Elisabeth Morgan Thompson

Young Women's Sexual Experiences Within Same-Sex Friendships: Discovering and Defining Bisexual and Bi-Curious Identity

SUMMARY Though not frequently studied for their role in sexual orientation identity development, sexual experiences within same-sex friendships may offer an opportunity for bisexual and bi-curious women to explore and define their sexual orientation. This study examined sexual self-defining memories and narratives about sexual orientation development in bisexual and bi-curious young women. Participants were 48 female college students of various ethnic backgrounds. They were selected for the study based on their primary sexual orientation identification and because they included a sexual experience with a same-sex friend as their event narrative. The event narratives were classified based on age (childhood versus adolescence) and type of same-sex friend sexual experience (sexual attraction versus sexual behavior). Themes of discovery, closeness, conflict, and defining identity emerged. Findings suggest that sexual experiences with same-sex friends can serve an important role in the emergence and definition of bisexual and bi-curious identity.

Girl Friend or Girlfriend?: Same-Sex Friendship and Bisexual Images as a Context for Flexible Sexual Identity Among Young Women

SUMMARY Diamond (2000a, 2002) has demonstrated that young women have deep and intense same-sex “passionate friendships” while in adolescence. Young womens friendships are often more physically and emotionally intimate than young mens friendships and can result in feelings and behaviors that often resemble (heterosexual) romantic relationships (Diamond, 2002; Griffin, 2002; Reis, 1998). Additionally, recent shifts in popular culture have produced an increase in images of female same-sex desire in the media and sexual experimentation with female friends. In this paper, I address these bisexual images in the media and emotionally intense (and sometimes sexual) same-sex friendships as creating a context for the questioning process of some young women who may ultimately experience flexibility in their sexual identity.

Processes of Sexual Orientation Questioning among Heterosexual Men

Male heterosexual identity development has received little empirical attention. The current study examines sexual orientation questioning processes of heterosexual-identified men and offers a comparison of these processes with those employed by their sexual-minority counterparts. Participants included 184 male college students (ages 18 to 23, M = 19.6), 149 primarily identified as “exclusively straight or heterosexual” and 35 as sexual minorities. Of exclusively straight respondents, 53 percent (n = 79) and all of the sexual-minority respondents indicated having questioned their sexual orientation. Heterosexual men’s questioning processes included five categories: unelaborated questioning, other-sex exploration, the social context as informants or sites of knowledge, hypothetical thinking and perspective taking, and attraction comparisons between men and women. Several unifying and differentiating themes emerged between sexual orientation groups. Results suggest that conventional notions of a “standardized” heterosexual identity appear simplistic and reveal ways in which men’s identification with a majority heterosexual sexual identity can be purposeful.