I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone the other week when I read the pseudo-scientific psychobabble that spewed forth from Psychology Today‘s blog, “Sax on Sex.” In this particular entry, psychology and physician Leonard Sax posits that there’s a reason why so many girls are lesbian and bisexual nowadays:
Psychologist John Buss estimates that for most of human history, perhaps 2% of women have been lesbian or bisexual (see note 1, below). Not any more. Recent surveys of teenage girls and young women find that roughly 15% of young females today self-identify as lesbian or bisexual, compared with about 5% of young males who identify as gay or bisexual
Sax also thinks there’s a connection between the rise in young boys having ready and available access to pornography and this rise in female lesbian/bisexuality:
Maybe there is. A young woman told me how her boyfriend several years ago suggested that she shave her pubic hair, so that she might more closely resemble the porn stars who were this young man’s most consistent source of sexual arousal. She now identifies herself as bisexual.
Ah, okay. So we intermingle sketchy historical data with a few shocking anecdotes, and suddenly we have an explanation for this “sudden” rise in female bi-sexuality and lesbians. Or do we?