We’re shocked! Shocked!
Seems all those guys “on the down-low” — you know, the ones with wives, the ones who take off their wedding bands when they go on “business trips” but somehow end up at piss-and-fist parties in Palm Springs.
Seems they’re all full of shit!
According to a new study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, these self-described “bisexuals” are just arm-wrestling with themselves when they try to believe they’re anything but true-blue gay. (See the illustration, above, by our favorite artist-couple Pierre & Gilles for what such an inner battle might look like.)
From the New York Times,:
In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.
The study is the largest of several small reports suggesting that the estimated 1.7 percent of men who identify themselves as bisexual show physical attraction patterns that differ substantially from their professed desires.
“Research on sexual orientation has been based almost entirely on self-reports, and this is one of the few good studies using physiological measures,” said Dr. Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender identity at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study.
The discrepancy between what is happening in people’s minds and what is going on in their bodies, she said, presents a puzzle “that the field now has to crack, and it raises this question about what we mean when we talk about desire.”
The study has already set off a firestorm. Some researchers claim the population for the study was skewed. Men were recruited though ads placed in gay and alternative newspapers — publications with liberal, educated, middle-class readerships. There was also the size of the study - 101 men total. For the study to have any teeth, the result would need to be repeated on ten times that number.
"The last thing you want," one doctor, a professor of socio-medical sciences at Columbia University, told the Times, "is for some therapists to see this study and start telling bisexual people that they’re wrong, that they’re really on their way to homosexuality.”
The findings fly in the face of the anecdotal evidence of many gay men who have been involved with "straight" (for the most part) partners. It also contradicts the life work of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose findings were based on a sex questionnaire given to thousands of Americans (as memorably depicted in the movie Kinsey, below, where a map of America comes alive with hundreds of voices recounting their sex histories.)
Kinsey concluded that bisexuality was the statistical norm, seeing hetero and homo sexuality as merely opposite peaks in a continuum. “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual,” Dr. Kinsey wrote. “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats.”
Yet, as the Time article points out, researchers were never able to produce direct evidence of bisexual arousal patterns in men:
A 1979 study of 30 men found that those who identified themselves as bisexuals were indistinguishable from homosexuals on measures of arousal. Studies of gay and bisexual men in the 1990’s showed that the two groups reported similar numbers of male sexual partners and risky sexual encounters. And a 1994 survey by The Advocate, the gay-oriented newsmagazine, found that, before identifying themselves as gay, 40 percent of gay men had described themselves as bisexual.
“I’m not denying that bisexual behavior exists,” said Dr. Bailey, “but I am saying that in men there’s no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men, arousal is orientation.”
For a discussion of Kinsey, as well as why the proposition of universal bisexuality enrages cultural conservatives, see Nightcharm’s entry Nobody is Straight, Says Gore Vidal. Or Gay Either
I worked as a male prostitute for years, and in the light of my personal experience this must be the most inaccurate pseudo-scientific study ever. I should add, though, that my hustling career took place in Italy, and as we all know the Italians are a breed apart…
I have always believed that while sexual orientation was a continuum, bisexual men were really rare compared to bisexual women. I suppose my lesbian friends would have something to add from their perspective; however I suspect bisexual men are either fcuked-in-the head heteros or more likely hard core closet cases. A truely bi guy would probably never need to label himself since his actions would speak louder than that, and such men are really rare.
With respect to those hiding behind the bi label? Well as far as I’m concerned they are gay men in their queer infancy. I have yet to be proven wrong as the long term outcome is what really matters: bi-labelled guy today typically means gay guy tomorrow.
As a biologist with an interest in sociobiology, I’m inclined to side with Simon Levay (his site is http://members.aol.com/slevay/index.html), where he suspects that men are more likely to be exclusively hetero or homo than women.
Unfortunately much of what we know today is predicated upon flimsy evidence and andecdotal reporting. Maybe we can hatch a few plausible theories on human sexual orientation, but really we should be doing more research! (Larger sample sizes taken from all over the world.)
Whatever science or religion says, I know what gives me a hard-on: I luv men. I luv neat facial hair, trimmed chest hair, and short hair/bald heads. I luv muscular chests, strong shoulders and firm butts. I luv stiff cocks. I luv hugging and kissing guys. I luv men fucking men - it’s the best part! That’s what feels so totally natural to me. I’m 100% hard core homosexual, and when politically necessary, proud of it, dammit!
Stay hard fellas
I really expected more from scientists. I can’t emphasize enough how elusive desire (and for that matter, emotion) is. These scientist are insanse if they think they measure it physically - and even more insane if they expect people to accept this UNscientific study.
