Posted on 04/12/2010 2:04:43 PM PDT by jerry557
Psychologist John Buss estimates that for most of human history, perhaps 2% of women have been lesbian or bisexual (see note 1, below). Not any more. Recent surveys of teenage girls and young women find that roughly 15% of young females today self-identify as lesbian or bisexual, compared with about 5% of young males who identify as gay or bisexual (see note 2, below).
As a physician and a psychologist, what I found missing in the noise surrounding the Constance McMillen story was any serious discussion of why a growing number of girls self-identify as lesbian or bisexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld might say. But why are young women today at least three times more likely than their brothers to identify as bisexual or homosexual? "I kissed a girl and I liked it," Katy Perry told us in her #1 hit single. Megan Fox, Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga, Anna Paquin, Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore - they all want us to know that they are bisexual. There is no comparable crowd of young male celebrities rushing to assure us that they go both ways. Imagine a young man singing "I kissed a boy and I liked it." Would that song reach #1 on the charts? Why not?
Why is it OK for girls to be bisexual or homosexual, but not boys?
Over the past seven years, I've posed this question to hundreds of teenagers and young adults across the United States. The most common answer I get isn't really an answer. "Girls kiss other girls at parties because guys like it," one teenage girl told me. "It makes the guys hoot and holler, so the girls do it again. They're just doing it for attention. It's not for real."
Female sexuality is different from male sexuality. If a straight boy kissed another boy, perhaps to amuse some girls who might be watching, he would be unlikely to undergo a change in sexual orientation as a result. But, as Professor Roy Baumeister at Florida State University and others have shown, sexual attraction in many women seems to be more malleable (see note 3 below). If a teenage girl kisses another teenage girl, for whatever reason, and she finds that she likes it - then things can happen, and things can change. If a young woman finds her soulmate, and her soulmate happens to be female, then she may begin to experience feelings she's never felt before.
Which brings me to the second point I've encountered in my interviews with young people. Twenty years ago, when I opened my practice in a suburb of Washington DC, it was rare to find 14-year-old boys who were looking at pornography every day. Today it's common, in fact it's becoming the norm. When I meet with a group of 14-year-old boys and I ask them, "how many of you guys subscribe to a porn site?", all hands go up. I don't believe them. But today, no boy wants to admit that he's the weirdo who doesn't look at online porn. Twenty years ago, hardcore pornography was tucked away in adult bookstores. Today any 14-year-old can access such photos online in seconds. Role models for young men, from pop singer John Mayer to the 2009 World Series MVP Hideki Matsui, talk openly about their collections of porn (see note 4, below).
Is there any connection between these two trends - between the rise in the number of young women who self-identify as lesbian or bisexual, and the increasing normalization and acceptance of pornography in the lives of young men? Maybe there is. A young woman told me how her boyfriend several years ago suggested that she shave her pubic hair, so that she might more closely resemble the porn stars who were this young man's most consistent source of sexual arousal. She now identifies herself as bisexual. "It was just such a welcome change, to snuggle under a blanket on the couch with my girlfriend, watch a movie, and talk about God and death and growing old, to be intimate emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. I don't know a guy who could even comprehend the conversations we have."
I wish Constance McMillen and her girlfriend all the best. But I have to wonder: Are there so many girl-girl couples out there because that's truly who they are - or because the guys are such losers?
Girls are supposed to be protected by their parents and by society.
Men are supposed to be protective of women’s and girls’ virture.
Instead, our society has told girls that the way for them to be “cool” is to engage in the abomination of sexual activity with each other.
Is much more of an explanation necessary?
Why did you change the title?
College age girls have told my wife its because of peer pressure. In some schools the girls are expected to have a boyfriend and a girlfriend.
when fashionistas try to make men into sissy, limp wristed pseudo-girls and MSM turns men into bumbling idiots that couldn’t change a roll pf toilet paper on their own.. no wonder many girls lose interest.
Society has also made it far more difficult for women to find real men.
That’s why they’re LUGs - Lesbian Until Graduation
Interesting suggestions.
...for the same reason that everyone smoked 40 years ago....
Far too many today.
chlymidia - Once on the lips, forever between the hips.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that....
After the third martini every woman on the planet is bisexual.
Several of my kids friends claimed lesbian status in order to discourage lotharios...
LUG’s. Lesbians Until Graduation.
- Why do many girls self-identify as bisexual or lesbian?
...for the same reason that everyone smoked 40 years ago....-
...and on THAT note.....
Remember how cool smoking was? If you’re 45 or older, you do.
Whatever happened to that politically correct, cool, suave, debonair habit that was all the rage among college students, profs, teachers, Hollywood actors, big business and just about everyone purporting to have “intellect”?
In a nutshell, some scientists at the National Institutes of Health got together in the ‘60s, ‘70s and later and did some pioneering studies that proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that this cool habit could kill you.
Today, they’re at it again. Only it isn’t smoking. That’s a dead issue, thanks to science and lawyers.
The activists then were Big Tobacco, supported by Hollywood, the advertising industry, the media and academe. Even politicians, like FDR, smoked and helped sell the image. But the activists were silenced by the nuclear option: lawsuits brought by the smokers, the victims themselves.
Now “alternative” sexual lifestyles are all the rage. They, too, are killing people. And again, it’s the “intellectual” cool, liberal, worldly, suave thing to do. The usual suspects are involved. All the big name colleges have special programs for promoting “alternative” sex. Businesses promote the Gay Olympics. Politicians like Barney Frank think they can foist alternative sex on people through their power positions. Hollywood uses its influence to turn the Marlboro Man into a spokesman for today’s popular deadly activity, and major companies like Ford contribute funds from the shareholders’ meager coffers to promote same-sex marriage. It’s just like the bad old days of Big Tobacco, and the Grim Reaper is having a gay old time.
http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/22SxSo/PnSx/HSx/XGayVsHsx.htm
To have a handy excuse to avoid the unwanted advances of incivilized boys.
So if when you poll them at that time a certain number will identify as questionable but it doesn't really make it so.
We have to remember that normal human beings go through phases as they develop. My daughter has been through three or four phases and she is just 7 months old.
A friend of mine told me that her 12 year old daughter was wondering if she was a lesbian because she didn’t like any boys.
Where does a 12 year come up with that?
The only boys I liked at 12 were Donny Osmond and David Cassidy.
My friend’s daughter is in public school, and my friend says it is much more accepted there.
I’m very glad my kids are in a private Christian school.
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