(hell, yeah) Scarleteen

Many young people attracted to more than one gender tend to binge drink because they feel stigmatised and socially excluded, a study by the University of Otago in Wellington has found.

Passing legislation for marriage equality - also known as same sex marriage - is suggested as a way to help alleviate the problem.

Binge drinking was higher among young people attracted to more than one gender than for other sexual minorities or for heterosexual young people, lead author, Frank Pega, from the university’s public health department and the Harvard School of Public Health, said.

He noted it was still a minority of those attracted to more than one gender who were binge drinking.

The study involved in-depth interviews this year with 32 people aged 18-25 in 11 focus groups in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin.

A significant factor leading to binge drinking was found to be wide-ranging social exclusion experienced by young people attracted to more than one gender, from heterosexual, lesbian and gay communities.

“Most study participants reported that they commonly experienced biphobia (an aversion toward bisexuality and bisexual people) and discrimination, and some had been verbally harassed and physically abused for their sexual attraction.

‘‘For many, these experiences resulted in a sense of being stigmatised, which caused daily stress and anxiety,” Pega said.

“While many participants were very resilient and responded positively, some participants binge drank to manage this stress.”

Sexual minority communities, health practitioners, and policy makers had long wanted to tackle the issue, but too little information had been available.

The report suggested more attention needed to be paid to reducing social stigma towards young people attracted to more than one gender.

Read the rest here.

Pandas_Arecute asks:

Hi! I am a 15 year old female and I think I may be bisexual, I have talked to a couple friends (who are straight) that I trust, They either said “It’s just a phase don’t worry” Or “There is only one way to know and that is to have sex/kiss another female.” But I don’t know any lesbian girls to do that with! I’m pretty sure it’s NOT a phase but I need to know how to find out if I’m bi or not. My school/parents are not very accepting of lesbians, bi’s and gays, so I wouldn’t be able to talk to my parents. Another thing is I’m secretly sort of wanting to do something with a girl. Please help me!I feel so lost!

Robin L. replies:

Have all of your straight friends had sex with a guy if they’re girls, or with a girl if they’re guys? If not, how do they know they’re straight?

See how silly that is? Hopefully they will, too. It’s not sound to make orientation something anyone needs to “prove” with sex for a whole lot of reasons. Not only does that add something pretty dehumanizing to people’s intimacies, sexual orientation is about feelings, not actions. It’s about what sexual or romantic feelings we have with or about people in terms of their gender. If we do or don’t have sex with those people — or do with people outside any given gender group we feel attraction towards — doesn’t prove or disprove anything about our or anyone else’s orientation.

A bisexual person is usually defined and self-defined as either someone who can be or is attracted to men and women alike, or to someone of any gender, though not always at the same time. Sometimes people think that bisexuality means being attracted to everyone at once, or just everyone, period, and feel fear and mistrust of bisexuals because of that. While there certainly wouldn’t be any reason to be fearful or judgmental of someone who earnestly was attracted to the whole wide world (what’s so scary about someone who thinks everyone is loveable and sexy, anyway?), for most bisexuals, just like for most of everyone else, attractions to people of any given gender are usually about more than their gender, and attraction to a given gender usually means to some people of that gender, not all people.

A bisexual person also isn’t always attracted to each gender equally or in the same way. For example, a woman might be attracted to women most of the time, but occasionally find men attractive or experience an attraction towards a specific man. Or, a bisexual guy might find that he feels stronger or more frequent emotional or romantic feelings towards men, but stronger or more frequent sexual attraction to women.

It is frustrating that people dismiss things that they don’t like or believe in, or that are inconvenient for them (or that they feel scared of) as being “just a phase”. That said, your bisexuality could be just a phase, but not in the way that your friends mean. And the same is true of your friend’s heterosexuality. The same is true of any aspect of sexuality for anyone, not just our orientation.

Sexuality is what we call fluid. Think about water, how it’s always moving, changing form based on the temperature around it and other factors like wind.

Sexuality is kind of like that. It can change based on where we are in life, what’s going on with us, or random factors that we can’t really figure out. So, if a type of sexuality is a phase for one person, it’s a phase for everyone. If bisexuality can be a phase (and it can), so can heterosexuality. That sexual fluidity applies just as much to people who identify and live as straight. I’d say, though, that your friends saying this is a phase probably isn’t so much about them understanding all of this as it’s about biphobia—a fear of bisexuality or bisexual people—or heteronormativity, which is a giant word that basically means the belief that everyone is inherently straight and the action that society being set up for straight people as a default.

Read the rest of this great answer from Scarleteen volunteer Robin here.

Early on, when I first started my research, some of the women that I interviewed would say things like, “Oh, I never knew that I was really attracted to women until I became close friends with one particular woman, and I fell in love with her…” In my naïveté, I sort of discounted these stories as evidence of repression (which was pretty common at that time).

As the years went by and I would re-interview these women, and as I would talk to lesbian-identified women who would say things like, “Wow, I was never really attracted to men, but now I sort of feel sexually attracted to my best male friend!” I began to realize that there was something really profound going on within these relationships, and that deep emotional attachments had the power to really change one’s entire way of experiencing desire.

It took me a while to really come to grips with this, scientifically; I kept rereading the interview transcripts, trying to interpret them within the conventional models of sexuality that were available at that time, and it just didn’t work. I remember that there was a particular day… actually, I was on an airplane with a stack of transcripts, struggling to make sense of them, and I just put down my pen and said, “OK, I need to throw out everything I think I ‘know’ and just start again, and reread everything, from the beginning. And really listen this time.”

The hard truth is that life is a lot more complicated than scientific models present it as being.

- Dr. Lisa Diamond here.