Sex Study Shatters Myth of College Girls Cavorting With Girls
March 21, 2011— -- Sociologists are shaking their heads at a recent study that shatters the myth that college women are more apt to dabble in same-sex experiences than their less-educated counterparts.
For years, terms like "lesbian until graduation," were used to describe a promiscuous college culture where enlightened and emboldened women experimented in bisexuality.
Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that women with bachelor's degrees are less likely to have a same-sex experience than those who did not finish high school.
The study was based on data from the 2006-08 National Survey of Family Growth, which attempted to measure sexual behavior, sexual attraction and sexual identity among males and females aged 15 to 44.
Of the 13,500 responses, 10 percent of women aged 22 to 44 with a bachelor's degree said they had had a same sex experience, compared with 15 percent of those with no high school diploma.
Women who had completed high school, or had some college, were somewhere in the middle.
Six percent of college-educated women reported oral sex with a same-sex partner, compared with 13 percent who did not complete high school.
"I can't say I expected it -- one of those, 'Oh, that's interesting,' and after a five-second pause, it's not that unreasonable at all kind of reaction," said Stephanie Coontz, co-chair and director of public education at the Council on Contemporary Families at the University of Illinois.
"Women who have college educations are much more open about it, and that's why we had the impression they were the ones who had done it," said Coontz, author of, "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s."
"They are much more willing to joke about it, even when they haven't done it," she said. "When you actually look at same-sex families, many are working-class and impoverished, raising kids."
According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, more same-sex couples are raising children in economically poorer states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas than in places like California and Massachusetts.
These families defy the stereotype that mainstream gay America is white, affluent, urban and living in the Northeast or on the West Coast. They are much more socio-economically diverse, according to U.S. Census data.
