The New York Times, being all hip, reports that a “popular stereotype” that college is a time when young women play around with the whole bisexual/bicurious thing “may be all wrong.”
“To the surprise of many researchers and sex experts, the National Survey on Family Growth found that women with bachelor’s degrees were actually less likely to have had a same-sex experience than those who did not finish high school,” the paper reported yesterday.
We’ve read all the same magazines and watched the same television shows about college girls kissing and dancing with each other at frat parties and such, and we’ve even heard of LUGs (Lesbians Until Graduation) … but, you know, we don’t think we actually bought into the whole “college girls are more likely to play around with sexual fluidity than other women” notion. Maybe our hindsight is 20-20. We’re inclined to agree with Lisa Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah.
“Maybe our stereotypes are just behind the times,” Diamond said, adding that the latest parenting data showed that “holy-moly, it’s less likely to be upper-middle-class same-sex couples than ethnic minorities and working-class couples.”
The new study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that almost 10 percent of women ages 22 to 44 with a bachelor’s degree said they had had a same-sex experience, compared with 15 percent of those with no high school diploma. Women with a high school diploma or some college, but no degree, fell in between.