An increasing number of young adults identify as bisexual

By Herbert Rothschild

A woman I knew very well spent her married life propping up her husband’s ego. He was both needy and insistent, and she was willing to meet his demands. Almost every time I was with them, I witnessed this dynamic at work. 

It offended me. She was a bright, caring and charming person, and she had significant gifts to offer. He mostly disregarded her attributes. For him, I think, she existed as his attribute. A pricey one. He had money and she spent it. Because he could readily afford her extravagance, it enhanced her value.

That story isn’t unusual, particularly because the husband’s wealth isn’t intrinsic to it. For my purposes here, it merely served to protect his psychic fragility. Other men have other defenses.

I’m not sure why the male ego so often is fragile. One reason may be that too many fathers refuse to let their sons know they are proud of them. That was certainly true of the man in my story. Another reason is that much of young male culture, even now, induces anxiety about one’s masculinity. And who knows? It may be that we’re all worried we won’t be able to rise to the occasion.

At any rate, male fragility imposes a heavy burden on others, and especially on the women subjected to it. At the time my friend and I were being socialized — the 1940s and 1950s — it was expected that women would marry men and bear that burden. Too often, despite their best efforts, their husbands would fly into rages to hide from themselves the wounds they carried from their childhoods. Then the wives would be in danger.

What I’ve written to this point is a prologue to today’s focus, which is the rapid rise in LGBTQ identity in the U.S. population. According to the Gallup poll, in 2024 9.3% of U.S. adults identified as something other than heterosexual. That compares with 3.5% in 2012, when Gallup first began tracking sexual identity.

That general statistic, however, isn’t what arrested my attention. With two-thirds of Americans now saying that homosexuality should be accepted by society, it stands to reason that many more people than before are ready to acknowledge to themselves as well as to others that they are non-heterosexual. Rather, it was two particular statistics that struck me.  

One is that among people ages 18-29 who identify as very liberal, a stunning 54% also identify as LGBTQ. In that same political category, 30% of people ages 30-49 also identify that way. As one goes toward the other end of the political spectrum through liberal to moderate to conservative, the percentages identifying as LGBTQ continually decrease. Only 7% of conservatives ages 18-29 identify as LGBTQ and only 5% of those 30-49.

Regarding the relationship between sexual and political orientation, it’s difficult to know which came first. Given the hostility of conservatives toward LGBTQ people and conservative efforts to enshrine bigotry in law, it’s understandable that non-heterosexuals will make common cause with those who affirm them. Indeed, one of the touchstones of liberalism is its readiness to welcome the other.

The inverse is more difficult to explain. One reason why very liberal people will more readily identify themselves as LGBTQ may be that they aren’t wedded to rigid conceptual categories. A statement like “there can only be two sexes” will strike them as dumb, especially when “God made us that way” is added. Another plausible explanation is that they are disposed to take responsibility for their own identities rather than let others tell them who they can and cannot be.

Nonetheless, 54% is so large a figure that, in contradiction to the last explanation I offered, it’s likely that there are external factors, social circumstances, influencing the reluctance of certain people, when they are fairly young and still questioning who they are, to identify as heterosexual. Very liberal doesn’t equate to individualistic.

The other statistic that struck me is the gender gap in LGBTQ self-identification. It has exploded since 2015, when 10% of females and 6% of males ages 18-29 identified that way. In 2024, it was 31% of females compared to 12% of males.

It’s significant, however, that what accounts for most of that overall increase is an increase in bisexual identification, especially among females. According to the Gallup study, nearly one-quarter of young women identify as bisexual.

In a column on his “American Stories” Substack blog, Daniel Cox discusses the role that social media may have played in the rapid rise of LGBTQ identity among young women. He writes, “Young women are significantly more active on social media than young men, and given gendered habits online, they are more likely to be exposed to accounts that feature LGBTQ topics. Our research also shows that young women who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer are much more active on social media platforms than women of the same age who are straight.”

It’s not easy to evaluate the explanatory power of this avenue of investigation, especially because Cox doesn’t display his research in the column. Further, he wisely makes the point that because bisexuality is a less decisive identity than gay or lesbian or transexual, as people age and their characters get more settled, the numbers fall.

What pleases me is that many females now growing up in the U.S. are not irrevocably committed to making a life with a man. This doesn’t mean that most of them won’t. They will. The Gallup survey found that 90% of those who identify as bisexual (male and female) and are in intimate relationships have partners of the opposite sex. It does mean that they’ve considered alternatives to what for so long has passed for masculinity in our culture.

If that is true, then fewer and fewer women will voluntarily bear the burden of helping men feel secure about their masculinity. Hopefully, that will hold true for men as well.   

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].