Penis police! Why do bisexual (or even “bisexual”) men threaten these gay researchers? So what?
Some very good information on th estudy and it’s author;
http://tinyurl.com/bpxlj
There’s no difference between bisexual men and gay men? So all those gay guys are really bi?
As a geneticist and someone who has identified as bisexual for over 20 years, I welcome any research on bisexuals, even if the findings seem suspect to me. Studies tend to draw more research, and since research on bisexuals has been minimal, we are bound to learn more.
Ascertainment bias and small sample size are always problems in these kinds of studies, and they are difficult to avoid. Nevertheless, one wonders what results might have been obtained by going to members of bisexual organizations in addition to going to gay bars. Are the populations the same?
As a facilitator for a bisexual men’s group for nearly a decade, I’ve met hundreds of men who identify themselves as bisexual. Some do indeed later identify as gay, but most others still view themselves as bisexual years later. It’s hard to imagine, as the headline-writer for the NY Times suggests, that they are all “lying”. What exactly would they be lying about? Not who they’ve had sex with, usually.
And, as a Stanford biologist pointed out in a letter to the Times, some 300 or so other vertebrate species have been documented as engaging in bisexual behavior - our near relatives the bonobos seem remarkably bisexual in the accounts I’ve read. Are all these animals lying, too?
I haven’t been able to read Michael Bailey’s study yet, but I am bothered by statements such as:
“I’m not denying that bisexual behavior exists,” said Dr. Bailey, “but I am saying that in men there’s no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men, arousal is orientation.”
Arousal to porn is orientation? In my experience arousal to porn is different than actually having sex with real people, and having sex is different than forming emotional bonds and building relationships.
I am attracted sexually and emotionally to both men and women, but the attraction is not the same in both cases. Visual attraction to men tends to be stronger in me, as it apparently was in most of Bailey’s subjects, but emotional attraction to women also has been stronger, although a few men have captured my heart. That doesn’t in my mind mean that one kind of attraction is “real’ and the other is “lying”. Defining orientation by arousal to porn is a much narrower idea of sexual identity than I have. (Particualrly if they used the usual kind of heterosexual porn that features exactly the kinds of high-heel and garter-wearing women with fake breasts that I’m usually not attracted to.) Bailey admits that bisexual behavior exists, and I submit that behavior needs to be explained as well as physiological response to porn.
Bisexual orientation is not one-dimensional; nor, I suspect, are other orientaions.
All interesting and valid points by everyone but as a self described bisexual male I have to disagree on the major opinion expressed by Dr. Bailey that “…for men, arousal is orientation.” The mind is so integral in sex and in life in general that to negate its influence on sexual identity is downright stupid at least in my humble opinion. There has got to be some overlap between mind and body. Humans are complex creatures and it just goes to show how little we know about them/us.
And since when did anecdotal evidence become so underrated in science. Kinda crazy.
BTW, great mini essay Paul. Thought provoking.
TTYL
A nit-pick for Nick
I’m not sure if your comment on anecdotal evidence was tongue-in-cheek or not, but I just want to explain what I meant…
Anecdotes are short narratives (typically biographical) that informally inform and often entertain. While useful and credible in a casual social context, or as a means to elaborate on an idea in a discussion, anecdotes (and by extension anecdotal reports) are too subjective (in the strict scientific sense) to be anything but interesting phenomena from which to launch an empirical investigation. Anecdotes are a great point to start on, but a poor choice of data for empirical analyses and even weaker as a means to provide conclusive evidence. I suppose there may be an exception in some situations, but I really can’t think of any plausible ones right now.
The scientific method demands a stringent adherence to the pursuit of objectivity - as best as we can - and even allows us to revisit earlier conclusions to refute, modify or just re-affirm them. Anecdotal “evidence” is not sufficient evidence in the formulation of a scientific conclusion - but I would not dismiss it as an initial challenge to tired old conclusions, stereotypying and bad ideas!
Another point: I have observed, moreso since 9-11 than ever before, an assualt by social conservatives and the religious right against scientists and the scientific community. For this reason I really feel “on guard” these days when I read about science and social issues. Studies like this one we’ve discussed, of which the background Paul researched really well, clearly show a need for scientists to show some very public political leadership against frauds like Bailey and the anti-science nitwits out there.
Cheers.
