I’ve asked this question a thousand times. This article from examiner.com gives you an idea of how difficult it is to arrive at a consensus. I personally believe, as far as men are concerned, if we could take the entire male population and strip away a lifetime of indoctrination, if men were allowed to perceive and react to what comes natural to them, the numbers would be astounding.
From examiner.com
By Mike Szymanski
No wonder we bisexuals feel so alone–we don’t even know how many of us exist. Estimates range from zero to tens of millions in the United States alone, depending on which study you believe.
It’s not easy to find hard numbers on this. To quote scholar and activist Loraine Hutchins:
Newer Kinsey Institute studies found both more evidence of bisexuality, and more denial. A late 80s study, for instance, showed 46 percent of (self-labeled) lesbians, not bisexuals, reporting having sex with men since in the ’80s”
Time Magazine said any statistic is unreliable because people who engage in such behavior don’t consider themselves bisexual.
Here are other reports:
* 0.3% of women and 0.7% of men engaged in sexual activity with both males and females within the previous year-”Sex in America,” University of Chicago, 1992
* 1.5% of women and 0% of men defined as bisexual based on sexual and romantic attraction-National Institutes of Health, 2002
* 5% of women and 10% of men fall solidly into a middle level of the Kinsey scale of sexual preferences. However, when accounting for people’s actions and attractions, as many as 25% of women and 46% of men could be labeled as bisexual.-Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, director of field research for The Institute for Sex Research
* 15 to 25% of women and 33 to 46% of men are bisexual based on activities or attractions-Alfred Kinsey, 1950s
* 18% of women and 21% of men admit to some sort of same-sex behavior in their lives- Harvard School of Public Health, 1994
* 60% of women and 50% of men reported having partners of both sexes in the past five years, from more than 3,000 interviewed by The Social Organization of Sexuality, 1994
* About 80% of the population could be bisexual if we acknowledge our fantasies, our dreams, our interests, our crushes. If normal curves hold true 10% of the population is totally gay and lesbian and 10% is totally heterosexual and everybody else is potentially bisexual.”-Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
* A U.S. federal study in 2004 estimates that 6 million men are bisexual.
* A Zogby poll released in February 2006 says 53 percent of the general population believes “a straight person may occasionally experience sexual attraction to individuals of the same sex.”
* A 2002 survey in the United States by National Center for Health Statistics found that 1.8 percent of men ages 18-44 considered themselves bisexual, 2.3 percent homosexual, and 3.9 percent as “something else”. The same study found that 2.8 percent of women ages 18-44 considered themselves bisexual, 1.3 percent homosexual, and 3.8 percent as “something else.”
* The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior, published in 1993, showed that 5 percent of men and 3 percent of women consider themselves bisexual and 4 percent of men and 2 percent of women considered themselves homosexual.
* Alfred Kinsey’s classic surveys in the ’40s and ’50s of American middle-class sexual mores found that about 46% of the men that were interviewed and 12% of the women admitted to sexual experiences with both sexes.
* According to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are an estimated 3.7 million bisexual people in the United States.
Conclusion: confusion. Even best approximations of 13-20% with bi tendencies would mean 40 to 60 million people. So where are the bi-gentrified neighborhoods with those cool coffeeshops and arthouse theaters?
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