He and She and She

 

 

A recent survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute included the shocking conclusion that 28% of Americans aged 18 to 25, colloquially known as “Generation Z”, identify themselves as LGBTQ.  It is a dramatic rise from earlier generations, including my own, the “Baby Boomers” – persons born during the years from 1946 to 1964 – in which only 4% identified themselves as LGBTQ.  News of the survey’s results prompted comedian and talk show host Bill Maher to joke that this dramatic upward trend in percentages implies that, in the not-too-distant future, “We’ll all be LGBTQ”.  As I reviewed the press releases which summarized this survey, and even visited the website of the organization, my greatest regret was that the results were not broken down by gender, because I had noticed many years ago an interesting trend which seemed to be limited to the female sex.

 

My first discovery of this trend was when I came across a survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2005, titled “Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15–44 Years of Age, United States, 2002”.  One of the questions posed to respondents was to identify the nature of their sexual attraction.  For men, the alternative responses were “Only female”, “Mostly female”, “Both”, “Mostly male”, “Only Male”, and “Not Sure”, and similarly for women, the alternative responses were “Only male”, Mostly male”, “Both”, “Mostly female”, “Only female”, and “Not Sure”.  The responses were divided into five age categories: 18-19 years, 20-24 years, 25-29 years, 30-34 years, and 35-44 years.  Among the male respondents, the answers showed no clear trend among these age categories, with the “Only female” category getting the largest percentage, averaging 92.2% among them, and the “Mostly female” category getting the second largest percentage, averaging 3.8%.  Together, the “Mostly male” and “Only male” categories averaged 2.2%, and the “Both” category (apparently representing complete bisexuals) averaged only 1.0%.  (The “Not sure” category averaged 0.8%).  But among the female respondents, a marked trend did appear among the different age categories.  Their complete results were as follows:

 

Age	Only Males	Mostly Males	Both	Mostly Females	Only Females	Not Sure
18-19	80.1%	12.8%	4.9%	-	-	0.8%
20-24	82.5%	13.3%	2.3%	0.3%	0.5%	1.0%
25-29	82.1%	13.5%	2.4%	0.7%	0.6%	0.8%
30-34	86.6%	9.8%	1.9%	0.5%	0.4%	0.7%
35-44	89.2%	7.1%	1.1%	1.0%	1.0%	0.6%

 

What immediately becomes apparent is that there had been a marked change in the proportion of females who considered themselves exclusively heterosexual, falling by over 9% from the oldest category (which included Baby Boomers and some from Generation X) to the youngest, accompanied by nearly a 6% increase in those who considered themselves mostly attracted to males, and a relatively sharp rise in the “Both” (bisexual) category, from 1% to 5%.  The overall impression left by this data is that women, unlike their male counterparts, have become more “fluid” in their sexual preferences over the past few decades.

 

Now of course, as political polls have starkly demonstrated in recent years, survey results such as these must be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.  With sex surveys in particular, respondents might be reluctant to be completely honest in their answers.  And even if these trends are reflective of reality, they open themselves up to alternative explanations.  For example, the fact that the percentages of women identifying themselves as mainly or entirely attracted to other women, which are lower among the younger respondents, rather than indicating a downward trend over time, might simply imply that many women don’t realize they are lesbians until later in life.  Similarly, the higher percentages of younger women who identify themselves as not entirely heterosexual might reflect the “college lesbian” phenomenon, in which women of those ages tend to engage in more sexual experimentation.  And so while I was surprised by these differences between the male and female respondents, with the female respondents seeming to show a gradual but significant change in their sexual preferences over time, I did try to refrain from jumping to conclusions.

