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Sexual orientation versus behavior—different for men and women?

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If you know which sexual orientation people identify with, how much does that tell you about whether they have sex with women, men, or both? How similar or different are the links between identity and behavior for women and men?

Building on our post from last June, “Women’s sexual orientation and sexual behavior: How well do they match?” we update the analysis of women to include more recent data and add an analysis of data on men.

We’re using data from the 2002, 2006-2010, and 2011-2013 National Survey of Family Growth for men and women 15 to 44 years of age. Detailed tables, along with how we generated our measures, are in the Appendix at the end of this post.

Here we focus on a few specific questions:

How common is it for heterosexual men and women to have sex with same-sex sexual partners?

Unsurprisingly, almost none of the men identifying as heterosexual have had only male sexual partners and only 2% say they have had even one male sexual partner

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For women, like men, almost none of those who identify as heterosexual have had only female partners, but 10% say they have had at least one same-sex partner, five-times the rate reported by men.

(We’ll only mention differences between men and women if they are statistically significant at the .05 level.) In sum, it is more common for heterosexual women than men to have had sex with members of their same sex.

We can get a little closer to assessing how common inconsistency between identity and behavior is by comparing men and women’s current identity with whether they’ve had same-sex sexual partners in the last year.

Here we get a much smaller figure—only .4% of men and 2% of women who called themselves heterosexual on the survey report that they had sex with a same-sex partner in the last year (Table 2). Thus, behavior usually aligns with identity in any short (one year) time range.

But here too the percent of heterosexuals having same-sex partners is larger for women than men. The graph below shows the percent of each gender that identify as heterosexual but report having had a same-sex partner ever, and in the last year

How should we interpret the finding that some men and women who identify as heterosexual have had sex with other-sex partners? It may mean that they had sex that doesn’t match their stated sexual orientation at the time, perhaps because of the stigma associated with same-sex partnerships in some quarters.

Another possibility is that, although they see themselves as straight now, they identified as gay/lesbian or bisexual at the time they had same-sex partners, so there was no inconsistency between identity and behavior.

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This is especially plausible regarding with whom one has had sex “ever.” If that is the explanation, then women’s higher rate may mean that they are more likely than men to change the sexual orientation they identify with.

But we are speculating; we would need panel data following the same people over time and repeatedly asking about orientation and recent behavior to distinguish changing sexual orientation where behavior and identity are almost always consistent from inconsistency between current identity and current behavior.

It is also possible that the way people see their own orientations don’t fit neatly into the three categories provided in the survey in most years, so some respondents choose the best fit of not-well-fitting categories.

How common is it for gay men and lesbians to have sex with other-sex sexual partners?

As the graph below (drawing from Tables 1 and 2) shows, 39% (37% + 2%) of gay men have had a female sexual partner sometime in their lives, whereas a much higher 59% (5% + 54%) of lesbians have had a male sexual partner sometime.

The proportion of either gay men or lesbians who have ever had sex with other-sex sexual partners is much larger than the proportion of heterosexual men and women who have had sex with same-sex sexual partners.

And it is much larger than the proportion of gays/lesbians who have had sex with an other-sex partner in the last year, 5% (3% + 2%) for men and 18% (5% + 13%) for women.

As for how things differ by gender, it is clear that lesbians are more likely than gay men to have ever had sex with an other-sex sexual partner, whether in the last year (5% for men and 18% for women) or ever (39% for men and 59% for women).

The larger share of lesbians than gay man who had other-sex partners in the past year comes both from lesbian being more likely than gay men to have partners of both sexes (13% of lesbians), as well as being more likely to have had sex with only other-sex partners (5% of lesbians)

Why would this be, that lesbians have sex with men more than gay men have sex with women? One explanation is that women’s sexual attractions don’t fit the three categories allowed by the survey as well, or that women are more likely than men to change the sexual orientation with which they identify.

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Either can be seen as more fluidity in women’s sexuality than men’s, a topic taken up by Lisa Diamond and Leila Rupp and her coauthors. Another possibility is that either evolution or cultural conditioning make guys the initiators in sex.

So it is probably a less likely scenario that a young man who thinks that he may be gay is approached by a woman for sex and acquiesces despite not wanting it, compared to an analogous scenario in which a young queer woman has sex with a man she doesn’t want.

Indeed, both lesbians and gay men are likely to have men as their first sexual partners, according to research conducted by Karin Martin and Ritch C.

Savin-Williams. In some cases these early partners may have raped them, as indicated by research on the prevalence of sexual assault among gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals by Emily Rothman and her coauthors.

We suspect, however, that greater sexual fluidity among women and the frequency of male initiation contribute more to the gender differences in partnership patterns than sexual assault.

How does the behavior of bisexual men and women differ from that of gay and heterosexual men and women?

Given that the common-sense meaning of the term “bisexual” is an interest in having sex and romantic relationships with men and women, we would expect more bisexual than heterosexual or lesbian/gay individuals to have had sex with both men and women.

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Indeed, we find that 62% of bisexual men and 73% of bisexual women have (ever) had sex with both sexes, higher than the analogous figures for gay men and lesbians, and drastically higher than the figures for heterosexual men and heterosexual women.

Who have bisexual men and women had sex with in the last year? The percent that have had sex with both women and men in the last year is 33% for bisexual men, 27% for bisexual women; 2% for gay men, 13% for lesbians; and 0.4% for heterosexual men, and 2% for heterosexual women.

Thus, as we would expect, bisexuals are much more likely than either gays/lesbians or straight men or women to have had sex with both sexes.

They are also more likely to have had sex only with other-sex partners in the last year than are gay men or lesbians, but are less likely to have done so than are heterosexuals.

All this suggests a tendency for behavior to conform to identity in any short time range, and that bisexual women and men in some respects are a middle point between straights and gays

What about gender differences between bisexual men and bisexual women? The two groups have a similarly low percent who have ever had sex only with the other sex (14% for men and 12% for women), but it is much more likely for bisexual women than men to have had sex only with the other sex in the last year—34% for men but 53% for women

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Conclusion

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We have shown that identity—the sexual orientation one identifies with—is strongly, but by no means perfectly, associated with whether men and women have had sex with women, men, or both.

Heterosexual men and women are the most likely to have had sex only with other-sex partners, bisexual men and women are the most likely to have had sex with both women and men, and gay men and lesbians are the most likely to have had sex only with same-sex partners. In this sense, behavior is roughly consistent with sexual orientation.

Unsurprisingly, this consistency between current identity and behavior is much stronger when the behavior being asked about is in the last year rather than over the whole lifetime.

However, the patterns differ between men and women. Women, both lesbian and straight, are more flexible with either their identities or behavior than men. Thus, they are more likely than men to have what could be seen as mismatches between identity and behavior.

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As an example of this, looking at behavior in the last year, heterosexual women are more likely than heterosexual men to have had sex with women, and lesbians are more likely than gay men to have had sex with an other-sex partner.

As part of women’s “flexibility,” women are more likely to have partners of both sexes than men are. Taking people of all sexual orientations combined, 14% of women, but only 4% of men have ever had both male and female sexual partners,.

Similarly, in the past year, 3% of all women had both male and female sexual partners, compared with less than 1% of men. This is partly because more women than men identify

As bisexual, but is also influenced by the higher proportion of women than men among those who identify as either heterosexual or gay having had both male and female sexual partners.

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