IF YOU GO CHASING RABBITS.

The simplest explanation for the news out of Brown University might be ... it's news out of Brown University.

New survey data from Brown University’s student newspaper provides further evidence that the increase in LGBT identification is driven by social pressures.

The latest data show that between 2010 and 2023, identification as LGBTQ+ has almost tripled among the student body at Brown (from 14% in 2010 saying they were not heterosexual to 38% now). "The Herald’s Spring 2023 poll found that 38% of students do not identify as straight — over five times the national rate," The Brown Daily Herald reported. "Over the past decade, LGBTQ+ identification has increased across the nation, with especially sharp growth at Brown." Other sexual orientations have seen massive increases. "Since Fall 2010, Brown’s LGBTQ+ population has expanded considerably. The gay or lesbian population has increased by 26% and the percentage of students identifying as bisexual has increased by 232%," the student newspaper reported. "Students identifying as other sexual orientations within the LGBTQ+ community have increased by 793%."

The idea of LGBT identification as a social contagion is one that continues to draw criticism among academics. For example, the head of an academic journal that published a paper that supported the theory of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria faced a cancellation attempt, along with the Northwestern University professor who wrote the paper.

Brown, recall, has long been a hothouse of goofy thinking, and it is so notorious as a safety school for the people who don't have the juice to get legacy-adjacent admissions for their spawn that it didn't figure in that celebrity-fake-athletic scholarships scandal of a few years Before Corona.

It's possible that seeking protected class status by making things up about how you like to roll is the latest Ivy League way of cutting up.

On March 3, 1939, a Harvard freshman named Lothrop Withington, Jr., bet some of his classmates $10 that he could swallow a live goldfish. Among those who gathered around Mr. Withington to watch the spectacle was a Boston reporter who dutifully recorded the moment for posterity.

What followed next was a study in mass psychology. For whatever reason, a competitive goldfish-swallowing craze swept the country.

The goldfish challenge continues today, although without quite the frenzy.

But the goldfish challenge was instructive about the lengths some young people will go to “fit in” with the crowd by mimicking and/or adopting the behavior of popular members. That might explain what’s happening at Brown University.

That essay also notes the numbers of standard-issue male and female homosexuals decreased; it was the rest of the alphabet, with particular emphasis on the "bi," that increased.  I suspect that as the population of campus long-hairs increased during the 1960s, the share of New Left types increased relative to the share of druggies that would be observed in the general population.  Author Rick Moran continues, "An interesting experiment would be to poll the same people 10 years from now and find out how many still identify as anything but straight." There used to be something called "lesbian until graduation;" and those of us with longer memories might recall the coastal cosmopolitans lamenting the "sellouts" who became Reagan-voting yuppies in the 1980s.

Power Line's John Hinderaker offers another possibility.

Or that some of those “bisexuals” are just normal young men who are having a hard time getting a date. As for the “asexuals,” “queers,” and so on, I suspect these are mainly faddists and misfits. And how about those “pansexuals”? Are there Brown students who have sexual relations with animals or trees? I very much doubt it.

Also, how about transsexuals? I take it that they represent some fraction of the vanishingly small “other” category. Which makes sense: Never in the course of human history have so few caused so much trouble for so many.

He's on to something, although whatever trouble the "normal young men" are having getting a date is only going to be magnified if they claim to be "bi" or "trans" or any of the other elements of the alphabet.  There are limits, even to claiming protected class status.  "Maybe I think too simply: if there's a principled argument for letting people present themselves as they would like, going to the extent of cosmetic surgery, is that not the same principled argument for letting people date and mate with whoever they want? If there's some right to sexual congress for crossers, does that not establish a similar right for the socially awkward?"

I suspect there's a simpler explanation, and it manifested itself nearly a generation ago.  "The Chicago Sun-Times has put together a series of articles about sex on campus titled Hooking Up and Hanging Out."  If I'm remembering that series correctly, there was one in which a reporter went to a campus bar somewhere and reported on the girls making out with each other as a strategy to get the attention of the guys.  It's possible, I suppose, that as campuses skew more and more female, while that kills dating, it offers the girls a chance to have their protected class status and some sort of companionship.  There's also an opportunity for the guys that do get into some sort of long term relationship:  "Bi, you say.  Is your girlfriend into threesomes?"

I note, though, that all of that analysis is based on one survey out of Brown University.  From that old post (the Carol Ianonne link has long since rotted) the following is likely germane.

Perhaps Professor Iannone projects her own perspective on attractiveness. The young men she describes seem to have no trouble finding female company. The quality of the companionship might rise to the level of male-female interaction in a light beer commercial, but perhaps that's satisfactory for the parties involved. Not everybody has grasped the finer points of third-wave feminist theory. Further, those baggy shorts and backwards caps signify frat-boy athlete types, and a few of them might actually be able to win a bowl game or close a sale. (But then, the commentary on higher education, never mind the ideology or politics, too often is defined by the aesthetic standards of the coastal symbolic analysts.) Maybe she's read too much Camille Paglia, whose writings about wimpy academic men make Rush Limbaugh's new castrati schtick look tame.

That is, there are still opportunities for normally hormonal young men and young women to get acquainted in the standard ways; and at least on that dimension, it is a good thing that the land grants and mid-majors aren't in the same business as the Ivies.

Alternatively, perhaps that Washington Examiner story with which we opened has found a direction for future research.

The researcher on that project, Eric Kaufmann, noted in comments to the College Fix that his research has found sexual behavior has not kept pace with the identification.

In other words, bisexual identification outstrips bisexual sexual activity.

"If this was about people feeling able to come out, then we should have seen these two trends rise together," he told the College Fix. "What we find instead is that identity is rising much faster than behavior, indicating that people with occasional rather than sustained feelings of attraction to the opposite sex are increasingly identifying as LGBT."

Coming out as not heterosexual is trendy and wins social plaudits. But the notion that social pressure plays a role in LGBT identification is only controversial because the group is a sacred cow. However, the idea that peer pressure plays a role in our behaviors and lifestyles is acknowledged in other less controversial areas. It follows then that if teenagers can pressure each other to partake in some actions, they can encourage them to identify as LGBT as well.

Perhaps so, although that bisexual identification might last only until the Hot Guy of the Evening notices.