Best Dating Sites
Looking for a dating site you can trust? Search no more.
is a curious thing for some people, seen as difficult to comprehend for many and entirely nonexistent to others.
A new report out of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health finds 15 percent of people do not believe bisexuality is an actual sexual identity.
The research also examines how this perception and other stigmas associated with bisexuals can negatively impact their health, both mentally and physically.
The research team developed 33 questions as part of the study to isolate individual attitudes on bisexuality. The test was then administered to 1,500 adults online.
Among the findings:
- Self-identified male bisexuals were more stigmatized than female counterparts.
- Women stigmatized less than men, and Caucasians stigmatized less than minorities.
- Straight men were three times more likely to dismiss the notion of bisexuality.
“Straight men were three times
more likely to dismiss bisexuality.”
Director of the HIV prevention initiative Project Silk, Mackey Friedman authored the report, the latest in a series on understanding bisexuality better. He said bisexuals are unique in that they experience marginalization and isolation from both heterosexuals and homosexuals.
“This can cause feelings of isolation and marginalization, which prior research has shown leads to higher substance use, depression and risky sexual behavior,” he said.
In his prior work, Friedman found many younger Americans had repeating opinions on those who identified as bisexual. Among them, bisexuals were viewed as either experimenting or simply confused.
Many bisexuals remain uncomfortable about being open with their identity, something Friedman hopes society is catching up to.
Friedman said he hopes the study will help provide “hard data to back up why a bisexual person might feel the need to be secretive about sexual orientation, something that can lead to higher depression and many other negative health outcomes.”
Source: apha.org. .
Advertiser Disclosure
DatingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). DatingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.
Our Editorial Review Policy
Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.
Discuss This!