionary psychology. A woman, as the receiver in sex, is the most vulnerable. She can be taken any time, forced against her will to have sex. Her body, therefore, disconnects from her brain and creates a sexual response to protect her from injury.
This explains the phenomena of rape victims finding themselves physically aroused while being violated. Many victims have wrestled with guilt from this horrific awareness, but they have no need to feel shame — this is the body merely protecting itself. The physical response has nothing to do with a woman’s true desire.
Given the disconnected nature of a woman’s sexuality, what happens in a society that has actively sexualized girls? What happens in a society that has prioritized physical desire over rational thought, feelings over the mind? What happens in a society in which homosexuality is glorified as the latest fad in the midst of heightened sexualization and emotionalism? The logical conclusion is that you have girls equating their sexual orientation with whatever they’re feeling as their adolescent hormones catch fire.
With the increase of young girls watching gay porn, seeing lesbian interaction on television shows, observing female interactions in the media in an overtly sexual frame, being told that what they feel is reality, and experiencing the normal sexual tensions girls feel once they hit puberty, it’s no wonder the number of girls identifying as gay and bisexual has skyrocketed. A sexualized environment coupled with the mind taking a backseat to emotions directs a girl whose body is already omnisexual to believe her orientation is something it might not be.
A young impressionable girl raised in such a culture will naturally gravitate to the sexual attraction of other women and make this her identity, either becoming a lesbian or, as most do, bisexual. She will not be taught or even realize that what she is feeling is probably not her sexuality at all, but her body’s objective response to stimuli — as thoughtless as her skin getting goosebumps when it's cold.
Feelings stirred while viewing the panacea of sexual imagery in the media or sexualized selfies on Instagram doesn’t mean a girl is gay or bi. It means she’s female. In the past, these feelings would pass quickly as they were filtered through a rational brain and a sober culture that hadn’t been steeped in emotionalism and sexualization. Even if girls experimented with a kiss or something more, it would fade into memory with no thought of being gay. Now there’s no filter, only the tyranny of arousal.
This understanding of female sexuality should serve as a guidepost to parents whose young daughters, whether they’re pre-teens, teens, or in their early twenties, announce they are gay or bisexual. It should also serve as a warning of the destructive influence of emotionalism and media sexualization on a girl’s sexual awareness. Given that such a small percentage of women have historically been gay, and the number of gay men has remained relatively steady, maybe your daughter isn’t what she thinks she is — precisely because she’s not thinking; she’s only feeling.