PS: Kudos the few guys who are truly and comfortably bisexual - but I remain instinctively sceptical of many men who use the bi label because their internalized homophobia won’t permit them to say they are gay yet. I’ve seen this among my peers sooooo often! Again and again… However, it may be that it is less true today with younger men than it was 20 years ago? I speak as a 42 year-old gay man, not a 22 year-old, so there may be a generational thing going on???
I once heard a talk-show psychologist tell a woman that for her son to be considered homosexual he had to be both homoerotic and homoromantic. If a guy is both–exclusively, he’s gay. If not, he could be just a straight man taking sexual opportunities or completely gaga over a male friend he in no way wants to have sex with, a confused or bruised or not yet out gay man looking to distance himself from the fray, or a bisexual sliding somewhere along the scale.
Under the above definition of homosexual, which has always seemed both the simplest and the most complete to me, I can’t imagine any objective study that could ever capture the bisexual man–or woman, for that matter. Sexual arousal we can measure or observe, but what piece of equipment measures love or romance, desire and emotional connectedness? And even if we could measure them, what mix of erotic response and romantic yearning would constitute the official definition of bisexual? Any respectable study would never accept “I just know” as a valid piece of data, but ultimately that’s all we’ve got.
I know my outlook is simplistic and uninformed, but the subject of defining orientation fascinates me, and I’ve really appreciated your responses to the article. I’ve never been able to get anything in me to move in a single direction: heteroerotic but homoromantic as a girl, identify straight and dream straight but have a female lover/partner of fifteen years, have a male friend I’ll always relate to as a lover though we’ll never end up in bed again and with whom I had a romantic friendship and the hottest buddy-type sex, found in my reading and research that I think much more like a gay man than a woman of any persuasion. It’s all just such a jumble–guess I’ll never figure it out. A therapist once said that with me it’s all about the person. Maybe that’s it; maybe that’s the definition of bisexual, but you still can’t test for it.
Thank you Tricia, Pete, Bernard, Brandon, Ann, Paul and Nick. Your commentary is far more interesting and compelling than the original piece, in the NYT, that inspired it. What an informative conversations this has been.
Tricia, I think you really nailed down the difference between being homosexual (which is about arousal) and being gay (which is about romantic fixation.)
Remember, everyone, that Tennessee Williams had many beautiful and true things to say about these matters. My favorite appears in his autobiography, Memoirs:
John Calendo
Yes, true Bisexual people do exist, that isnt doubted.However this report seems to begin to confirm, what has been acknowledged and observed for a number of years now, that a very large number of people presenting as initially as self described Bisexual, are in fact Homosexual. In my profession I have councilled at least 164 guys and 130 women {mid 20’s to late 30’s/earl 40’s} who originally described themselves as ‘Bisexual’, usually as they had wives/ husbands or long term partners of the opposite sex. They also felt they had a ‘position to maintain’in their jobs or wider families, that was aided by having a traditional, heterosexual relationship. Despite this, they have all gradually gone on, over varying degrees of time, to begin having the occasional same -sex encounter, [usually put down at the time to a 'one time only' event]; However this has only served to fuel a desire to repeat the process, with an ever increasing number of frequent gay sexual encounters. In turn this has been followed by a number of short term same-sex or Gay ‘relationships’ that appear to end where they eventually meet a same-sex partner who they then fall in love with and start a long term or permanent relationship with. Their former heterosexual relationship at this point is always at an end and usually has been for many months. They then finally admit that they were ‘really Gay after all’, often explaining, that due to a combination of pressures from society, religeous beliefs or family, felt that they had to get married or have a steady girlfriend. Many had originally felt guilty and confessed to wishing to repress their homosexual urges from an early age and thought that by getting married or dating the opposite sex they would be able to ‘cure themselves’, most admitted, while having ’straight sex’, to fantasising about someone of the same sex to get them through it. While others said they had never enjoyed sex with their wife or husband or straight partner but just didnt realise fully what was wrong. Some knew deep down their feelings, but wouldnt admit that what they were doing was anything more than just getting rid of ’sexual relief’ at first, but realised after a time that they increasingly preferred the Gay side of the double life they had constructed for themselves. This pattern I have observed repeated time and time again. However,like one of the previous writers, younger people now seem to be aware of and more accepting of their Homosexual preferences/status earlier and dont then seem to change. I am now seeing less and less of the so called ‘married Bisexuals’, now than in the last two decades. Maybe this is because society is changing so that being Gay and eventually having same-sex permanent relationships is now more acceptable and easier to achieve generally? People dont seem to feel the need to justify themselves by having to enter into unsuitable or sham relationships’ as a cover for their true sexuality. Bisexual people I have encountered rarely if ever have any guilt or anxiety about their sexual preferences.This report is very interesting but a wider series of studies are needed. However this seems to confirm my own findings, that many people who at first claim to be Bisexual are actually repressed or latent homosexual types.
