Aug. 25--If you're a woman who's currently married to a man, but had sex with women prior to marriage, how would you define yourself now? Straight? Bisexual? An amalgam of both? None of the above?
Consider this: If you're a woman who identifies as bisexual, do you do so in part because it's trendy and some men think it's hot?
Sociologist Elizabeth Aura McClintock has been studying how a person's sexual identity is influenced by what's going on in society, as well as in his or her life. What McClintock has found is that women tend to define their sexuality in ways that are far more adaptable, and flexible, than the way men define theirs.
"Sexual identity, just like racial identity, has meaning because we believe they have meaning," said McClintock, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. "So it seemed to me there should be social causes for your sexual category."
This is the subject of "The Social Context of Sexual Identity," a new study that McClintock will present Tuesday at the 110th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, which is being held this week in Chicago.
She said that in the past, historians have shown ways in which sexual identity is a social construct. For example, prior to the late 1800s, a man who had sex with another man was considered to be engaging in homosexuality. It wasn't until later that his identity was attached to his behavior and he became a "homosexual."
Sexual researchers have long shown how women's sexual identity changes over time. But many of the studies, said McClintock, had ignored the impact of social factors, and she wanted to change that.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, she looked at 5,018 women and 4,191 men as they grew from adolescents to young adults. The age range was about 16 to 28.
McClintock said the focus of this study wasn't about whether people were born gay or straight, but whether their sexual identity changed over time.
"There are some people who are very gay or very straight," McClintock told me during an interview last week. "But there are a lot of people who are attracted to both genders and have had sexual experiences with both. Some people may be mostly attracted to one and maybe a little to the other."
She said those are the people who have more flexibility in terms of sexual identity. And often those people are women.
"Men tend to be attracted to women or men, but rarely to both," she said. "And for the men who are attracted to both, they seem over time to move more toward one or the other."
In her research, McClintock looked at several factors affecting sexual identity. One was educational attainment. She found that women who were more educated tended to identify more as heterosexual.
"We don't live in an equal society, and it's easier to be heterosexual," McClintock said. "Women who are more educated have more advantages when it comes to partnering, and even today a stable marriage (to a man) impacts economic well-being."
McClintock also looked at attractiveness. It's not surprising that women who are more "attractive" have more romantic opportunities with both men and women. But she found that the more attractive a woman was, the more likely she was to be heterosexual. The less attractive she was, the more flexible she was with her sexuality and sexual identity.
"In our society, heterosexuality is the default," she said. "When that default path is more available to you, you're more likely to take it."
Because women with children have a hard time finding partners, McClintock also examined the age when a woman had her first child and how that affected her sexual identity. She said that having a baby early may function to prolong a woman's heterosexuality, but over time that may change for myriad reasons.
"It could be that the woman had a bad experience with a man," said McClintock. "Maybe women are more willing to take on a stepchild."
This wasn't a qualitative study, so McClintock didn't conduct interviews. It's also important to note that what she found were associations and not causal relationships.
For me, one of the surprising parts of the study was that black women were more likely to have a same-sex partner, no matter their education level. One reason may have something to do with an imbalance in the black community.
"There simply aren't enough guys, and black women are unlikely to partner with guys who are not black," McClintock said.
What do you think?
dmturner@tribpub.com
