The brain, sexual orientation, and biological destiny

[levertovfan]

From an interesting article on nytimes.com

"Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, 'Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate — they get aroused by both male and female images,' Dr. Bailey said. 'I’m not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men.'....

Two Canadian researchers, Ray Blanchard and Anthony F. Bogaert, have shown that having older brothers substantially increases the chances that a man will be gay. Older sisters don’t count, nor does it matter whether the brothers are in the house when the boy is reared... The fraternal birth order effect is quite substantial. Some 15 percent of gay men can attribute their homosexuality to it, based on the assumption that 1 percent to 4 percent of men are gay, and each additional older brother increases the odds of same-sex attraction by 33 percent."

Comments

[darthbitsy.livejournal.com]

That article really bothers me. I left a comment on http://differenceblog.livejournal.com/ 's post about it.

[my-sihaya.livejournal.com]

I had mixed feelings about this. I'm always a little skeptical of research that claims to have found the definitive difference between men and women (or men's brains and women's brains).
At the same time, this more or less lines up with what I've observed in people around me. I've known lots of bisexual (or heteroflexible, or "I'm not a lesbian I'm just in love with this one woman") women, but very very few bisexual men. Of course, the people I've known are in no way a representative sample etc etc. And of course there are social conditions in play here, as well. For example, in certain communities (say, people between the ages of 18 and 30), women -- as long as they adhere to an ideal of mainstream attractiveness -- are rewarded, socially, for being, shall we say, open to bisexuality (i.e., making out with other girls in bars). Now that in itself is a whole 'nother can of worms which I won't open right now, except to note that I'm not aware of any parallel social reward for bisexual men. So, there's no social incentive for a guy to experiment and perhaps discover that he really likes boys AND girls, whereas at least some gals who are experimenting with other girls just to put on a show may discover that they actually like fooling around with girls for its own sake. If my hunch is right on this, not that I'll ever know, that'd mean there are a whole lot of "straight" men who'd be happily bisexual if only they'd had the chance to mess around with another guy. (I, personally, disagree with the idea that everyone knows and understands their sexual orientation as a gut feeling from the time they're five years old. Certainly this is true for some people -- the "I always knew I was different" folks. For others -- myself included -- it has never been that simple, or even that fixed.)
I recently read an interesting book about bisexuality in women: Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics by Jennifer Baumgartner. The basic premise of the book is that women who've been in relationships with other women take expectations of egalitarianism to their other relationships, including their relationships with men. It's an interesting idea, and I think there is probably some truth to it (although it might work the other way: women who are open to the idea of relationships with other women are the type of women who already have egalitarian expectations). A lively read, for sure.

[levertovfan.livejournal.com]

I share your scepticism. And yet I do think that there must be reasons other than culture that shape sexual responses and sexual desire. There is only so far that culture can warp expressions of biology before the humans who inhabit that culture begin to yank it back. I tend to be suspicious of people who claim that sexual behavior is entirely a product of culture because societies/culture are constituted by the people who inhabit them, and if certain habits or practices don't serve human needs, then they will reject them.

From observation and conversations, I suspect that most men experience their sexuality in a different way than most women do. For example, I suspect that the majority of men have a more solid (albeit possibly unconcious) sense of their sexual orientation when they are younger than women do--even though sexual orientation can change with life experience.

The general principal of sexual orientation would seem to be that people are born with a range of potential future expressions of their sexuality and their specific experiences with their culture determines where they fall within that range. The article only talks about measurements of physical arousal, but it suggests that women have a higher potential for bisexual sexual expression than men do, which certainly fits with my observations.

That said, I've put Look Both Ways on hold at the library.