Reasons Lesbian and Bisexual Adolescent Girls Have or Might Have Sex with Females or Males: Implications for Discordance between Sexual Identity and Behaviors and for Prevention of Pregnancy and STIs

ABSTRACT

We examined reasons lesbian and bisexual adolescent girls have sex or, if sexually inexperienced, might have sex with girls or boys, and the role of internalized homonegativity in these relations and among lesbians. Girls were recruited online and classified as lesbian (n = 129) or bisexual (n = 193); the classification was validated. Love and pleasure were common reasons for having sex with girls, although more lesbian girls (LG) than bisexual girls (BG) endorsed love. BG, relative to LG, had sex with girls because they were curious or wanted to verify their sexual identity. Love and pleasure were motives for having sex with boys for BG. They were common reasons for potentially having sex with either sex among sexually inexperienced girls, but both were more likely for BG than LG for sex with boys. Internalized homonegativity did not mediate the relation between sexual identity and reasons for sex, but LG just with male partners were more homonegative than LG just with female partners. The findings indicate that LG and BG should not be combined into a single group, provide insights into the discordance between sexual identity and behaviors, and have implications for reducing risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections among sexual minority girls.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States, award TP2AH000035. The content of this manuscript does not necessarily represent the official view of OAH. We are grateful to Myeshia Price-Feeney, PhD, for her data management and feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

¹ We refer to the label(s) that youth endorsed as “sexual identity,” as is common in the sex research literature.

² Our validation is based on general patterns across the sample of BG and LG. Of no concern in this report is discordance among our sexual identity categorization, behaviors, or attractions at the individual level of analysis. No girl was excluded or reclassified for discordance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States [TP2AH000035].