Study | College-Degree Women Least Likely To Have Bisexual Contact

Images: Amanda Lear | Karim Sadli | ‘Le Vrai Visage d’Amanda Vogue Paris March 2011

Like today’s transgender model Lea T,  Amanda Lear was originally born a man names Alain Tapp, who became a performer at Le Carousel in Paris under the name of Peki d’Oslo.

Lear became a muse and trusted friend of Salvador Dali, who may have paid for her gender-changing operation with Dr. Bureau in 1963. Some say that her name = ‘a man’ + ‘dali’ or ‘L’amant Dali” (this latter the title of one of her books). via Zagria blog

Throughout the fashion world, sexuality is in flux. LOVE magazine recently put an image of Lea T and Kate Moss kissing on their cover. Model sensation Andrej Pejic says he would have a sex change operation to become a Victoria’s Secret Angel.

Amanda Lear is making a comeback in our gender flux world, but I post her Vogue Paris images in Sensually Yours, to underscore important new data on female sexuality and women’s experimentation with same-sex relationships.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a new study on sexuality in America for students and younger adults. Much of the fanfare has focused on a decrease in first-time sexual activity for younger people.

Some of the most startling statistics concern female bisexual experimentation by class status and education.

Among the 13,500 online responses to the sex survey, almost 10 percent of the women ages 22 to 44 with a bachelor’s degree said they had participated in a same-sex experience.

In 2003 New York Magazine wrote an article ‘Bi For Now’, introducing the term ‘hasbian’ as a woman who used to date women but now dates men. The article refers to LUGS: lesbians until graduation. The image of bisexual university women has titillated many a male mind, to say nothing of the porn world.

The new data doesn’t negate the reality of college women experimenting with their sexuality. The stunner is the revelation that women without high school degrees are experimenting with bisexuality more than college age women.

Among women with no high school diploma, 15 percent report same-sex sexual involvement. Women with a high school diploma or some college without a degree are more than the 10 percent for college-degree women but less than no high school diploma.

In 2002, there was no statistical difference based on educational attainment.

“It’s like a Rubik’s cube of sexuality, where you turn it a different way, and the factors don’t fit together,” said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It may be that the commonly held wisdom was wrong, that people just liked to imagine women in college having sex together, or it may be that society has changed, and as more people come out publicly, in politics or on television, we are getting a clearer view of the breadth of sexuality.” via NYTimes

The new data on non high school degree women is also supported by the reality that the latest parenting data shows that same-sex ethnic and working-class couples are adopting children at numbers above upper-middle-class same-sex couples.

There are a host of factors in play in what could be driving the trend of same-sex relationships among less educated women.America’s harsh drug laws have unfairly put 1 in 9 young black men in prison, wrote the NAACP in 2008. Those laws were amended in 2010 as “The Fair Sentencing Act”.

Latino families have also suffered under these sentencing laws.

Young women searching for economic stability in their lives — tough without a high school degree — may seek stability in their lives by creating household/family units together and sexual contact becomes part of the experience.

Historically, women have always banded together in groups. As America plunges deeply into a two-class society of rich and poor with no middle class, these new family structures and sexual relationships may represent practicality and shared goals among women.

For now we can only speculate on the events driving these new statistics. But they are startling and again challenge the Phyllis Schlafly argument that college-educated feminists have ruined America. The restoration of American life requires us to support and focus on our struggling families, which is why I also wrote You Want to Defund Planned Parenthood & Title X? Look at Texas. Anne

Images via TFS