Although it comes as no surprise to members of the adult industry or the various sex positive communities throughout America, a recent study released on Thursday by the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics reveals that an increasing number of women in their late teens and 20s, particularly those in college, are willing to report that they have explored their bisexuality.At least one same-sex experience was reported by 11.5-percent of the women, aged 18 to 44, who participated in the survey. A decade previous, only four-percent of women aged 18 to 59 confessed the same thing. Younger women were more likely to admit to having had a bisexual experience, with 14-percent of women in their late teens and 20s admitting that they had foregone the company of a man for that of another woman.
Statistics for reports of male bisexual was much lower, in spite of privacy assurances, with a merely six-percent of teen and 20-something men indicating that they had participated in same-sex activities. Researchers admit that they are not sure if the numbers are lower due to actual lack of experience or resistance to admissions of bisexuality because of greater social criticism.
William Mosher, the statistician in charge of the report feels that the survey was an important contribution to the developing database of information concerning human sexuality.
“Instead of just anecdotes and stories that raise people’s anxieties, I think it’s best to have real numbers,” Mosher explains.
Although some believe that the higher numbers among women relate to increased pressure to experiment as a rite of passage for college students, Mosher believes that learning the motivation of such women is a worthy goal. Meanwhile, some sexual behavior wags joke about the number of what Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, specializing in the biology of sexual orientation and gender reports is calls college “LUGs” – meaning “lesbians until graduation.”
This and more information is available in the National Survey of Family Growth, which involved 12,571 face-to-face interviews conducted between March 2002 and March 2003. Other findings include the fact that approximately 10-percent of females aged 15 to 19 have had heterosexual oral sex but not vaginal sex. This number compares with 12-percent of males the same age reporting the same activities. Once respondent ages reached the 20s, incidences of vaginal intercourse increased. Of men between the ages of 15 and 44, 39-percent surveyed claimed that they had used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter, with 65-percent of unmarried men saying likewise. An impressive 91-percent of those men who admitted to same-sex relations reported the use of a condom, as well. In spite of experimentation, researchers conclude that the majority of people surveyed have had relatively few partners and run a low risk for transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