 

But then, about a decade later, I encountered an almost identical survey, also performed under the auspices of the CDC, published in 2016, titled “Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual Orientation Among Adults Aged 18–44 in the United States: Data From the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth”.  While the response categories were the same, the age group classifications were condensed from 5 to 3:

 

Age	Only Males	Mostly Males	Both	Mostly Females	Only Females	Not Sure
18-24	75.9%	14.4%	5.3%	1.7%	1.0%	1.8%
25-34	79.1%	15.4%	3.3%	0.3%	0.9%	0.9%
35-44	86.6%	9.2%	1.7%	0.7%	0.6%	1.3%

 

These results seem to confirm that a trend has been occurring, and is continuing, with now just 76% of the youngest cohort (college-age women) reporting that they are only attracted to men.  And only 79% of the next highest age bracket, which roughly represents the same group surveyed in the college-age bracket a decade earlier, reported that they are only attracted to men.  This is lower than what the college-age bracket reported in that earlier survey, which seems to undermine the “college lesbian” (i.e., transitory sexual experimentation) theory.  However, the 35-44 age bracket in the later survey includes a higher percentage of women in the “Only Males” category than their counterparts in the 25-34 age bracket of the earlier survey, so perhaps this indicates that the “experimentation” phase lasts beyond the college years, through the early thirties, before reverting to more conventional sexual behavior patterns.

 

Again, this is probably lending more interpretation to the survey results than they actually merit, but it is hard to challenge the overall impression that a clear trend in American female sexuality is in evidence.  I’ve not seen any more CDC surveys since the one that came out in 2016, but I did happen upon a more recent study published in 2021 titled “Sexuality in Emerging Adulthood”, which was authored by Elizabeth M. Morgan and Manfred H. M. van Dulmen.  This one included an annual survey of college-aged persons from the years 2011 through 2019, and used categories almost identical to those of the CDC studies.  As with the earlier CDC study, the annual survey showed little change in the sexual preferences of the male respondents over time, although the percentage of men who identified as exclusively heterosexual was lower than the CDC study, at only 85%.  (The percentage of men who indicated that they were mostly or exclusively attracted to other men was also about twice as high as that reported in the CDC study.)  But in this study, again, there were clear trends among the female respondents in nearly all categories, with the percentage of women saying that they were only sexually attracted to men falling from around 77% in the beginning of the study period to about 65% in the final year (2019).  (The same study indicated that while there was no trend among males reporting that they had engaged in sex with other men, with an average of about 10% saying that they had done so, there again was a clear trend among women, with the percentage reporting that they had engaged in sex with other women doubling from 9% in 2011 to 18% in 2019.)

 

 

And this brings us back to the most recent poll, with its surprising result that 28% of Gen Z Americans identify themselves as LGBTQ.  Again, this result should be treated with at least a little skepticism:  A Gallup poll done in 2020, which posed the same question, found that only 16% of Gen Z Americans identified themselves as LGBTQ, which is more consistent with the earlier studies.  But on the other hand, a poll conducted by Ipsos, a global market research and public opinion firm, in early 2021, found that 14% of Gen Z Americans said that they were attracted mainly or entirely to the same sex, and 21% said that they were equally attracted to both sexes.  The poll also found that just 51% of females in that generation now said that they were sexually attracted to men only.  This result, if true, would reveal a very dramatic shift in female sexual preference over the past few decades, with over 8 out of 9 females in the Baby Boomer generation identifying as exclusively attracted to men, and only 1 out of 2 females doing so in Gen Z.  It echoes a general conclusion that emerged from all of these most recent studies and surveys: that the growth of bisexuality among females is a principal if not predominant cause of the growing percentage of LGBTQ adults in America.

 

But what could cause such a dramatic shift in female sexual preferences (and behavior)?  Certainly there are a number of contributing factors, including the sexual revolution, with its advocacy of a wider variety of sexual practices, and a more general social acceptance of sexual identities and preferences that are not confined to heterosexuality.  But these alone could not account for the significant disparity between genders in these changing sexual preferences.  I believe that there is one, fundamental, thing that is driving this shift among females.  It is pornography.

 

