Queering Consensus: How Current Non-Heteronormative Identities Navigate Sexual Behavior, Attraction, and Fantasy

Authors: Alaina Gumble, Sarah Mergott, Nicole Quintanilla

Field of Study: Social Sciences

Program Affiliation: Binghamton Human Sexualities Lab

Faculty Mentors: Sean Massey, Ann Meriwether, Melissa Hardesty, Sarah Young

Easel: 27

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: In 1992, sociologist Paula Rust examined how sexual attraction and behavior are felt/experienced differently between women who identify as lesbian and those who identify as bisexual, and how these are used to define identity boundaries. Rust found that lesbians placed more emphasis on sex of recent sexual partners while bisexual women emphasized range of overall sexual attraction. Recent research by Massey et al. (2021) found that college-age women are becoming, on average, less exclusively heterosexual and use a wider range of identity categories to define sexual orientation. The current study uses online survey data collected from emerging adult college undergraduates to explore how the self-reported sexual behavior, attraction, and fantasy of those who identify as something other than exclusively heterosexual relate to their self-reported sexual identity label (including those who prefer the term bisexual). These recent findings will also be compared to Rust’s now 30+ year old findings.