Who benefits when women are encouraged to understand their sexual boundaries as especially open to revision?Women have spent a great deal of histo
Who benefits when women are encouraged to understand their sexual boundaries as especially open to revision?
Women have spent a great deal of history being told that their own sexual judgment was not quite sufficient. Too hard. Too complicated to understand.
Their families selected husbands. Marriage limited sexual refusal. Economic dependence constrained choices. Women who rejected men could be characterized as prudish, selfish, frigid, unnatural, too particular, or destined to regret it.
Even some supposedly liberating sexual cultures created new expectations that women should become more sexually available in order to demonstrate that they were liberated.
Different language. Familiar pressure.
Sexual freedom includes the freedom to remain exactly as sexually selective, particular, unchanging, and unavailable as you choose.
Power
Control over the terms of change is where power enters the picture.
Here is something about power we do not talk about enough:
Power can become remarkably durable when the rules beneath everyone else keep moving.
If you are always adjusting to the newest rule, somebody else gets to keep writing the rules.
Definitions change. Expectations shift. Yesterday’s boundary becomes today’s question. What was once considered a perfectly ordinary personal decision suddenly requires an explanation.
And ordinary people spend enormous amounts of energy trying to keep up.
This is how abusive partners exhaust the person they are in relationship with. Shifting and chaos.
Women know something about this.
There has never been just one permanent instruction for how women are supposed to handle sexuality.
The instructions change. The expectation that women submit to the instructions without their input does not.
Micro management
We should pay attention whenever one direction is called “growth,” “openness,” “exploration,” or “evolution” while remaining where you are requires explanation.
Because then we have to ask:
Are all choices actually being respected?
There is a difference between:
“You are free to change.”
and
“A good, enlightened, compassionate person should be willing to change.”
One protects autonomy.
The other can quietly establish a preferred destination.
And here is the principle I keep coming back to:
If only your openness is celebrated, but your permanence requires explanation, you haven’t been offered complete freedom. You’ve been given a preferred direction.
Women’s autonomy includes movement.
It also includes stillness.
“I thought about it. I listened. I examined myself. I understand your argument. My answer is still no.”
Both require the same thing. The decision remains hers.
I continue to support women no matter who they choose to date or partner with, but I keep noticing that policies and resources STILL aren’t flowing in that direction when it comes to violence prevention. Too much is being focused on women being more open, kind, and accessble. Where is the response to the real issues that women continue to face?????
That represented an estimated 2.1 million bisexual women in the population represented by that survey.
What the CDC Found
One of our strongest sources is the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, commonly called NISVS.
In its report using 2016–2017 data, the CDC estimated that 28.4% of lesbian women and 45.2% of bisexual women had experienced rape during their lifetimes.
Among heterosexual women, the estimate was 26.1%.
There is an important statistical detail here. The CDC found that bisexual women had a significantly higher lifetime prevalence of rape than heterosexual women. The difference between lesbian and heterosexual women in this particular rape measure was not statistically significant.
But rape is only one form of sexual violence.
When the CDC looked more broadly at contact sexual violence, the numbers rose substantially.
An estimated 59.9% of lesbian women had experienced contact sexual violence during their lifetimes.
Among bisexual women, it was 79.3%.
Among heterosexual women, it was 53.3%.
Contact sexual violence is a broader CDC category that includes rape, sexual coercion, and unwanted sexual contact.
That means nearly four out of five bisexual women represented by this survey reported experiencing some form of contact sexual violence during their lives.
That deserves our attention. Not judgment. Attention.
The Domestic-Violence Numbers Deserve Attention Too
The CDC also examined violence committed by intimate partners.
An estimated 56.3% of lesbian women reported experiencing contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetimes.
Among bisexual women, the estimate was 69.3%.
Among heterosexual women, it was 46.3%.
Those percentages should not be casually translated into “domestic violence” without explaining what the CDC actually measured. The statistic combines several forms of intimate-partner victimization.
But there is no reasonable way to look at these findings and conclude that violence affecting lesbian and bisexual women is a minor concern.
It isn’t. These women are Survivors too.
Something Is Happening With Bisexual Women’s Victimization
There is another finding that deserves considerably more investigation.
Across multiple studies, bisexual women repeatedly report exceptionally high levels of sexual and intimate-partner victimization.
The CDC’s 2016–2017 NISVS estimated lifetime rape prevalence at:
45.2% among bisexual women.
That’s compared with 28.4% among lesbian women and 26.1% among heterosexual women.
An earlier CDC NISVS report using 2010 data found a remarkably similar figure: 46.1% of bisexual women reported lifetime rape.
Another CDC study, using an entirely different survey called the National Survey of Family Growth, examined women ages 18–44 during 2011–2017.
Researchers found that 36.1% of bisexual women reported nonvoluntary or forced sex, compared with 18.2% of lesbian women and 17.5% of heterosexual women.
Those percentages cannot simply be combined because the surveys asked different questions, used different definitions, and studied somewhat different populations.
But the pattern deserves serious research.
Bisexual women keep appearing among the populations of women reporting particularly high levels of victimization.
The responsible question is not:
“What’s wrong with bisexual women?”
The question is:
What is happening TO bisexual women?
Who is harming them?
When does the violence begin?
What relationships are involved?
What forms does the violence take?
What barriers keep Survivors from getting help?
And are our domestic-violence and sexual-assault systems prepared to recognize what these women are experiencing?
Those are Survivor-centered questions.
We Cannot Prevent Violence We Refuse to Look At
Sometimes statistics involving sexuality become ammunition in somebody else’s argument.
Women’s experiences disappear while everybody debates what the numbers supposedly prove about an entire group.
We don’t have to do that here.
A woman should never have to defend her sexuality before we care that someone hurt her.
A lesbian Survivor doesn’t become less deserving of protection because her abuser was another woman.
A bisexual Survivor doesn’t become responsible for violence committed against her because of the people she dates.
A heterosexual Survivor doesn’t become foolish because the person who harmed her was male.
The responsibility for abuse remains with the person who chose abusive behavior.
At the same time, women deserve information.
We should be able to study patterns honestly. We should be able to ask difficult questions. We should be able to identify environments where particular groups of women are experiencing disproportionate harm.
That is part of prevention.
Some of the younger women are giving me so much hope. Here’s another account that I truly enjoy.
@bunmisupremeI don’t feel liberated by any of these movements♬ original sound – ITS BUNMI BITCH (Boo-mi)
Sources
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Victimization by Sexual Identity. This is the principal source for the lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women’s rape, sexual-violence, and intimate-partner-violence estimates discussed above.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Findings on Victimization by Sexual Orientation. This earlier national report found similarly elevated lifetime rape victimization among bisexual women.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Sexual Identity and Adverse Health Outcomes Among Women Ages 18–44 Years, National Survey of Family Growth, United States, 2011–2017. This separate CDC analysis provides additional evidence concerning nonvoluntary or forced sex among lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women.
Readers should consult the original CDC reports when using individual statistics because definitions, denominators, confidence intervals, and statistical significance differ across measures.