Letters to the Editor

• @Rachael F (In re: "You know")

  [Read the article: Hillary Clinton: Nope, still not gay]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Superb, superb post! Very informative and well-written. One of the most fascinating books I've ever read is The Sexual Brain by Simon LeVay. I assume you're familiar with it, given your detailed knowledge in the area.

  I recall seeing an article on a sexuality study published back in 2003, I think (I apologize for not providing a link, but I can't recall the specific authors, title, etc.) I think the study was done at the University of Georgia, but I could be mistaken. Anyway, the study took male and female volunteers and gave them short questionnaires about their sexual orientations, attractions, practices, etc. and then took them into video labs and exposed them to a wide range of erotica/porn clips corresponding to various orientations to see how they responded to the stimuli and whether their responses correlated with their survey responses. Arousal was measured using the penile plethysmograph for the males and the vaginal equivalent for females.

  The survey's findings were quite interesting and surprised the researchers, and they track closely with what you outlined in your post. Men's arousal patterns hewed very closely to their stated sexual orientations and practices, but with a couple of interesting kinks. Self-declared heterosexual men had the strongest arousal to lesbian erotica, followed by heterosexual, then bisexual (much weaker), with by far the least arousal to gay male porn. Self-declared gay men had by far the strongest arousal to gay male porn, followed by bisexual, still less to heterosexual, with almost none to lesbian. Self-declared bisexual men paralleled the gay men in their arousal patterns--that is, they were most aroused by male same-sex erotica and porn, least by lesbian. All the male subgroups showed strong differences in arousal between their most and least favorite types of erotica.

  Women, on the other hand, were very different from the men. All of the women studied, no matter their stated sexual orientations and practices, showed almost equal arousal to ALL types of erotica or porn shown to them in the study. That is, self-declared heterosexual women showed nearly the same arousal to gay male porn and lesbian erotica as they did to heterosexual porn; likewise self-declared lesbians showed approximately the same arousal patterns to heterosexual and gay male porn as they did to the lesbian erotica.

  This led the researchers to the startling conclusion that innate, hard-wired sexual orientation is really only true of males, whereas (at least divorced from social and cultural context) women can more nearly be described as sexual, without needing to tack on a qualifying prefix.

  Fascinating stuff! I wonder if the study has been replicated elsewhere and if the findings have been consistent.

  If these findings are indeed accurate, it raises even more questions about the studies that have found males reporting significantly higher rates of same-sex sexual activity than females (even correcting for institutional homosexuality as in prisons and ships at sea, etc.). Furthermore, as I think LeVay indicated in his book, surveys that have documented gays and lesbians living relatively open and sexually active lives (what I guess you'd call "out of the closet" lives) have found that the number of gay males consistently outnumbers the numbers of lesbians by some 2-1 (or another way to put it is that 2/3 of the gay "community" is male). These survey findings are quite surprising given the results of the Georgia study. Is there a far greater number of men who are "wired" for same-sex attraction than most people think, or than we've been led to believe until now?

  What are your thoughts on all of this?

  Permalink Friday, September 21, 2007 04:27 PM