A new study busts myth that college educated women are more likely to experiment with sexuality
As college students and grads, we’ve all no doubt heard the term L.U.G. before — Lesbian Until Graduation. It had long been assumed that women who go off to college — especially a liberal school — are more likely to experiment in same-sex relationships without actually identifying themselves as lesbian or bisexual. Well, a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that women with bachelor’s degrees are actually less likely to have a same-sex experience than their counterparts who don’t have a high school diploma. According to the study, women who have some college experience or have just a high school diploma fall somewhere in the middle.
The study was conducted to measure sexual behavior, attraction and identity among males and females aged 15 to 44. Ten percent of women aged 22 to 44 with a bachelor’s degree reported that they had had a same-sex experience, while 15 percent of women without a high school diploma reported they had had one. Thirteen percent of all women surveyed reported having a same-sex experience but the majority did not identify themselves as lesbian or bisexual.
These findings have led experts to believe that women, as opposed to men, are more flexible sexually. As Lisa Diamond, associate professor of gender studies at the University of Utah, says, “In the old days, any instance of same-sex attraction was automatically put in the category of bisexual or lesbian, and now we realize women are more complicated than that.”
GLAAD spokeswoman Sharda Sekaran said it best, “We span education levels, identities and races and come from a wide array of backgrounds and communities.”
Read more about the study here.
