A team of scholars from the Human Sexualities Research Lab at Binghamton University in New York recently published an article in The Conversation regarding their new research on recent trends in sexual orientation among young women and men.
For their study, the research team examined 15 years of responses from more than 10,000 undergraduates at a public university in New York, as well as data from more than 700 open-ended responses from those students with further details on their sexual identities. According to the authors’ analysis, the share of women students reporting their sexual attraction was not exclusively heterosexual rose from 22 percent in 2011 to nearly 50 percent in 2026. Over the same time period, the share of women who reported not having exclusively male sexual partners also increased from 8 percent to 35 percent, while the share who identify as something other than exclusively heterosexual rose from 18 percent to 44 percent. Notably, the trend in young women moving away from exclusive heterosexuality was not primarily a result of an increase in women reporting exclusive attraction to women. Instead, young women’s sexual identities ranged from mostly attracted to men to mostly attracted to women.
In contrast, the authors found the share of young men who are not exclusively attracted to women remained virtually unchanged, declining slightly from 14 percent in 2011 to 13 percent in 2026. Young men who identified as something other than exclusively straight were significantly more likely to say they were exclusively homosexual. A larger share of male students reported they were exclusively gay than the share of women students who said they were exclusively lesbian.
“Our findings don’t just tell the story of young people becoming less heterosexual or young women becoming more queer,” the authors write. “Instead, we believe they support the idea that heterosexuality may no longer organize gender in quite the same way for women and men. For young women, its boundaries appear more permeable. For young men, heterosexuality remains bound to masculinity, status and social recognition.”
The authors continue, “In our analysis, the gap between women and men may persist unless masculinity itself becomes less dependent on dominance, control and compulsory heterosexuality.”
The research was conducted by Binghamton University’s Sean G. Massey, Ann M. Merriweather, and Melissa Hardesty, along with their former colleague Sarah R. Young of Cornell University.