Heteropessimism is yet another reason to ban TikTok

According to Gallup, Generation Z is the gayest generation ever. While just 2% of baby boomers currently identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, and just 7.6% of all adults do the same, an eye-popping 22.3% of Gen Z claim an LGBT identity.

The next highest number is millennials at just 9.8%.

What is going on with Gen Z?

Well, a closer look at the numbers shows that the “B” in LGBT is doing most of the work. Of those in Gen Z who label themselves LGBT, bisexuals make up 70% of that group. And this newfound gayness is not spreading equally among the sexes. Gen Z women are more than twice as likely as Gen Z men to report LGBT identity.

So it is not that a bunch of Gen Z men suddenly discovered they liked men more than previous generations, it is that Gen Z women who are attracted to men are more open to maybe having a sexual relationship with another woman. But very few of them have actually acted on this new LGBT identity.

So why are so many Gen Z women embracing the bisexual label?

One gender studies student at the University of Pennsylvania has a theory. In her senior thesis, “Neoliberal Love and the Pathology of Gen Z’s Singledom,” Talia Fiester documents the “viral spread” of something called “heteropessimism” on TikTok.

Gen Z women who use TikTok, Fiester argues, are simply ashamed to identify as straight. “The principal issue that we’re seeing among young, straight people right now, and especially straight women, is that they hate being straight because of the apparent hopelessness of finding romantic, exclusive, and committed relationships amid 2023 hook up culture,” she argues. “An example of this would be like, ‘Oh, I wish I was gay,’ or, ‘I hate that I’m attracted to men,’ or ‘It would be so much easier to be lesbians.’”

Fiester correctly notes that the idea, “It would be so much easier to be lesbians,” is false. Gay couples, especially lesbian couples, break up just as often as straight couples. In fact, lesbian couples have higher divorce rates than straight couples who have higher divorce rates than gay male couples.

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And there is also plenty of evidence that young women accumulate substantial psychic pain as they transition from straight to bisexual to straight again. One recent study found that more than a quarter of women who changed to identify as LGBT later returned to heterosexual identities within a five-year window. And another study found that bisexual females who question their sexuality have significantly higher scores for depression, anxiety, and traumatic distress than heterosexual females.

Instead of spending all their time obsessing over producing TikTok content related to their romantic lives, maybe young women would be healthier if they just deleted the TikTok app from their phones entirely.