No Physiological Basis For Male Bisexuality in New Study
A new study with the potential for considerable controversy, finds little physiological evidence for bisexuality in men. Psychological investigations into bisexuality in the past have mostly been based on self-report measures - this is one of the first to directly measure physiological arousal.
In this study a sensor was attached to the penis and participants were shown erotic films, some involving just men and some involving just women. Having been asked about their sexuality before the experiment, patterns of arousal were compared with the stated preferences. Arousal was as expected for those identifying themselves as heterosexual and homosexual,
"But the men in the study who described themselves as bisexual did not have patterns of arousal that were consistent with their stated attraction to men and to women. Instead, about three-quarters of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals."
The researchers are, quite rightly, extremely cautious about the implications of their study which is based on a fairly small sample (101). It is unclear what the relationship is between physiological arousal and emotional and cognitive factors.
Certainly Freud believed that humans were naturally bisexual and the sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey, found evidence from the thousands of interviews he conducted that most people had at least some attraction to both sexes. This kind of research flies in the face of conventional thinking on the subject - part of the reason it's so interesting.
As for bisexual women, the NY Times goes on to report that, unlike bisexual men, other research has shown that those women identifying themselves as bisexuals have shown physiological arousal to both men and women. From this evidence the physiological case for bisexuality looks stronger in women than in men.
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Over email Dr Petra Boynton, the sex and relationship psychologist, expressed concerns about the ecological validity of this study to me:
"In terms of the bisexuality study it's an interesting one. I suspect it's partly in the methodology. It's kind of muddled. They seemed to show people straight porn and gay porn, but expected the bi oriented guys to like both equally and seemed surprised when they weren't?
"Some bi guys like mixed scenes (e.g. a guy and a woman together), some identify with either male and male or male/female experiences. I think the whole issue about defining sexuality gets messy when we have to fit people into categories. People can cope with gay or straight, it seems, but can't fit 'bi' into one box ('scuse the pun).
"My take, as usual, would be on the method - I don't feel these lab based studies using erotica are very reliable. The people behind the research never seem to reveal how they selected the erotic material to be shown, and frankly watching porn in a lab isn't representative of how you'd enjoy it elsewhere. It's also someone else's choice of 'erotic' which (as anyone knows if they've stumbled on someone else's porn collection) is usually a bit hit and miss arousal wise."
Although she does temper her criticism by saying:
"However, I could be being very unfair about these researchers since I've not read their original study."
Further criticism on the letters page of the NY Times.
More in depth criticism from Mixing Memory here and here.
Just to address Dr. Boynton's stated concerns, the study does a good job of flattening out any potential reporting errors by sampling a range of bisexual, heterosexual and homosexual men. So use of pornography and potential migitating factors to how people process it in a laboratory setting are not particularly relevent here. The study, if run as their article claims, really does a good job of simply comparing the three groups of men with the assumption that if bisexual men are different, they will have results that are in someway different from the other two. And they as the study of course found, did not.
This was a flawed study...
Too many variables have been omitted to give this study true credit.
It is my belief that Bi-sexuality is potentially in everyone male and female for sexual gratification, emotional gratification is not the same nor included in this study.
We live in a sexual stereotypical society, which says men with women and vice-versa, some men fortunately have the chance to think for themselves and have same sex encounters and have received homosexual gratification, luckily some of them men do not deny the heterosexual gratification they experience.
(Is it not strange how men leading heterosexual roles still receive sexual gratification from women and then choose through whatever reason that they are homosexual and then deny the gratification they received while in the heterosexual role? So who are the true liars?)
If our modem society was based on bi-sexual stereotype....then the majority of us would?? BI SEXUAL
With the odd outcast preferring, heterosexual or homosexual lifestyles or course!
Yes I am studying psychology and yes I am Bi-Sexual.
Matt, you make an interesting point - thanks for your comment.
I had to laugh when I read the description of the study. Apparently, I don't exist (...or I'm lying to myself). I am a 50 year-old male, who has always had a deep sexual attraction to women, and recently (middle age is wonderful) have been much more heterosexually active, exploring many of the pent-up desires of my youth. In addition to that, since my teen years, I have had secretive desires to be taken by a man, and have at times had very active homosexual fantasies. Very recently, I have begun acting on them as well. I love sex with women, and if I had to choose, I suppose I would give up men. But thankfully I don't have to choose.
I think the study may have been flawed in a number of ways. First, sexual attraction is very specific. For instance, if the images had shown 18-year old girls, I would have had little, if any, sexual response. That's just not my thing. On the other hand, if the images had shown middle-aged women, about my age, or plumper women (which is something I'm into), I would have had a strong reaction. Likewise, if it had shown feminine men, I would have had little response.
Now it may be true that for some men, "bisexual" is a cover story, one step out of the closet. But that certainly is not universally true. There are truly men (and women, I'm guessing) who are omni-sexual... extremely sexual beings, who are attracted to both sexes. I know. I'm one of them.
There is no such thing as a straight man, just men who confuse researchers. Do we really need a study for this? The little spoken word on men in locker rooms, gyms, business trips, etc., goes back before the ancient Greek and Roman bathhouses.