An estimated 6% of nontransgender sexual minority adults in the U.S. identify as queer, according to a paper in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, by Shoshana K. Goldberg, Esther D. Rothblum, Ilan H. Meyer, and Stephen T. Russell. Findings reveal queer individuals are distinct in a number of important ways from other sexual minority people in demographic characteristics and sexuality and across gender identity.
The study, the first to examine queer identity, relied on responses from more than 1,500 respondents in the Generations study, a representative sample of select sexual minority populations in the United States from three age groups — young (18–25), middle (34–41), and older (52–59). Analyses explored the demographic characteristics and sexuality of people who identify as queer, compared to those who identify as lesbian/gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority identities (e.g., pansexual).
Among cisgender respondents (those who reported a gender identity consistent with their sex assigned at birth), queer identification appears to reflect an inclusiveness of and openness to a diversity of gender identities in sexual and romantic partners, and with transgender partners in particular.
More than 62% of queer cisgender women reported attraction to transgender women, and 76% reported attraction to transgender men, a substantially higher proportion than was seen among lesbian/gay or bisexual women (less than 20% of lesbian women were attracted to either transgender women or men, whereas among bisexual women, 38.5% were attracted to transgender women, and 47% were attracted to transgender men).
Queer cisgender women were also more likely to report transgender sexual partners than lesbian/gay or bisexual women were. Similarly, queer cisgender men were more likely than men of other sexual identities to report attractions to transgender men and women and were more likely to report sexual partners who are transgender men (reported by 30% of queer men vs. 11% of bisexual men, 2% of gay men, and 0 other-identified men).
For noncisgender people — those who reported a gender identity of genderqueer/nonbinary (GQNB) — queer identity appeared to reflect the fluidity in their own gender identity. (Potential respondents who identified as transgender were surveyed in a separate study, and are not included.) Respondents who identified as GQNB were substantially more likely to identify as queer than cisgender people were: More than a quarter (25.9%) of GQNB respondents, compared with 6% of cisgender women and 1.5% of cisgender men, identified as queer.
Queer GQNB respondents largely did not differ statistically in attraction/partnering patterns from GQNB people of other sexual identities.
Among the demographic differences, younger adults were significantly more likely to identify as queer: 7.1% of respondents aged 18–25 and 6.0% of respondents aged 34–41 identified as queer, compared with less than 1% of those aged 52–59.
Queer people were more highly educated than other sexual minorities, with almost 4 in 10 reporting a bachelor’s degree or higher (38.6%), compared to 3 in 10 lesbian/gay people and less than 1 in 5 bisexual people.
The results highlight that, for some nontransgender sexual minority individuals, queer is a distinct sexual identity, capturing a fluidity in gender expression and sexual partners. However, more research is needed to better understand queer identity in this population and among transgender individuals.
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