Single Bisexual Men’s and Women’s Perceptions of Acceptance in the LGBTQ Community

ABSTRACT

In recent years, sociocultural shifts in the U.S. have cast a positive light on the LGBTQ community, presumably providing benefits to sexual and gender minorities. Using a sample of single lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women (N= 924) collected from a 2016 survey in the U.S., we assess bisexual people’s attitudes about the “LGBTQ community”, as well as how others in the community – gay men and lesbian women – view bisexuals. We also examine contexts in which bisexual people feel they are unable to share their sexual identities. Descriptive analyses revealed that while many bisexual people feel they need to hide their sexual identity in most contexts, the majority of bisexual men and women feel “mostly” to “near total acceptance” in the LGBTQ community. Thus, while bisexual people do experience stigma-related stress, findings suggest a promising shift for bisexual people’s lives in terms of drawing resources and support from the larger LGBTQ community.

KEYWORDS:

• Bisexuality
• LGBTQ
• community
• stigma
• identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As used here, the LGBTQ community is a term that characterizes many diverse people but represents a suite of similarly marginalized sexual and gender minority identities and experiences: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or identity questioning people. LGBTQ communities include non-heteronormative physical and digital spaces, which are important for a wide range of social issues ranging from finding information to social support to organizing social justice efforts.