Many years ago I read an article about a psychological study that had identified different ways that males and females react to erotic images or movies.  (And here I can enjoy the greater latitude given to me in writing on this subject in a blog, rather than an academic journal, where I would have to locate said study and cite it.)  The author(s) of the study found that a woman, when viewing a male and female engaged in a sexual act, could mentally place herself into the image and role of the female, and thereby experience the act vicariously in her imagination, with the female performer essentially becoming her avatar.  For men, on the other hand, this was a more difficult thing to do, because the men, when viewing a man and woman engaged in sex, tended to view the male figure as a rival.  His presence in the image was intrusive, and an unpleasant distraction.  Now I can’t remember if the study went on to make the following conclusion that I am about to state, but I think that it is a pretty obvious one.  At some time in the past, purveyors of pornography came upon a simple solution to this problem.  Rather than showing a man and a woman having sex, they could replace the man with another woman.  The (heterosexual) male viewer could then enjoy the image of a woman (or rather two women) in various stages of undress and in the heat of sexual passion, without having to contend with the unpleasant distraction of looking at another man.  It proved to be an eminently successful solution, but in order to make it work, pornographers had to popularize two conventions: the “lipstick lesbian” (i.e., a beautiful actress/model portraying a lesbian whose beauty conforms to conventional standards appealing to the male gaze: clean-shaven bodies, high heels, make-up, etc.) and the pansexual female.  Several decades ago, when the availability of pornography was confined to seedy adult bookstores, which most women avoided, women in general were probably completely oblivious to these conventions, unless they happened to glimpse examples of them in adult magazines like Penthouse.

 

But this all changed when pornography gradually became more accessible to a general audience – both male and female – and moved beyond the boundaries of “girlie magazines” and the “stag films” that were often shown at bachelor parties.  Cable television provided the avenue of entry to this more general realm.  I remember this well, because I was in college at the time, and whenever I would visit my parents during break, I would enjoy the cable television premium subscription package that they had, which included a wide assortment of offerings, including some clearly intended for an adult audience.  During my visit, after they went to bed, I would stay up and peruse some of these adult offerings, like the “Adam and Eve” and “Playboy” channels.  These featured softcore pornography, which avoided showing explicit images of male or female genitalia, but otherwise left little or nothing to the imagination in portraying the various sexual activities of the performers.  They included heterosexual couplings of course, along with indulgences in relatively benign fetishes, but the lipstick lesbian and pansexual female were popular presences here as well, with prolific scenes of very attractive females kissing and romancing other attractive females, and coupling with them in ways that, again, left little or nothing to the imagination.  These, then, constituted the type of sexual behavior that was considered suitable for pornography tailored to a broader, cable television audience.  What was never shown on these adult channels – at least back then – were bisexual or homosexual males, as their behavior was apparently considered unsuitable for that same audience. 

 

Eventually, the offerings of these softcore pornography channels were superseded in popularity by adult-oriented, “after dark” programs made available by mainstream channels, such as HBO and Cinemax.  These were generally featured in the very late evening or very early morning hours, and often only on weekends.  They were still softcore pornography, but the features were scrubbed, polished, and standardized into something that apparently was considered more appropriate for a popular cable television channel.  The female performers were almost always in their twenties, usually Caucasian, sometimes Asian, and rarely black, while the male performers tended to be a decade or so older than their female counterparts, usually Caucasian, sometimes black, and rarely Asian.  The movies followed a very predictable format.  They were generally light-hearted in tone, with a comedic or mildly melodramatic plot interspersed with scenes involving sexual coupling.  The standard number of these sex scenes tended to be four, and followed an almost identical format: with the first being male-female, the second female-female, the third male-female, and the final sex scene constituting a sort of grand finale involving more than two people (e.g., a male-female-female menage a trois, or two or more couples engaged in an orgy).  And it was not uncommon for each of the two females involved in the lesbian scene to be a participant in one or the other of the heterosexual love scenes, further popularizing the fictional convention of the pansexual female.  (I must confess again that I made these observations not as a result of a dispassionate academic research investigation.  However, having said that, I will add that these films were ultimately disappointing to watch: because they were so routinized in the manner that they set up and choreographed each scene, they actually made sex appear boring!)

 

This, then, was the fictional erotic universe created to satiate the heterosexual male’s lust: one in in which men seduced women, and women seduced both men and each other.  Cable television had liberated this universe from the obscure, backwater realm of the adult bookstores and sex shops, and brought it to a more general audience.  From there, it seeped even further into the general consciousness, as the lipstick lesbian and sexually fluid female made a growing appearance in popular television programs and movies.  But there has been one other, seismic shift in the landscape of pornographic fantasies, and that has been the rise of internet pornography.

