Soft-focus portrait of two young women with long brown hair, one kissing the other's cheek as she smiles
Key Takeaways
An estimated 4 million or more people worldwide identify as swingers, with bisexuality—especially among women—being common within that community.
The internet has transformed bisexual swinging from an anonymous underground practice into a visible community with millions of accessible profiles.
Female bisexuality is particularly prevalent in swinger communities across Northern Europe, while male bisexuality is increasing but still less common.
Scientific research suggests bisexuality may be influenced by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many bisexual swingers are there?
Exact numbers are difficult to determine because many bisexuals do not publicly identify as such. Research estimates suggest at least half a percent of Americans actively engage in bisexual swinging, which would represent roughly 1.5 million people in the US alone. Globally, the figure is considerably higher, particularly in countries like Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands where female bisexuality is widely normalized.
Are most swingers bisexual?
Not all swingers are bisexual, but bisexuality—especially among women—is very common in the lifestyle. Many women enter swinging out of bisexual curiosity, and female same-sex play is a standard part of many swinger encounters. Male bisexuality is less prevalent but growing. Heterosexual couples are also very common in swinging, with both partners only engaging with opposite-sex partners.
How has the internet changed bisexual swinging?
Before the internet, bisexual swingers had to connect anonymously through adult magazines and carefully arranged meetings, making it hard to gauge the size of the community. Today, dedicated swinger websites allow bisexual individuals and couples to create profiles, search by orientation, and connect with compatible partners easily. This visibility has helped normalize bisexuality within the lifestyle and enabled far more people to participate openly.
The lifestyle community has always included bisexual members. What has changed over time is not their presence but the degree to which their presence is actually acknowledged — and acknowledged equitably. Bisexuality in thelifestyle is common; bisexuality treated as a full, respected dimension of identity across all genders is still a work in progress.
Understanding the gap between those two things matters for anyone navigating the lifestyle as a bisexual person — and for anyone who wants to build more genuinely inclusive connections within it.
How Common Is Bisexuality in the Lifestyle?
Research summarized by the Kinsey Institute on swinger demographics consistently finds that bisexuality, particularly among women, is widespread in lifestyle communities. The pattern holds across multiple studies and community surveys: women in swinger populations identify as bisexual or bi-curious at substantially higher rates than women in the general population, and same-sex female play is a standard element of many couple encounters.
Male bisexuality is documented at lower rates, though researchers and community advocates note that this likely reflects underreporting rather than a genuine absence. The social cost of identifying as bisexual is higher for men in many cultural contexts, and that cost does not disappear at the door of a swinger club. Men who are bisexual or bi-curious may participate in same-sex encounters without identifying publicly, or may find that the explicit welcome extended to bisexual women does not extend to them.
Non-binary, pansexual, and genderfluid members add dimensions to this picture that the older "bi men vs. bi women" framing does not fully capture. Attraction that does not track gender neatly is not unusual in the lifestyle — and increasingly, the community's language for it is catching up to the reality.
The Bi Treatment Gap: An Honest Assessment
The asymmetry in how bisexuality is received across gender lines is real, documented, and worth naming directly. In many lifestyle spaces, female bisexuality is not just accepted — it is specifically sought out. Couple profiles that specify "the wife is bi" or that describe same-sex female play as part of their interest are common. The bi-friendly label in these contexts functions as an amenity rather than as a statement of genuine inclusion.
For bisexual men, the experience is often the opposite. "No bi guys" appears as a standard disclaimer in a significant number of couple profiles. Same-sex male play is frequently treated as incompatible with couple-oriented swinging — an assumption that has no logical basis in the community's own stated values but persists as a cultural norm in some spaces. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom has documented bi-erasure as a specific concern within kink and consensually non-monogamous communities, identifying it as a form of discrimination that the community's consent-and-inclusion framework should address.
The difference between "bi-friendly" and "full bi" in a profile is therefore meaningful. Bi-friendly often signals that female same-sex play is welcome; full bi signals that male same-sex play is also welcome. Members for whom the distinction matters — bi men, bi couples, bi-curious individuals exploring same-sex dynamics in all directions — benefit from profiles that are specific rather than vague.
What surfaces consistently in these conversations is the desire for accuracy over aspiration. Several bi members described the experience of reading a profile that called itself bi-friendly, connecting with the couple, and then discovering in conversation that "bi-friendly" applied only to the woman in the pair. The disappointment is not just about a missed connection — it is about having your identity treated as a marketing term rather than as something real. The profiles and couples that get it right tend to be specific: they name what they are open to, they do not use shorthand that means different things to different people, and they respond to a bi man's identity with the same straightforwardness they would bring to any other orientation. That specificity is what genuine inclusion looks like in practice.
— Bisexual members and bi-friendly couples on Swing.com we've spoken with
Beyond the Binary: Pan, Fluid, and Non-Binary Members
The lifestyle community includes members whose attraction does not map neatly onto a bisexual/straight binary. Pansexual members experience attraction that is not contingent on gender. Genderfluid and non-binary members may have complex relationships with orientation labels that shift with context. Trans members navigate the full spectrum of bisexual and same-sex dynamics with the additional layer of gender identity that heteronormative couple frameworks rarely account for.
These configurations are not edge cases — they are part of the actual community. Research summarized by the Journal of Sex Research on diverse orientations within CNM populations reflects a community that is more varied in its configurations than the dominant discourse about swingers often suggests. Profiles and spaces that name this reality explicitly — rather than defaulting to "couples only" or "male-female couples preferred" — signal a more genuinely open environment to the members who are navigating it.
How Platform Tools Support Clearer Communication
One of the most practical improvements lifestyle platforms have made is giving members better language tools for communicating orientation and openness. Rather than relying on the vague "bi-friendly" label, profiles on Swing.com can specify whether same-sex female play, same-sex male play, or both are welcome; whether non-binary or trans partners are welcomed; and what each person's own orientation is.
This level of specificity benefits everyone. Bi men can filter for explicitly bi-affirmative couples rather than hoping "bi-friendly" means what they need it to mean. Bi women who are tired of being the only one in the room whose bisexuality gets acknowledged can find couples who apply the same standard across genders. Pansexual and non-binary members can identify spaces that have done the work to include them accurately.
What Genuine Bi-Inclusion Looks Like
The lifestyle community's foundational values — consent, honesty, non-judgment, explicit communication about what each person is open to — are entirely compatible with full bi inclusion. They always were. The gap between those values and the inconsistent treatment of bisexual men in particular is not a principled position; it is a cultural residue of mainstream society's discomfort with male bisexuality, imported into a community that claims to have left it behind.
The corrective is not complicated: take people's stated orientation at face value; be specific in profiles about what each person in a couple is open to; extend the same welcome to bi men that has long been extended to bi women; include non-binary and genderfluid members in discussions of orientation rather than defaulting to binary framing.
Browse the LGBTQ+-welcoming community groups and bi-affirmative member profiles on Swing.com to find connections that start from that baseline — and to help build the community that the lifestyle's own values already call for.
Swing Editorial··5 min read