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Are Teens “Post-Gay”? Contemporary Adolescents’ Sexual Identity Labels

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Abstract

Recent reports suggest that historically typical sexual identity labels—“gay,” “lesbian” and “bisexual”—have lost meaning and relevance for contemporary adolescents. Yet there is little empirical evidence that contemporary teenagers are “post-gay.” In this brief study we investigate youths’ sexual identity labels. The Preventing School Harassment survey included 2,560 California secondary school students administered over 3 years: 2003–2005. We examined adolescents’ responses to a closed-ended survey question that asked for self-reports of sexual identity, including an option to write-in a response; we content analyzed the write-in responses. Results suggest that historically typical sexual identity labels are endorsed by the majority (71%) of non-heterosexual youth. Some non-heterosexual youth report that they are “questioning” (13%) their sexual identities or that they are “queer” (5%); a small proportion (9%) provided alternative labels that describe ambivalence or resistance to sexual identity labels, or fluidity in sexual identities. Our results show that lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities remain relevant for contemporary adolescents.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a contract from the California Endowment to the California Safe Schools Coalition, and by a William T Grant Foundation Scholar Award to the first author. The authors thank the Gay-Straight Alliance Network for their role in collecting the data, the California Safe Schools Coalition Evaluation Committee for access to the data, and Jenifer McGuire, Cesar Egurrola, Craig Talmage, Jacqueline Larriva, and Nicole Lehman for assistance with data preparation.

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Correspondence to Stephen T. Russell.

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Russell, S.T., Clarke, T.J. & Clary, J. Are Teens “Post-Gay”? Contemporary Adolescents’ Sexual Identity Labels. J Youth Adolescence 38, 884–890 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-008-9388-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-008-9388-2

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