when you announce an identity, it’s useful primarily for signaling. even if i’m receptive to sexual acts with either sex, the IRL driver of most of these things for me today is romantic partnership. and when it comes to long-term romantic partnerships i have a strong preference toward the opposite sex, so i’m likely going to identify as “straight” in most situations to avoid giving off misleading signals, but it’s important to understand that the answer is context-dependent. it shouldn’t surprise anyone if my advertised orientation on a dating app like Hinge varies from my orientation on a hookup app like Tinder.
a simple “are you L/G/B/T” survey question is way too detached from context, it’s sort of meaningless. with enough control (cohorting, etc), maybe you can claim that “today’s generation thinks about sexuality differently than the previous generation” or “individual’s thoughts toward sexuality change as they age”, both of which seem too trivial to merit asking the question in the first place. i think we lose a lot of the actual substance by treating these things as (context-free) identity.
More than a decade ago you had https://www.webmd.com/sex/news/20060918/many-straight-men-have-gay-sex :
Identity is very complicated and just because people self-identify a certain way, doesn’t mean that you know much about their actual behavior.
when you announce an identity, it’s useful primarily for signaling. even if i’m receptive to sexual acts with either sex, the IRL driver of most of these things for me today is romantic partnership. and when it comes to long-term romantic partnerships i have a strong preference toward the opposite sex, so i’m likely going to identify as “straight” in most situations to avoid giving off misleading signals, but it’s important to understand that the answer is context-dependent. it shouldn’t surprise anyone if my advertised orientation on a dating app like Hinge varies from my orientation on a hookup app like Tinder.
a simple “are you L/G/B/T” survey question is way too detached from context, it’s sort of meaningless. with enough control (cohorting, etc), maybe you can claim that “today’s generation thinks about sexuality differently than the previous generation” or “individual’s thoughts toward sexuality change as they age”, both of which seem too trivial to merit asking the question in the first place. i think we lose a lot of the actual substance by treating these things as (context-free) identity.