Thank you, Mr. C, for your kind words and for not blasting me out of the water for weighing in on male bi-ness. It’s a subject I am obviously in no way qualified to address, and Paul, Nick and the others had already said it all. My only excuses are that I was running a fever (doubtlessly delirious) and that I’m in one of those transition times of life where you’re frantic to take things in, gulp down knowledge, ideas, sensations to fuel the next phase, trying to understand…something…before moving forward.
Nightcharm is a special part of that for me. Thanks for all you do to get the mind and spirit humming right along with the body. I used to be tempted to join (don’t know if they’re still producing new pieces for you, but I’m a sucker for the writings of Bob Vickery and R. J. March), though really, can’t guys have just one thing to themselves? Still, I keep coming back as a grateful visitor, somehow always finding myself here, finding answers to old questions and having new ones fired off. I don’t know how to tell you the influence a site like Nightcharm can have, but this last contact and the writing I’ve been doing because of it have finally clarified a problem I’ve been wrestling with for–literally–months. There’s just no proper way to thank you or David or your commentators for that.
Lovely Tennessee Williams quote, by the way–perfect.
According to Freud’s the innate human condition is “polymorphous perverse.” That can only mean that heteronormatives are closet cases.
I suppose Im BI. Simply because I find myself sexualy attracted to both males and females. Just after puberty I would experience “moods” either I was in a hetrosexual mood or feeling gay. I figured this was simply how it worked for all Bisexuals, and I have heard simular accounts.
Now in my 20’s I find Im much more flexable, I would have no problem gettign in bed with a male and female at the same time. I find the feelings to form a conflict with each other, perhaps testosterone and estergine? When they both pump at the same time, I find that exilerating. For me sexual orentaition has always been a state of mind, and Im open minded so its seems natural to swing both ways.
I Judge each person by thier age, looks, personality. In fact I cant even begin to understand how a hetrosexual or homosexual thinks about sex. it seems to me hetro’s maintain a childish perspective towards the concept of a same sex encounter. But I cant fathom what a homosexual thinks about females. Everyones talking about how compicated Bisexuals are, but bisexuals are the only orentation I understand.
Also bisexuals have been accounted for for a long time, some of the roman empires elite warroirs were Bi. I think that talks about the social elite of rome and thier bisexualness anyway “feminine-looking boys often were openly seen as desirable sex partners” That I think points out the nature of Bi, at least for me I can account. If thier is somthing physical or mentaly differant between a hetrosexual and homosexual I dont think the bisexual falls on the homosexual end, Unless homosexuals are able to become attracted to females thus creating the oposite kind of bisexual as me.
In anycase being Bi is great, truly the best of both worlds. I feel no need to be accepted or even reconized. So what if nobody thinks we exist? I’ll still like guys and girls
If I ever feel uncomfortable about being discovered, I dont even have to lie, I simply say “I’m not gay” Ok well I totaly necro’d this thread, but felt I needed to add input.
Oh one more thing, I think why the test results for Bi’s often show one sex or the other as being more stimulating is because with the one that test hetro, they where most likely not cofortabel with their sexuality, and the akward feeling prevented and open stimulating feeling for the same sex.
With those who tested 100% gay, I think they may have still been bisexual but with many Bisexuals they feel more of a social taboo towards same sex concepts so that feelign of it beign more “wrong” yet still comfortable enuff not to care its “wrong” made the stimulas stronger.
Personaly I find my attraction to the oposite sex is more physical, while my attraction to the same sex is more psychological. I dont think im any diffrent from a standard hetrosexual other than I dont belive same sex reatioships are wrong, and I understand that “sin” is a man made concept.
Wow, I had a lot to say.
Well, I’m glad that everyone is familiar with the article that, for me at least, seems to be hidden behind lock and key. Without being able to reference this litle jewel, it’s going to be difficult to muster anything interesting to say that actually pertains to the subject of the article. I will say, however, that news forums in general have been a ridiculously unreliable source of legitimate conclusions based on scientific study–there’s a reason science requires multiple studies on a subject, why newspaper editors are newspaper editors and not scientists themselves, and why “scientific conclusions” can contradict themselves from one week to the next based on broadly drawn conclusions from these and previous studies.
But again, your article is hidden to me. Maybe someone else can respond with these thoughts in mind and that piece in hand.