Latino Sexual Styles: Developing a Nuanced Understanding of Risk

The commencement of bisexual behavior and the ontogenesis of a bisexual orientation was studied in order to aid in the better understanding of how sexual behavior patterns begin and change. The investigation was conducted through in‐depth interviews held in California, Oregon, and Washington with the first 50 female volunteers gathered from a variety of sources who met the study requirements. Those requirements were that each subject, at the time of her first sexual contact with another female, (a) was married; (b) was at least 30 years of age; (c) was engaged in swinging; (d) was enjoying sex with males; and (e) had no history, prior to age 30, of a sexual attraction to females. “Multi‐female” and “multi‐male” sexual activity are terms introduced to remove the ambiguity and mislabeling which results from defining sexual activity between all persons of the same sex as necessarily homosexual. Subjects typically revealed a high incidence of early and continuing autosexual and heterosexual activity and current high frequencies of sexual activity with each sex. Influences facilitating a typical subject's initial and subsequent sexual activity with females were found to be her husband, other swingers, and the general swinging environment—the husband's influence usually being of paramount importance. It was concluded that those influences, perhaps together with a predisposition toward gaining perceived fulfillment of felt needs through sexual activity, will result in some heterosexual females engaging in multi‐female sexual activity and eventually adopting a self‐identified bisexual orientation.