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Four years ago, one of my undergraduate mentees asked me, “Am I a lesbian? I don’t think I look like a lesbian…but I do like sports, so maybe I am.”
As a mentor in a university program for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered students for the past three years, I had heard this questions in different forms many times. I gave my generic response, “I can’t answer that question for you,” which was sometimes expressed as “You know yourself better than I do” or “I don’t know. What do you think?” After she ended a year-long relationship with another woman, my mentee was unsure about how to describe her sexuality. Prior to this relationship, she had expressed no attraction for other women and had several intense romantic and sexual relationships with men. She had recently begun dating a man and was discussing the possibility of moving in with him. Her parents were very religious and conservative, and my mentee was greatly distressed by the idea that she had told them she was a lesbian “for nothing.”
“And now I’ve got to tell them that I’m moving in with him. I don’t know which is worse: being a lesbian or having sex before marriage,” she said.
My mentee’s uncertainty about her sexual orientation reflects current debates within social science research on lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people. According to a joint position statement given by the American Psychological Association and nine other national professional organizations “[s]exual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction that a person feels toward another person” (1999). Far from settling current debates, this definition raises many of the questions discussed by researchers and practitioners, including the choice of attraction-object, the typical sex of attraction-object, and changes in the typical sex of attraction-objects (e.g., Diamond, 2003c; Diamond & Savin-Williams, 2000; Rust, 1992, 1993; Savin-Williams, 2001, 2005a, b; Weinberg, Williams, & Pryor, 1994). First, the definition ignores the popular meaning of sexual orientation, which is defined by the sex of individuals and the sexes of the people to whom they are usually attracted. In modern terms, people who are attracted to only the same-sex are “lesbian” if they are women or “gay” if they are men. People who are attracted to both sexes are “bisexual.” People who are attracted only to the opposite sex are “heterosexual.” Also, the definition does not account for changes in attraction over time (Diamond).
Finally, the definition ignores the historical and cultural contexts in which attraction develops and is expressed. People do not develop in a vacuum, but they are subject to the influence of their historical and current environments that, in turn, they also influence (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Shweder, Goodnow, Hatano, LeVine, Markus, & Miller, 2006). Past studies of sexual orientation development have been remarkably non-developmental, assuming that participants’ current sexual identities are unchanging and not subject to social influence.
The ambiguity of the sexual orientation definition is reflected in the different questions used to assess sexual orientation in current research programs. Some focus on sexual behavior (i.e., DuRant, Krowchuk, & Sinal, 1998; Faulkner & Cranston, 1998), some on sexual attraction (i.e., Diamond, 2000, 2003c, 2006; Russell & Consolacion, 2003; Russell, Franz, & Driscoll, 2001), and some on self-reported identity as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual. Some programs include questions on participants’ relationship histories (i.e., Diamond, 1998; Kinsey Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953) and, more rarely, their ideal future relationships (i.e., Klein, Sepekoff & Wolf, 1985; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Weinberg et al., 1994), whereas others only examine current identities and relationships (i.e., Baumeister, 2000; D’Augelli, 2002, 2006). Some programs use closed-ended questions wherein participants choose from sexual identity labels supplied by the researcher (i.e., Balsam, Rothblum, & Beauchaine, 2005; D’Augelli, 2002), whereas others use open-ended questions that allow participants to identify themselves (i.e., Diamond, 2002; Rust, 1993).
Furthermore, different research programs use different sampling techniques. Because the LGB population is generally considered to be hidden, researchers have recruited their participants using community centers and support groups (i.e., D’Augelli & Grossman, 2006; Rosario, Hunter, & Gwadz, 1997; Rosario, Meyer-Bahlburg, Hunter, & Gwadz, 1999), LGB community events and parades (Balsam & Szymanski, 2005; Rosario et al., 1997), and snowball sampling (D’Augelli & Grossman). National studies generally do not include questions assessing sexual orientation, and those that do ask them in various ways, sometimes even changing their questions throughout the course of a longitudinal study (Russell, 2006; Sell, 2007). In short, research findings regarding LGB people are entirely dependent upon who is included as being LGB and how LGB people are located, creating a multitude of third variable considerations regarding any conclusions .
