A study has found that female bisexuality has been found to be a sexual orientation and not really and experimental or transitional stage on the way to what we call lesbianism.
The study, published by the American Psychological Association, of 79 non-heterosexual women over 10 years found that bisexual women maintained a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes.
Aside from this, the research overthrows the myth that bisexual women are uninterested in or unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships.
“This research provides the first empirical examination of competing assumptions about the nature of bisexuality, both as a sexual identity label and as a pattern of nonexclusive sexual attraction and behaviour,” wrote University of Utah psychologist Dr. Lisa M. Diamond, who conducted the study. ”
Diamond used interview data collected five times over a decade from 79 women who identified as lesbian, bisexual or unlabelled. The subjects initially ranged in age from 18 to 25 years old.
The findings showed that bisexual and unlabelled women were more likely than lesbians to change their identity over the course of the study.
Seventeen percent of respondents switched from a bisexual or unlabelled identity to heterosexual during the study – but more than half of these women switched back to bisexual or unlabelled by the end.
By year 10, most of the women were involved in long-term (i.e., more than a year in length) monogamous relationships – 70 per cent of the self-identified lesbians, 89 per cent bisexual, 85 per cent unlabelled and 67 per cent heterosexual.