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Thursday, July 07, 2005
Let me tell you what I think...
OK, I am going to dignify this article with a response.
All over the blogosphere (or at least the my blogosphere) people are writing about the news that bisexuality doesn't exist, according to a new study. In a nutshell, some researchers decided to measure genital arousal when men were shown pictures of men and women. They found that the men who claimed to be bisexual tended to become aroused by pictures of only one gender, usually other men. Sounds like a pretty good case for the non-existence of bisexuality, right? Wrong. And to explain why, I'm going to take you back 20 years and introduce you to Fritz Klein. Klein is a sex researcher who studies bisexuality. When Klein began his research, the definitive work on sexual orientation had been done by Kinsey, whose famous "Heterosexual-Homosexual Scale" measured an individual's bisexuality on a continuum of 0 to 6, where "0" represents completely heterosexual, and "6" represents completely homosexual. People answered questions about past sexual experiences, and were placed on the scale. Most people score somewhere in the middle, and therefore, according to Kinsey, have at least some bisexual inclination. Klein changed the scale, first by changing the numbers from 1 to 7--he found that people are unlikely to identify as "0," even in regards to sexual orientation. Klein also made the scale much larger, so that it would measure more than just past sexual experiences. Klein's scale measures the past, present, and future of all of the following areas: sexual attraction, sexual behavior, sexual fantasies, emotional preference, social preference, lifestyle preference, sexual identity, and political identity. (For more information on the Klein scale, click here.) In other words, Klein realized that sexual orientation--and more importantly, sexual identity--are multi-faceted sociological contstructs. Michael Bailey, a psychologist and one of the authors of the study has this to say: "I'm not denying that bisexual behavior exists,but I am saying that in men there's no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation." And I offer this response to Dr. Bailey: Bullshit. Sexuality is a complicated thing--it's never as simple as mere genital arousal, even in men. The idea that adult men run around like dogs humping whatever provokes genital arousal is reductionist and absurd. Sexuality is heavily influenced by attraction, undoubtedly, but sexuality does not occur without a sociological context. For example, there are familial and societal pressures, cultural norms, and peer groups to consider when examining sexuality. That's just scratching the surface of the construction of sexuality. And when Dr. Bailey fails to consider the other factors that can influence sexual orientation, it is obvious that Dr. Bailey has not done his research. The concept that what-makes-you-hard-is-who-you-are has not been accepted by any serious sex researchers or sexologists for at least 20 years. I encourage anyone out there interested in sexuality to put the good doctor's article to its most appropriate use: Line a bird cage with it. Oh, and one more thing: Look what came up as the sponsor of the printer-friendly version of this story when I clicked on it. Oh, the irony. 
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