Bisexual men are stereotyped to be more similar to gay men than bisexual women are to lesbian women, according to new research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. In other words, people tend to think bisexual men are more like gay men, while bisexual women are not seen as similar to lesbian women. These perceptions, in turn, are linked to identity-denying beliefs about bisexuality.
While sexual minority individuals share common challenges, different subgroups within the LGBT community encounter distinct obstacles and attitudes. This study was motivated by the need to better understand the intersection of sexual orientation and gender in shaping perceptions of bisexual individuals.
“I was interested in this topic because I noticed that in everyday life and in the media, there seems to be a belief that bisexual men are ‘actually gay’ and bisexual women are ‘actually straight.’ I wanted to understand to what extent people hold these beliefs, and what underlying stereotypes might be related to them,” explained study author Emma L. McGorray, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University.
To investigate this, the researchers conducted three experiments involving 1,149 participants in total. These experiments aimed to examine how stereotypes about sexual orientation categories (gay, bisexual, heterosexual) vary depending on the gender of the targets. The researchers specifically wanted to explore the degree of stereotype overlap for bisexual individuals compared to gay and heterosexual individuals based on their gender.
In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a checklist of traits and were asked to select the 10 traits that they believed were most stereotypic of randomly assigned target groups (e.g., gay, bisexual, heterosexual men and women). The researchers wanted to assess the extent to which stereotypes selected for bisexual individuals overlap with those for gay and heterosexual individuals, with variations based on gender.
In Experiment 1, participants stereotyped bisexual men as possessing characteristics more similar to gay men, but the same was not observed for bisexual women being similar to heterosexual women.
Recognizing that the checklist method might constrain participants’ responses, in Experiment 2 the researchers allowed participants to freely list stereotypes that came to mind when thinking about the randomly assigned target groups. Participants were asked to provide five characteristics that were part of the current cultural stereotype of different sexual orientation and gender groups. This approach aimed to capture naturally associated stereotypes rather than constrained checklist responses.
Experiment 2 replicated the results from Experiment 1, demonstrating that participants still viewed bisexual men as more similar to gay men, but the same level of stereotype overlap was not observed for bisexual women being similar to heterosexual women.
In Experiment 3, participants rated either bisexual men or women on the extent to which they believed these individuals possessed stereotypically “gay” and “heterosexual” attributes identified in the previous experiments. The researchers then assessed whether endorsing these stereotypes predicted endorsement of identity-denying beliefs about bisexual individuals, such as perceiving them as being “actually gay” or being “actually heterosexual.”
The researchers found that the tendency to stereotype bisexual men as possessing distinctively “gay” attributes predicted “actually gay” identity-denial beliefs. Similarly, the tendency to stereotype bisexual women as possessing distinctively “heterosexual” attributes predicted “actually heterosexual” erasure beliefs.
“The main takeaway from this research is that bisexual men (more so than bisexual women) are stereotyped as similar to gay people of their gender group,” McGorray told PsyPost. “Stereotypes like these are associated with beliefs that bisexual people are ‘actually gay,’ which we know from other research is the type of belief that can be negatively associated with bisexual people’s well-being.”
Interestingly, while both bisexual men and women were seen as possessing attributes stereotypically associated with heterosexuality to a similar degree, bisexual women were subject to a stronger identity-denying belief that they are “actually heterosexual.”
“I was a bit surprised that we didn’t find that bisexual women (more so than men) were stereotyped as similar to heterosexual people of their gender group,” McGorray said. “We did find that people more strongly hold beliefs that bisexual people are ‘actually heterosexual’ when evaluating women vs. men, but this didn’t seem to be consistently linked to the stereotypical traits people were ascribing to bisexual people.”
Taken together, these findings suggest that bisexual men and women face distinct challenges concerning their identities. But the study has a few limitations to keep in mind. First, the participants were mostly from the United States and recruited online, which might not fully represent all perspectives and cultures. Additionally, the study focused on stereotypes and beliefs but didn’t explore the reasons behind these perceptions.
“All in all, I think some major questions remaining include where these stereotypes and beliefs come from,” McGorray said. “Are people’s stereotypes causing their beliefs that bisexual men are actually gay, or is the relationship simply correlational? And what might underlie beliefs that bisexual women are ‘actually heterosexual,’ since we didn’t find the links between stereotypes about bisexual women and beliefs that bisexual women are actually heterosexual that we had predicted?”
“Another major area I’d like to explore is the implications this has for bisexual people’s romantic relationships, including how bisexual people navigate perceptions like these in the relationship context in ways that allow them to sustain positive feelings about their identity.”
The study, “Perceptions of Bisexual Individuals Depend on Target Gender“, was authored by Emma L. McGorray and Christopher D. Petsko, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.