Statistically Bisexual
Gallup has released new polling on Americans who identify as LGBT. Some interesting developments.
The portion of people who identify as LGBT has shot up dramatically, increased by 50% since 2014 and is now now 5.6% of the population. As you can guess, most of this category are individuals who identify as bisexual, constituting 54.6% of the LGBT pie. Things get even more interesting when you break things down by generations, because a whopping 15.9% of Gen Z (born 1997-2002) identify as LGBT, compared to 9.1% of millenials, and 3.8% of Gen X. Again, bisexual is doing most of the work here, with 72% of Gen Z LGBT identifying as bisexual. Following on that same thread, a significant majority of LGBT individuals are married to opposite-sex spouse. Out of the people who identify as bisexual and are in a relationship, 89% either live or are married to opposite-sex spouse partner (compared to 5% for gay/lesbian individuals, which could be a function of sampling error or maybe capturing trans/enby individuals).
It might be cynical, but a prime example of this fluidity was the actress Jameela Jamil who was criticized for being cast in an HBO show on trans ballroom competition. She identified as "queer" (undefined) in response to the backlash presumably as a way to mollify the criticism. My own small anecdote is that I identify as a straight cis male, which led to the vocal disappointment from a friend of mine that I am not open-minded enough to consider myself bisexual. This is within a specific community within a very gay-friendly city which obviously is not illustrative of the rest of the country. Yet it's clear that there is some benefit of adopting the "queer" mantle, in some circumstances. And the label is vague enough and flexible enough that I wouldn't be surprised if the qualification was something along the lines of "Have you ever considered kissing a member of the opposite sex? Boom, you're bi". Individuals who are otherwise heterosexual people can get the queer label without materially modifying their lifestyle.
[An example of this which I can't tell if it's real or not is here. A person who presents as female identifies as "pansexual genderfluid trans non-binary genderqueer" who is "androphilic" (i.e. prefers dick) and has a "masculine partner". To me that seems like a very long-winded way of saying "I'm straight".]
I'm going to guess that bisexual and trans and 'other' are categories that will continue to skyrocket in polls because they're all vague and describing potentially unremarkable phenomena. The "old school" definitions of gay and lesbian are both too specific (I am a man who is attracted exclusively to men/ I am a woman who is attracted exclusively to women) to move much in the polls.
"Gay" as a label appears to be very stable, but "Lesbian" does appear to slowly be a dying breed, as elucidated by Katie Herzog. But the poll I linked to only shows a breakdown by generation, and if that's a good snapshot across time, it actually shows that lesbian identity is dramatically increasing. I don't know if that's necessarily the best way to track, especially for such small sampled populations. The claim that lesbians are disappearing is supported by the sources Herzog links to. Admittedly, many of her citations are properly described as anecdotal.