Sexual orientation issues in adolescent girls

Abstract

T he majority of what is written about homosexuality and heterosexuality is about adult men. Only recently have the issues of the gay adolescent been addressed, but even these efforts have pertained mainly to gay adolescent males. For instance, the increased incidence of completed suicide in homosexual male adolescents has attracted attention, 1,2 as has their high risk of contacting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including AIDS.3 Our society is ambivalent about sexual expression in the young, and erotophobia also contributes to a lack of information about sexual behavior and feelings in adolescents. It is extraordinary that national data on adolescent same-sex behavior do not exist, even in this decade of heightened AIDS awareness.3 We are confronting here the combined effects of sexism (because the sexuality of males has attracted more scientific attention than that of females), homophobia (irrational fear and hatred of homosexuality) and socially conseroative views about sex on knowledge about sexual orientation in adolescent girls. Of necessity, then, these comments will be preliminary and based on limited information, because such information is all that is available. Think for a moment about how differently heterosexual men act from heterosexual women. Gender identity and gender role behavior as well as other differences in how sex is experienced-whether these differences are biologically determined or socially acquired-are enormously determinative of behavior. That a man and a woman are both heterosexual does not imply that they are alike in their sexual behavior and their feelings about it. I want to make the same point about homosexual individuals, specifically in this case, about homosexual adolescents: Although it is true that same-sex erotic behavior in male teenagers shares some similarities with same-sex behavior in female teenagers, it is absolutely necessary to think of adolescent girls who engage in same-sex sexual behavior with reference to their female counterparts who are engaging in opposite-sex sexual behavior. In other words, in many ways, it is more important that the adolescent is female than that she is gay (or at least, demonstrates some same-sex attractions or behavior). My discussion is complicated by the fact that the concepts of heterosex© 1994 by The Jacobs Institute of Women's Health 1049-3867/941$7.00