 

In 2007, two websites were created that featured pornographic videos: XVideos and Pornhub, and they have since become immensely popular, with XVideos now the 9^th, and Pornhub the 14^th, most visited websites in the world.  (Internet pornography had already existed at least a decade before these companies came into being, but they have been largely responsible for its general surge in popularity.)  The innovation that is at the base of these websites, and the many others like them that exist, is that they present an “a la carte” approach to viewing pornography:  Search engines enable viewers to find and select videos that cater to their particular tastes and fancies, including the age, race, ethnicity, and gender of the performers.  And while most of the popular pornographic website providers, such as XVideos and Pornhub, endeavor to portray themselves as benign purveyors of this material, with requirements, for example, that all featured performers be at least 18 years of age, that they are voluntary participants, and that video submissions featuring their performances have been made with their consent, the websites have not escaped controversy, with accusations levied against them of some videos involving human trafficking and the involuntary participation of persons featured in them.  But even if these accusations are unfounded, there are two additional unsavory facts about these providers.  First, unlike the offerings of adult entertainment on cable television, the internet videos are explicit, showing full nudity, including genitalia, and so are of the “hardcore” rather than “softcore” variety shown on cable television.  And second, these offerings are available, and at no cost on many of these websites, to anyone who has internet access, with the only gatekeeping generally being a requirement that anyone entering the website confirm that they are at least eighteen years of age, without having to verify this in any formal sort of way.  It is highly likely, then, that many children are now getting their first exposure to sex through viewing videos on these websites.

 

But has this been a principal cause of the growth of bisexuality among young females?  If, as the recent surveys suggest, this trend has been accelerating over the past decade or so, then the timing seems to be right, as it coincides with the massive growth in popularity of internet pornographic websites.  But on the other hand, because these websites are driven by search engines, users are actually choosing what types of videos they view.  Pornhub publishes on the internet an annual demographic summary describing who its users are and their viewing behaviors.  Globally, it reports that the percentage of female viewership has grown from 24% in 2015 to 36% in 2023.  In America, the percentage of female viewers is a little lower, hovering around 30% over the past few years.  The share of viewers in the youngest age category, 18-24, was at 23% in the U.S. in 2023 (27% worldwide), and it can be presumed that this includes children who are only claiming to be 18 or over.  The Pornhub report also includes a ranking of the most popular search words worldwide, by gender of viewers, and while the entire lists have changed over time, with various words rising and falling in popularity, the top picks have been very consistent over the years.  Among female viewers, the most popular search word is “lesbian”.  (Among male viewers, it is “Japanese”.)  So there is a definite curiosity among female viewers about lesbianism, perhaps stoked by other causes, but easily addressed and satisfied by pornographic websites such as Pornhub.  (At least some of these female viewers may actually be lesbians, of course, but given the very low percentage of females who identify themselves as such, even in the more recent surveys, it is likely that most of these female viewers are not.) 

 

What to make of all of this?  I must admit, again, that I am no puritan, and my attitude toward sexual behavior in general is probably consistent with much if not most of the general public:  If it brings happiness and pleasure, only involves consenting adults, and is creating no collateral harm, then where is the reproach?  And I must confess, too, that like many if not most male heterosexuals I find scenes and images of female sapphic behavior titillating.  But the pornographic industry, in creating and popularizing a fantasy world in which these behaviors are believably commonplace: one in which (heterosexual) men will be men, but many if not most women have a fluid sexuality that makes it just as easy for them to be seduced by another woman as by a man, seems to have succeeded in creating a phenomenon where life is increasingly imitating “art” (if I may use that word).  And I wonder if we men might someday be finding ourselves confronting the old adage: “Be careful what you wish for.”

 

There are at least some feminists who might actually welcome these trends, because there has always been a branch of radical feminism which believes that the cultivation by females of a sexual attraction for one another is an effective way of neutralizing a major factor contributing to their dependency on males.  But as this behavior has increasingly become a reality, such feminists will find themselves (if I may use the expression) “strange bedfellows” with pornographers, who have played a large if not dominant role in bringing about its emergence.

 

The physicist Neils Bohr once famously said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future,” and predictions often go terribly – even laughably – wrong when they are simply based upon extrapolations of present trends.  And so at the risk of descending into absurdity, I will venture to describe some future scenarios where trends in female sexual behavior may be leading us. 

