Bisexual Erasure More Frequent Toward Bi Men, Study Shows

Many folks within the LGBTQ community already understand bi erasure and stigma are issues within the community, but new research on systemic biases in how we perceive bisexuality are helping to back community testimony, finding that bisexual men are more likely to be viewed as being attracted to men more than women, while bisexual women are more likely to be viewed as attracted equally to men and women.

The research was published in the European Journal of Social Psychology earlier this year, and the authors write that the findings, “add to the understanding of the unique bias bisexual people face by showing that perceived attraction patterns may underlie the labelling of bisexual men as ‘actually gay.'” Their analysis also found that heterosexual, lesbian, and gay participants all perceived bisexual men as more attracted to men than women.

The study’s lead author Thekla Morgenroth, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter and incoming assistant professor of psychology at Purdue University, is part of the LGBTQ community and says that this study, like their other research interests, stemmed from something they observed in real life, that people often don’t believe bisexual people are actually bisexual.

“There is also research to back this up, showing that bisexual people are stereotyped as confused or that bisexuality is not a real sexual identity,” they tell PsyPost. “What I found particularly interesting, however, was that this denial of bisexual identities seemed to take different forms for women and men. (I should say here that there are of course also nonbinary bisexual people but for the purpose of this study, we just focused on women and men.)”

Morgenroth expands, saying bisexual women are often thought to be straight and “just experimenting,” which bisexual men are seen as a stepping stone before coming out as gay. In that, they say in both cases, people are prone to thinking bisexual people are more attracted to men.

The study involved 787 participants told the research was examining online dating. Participants were shown a profile of a bisexual person, and the viewer was told to indicate if that person favored men or women more.

Morgenroth mentions to PsyPost that a surprising finding was that female bisexuality was not erased in the way they assumed it would be, potentially an indication that female bisexuality is more accepted, though it could also have pointed to the study’s specific methodology.

They also note the study was limited, in that researchers couldn’t explain why bi men were thought to be more attracted to men than women.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons