Recent reports suggest that historically typical sexual identity labels—“gay,” “lesbian” and “bisexual”—have lost meaning
and relevance for contemporary adolescents. Yet there is little empirical evidence that contemporary teenagers are “post-gay.”
In this brief study we investigate youths’ sexual identity labels. The Preventing School Harassment survey included 2,560
California secondary school students administered over 3 years: 2003–2005. We examined adolescents’ responses to a closed-ended
survey question that asked for self-reports of sexual identity, including an option to write-in a response; we content analyzed
the write-in responses. Results suggest that historically typical sexual identity labels are endorsed by the majority (71%)
of non-heterosexual youth. Some non-heterosexual youth report that they are “questioning” (13%) their sexual identities or
that they are “queer” (5%); a small proportion (9%) provided alternative labels that describe ambivalence or resistance to
sexual identity labels, or fluidity in sexual identities. Our results show that lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities remain
relevant for contemporary adolescents.
Keywords Sexual identity - Sexual orientation - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual