The cause is very simple. The definition of the acronym has changed. It now simply means “a good person.” These young people are trying to tell the world that they are good, kind individuals.
I’m not being facetious. This is quite literally what teenagers think the words “bisexual,” “non-binary,” and “queer” mean.
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The 40% number is probably driven by two things:
1) A lot of young women label themselves bi but mostly or exclusively date men. The bi label can mean anything from “I date both sexes” to “I had one experience with the same sex” to “I want to seem open-minded so I won’t rule out the same sex, even though I have never even kissed a member of the same sex.”
2) Queer no longer means gay. It now means “not uptight.” You can dye a purple streak in your hair and say that this trendy hairstyle makes you a very unique individual, but stick to heterosexual sex, and only in the missionary position.
Oh, and then there are the demisexuals, who are LGBTQ+ despite being heterosexual women who don’t enjoy casual sex. This makes them very Diverse.
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Yes. From what I gather, “the youts” these days regard it as bigoted to express any sexual preferences at all. They have such preferences, of course. But it’s uncool to state them. They are given a list of “sexualities” like a menu– gay, lesbian, bi, poly, pan, a, etc. The most uncool thing you can choose is straight. If you’re a straight guy, the thing to do is wear eyeliner and a skirt now and then, paint your fingernails, and say you’re a trans lesbian. That way you still get to date girls, but you’re not (gasp!) a square. If you’re a straight gal, you declare yourself bi or pan, but then only date guys. Kiss your best girl friend once if you need street cred. From what I’ve heard ‘queer’ is already seen as a cop-out, and just means you’ve dyed your hair an unnatural color.
Among actual gay and lesbian people, I assume this is just as eye-rollingly dumb and tiresome as LUGs were when I was college-age.
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I doubt that many straight males are jumping on this bandwagon. Yeah, there’s always a few. But I’m sure the trend is driven by women.
Liberal arts colleges are 60% female, and probably draw more genuinely gay and lesbian students than the general population. So let’s say 10% of the student body is genuinely gay or lesbian. In a group of 100 students that’s 6 lesbian women and 4 gay men.
These schools probably also draw more trans students than the general population, so toss in another 4 students. 4 out of 100 is 1 in a group of 25, or enough so the average classroom has one trans student. Every prof can duly boast about respecting pronouns on a daily basis.
To get to 40% identifying LGBTQ you need another 26 students. Among the sorts of young women who want to attend a liberal arts college–and have parents who can afford it!–I am sure that well over a third will eagerly adopt trendy labels to seem unusual and open-minded and morally superior. So let’s say 24 out of 60. That leaves us with 2 men out of 40, or 1 in 20 men and 1 in 50 students. This means that many classrooms will have one dude who claims to be nonbinary because he wants to be diverse when submitting to literary magazines. Probably zero in STEM classes (yes, liberal arts colleges have STEM classes) but at least 1 in every humanities class.
Anyway, most of the men (34 out of 40) express zero interest in anything other than sex with women. Maybe, if pushed, they will say something about open-mindedness and respecting all identities. But they aren’t going to let anyone labor under the impression that they’re into dick.
And these 34 straight men will find 52 functionally straight women, even though most of those women claim to be some flavor of LGBTQ. And the men hope in vain that these allegedly open-minded and sexually adventurous women will treat them to a threesome. But in reality, their girlfriends’ queerness is limited to a streak of green hair dye and a label that gives their parents heartburn. Maybe a quick peck on another woman’s lips when drunk at a party and a bunch of men are cheering. But no actual sex with other women.
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I am not familiar with the stats. My only window on the situation is at the high-school level, through an angsty teen girl relative. Her last two boyfriends have been straight hetero males identifying as “queer” by painting their fingernails black and once in a while trying on women’s clothing, putting on lipstick, and lipsynching on tiktok to see how many “likes” they can get. She is a straight girl identifying as “pansexual” on no evidence whatsoever unless you count dating boys who wear nail polish. In theory it means “I don’t discriminate against anyone as dating material” but in practice means “I only date big-jawed latino guys with fluffy hair”.
You can infer the eye-rolling.
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Oh, so he emulates rock stars of the 70’s and 80’s. Very few guys have their looks and attitude.
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I’m in the Humanities, and there are very many male students who are doing it. If anything, I’d say this phenomenon skews somewhat male. But we are a discipline that is chosen by a specific cohort of men who tend to be sensitive and good at “girl subjects” by default.
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Oh, I have no doubt the proportion of queer-identifying males is high among students pre-selected for a sensitive disposition and ability to thrive in female-heavy classrooms.
Among the wider student body, not so much.
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[cue “Johnny Are You Queer?” by Josie Cotton (and The Go-Go’s)] š
The most confused crap I’ve heard all week came from behind a closed hospital pharmacy desk where two females and a male thought nobody else was around …
Guy: “Oh, I’m mostly bi …”
Guy later: “… except that I’m not really into guys.”
The two females back there were lesbians who were into guys more than women.
There are things I wish I hadn’t heard because they’re just bafflingly stupid.
But comparatively speaking, “demisexual” is a lot easier to understand: these are Neo-Victorian men and women who are doing mate selection for a much older historical period, but it’s uncool to call them Neo-Victorians.
Neo-Victorian: “Sleep around? Why, a man could get a reputation that way … and then you’ll never meet the right one!”
2020s hipster: “Sleep around? That gets you a case of the karmic cooties … and then you’ll never meet the right one!”
Same difference.
Oh, but people like this can’t exist … and then hang around r/INFJ sometime.
Suffragistes versus suffragettes, potatoe versus potato, let’s call the whole thing off. š
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I don’t even know what to say about that. What the fuck do words mean now?
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LOL The lamest you can be these days is straight and vanilla. Apparently vanilla used to be the term for boring = missionary-only sex, but now refers to everything that is not outright kink or violence (choking, BDSM, multiple simultaneous partners, etc), which means it includes a vast majority of even fairly acrobatic one-on-one acts and even many sex toys and props. So those clearly straight “lesbians” and “bi dude” you overheard are just trying not to be lame old straight vanilla š and possibly gearing up for a threesome! š
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/02/ce-corner
There’s research showing that hookup culture isn’t doing men or women many favors, and women in particular feel crappy more often than not after a casual encounter (let’s not miss the scary statistic that under 50% of people having casual sex use protection). It’s almost as if we’re not wired to share our bodies with complete strangers (or at least not routinely — most adult allosexuals have had encounters where the initial physical attraction is though the roof and it makes perfect sense to pursue it). That never used to be controversial before, but these days it’s supposed to be seen as pathological.
I have heard people saying they are relationship guys and gals, and other people chiming in that it means they must be demisexual. Why is “I actually would like to get to know someone first before getting frisky” a sexual orientation FFS? Since when is drunkenly humping randos is bar restrooms the allosexual norm?
(Seriously now, demisexuality isn’t the above (even though many folks to think it is); actually it means a person really feels no sexual attraction toward anyone they don’t know, but sometimes develop sexual feelings once they’ve become friends with someone. This is a different kettle of fish from “I’d like to lick this guy’s chest, but I’m not gonna do it until I know him better.”)
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If this bizarre conversation is actually the prelude to a threesome, well, I will just say “Godspeed, bro.”
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