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| Women in the 1990s: less likely to have sex with other women |
Fifteen thousand people around the UK aged 16-74 were
interviewed about various aspects of their sexual behaviour in 2010-2012.
This survey – the third, following previous surveys held 20
and 10 years ago – has had its headline results published in the Lancet.
Out of all the interesting research published in the survey,
the aspect that has been both under-discussed and is relevant for this blog is
this: women are now four times more likely to say they had had same-sex
activity than they were 20 years ago. (4% in 1990 to 16% in 2010)
Director of the research, Professor Kaye Welland, was
reported in Pink News as saying that this was too big a change to be simply a difference in what
women said. In other words, it was not just that they had changed their way of
gathering data, or that the women were being more honest. Women actually ARE
having more same-sex behaviour than they were 20 years ago. Much, much more.
It is not that women are necessarily having what they coyly
describe as “genital contact” – that is only 8% or half of the women reporting
same-sex contact - so what does “sex” mean here? And what’s behind the increase?
Here are eight (connected) reasons why I think more women
are having sex with each other. They are only theories, but they sound right to
me. If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. (I have comment moderation
on, so please be patient if you post!)
Increased acceptability/less prejudice against women-women
relationships
As well as the rates of same-sex going up, according to this
survey, the percentages of people thinking same-sex relationships were always
or sometimes wrong have gone down a great deal too. Women are more likely than
men to think such relationships are acceptable – this has gone up from 28% in
1990 to 66% now. Relationships between women are more accepted than are those
between men, especially by men, with 52% of men thinking that same-sex
relationships between men are always wrong, and 48% that those between women
are always wrong. In 1990, those figures were 78% and 76%.
More same-sex couples and individuals in the media
Oh yes. I mean, there’s even a UK bank ad featuring female identical
twins one of whom has a female partner, the other a male. This is presented as
no more of an issue than whether she does or doesn’t like swimming.
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| Lesbian power couple: Alice Arnold (left) and Clare Balding |
More sex in general
Women are having more sexual partners in general than they
were 20 years ago. The average for women aged 16-44 in 1990 was 3.7 and now is
7.7. So if there is more sex, there is also likely to be more same-sex too.
There’s no research (that I know of, although you might) showing that women are
more open and assertive in their sexual desires than 20 years ago, but I wouldn’t
be surprised.
Internet dating
You are 25, you live in a tiny village where everyone knows
everyone and no one available is of interest to you. But pop online, and dozens
of potential partners of whatever gender you desire are just waiting. And you
know they are interested in people like you – in terms of gender, looks,
interest, what-have-you – because they say so. There may be problems of course,
but “do they want to have sex with someone of my gender” isn’t one of them. There
is a whole pool of sexual partners who simply would not have been available
before. For older people, I think this is much more difficult but for reasons
of age, not gender.
The lesbian community
Not so long ago, women usually had to be part of a lesbian
community if they wanted women to be their sexual partners. Of course, some
women didn’t do this: they happened upon each other by accident, or maybe were
part of other radical political movements, or met through friends. But most
did. While of course many women were happy in their lesbian community, it had
its political, social and sexual norms which you had to adhere to. It didn’t
always (and still doesn’t) welcome women who didn’t agree with those norms. Bi
women in particular.
But to be fair, I think it is also true that some parts of the lesbian community, anyway, are more tolerant towards women who aren't 150% lesbian, though understandably perhaps not towards women who are "experimenting".
But to be fair, I think it is also true that some parts of the lesbian community, anyway, are more tolerant towards women who aren't 150% lesbian, though understandably perhaps not towards women who are "experimenting".
There are also now many more same-sex friendly communities –
queer, poly, bi, kink, swinger, pagan, goth, BDSM, etc etc – where women can
meet each other. Many of them were around 20 years ago too, but they are much easier
to find now. And if there are more women having same-sex, the chances of you
just coming across them in everyday life are that much greater.