The problems created by these different questions and sampling techniques are more than exercises in semantics. Programs that use different questions or different sampling techniques have reached different conclusions regarding the stability of sexual orientation and the process by which sexual orientation is refined (i.e., Busseri, Willoughby, Chalmers, & Bogaert, 2006; Diamond, 2006; Rosario, Meyer-Bahlburg, Hunter, Exner, Gwadz, & Keller, 1996; Weinberg et al., 1994). More importantly, these programs reach different conclusions about adjustment among LGB people, including such factors as victimization, family support and rejection (D’Augelli, Grossman, & Starks, 2006; Savin-Williams, 2005a, 2005b), suicide risk (Consolacion, Russell, & Sue, 2004; D’Augelli, Grossman, Salter, Vasey, Starks, & Sinclair, 2005; Garofalo, Wolf, Kessel, Palfrey, & DuRant, 1998) and mental health problems. Although most researchers have found that LGB people are at a greater risk for adjustment difficulties than heterosexual people, others have found no differences between LGB and heterosexual people (Diamond, Savin-Williams, & Dube, 1999). These contradictions have mired the field in a debate regarding the prevalence of risk factors, centering the discussion around whether or not LGB people are at-risk, rather than which LGB people are at-risk and why.
There are several conflicts in research on LGB youth: how to identify LGB youth, how to identify which LGB youth are at risk for adjustment problems, and how to identify which risk and resilience factors may help youth have better adjustment. If past studies are considered in light of contemporary developmental theory, it should not be surprising that studies conducted at the population levels have produced contradictory findings. As theorists have proposed for general developmental processes, the process of sexual orientation development cannot be understood at the population level because it is non-ergodic, even within the groupings generally used in research. To be plain, the process by which LGB youth, adopt, maintain, or reject their sexual orientations is not the same for all youth, even when youth are divided into groups based on attraction, gender, and race or ethnicity. For example, even if we know that a 15 year-old, White male from a lower class, urban background is attracted mainly to men and only slightly to women, we cannot say with any certainty what he considers his sexual orientation to be nor how he will describe his sexual orientation to others. More importantly, we cannot predict how he views his sexual orientation and how that view impacts his experiences of discrimination and victimization.
To improve our knowledge about the development of LGB youth, researchers must use developmental theory to inform design and analysis. Because there is considerable heterogeneity in how youth come to recognize and adopt sexual identities, questions about development must be answered at the individual, rather than the group, level. In my research, I am interested in intensive longitudinal studies of same-sex attracted youth, assessing sexual and romantic attractions, sexual behavior, and sexual identity at multiple time points and in multiple contexts for each participant. I am interested in relating these sexual orientation components to general measures of adjustment, such as anxiety, depression, and stress, and LGB-specific measures, such as internalized homophobia and experiences of anti-gay prejudice. I am particularly interested in how participants cope with minority stress experiences, both vicariously and directly experienced, of anti-gay prejudice, victimization, and rejection at each time point. To this end, I would like to consider the effects of resilience factors, such as self-esteem, support from family and friends, coping skills, and connection to the LGB community.
Sexual orientation research has centered around questions regarding the meanings and construction of LGB identities with a particular emphasis on the prevalence of same-sex attractions, behaviors, and identities. In light of developmental theory, questions regarding prevalence may be less important than questions regarding the processes by which people adopt same-sex orientations and cope with maladaptive environments. It is time to transition from asking if LGB youth are at-risk to which LGB youth are at-risk and why they are at-risk. If risk and resilience trajectories can be identified, interventions can be applied at the individual-level that are sensitive to the unique problems presented by each individual’s environment. If we are to help LGB youth develop successfully, the study of individuals must take the highest priority in research.
For more information on some of the statistical techniques we have been using to conduct person-specific analyses, please see my Developmental Systems Research page.
For resources regarding LGB people and their friends and families, please see my Resources For LGBTA People and Their Friends and Families page.
For resources on teaching about diverse populations, including sexual orientation, please see my Resources Regarding Teaching page.
