Bisexual men are more frowned upon than bisexual women, and bisexual men are more scorned by men themselves.
This is according to a study – “The Gender-Specific Binegativity Scale: Validation in a Spanish Sample of University Students and Proposal of a Brief Version” by Rosario Castillo, Carmen Tabernero, Sandra Santiago, Laura Onieva, Bárbara Luque, Sebastián Vivas and Francisco García – that was published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
As it is, “bisexuality is a more prevalent sexual orientation than homosexuality, despite being much less visible,” the researchers noted. And so “not surprisingly, even with studies showing that rates of distress, depression, and anxiety among bisexual people are higher than among homosexuals, those belonging in this sector continue to be plagued by denial, invisibility and a lack of community support that impact their mental health.”
It is worth noting that there are few tools to assess discrimination against bisexual people based on their sexual orientation, with one scale in particular often used to do this – i.e. The Gender-Specific Binegativity Scale (Yost & Thomas, 2012).
In this study, a team from the Department of Psychology at the University of Cordoba translated the scale into Spanish, and then validated it.
This scale is comprised of 30 items to evaluate women, and 30 to evaluate men, with statements such as: “I don’t think that bisexual women (or men) should work with children”, “I don’t think that bisexual women (or men) should marry” or “I avoid bisexual women (men)”. To overcome the drawback of the instrument’s length, which entails having to complete 30 items referring to bisexual women and 30 to bisexual men, the team validated a shorter version with only eight parallel items for each gender.
In total, 495 students in the School of Education Sciences and Psychology participated in the development of this scale, completing it along with other variables of interest, such as sexism and social dominance.
The study found that the rejection of bisexual people was very limited, but negative attitudes were related to sexism, homophobia and an orientation towards social dominance, which is a variable that evaluates discrimination, in general, and support for social hierarchies. That is, those who had negative attitudes towards bisexual people were also more sexist and showed greater attachments to hierarchy.
“Based on the results, bisexual men are more frowned upon than bisexual women. Bisexual men, in addition, are more scorned by men themselves,” noted researcher Vivas.
This has a lot to do with gender stereotypes since, although there are negative attitudes towards both bisexual women and men, in the case of women they are more related to promiscuity and eroticization on the part of men, and “they are seen as a confused heterosexual woman, while in the case of men, they are made invisible and pointed to as confused homosexuals.”
This work is said to bolster the visibility of bisexuality, providing an instrument that paves the way for further research into attitudes towards bisexual people on a larger scale, developing strategies to promote equal treatment, such as training in equality for people who work in public service, or education, at every level, and then being able to evaluate the effects of these programs; in short, moving towards a better and more egalitarian society.
