Dr. Jason Hodgson, an anthropologist and evolutionary geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University in England, recently made headlines when he said, “I predict that most people should actually be bisexual.” Citing the genetics of same-sex behavior and the well-established fact that bisexuality is incredibly common across the primate world, Hodson said, “I suspect most people would be slightly in the bisexual range if given the right social circumstances.” In other words, Hodson is proposing that most humans are probably 1s or 2s on the Kinsey Scale — bi people who are attracted to both sexes, but who fall nearer the straight end of the spectrum than the gay one. The Kinsey Scale is a model to help illustrate the spectrum of (bi)sexuality numerically, where 0 represents exclusive heterosexuality, 6 represents exclusive homosexuality, and 1–5 represents the range of bisexual attractions.
As someone who’s been covering bi issues for years, with a particular focus on data and research, I came to a similar conclusion in my 2023 article “Why Not Both: Could Bisexuality Be the Norm?” I’d read through so many studies going back nearly a century, and had been exposed to so many different lines of evidence — not just how people identify, but their actual behaviors and attractions, plus evidence from the animal world, tribal societies, human genetics, and more. It turns out, very large percentages of people who don’t see themselves as bi nevertheless fit the textbook definition of bisexuality: being attracted to people of both sexes, being open to sexual behavior with both sexes, and in some cases, having actually slept with people of both sexes. I roughly crunched some numbers and was astonished to find there was good reason to suppose most humans might actually be bi! Whether or not they act on their bisexuality or identify as bi is another question. But with every passing year, we’re seeing this latent bisexuality blossom.
A new Gallup poll just released in February 2025 showed the single biggest year-over-year rise in people identifying as bi on record. In 2024, Gallup found that 4.4% of US adults identified as bi (nearly 60% of all LGBT people). In 2025, that number jumped to 5.2% of American adults. Interestingly, this uptick is not being driven by Gen Z, but by Millennials, who saw a 1.5-point increase in bi identification. Gen Xers and the Silent Generation also saw increases. To put this in perspective, there are more openly bi people in 2025 than there were openly LGBT people in 2017!
And lest you think this is just crazy Americans being extra special, research shows bi people are global. The LGBT+ Pride 2021 Global Survey from Ipsos found that among the 27 countries polled, 5% of people identified as bi or another label that falls under the bi umbrella. When the researchers asked the question differently, though, they found that 19% of people were not exclusively attracted to one sex — in other words, bi. 13% of people in particular said they were “mostly attracted to the opposite sex” — those Kinsey 1s and 2s mentioned earlier. Again, these results are four years old, and from countries around the world, not just the liberal West.
Ipsos followed up last year with their LGBT+ Pride 2024 Survey, but they gave bisexuality short shrift, asking questions almost entirely focused on other LGBT topics. However, they did find a 1-point increase in people who reported having a bi friend, relative, or colleague among the 23 countries surveyed, showing a global rise in bi visibility. Countries like Germany (+13 points), Columbia (+8 points), and Spain (+4) had especially large bumps. The US rose by 4 points as well.
The science has been pretty clear: many sexually reproducing animals, especially mammals, and most especially primates, including humans, seem to be wired for bisexuality. Why? Because, well, it gives the best of both worlds, and not just sexually speaking. It enables individuals to form stronger bonds, adapt to single-sex environments, take necessary risks, better understand others through more diverse experiences — and not sacrifice having children in the process.
This is all a long way of saying that the state of the bi union is strong, and only growing stronger. People don’t seem to realize how bi they are, but they’re gradually waking up to it. Or, to put it in T-shirt terms: the future is bi.