This past summer, a sex study conducted by researchers in Chicago and Toronto supposedly demonstrated that most of those men calling themselves bisexual respond to sexually-charged visual stimulation more like gay men than straight men. The implication, widely picked up on by both the gay and mainstream press, was that most self-reported bisexual men were either self-deluded or misrepresenting their attractions: “Gay, Straight, or Lying?” as a New York Times op-ed piece put it.
The study involved about one hundred men recruited from ads in gay and “alternative” publications. Study subjects fell into roughly equal thirds: those calling themselves bisexual, gay, or heterosexual. Each participant was hooked up to a penile plethysmograph (to measure any swelling in the penis) and shown a set of short films, including one of two men having sex and one of two women having sex. When researchers toted up their boner stats, they found that most of the bisexual men responded– like gay men– more strongly to the man-on-man erotica than they did to the lesbian action. The researchers, concluded that “it remains to be shown that male bisexuality exists.”
View our poll archive
Many people have noted the methodological shortcomings of the study: participants were drawn largely from responses to ads in gay publications, suggesting that any bi guys recruited thusly might tend toward their homo side, for researchers did not ask for “men equally attracted to men and women.”
But a more fundamental problem lies in one of the lead researcher’s assertion that, “for men, arousal is orientation.”
By that standard, almost all teen boys, erect as often as not, must “sexually oriented” to tight jeans, wrestling, doctor’s visits, and Baywatch re-runs.
Some guys would undoubtedly find films of animals copulating arousing; are all of them closet zoophiles?
What of the one-third of the study participants who had no measurable arousal to any of the films? Do they lack a sexual orientation? And what about the three self-identified gay guys who got chubs watching lezzie action, but didn’t while viewing gay male erotica? If arousal equals orientation, have researchers uncovered three heterosexual men pretending to be gay?
Straight men in the military or prison turn to homosexuality with a gusto that often doesn’t even pretend to need the excuse that exclusive heterosexuality on board ship or behind bars would mean celibacy. They can get aroused and like sex with women, they can get aroused and like sex with men. Many such men report that sex with women is different from sex with men– both are enjoyable, but not interchangeable.
Furthermore, ones sexuality can shift. Many men discover (or develop) only later in life various kinks and quirks that become key parts of their sex life; it is often intellectual intrigue– not an erect penis– that leads guys to explore leather, S&M, piss play, and a whole host of perversions whose nervousness-generating novelty may initially inspire impotence before blooming into a new fetish.
And consider carefully: the majority of preadolescent boys engage in genital sex play, and most of such sexual activity is with other boys; such homosexual activity only stops when adolescence’s rabidly homophobic socialization targets “queer stuff” for ridicule and beating. As adults, many such men may genuinely enjoy sex with women, but may again turn to guys later once their nuptial sex life dries up; rest areas and tea rooms (and now chatrooms, too) are full of married guys looking for man-on-man action. No matter how varied their sexual life history, though, few of these men would ever label themselves “bisexual.”
Whatever labels people choose, or that researchers assign, bisexual behavior is common and widespread. Instead of calling people liars for not fitting into predetermined categories, let’s recognize and celebrate that human sexuality is wondrously diverse.
Brought to you by The Editoral Guide
