Australia | Bi men are the least likely to be out

Coming out the closet is far more difficult for young bisexual men in Australia, compared to their gay counterparts, says a new study.

Radio station Triple J surveyed 11,000 people aged 18 to 29 to discover what it’s like to be a millennial in Australia.

When it came to the LGBQ community, the What’s Up In Your World poll looked at the issue of being open about one’s sexuality.

It found that young men who identify as gay are twice as likely to have come out than bisexual men.

In fact, bi men are the least likely to have come out about their sexuality within the LGBQ community, with only 40 percent being out. Bisexual women were a little more likely to be out the closet at 48 percent. This is compared to 83 percent of gay men and 86 percent of lesbian women who are open about their sexuality.

Interestingly, far more young people identify as bisexual than gay or lesbian. Around 15 percent of women say that they are bi as do 5 percent of men, while 2 percent of women are lesbian and 5 percent of men are gay. Between 1 and 3 percent of people identify as pansexual and 1 to 2 percent chose “other” to categorise their sexuality.

Julia Taylor from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society suggested that one of the reasons so many men struggle to come out as bi is a lack of visibility.

“More and more so bisexual women are depicted in television and literature… although it’s still minimal,” she told Hack. “But for bisexual men it’s completely invisible… there’s a lack of role models.”

The results follow previous research that shows that bisexual people report higher levels of physical and mental health disparities, sexual and domestic violence, and poverty than gays and lesbians.

They also experience “bisexual erasure or invisibility” and are seen by many, in both the heterosexual and LGBQ communities, as suspicious, confused, untrustworthy or simply unwilling to come out as gay.