 

At one extreme, if this trend continues unabated, and bisexual behavior among females becomes common and in fact a societal norm, we might find ourselves living in the female counterpart to that strange episode in human civilization – classical Greece – when it was customary for a middle-aged man to have both a (female) wife and a young male lover.  But such a society may be a very dystopian one for many men, particularly those who are victims of what has been called in recent years the “Boy Crisis”.  This refers to the increasing marginalization of boys and young men in society, who are lagging behind their female counterparts in educational performance, and, among the working classes, finding it increasingly difficult to find the kind of gainful employment that their fathers and grandfathers found in the manufacturing sector.  Many of these young males are descending into antisocial behavior, including drug and alcohol abuse, and crime, and many more are finding themselves underemployed, or working low wage, menial jobs, or not working at all.  It would be challenging enough for such men to attract a mate, but much, much more so if they now find that they are not just competing with other males, but with females as well, for the amorous affections of women.  If the trend toward female pansexuality is a global one, and one that is not just confined to America, then in those countries where “gendercide” – sexually selective abortions favoring male over female infants, for reasons of economic security – has been practiced, young men will face the additional challenge of finding a mate in a much-reduced female population.  One could imagine a society in which it is not uncommon for adult males to be living in their mother’s basement, unmarried and with little or no means of self-support, wiling away their hours in an alcohol- and cannabis-fueled haze, listening to music, gaming, and watching pornography, perhaps enhanced and intensified with the latest advances in virtual reality.  Mothers of these aimless young men will only be able to turn to their husbands (or wives), roll their eyes, and shrug their shoulders in helpless exasperation. 

 

In fact, there is already an emerging class of men, identifying themselves as “Incels” (involuntary celibates), who have abandoned all hope of having a sexual/romantic relationship with a female.  (I should remark at this point that I have never given much currency to the theory that the growth in female bisexuality is due to the death of masculinity, brought on by feminist critiques of conventional male behavior and intensified by concerted protests against sexual harassment, such as the “Me Too” movement.  The idea here is that men in general have been systematically intimidated in order to compel them to avoid engaging in traditionally masculine behavior, with the result that they have become less attractive to women.  When I think back to the days of my youth, long before the phrase “toxic masculinity” entered the popular lexicon, I remember that the men who were most successful on the dating scene – who had what is sometimes called “animal magnetism”: an apparent ability to attract female admirers with little or no effort – were not “alpha males” who dominated their peers.  They weren’t even “macho” men, in the generally understood sense of that word.  Instead, they had an easy-going manner about them – a natural gregariousness.  Any air of self-confidence that they exuded was of a serene sort, which, rather than coming off as arrogant or condescending, only made women feel comfortable and safe around them, never intimidated, and certainly never bullied.  They exhibited a playfully nonchalant attitude about sex: they enjoyed it, and were not hampered by any inhibitions, and yet acted as if they could “take it or leave it”: an attitude completely devoid of desperation or compulsion.  And this attitude, ironically, was like catnip to their female companions, stoking their own passions.  These men, then, while often athletic, were the antithesis of the brutish boors that have populated the “Me Too” horror stories.)

 

Coincidentally, while I was putting this piece together, I came across an article in The Guardian authored by Gaby Hinsliff titled “I was puzzled by younger women’s reaction to Barbie. It turned out Gen Z men held the answer” (February 2, 2024).  She was referring to the different reaction among her generation of women to the Barbie movie (who simply saw “colour and fun”) and that of Gen Z women, who seemed to see in it a much more serious message about the growing divide between men and women.  She writes:

 

Something is happening to Gen Z that belies lazy “woke” stereotypes. As young women become dramatically more liberal, young men are getting more conservative, not only in the US but – according to a Financial Times analysis – from South Korea to Germany, Poland to China. Though the divide is relatively modest in Britain, polling this week found that one in five British men aged 16 to 29 who have heard of him think warmly of Andrew Tate, the YouTube misogynist currently facing charges in Romania of rape and human trafficking (which he denies). So much for all those well-meaning school assemblies on toxic masculinity.

