Constance McMillen

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Constance McMillen Flap: Sign Of Epidemic in Teen Girl Fake Dykedom?

Constance plants kiss on girlfriend. Is it real or is she just funnin’?

We just came across a rather interesting article written in Psychology Today. Its title asks the question, Why are so many girls lesbian or bisexual? We didn’t realize that there’d been a jump in girls declaring themselves lesbian or bisexual in recent years. Of course with the changing of times and gradual acceptance of homosexuality over the last few decades surely more people male and female we thought, are coming out earlier and in much greater numbers than ever before.

But that’s not what the author of this article—-psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax, a specialist in the study of the emerging science of sexual differences—-is focusing on. Instead, he’s asking why there’s so many openly gay teen girls in comparison to teen boys. Today’s female teen or young woman is three times more likely to be homosexual or bi than their male counterparts.

In a study where Sax interviewed hundreds of teen boys and girls over 7 years he asked them the question: Why is it OK for girls to be bisexual or homosexual, but not boys?

Now let’s pause for a second here. Upon glancing at the article we thought it was stupid to begin with. Of course lesbianism and being bi is much more acceptable by society for women. For starters straight men love it—a good portion of straight porno is sexual three-ways scenarios: 2 girls and a guy with the guy getting off on watching the girls go at it while he alternates with each of them in various intervals. And then there’s hetero porn featuring just two women having sex.

So from our view in terms of male homosexuality it’s just a matter of cultural and social taboos in masculinity—American culture in this case. Doesn’t take a rocket science to figure that out. So Sax’s questions seemed dumb—like dude, what planet are you on?

But then we read further, and that’s when things started to get interesting. Sax shares with us the most common answers to his ‘why is okay for girls’ question from some of the kids. Read the following excerpt:

The most common answer I get isn’t really an answer. “Girls kiss other girls at parties because guys like it,” one teenage girl told me. “It makes the guys hoot and holler, so the girls do it again. They’re just doing it for attention. It’s not for real.”

I point out, as gently as I can, that that response doesn’t answer my question. Pretending to be lesbian or bisexual doesn’t explain why a growing proportion of young women are lesbian or bisexual.

Or does it?

So what he proposes or questions is not a matter of female bi or gayness being more socially accepting in our culture as much as the possibility of many of these teen girls possibly “pretending” to be gay or bi. Now stay with us cause can easily see our lesbian readership completely tuning out and off at this point. Hang on ladies. It gets more intriguing.

So we had to pause and think about that the ‘or is it‘ possibility there. In our lifetime we’ve known many woman who have had serious relationships with other women only to get married later on to a man and raise a family as devoted hetero wives and mothers as though their romantic/sexual history with other women was just an experiment or “phase” — a term we hate with a passion.

On the other hand, even though there is a much smaller number of young men who openly identify as gay as opposed to young women who do the same, typically however if a young man or adult identifies as such he almost always expresses his sexuality exclusively as a homosexual in our experience. There is no later on getting married to woman and settling down to raise a family. With young women who identify as lesbian, that very much can remain a possibility.

As Sax states, female sexuality is different than male sexuality. And perhaps nothing more makes this clear than homosexual or bisexuality as expressed in both sexes. But he takes it further with a radical notion. And that is, are there so many young women identifying as lesbian or bi because so many of the boys in their realm are big losers?

He goes into all that using as his platform the dramatic rise and easy access for teen boys to pornography. Okay, whateves, right? But in his notes at the end of the article Sax cites something that caught our eye:

Professor Lisa Diamond has made a compelling case that many women don’t discover their “true” sexual identity until their 20’s, 30’s or even 40’s. A woman may reach her 40’s, believe that she is a straight woman, and then find herself falling in love with her soulmate – who happens to be a woman. Here are three of Professor Diamond’s most relevant articles:

“Female bisexuality from adolescence to adulthood: results from a 10-year longitudinal study,” Developmental Psychology, volume 44, pp. 5 – 14, 2008.

“The evolution of plasticity in female-female desire,” Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, volume 18, pp. 245 – 274, 2006.

“What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire,” Psychological Review, volume 110, pp. 173 – 192, 2003.

Just in case you’re not familiar with Dr. Lisa Diamond (she holds a doctorate and teaches) she wrote the book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. She is an associate professor in Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah is an internationally recognized expert on female sexuality and specifically on female sexual fluidity. She’s appeared on multiple talk shows including Oprah, and her work has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today. We’ve provided a link at the end of this post to an online interview she did last year in which talks about sexual fluidity in detail. We highly encourage that you check it out. She shares some pretty cool and deep stuff.

Understand we’re not arguing anything one way or the other. But we do think it is a compelling article in terms of a rising tide of teen lesbians in American culture and why it was happening not necessarily within—but outside of cultural permissiveness. Bottom line, what the man is asking is whether or not we’re being inundated with a bunch of young faux dykes. Considering the fluidity of female sexuality, hard as it is to say it —- we don’t consider the question as something all that farfetched or challenging authentic lesbian or bisexual identity in women. But that’s just it. What is true lesbian or bi identity in terms of the fluidity in female sexuality?

Is Constance McMillen and other lesbian/bi identified teen girls too young to even know if their gay or straight?

We lifted the following from the blog Queer Gnosis. It’s actually the opening paragraph for the Lisa Diamond interview we mentioned earlier. And it sums up the challenges and questions expressed by both Dr. Leonard Sax and Professor Lisa Diamond’s work towards LGBT and hetero ideas on fixed sexuality:

The queer community has been obsessed with cultivating the idea that we all have fixed sexual identities. We’ve crafted terrific narratives and political platforms based on the notions that all gays are “born that way”. But what if sexuality is more complex? What if biology actually intersects with environment, time, culture and context? Could we possibly be more fluid than we’ve supposed?

Psychology Today: Why are so many girls lesbian or bisexual?

Queer Gnosis: Sexual Fluidity: The Lisa Diamond Interview

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