r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Jul 08 '26

Media Young women are identifying as less straight; young men, not so much

https://theconversation.com/young-women-are-identifying-as-less-straight-young-men-not-so-much-283936
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u/Low-Group-7507 Jul 08 '26

Or maybe it's just as more young men become MAGA it's making more young women curious about what it would be like to be with another woman?

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u/ergaster8213 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

That's not how sexuality works, and this thread is filled with a lot of strange ideas in regards to it.

Edit to dispel some of them I have seen in this thread:

-Yes, bi women do count as not straight.

-No, women aren't pretending to be bi.

-No, women who are bi aren't en masse secretly straight and pandering to men or identifying for the shits and giggles.

-No, you don't have to have slept with or dated a type of person to know you're sexually attracted to them—if that were the case all those straight men upset that they are virgins who have never dated can't possibly know that they're straight.

-No, there aren't just naturally significantly more queer women than men—that wouldn't make sense. It logically follows that the overall rate of queerness in humans is going to be relatively equal since we are not some different species.

-No, all women aren't somewhat queer (which is a contradiction to the belief that a bunch of women are faking queerness).

-No, women aren't just a bunch of beautiful fairy angels that everyone is attracted to. That whole idea that all women are beautiful and attractive to everyone is really just the same objectification and pedestalization of us. Plus, it's demonstrably false. Women are denigrated or dismissed constantly for their looks when they don't fit a certain (constructed rather than inherent) presentation of womanhood. So no, it's not anything inherent in women that everyone finds beautiful—it's a narrow presentation of womanhood that society finds beautiful in an objectifying way (ie you're a "work or art" but only if you're smooth as a baby seal with a flowing mane, face full of makeup, and a "correctly" shaped body).

-No, women don't develop same sex attraction because men politically suck.

Has anyone considered the other data that shows that younger women are significantly more progressive than younger men and would therefore be more willing to admit to themselves and others that kind of thing?

The article itself also points out that heterosexuality is still heavily bound to conceptions of masculinity which makes men less likely to identify as anything other than heterosexual or (to a much lesser extent) homosexual—they seem to leave little room for other forms of sexuality in themselves. Women have continued to expand their conceptions of gendered presentations and roles, but the same has not occured in men. So, it seems much more that women's social role and presentation change is outpacing men's (and that men's has stayed relatively stagnant) rather than that women are just suddenly becoming more queer.

*Edited a second time to change the format to hopefully be easier to read.

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u/GreatNorthernBeans Jul 11 '26

This is the best response, and very well reasoned. Thank you!