 

After providing examples of the trend toward political extremism among Gen Z males, she concludes:

 

But if the political implications are alarming, there are more intimate consequences, too. Why on earth would the Swiftie generation want to settle down with men who seem to hate them, ranting on dates about how feminism has gone too far and scoffing at ideas they hold dear? The angriest Kens may be heading for the kind of lonely lives that, if anything, might only intensify their embittered search for easy scapegoats.

 

It’s still unclear what exactly is driving all this, with possible causes ranging from social media polarisation to pushback against #MeToo, economic trends such as more women than men going to university (with consequences for lifetime earnings), or the so-called bachelor timebomb in South Korea and China, where young men outnumber women and so struggle to find partners. Such a complex phenomenon won’t have simple answers. But unless young people of both sexes are happy to end up living alone with their cats, it’s probably in all our interests to find them.

 

The scenario that Hinsliff describes is that of an outright growing hostility between the sexes in Generation Z, and while she doesn’t mention trends in sexual behavior, one wonders if these are a contributing cause of the mutual sexual alienation she describes, or a consequence of it, or both – in a sort of descending spiral of antipathy.

 

            So much for the dystopian future.  But while this might be the fate awaiting many young men, others will continue to find avenues for success that provide them with a decent living and a comfortable lifestyle, thereby enabling them to fare much better in finding and maintaining romantic relationships, and for them the future could be very different: potentially even a utopia, of sorts.  Such men, with their bisexual wives’ or girlfriends’ full support and participation, if not outright encouragement, might spice up their love lives by occasionally – or even permanently – bringing an additional woman into the relationship.

 

            There is another – probably more likely – scenario, however, which is that things will be pretty much the same as they are now.  After all, there have been many trends, and innovations, and inventions in the past that, on their first appearance, were seen by many to threaten the survival of the family, or the American way of life, or civilization in general: such as mass immigrations of the “wrong” sort of people, secularism, jazz and – later – rock and roll, pot, the birth control pill and the sexual revolution, ultraconservatism, ultraliberalism, even automobiles and television, not to mention the internet in general and social media in particular.  So far, at least, the general features of the family have survived all of these threats and onslaughts intact.  We are a more permissive society, and a more tolerant one of alternative lifestyles, but I suspect that most of us see this as a generally good thing, which actually makes our world a better one than that of previous generations.  Greater sexual fluidity among the female population may simply be a new and permanent feature of our society, which incorporates itself seamlessly into the fabric of that society.  Perhaps, too, in spite of the increasing rate of growth of pansexuality among females that the most recent surveys suggest, this will eventually level off, leaving the majority of the female population still generally heterosexual in orientation, although no longer rigidly so, with the ultimate consequence that while many will have interesting dating histories, most will still follow in the tradition of their mothers and grandmothers, forming long-term relationships with men.

 

The glamorization and popularization of female homoeroticism continues to expand, in movies, television, television commercials, and has even breached the bounds of pornography on the internet to more mainstream websites, like YouTube, with “hot girls kissing” videos and the like.  To what extent the expansion of this phenomenon continues is anyone’s guess, but I believe that it is here to stay, as a permanent feature of our cultural landscape.  I wonder, though, if there will be a backlash to at least some aspects of the phenomenon, at least where pornography is involved.  Even feminists who believe that female sexual fluidity is a form of empowerment may conclude that its furtherance by pornography has turned out to be a Faustian bargain with the devil, because in doing so it has only increased the sexual objectification of women.  And those in Gen Z, who have become famous – or infamous – in their intolerance for even the expression of ideas that they consider to be illiberal, may eventually push for the regulation or even banning of internet pornography.  Of course this, too, could have negative collateral consequences, if it opens the door to the sort of internet censorship that is now common in totalitarian countries like China.

 

As an aging Baby Boomer, I have had the luxury of following this trend in female sexuality with a detached fascination.  I can only wonder what kind of society awaits the men of future generations.  (I should mention that while most of the studies that I cited showed no significant trends in male sexual preferences within their survey periods, a comparison across the studies over time suggests that the male population, too, is undergoing a transition to greater sexual fluidity, with the only difference between the sexes being that the female population is undergoing the transition at a much faster rate.)  And while I may have little or no personal stake in the outcome, I still peruse any new publication of sexual surveys like the ones I have described here with unbounded curiosity.  They seem to describe a social transformation underway of potentially seismic proportions, but one which is rarely openly discussed.