Sexual Identity Fluidity Among Sexual Minorities: Gender Differences in Determinants of Fluidity and Health-Related Outcomes

Drawing upon the Generations Study, a longitudinal U.S. national probability survey, we examine sexual fluidity among 894 sexual minority adults over three waves of survey data. We find that plurisexual individuals (i.e. attracted to more than one gender) are more sexually fluid than are monosexual individuals, and those who hold more emergent sexual identities (e.g. asexual, same-gender loving, pansexual, and queer) are more sexually fluid than those with more traditional sexual identities (gay, bisexual, and lesbian). We also find that, although sexual minority men are less fluid than sexual minority women, men's sexual fluidity is tied to more individual and contextual characteristics than is women's fluidity. Finally, we examine how sexual identity fluidity is related to select health-related outcomes and established social determinants of health for sexual minorities. We find no differences based on sexual fluidity for sexual minority men, but sexually fluid sexual minority women fare better than non-fluid sexual minority women on measures of alcohol consumption and social support from friends. These findings suggest that sexual fluidity might be more positively linked to some health-related indicators for women when shifts are primarily occurring between sexual minority identities, rather than between heterosexual and more stigmatized identities.