Pornography
I have no idea what proportion of women look at any kind of
porn, but some of them will see other women having sex with each other on
screen and start to fantasise about it themselves. I know this to be the case,
because some have told me so. Of course, maybe their boyfriends have fantasies
about this, or maybe they both do. Or maybe they think their boyfriends want
them to (whether they actually do or not). But maybe they have turned on their computers,
gone actively searching for porn or found it by accident, and seen a woman who
made them think…
For all of these reasons, women may feel it is less of a big
deal to think about having sex with another woman and possibly to act on it.
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| Katy Perry |
“I kissed a girl and
I liked it”
According to today’s colloquium on the survey, which I
followed on Twitter through the hashtag #NATSAL, the increase in same-sex
between women is because more of them are experimenting, rather than changing
their identity [Though I don’t see why it is either experimenting OR changing
your identity, or indeed what identity per se necessarily has to do with it at
all]. Maybe they listened to the Katy Perry song.
Experimentation
In principle, I am in favour of young people experimenting,
with the normal provisos of openness, honesty, safer sex, respecting your
partner, and so on. But I still think the concept needs much more unpacking if
nothing else than because “experimenting” implies something very trivial and
meaningless. While sex can be both trivial and meaningless (as well the reverse),
experimenting can be pretty damn serious.
Some women who start off with experimenting will go on to
have more, deeper, relationships with other women. They may not call themselves
lesbian, or bi, or indeed have the remotest interest in sexual identity or community,
but “experimenting” doesn’t always start and finish with a bit of pawing in a
club (pleasant though that might be).
Experimenting is just that – trying something out. You don’t
necessarily know what the result will be. Your desires and fantasies are not
always enough. You need to see whether what you have thought about really works
for you – at this place, with this person, at this time in your life.
Performing bisexuality
I think some observers might count this as experimenting
too. Yes, some heterosexual women are definitely kissing and groping each other
in public, probably for attention, mainly from men. This was first spotted as a
phenomenon around 15 years ago, and now seems pretty ubiquitous. The
expectation is that this is all a bit of a joke, and that no “real sex” will
occur.
But women who are doing this are not necessarily
experimenting or even not properly into women. I was shocked (yes reader, I can
still be shocked) by women I know to have had genuine relationships with women
setting out to torment/arouse men by kissing other women in front of them.
So while I don’t dispute that more women may be sexually
experimenting… can this really account for such a vast increase? It doesn’t
seem likely. I think it is all of the reasons listed above.
Just for the young?
Given that I have, as I said in my last post, changed the
focus of this blog to be on ageing, I do want to touch on what this might mean
for us older women.
To start with, are these just young women having all this
same-sex? Mostly, yes.
According to the statistics, when asked whether they’ve had
any sexual experience or contact with another female, only 3% of women aged
65–74 said yes. It’s 7% for those aged 55–64, 9% aged 45–54, 12% 35–44, 18%
women 25–34, and 19% 16–24. If the prevalence of same sex was constant, it
would increase with age, based on the accumulation of experience. But the
opposite is true. So among younger women, it’s either more common, or more
honestly reported, or (as I would guess) both.
But I wonder whether older, previously heterosexual, women will
start experimenting too (if not to such a great extent) as we grow and change
and explore different opportunities in life. I have certainly read about women having their first female partners when they are 50+ and I am going to
write about this phenomenon at some point.
In this survey, women did report “less sexual anxiety” as
they got older, which can only be a good thing!
Men
Another thing coming out of this survey is that men are now far
less likely to report having same-sex behaviour than are women (7% - the same rate
as in 1990 – compared to 16% for women). This seems very low.
So what does this figure mean? As the (male) commenters on
the Pink News site above mention, that depends on so many things. One is
certainly: “what counts as sex?”
To quote one commenter:
“In my experience more men than
ever are having sex with other men. These men do not regard themselves as gay
at all - they just think they are sexually adventurous. As for the anal aspect
[there were very low rates of penetrative sex between men] that’s just a
distraction thrown into the argument by heterosexuals. Most men who have sex
with men have non-penetrative [sex].”
Many other men have said this to me over the years, and I’ll
be writing about all of that in some future post.
