theorists questioned the century-old convention of defining sexual orientation in terms of the biological sex or gender of one’s sex-object choice. DeCecco and Shively (1983/84), in an oft-cited article, proposed shifting scientific attention from its focus on the sexual individual to a focus on the sexual relationship as the unit of analysis. Ross (1984), Kaplan and Rogers (1984), and Freimuth and Hornstein (1982) argued that social scientists should remove the emphasis on the biological sex characteristics of the partners in a relationship and step back to ask which characteristics serve to define a sexual encounter for the participants in the encounter. Kaplan and Rogers argued that while biological sex is an important factor in choosing sexual partners, albeit only because of the social emphasis placed on biological sex, other gender-related characteristics are also influential because genitalia themselves are not immediately observable. Taking the argument a step further, Ross suggested that individuals might choose their sexual partners on the basis of a number of characteristics, among which biological sex might be more or less important. Ross and Paul (1992) suggested that bisexuals could be conceptualized as individuals for whom biological sex is a comparatively minor consideration in choosing sexual partners, in contrast to heterosexuals and homosexuals who “have succumbed to social pressures to adopt an exclusive and stable sexual orientation” (Ross 1984:64).
Theorists who advocated abandoning biological sex-based or gender-based definitions of sexual orientation often suggested that research on bisexuals would be particularly useful in developing a new model of sexuality.8 Among bisexuals, other characteristics that are important in partner choice are not overshadowed by an exclusive choice on the basis of gender. Therefore, these other characteristics should prove to be more readily identified and studied among bisexuals than among homosexuals or heterosexuals. In fact, Ross (1984:68) asserted that “[w]e can only begin to understand the meaning of having a same-sex partner by looking at bisexuals . . . for whom gender is one of a number of determinants in partner choice.” The belief that bisexuals hold the key to understanding sexuality, including heterosexuality and homosexuality, is a far cry from the attitudes of earlier theorists who ascribed to the conflict model of sexuality and viewed bisexuals as either nonexistent or mere combinations of conflicting homosexual and heterosexual impulses.
Unfortunately, researchers have largely ignored the progress made by theorists. A review of the research literature is outside the scope of this book, but suffice it to say that most researchers continue to classify people as either “lesbians/gays” or “heterosexuals.” A few researchers recognize a “bisexual” category, and some collect Kinsey scores that are often used merely to place people into these categories. As MacDonald (1983) pointed out, these practices lead not only to a lack of knowledge about bisexuals, but also to poor quality knowledge about lesbians and gays, because people with varied sexual desires, behaviors, and identities are often lumped together within a single category. In my study, I refer to the women who participated as “lesbians” or “bisexuals” according to their own self-identities. These labels are not meant to imply that these women are “really” lesbian or bisexual in an essential sense, nor are they meant to gloss over the varied sexual experiences of the women collected under each label; on the contrary, I examine these differences and their implications. The labels are both a linguistic convenience and a way to show respect for the self-identities of the women who participated in this study.
3 BEHIND THE SCENES: HOW THE STUDY WAS DONE AND WHO PARTICIPATED IN IT
A BRIEF AND NONTECHNICAL LESSON IN SAMPLING THEORY FOR NONACADEMIC READERS
Chapters 4, 5, and 7 will present the findings of research in which I explored lesbian and bisexual women’s opinions on the topic of bisexuality. But before I present the findings it is important for you to know something about the women who participated in the study. The odds are that you and your friends were not among the women who participated, so you might be wondering how the findings could possibly be relevant to you, much less reflect your own opinions. This chapter will answer that question, and it will give you information that you need in order to draw your own conclusions about the findings. Readers who are familiar with scientific sampling methods might want to skip to the subheading “How Lesbian and Bisexual Women Were Recruited to Participate in the Study.”
It would have been impossible, for many practical reasons, to survey all lesbians and bisexual women in the U.S. Instead of surveying an entire population, social scientists usually select particular members of the population as representatives of the population and survey these people. In other words, we take a sample of the population and then we use the information these people give us to draw informed conclusions about the population as a whole. In this way, scientists use limited financial resources to focus on getting the most accurate information possible from the people they have selected, instead of obtaining poor quality information from a larger number of people.
It may seem risky to draw conclusions about a whole population based on information from just a sample, and it can be if it is not done properly. How do scientists know that the people who are sampled really represent everyone else fairly? We do, if we have drawn the sample using methods that guarantee that each member of a population has an equal chance1 of being selected for inclusion in the sample. When these methods are used, we can be reasonably certain that various segments of the population, and their opinions, are represented in the sample in the same proportion in which they appear in the population as a whole. Therefore, the sample should provide an accurate micropicture of the whole population. There is always a possibility that this will not be the case, but even the magnitude of this possibility is known if scientific sampling methods have been used. Social scientists generally do not report findings from a sample unless they are at least 95% certain that the findings are an accurate reflection of the whole population. Readers who are unfamiliar with scientific sampling procedures can consult any textbook on social scientific research methods.
But lesbian and bisexual women cannot be sampled using representative sampling methods. In order to draw a representative sample a researcher must begin with a complete listing of all members of the population. It would be impossible to make a list of all lesbian and bisexual women because many of us are isolated or closeted. Therefore, lesbian and bisexual women have to be sampled by methods that are designed to maximize the diversity of the sample, rather than its representativeness. In other words, participants need to be recruited in ways that guarantee that women of different socioeconomic classes, racial/ethnic groups, educational levels, incomes, ages, political orientations, etc., are included in the sample. Their number in the sample will probably not be proportionate to their number in the whole population, but they will be represented.
When samples are recruited by methods that emphasize diversity rather than representativeness, findings have to be interpreted with special care. For example, if I had been able to draw a representative sample of lesbians and I found that 15% had children, then I would be able to say, with a known degree of certainty, that 15% of all lesbians have children. But, since the lesbians who participated in my study are not a representative sample, I do not know how accurate it would be to conclude that 15% of all lesbians have children. I can, however, look at differences between groups of study participants with some confidence. For example, later in this chapter I will report that 15% of lesbian-identified women in the study had children, whereas 25% of bisexual-identified women in the study had children. On the basis of these results, I have reason to believe that in the population at large bisexual-identified women are indeed more likely to have children than lesbian-identified women. Neither the 15% nor the 25% might be accurate; both of these figures might be inflated or deflated. But, unless I have some reason to believe that there were factors in my sampling methods that affected lesbian-identified mothers’ participation rate differently than
