The number of Americans who are bisexual has tripled in the past decade.
According to new data from the General Social Survey, women are behind the increase.
3.3 percent of Americans identified as bisexual last year – up from 1.1 percent only in 2008, the GSS revealed.
Even though the number of Americans identifying as gay has seen some variation over the years, the change was minimal: 1.6 percent in200 to 1.7 percent in 2018.
5.6 percent of the women in the United States consider themselves bisexual while only 0.6 percent of US men identify as bisexual.
The number of women jumped 273 percent since 2008 when only 1.5 percent identified as bisexual.
Sociologist Tristan Bridges told Daily Mail: “Some people have said that this means new people are identifying this way, but I think actually this is an illustration of what happens as sexual tolerance becomes more mainstream.
“It becomes less scary to sort of publicly identify yourself (as LGBTQ) even in an anonymous survey.”
On the other hand, men have consistently been less likely than women to identify themselves as bi, with shares hovering between 0.5 and 1.9 percent over the past ten years.
“I think that women have always been more likely to identify as bisexual than men and I think one of the reasons that is, is there’s a large body of research that connects masculinity and homophobia and I think it’s more socially costly for men to be perceived as bisexual or gay,” Bridges added.
African Americans are also more likely to consider themselves as bisexual, with 6.5 percent compared to only 2.5 percent of white Americans.
The number almost doubled among black people since 2016, when only 3.3 percent of African Americans identified as bi.
It was also found that Democrats were more likely to identify as bisexual than Republicans, with 4.5 percent and 1.6 percent respectively.
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