A new study by a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto suggests that the estimated 1.7 percent of men who identify themselves as bisexual may not be truly attracted to both sexes.
Psychologists at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto recruited their subjects through advertisements in gay and alternative newspapers. Out of the 101 young adult men they selected, 33 identified themselves as bisexual, 30 as heterosexual and 38 as homosexual.
The men were then seated alone in a laboratory with a device to measure their genital arousal pattern while they watched a series of erotic movies. Some of the pornography involved only women. Others involved only men.
The monitors showed that only men aroused gay men, and only women aroused straight men. But bisexuals were a different story.
Instead of being aroused by both men and women, about three-quarters of the group identified as bisexual were aroused only by men. The remaining bi-identified men were aroused only by women.
"Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern University and the study's lead author in a quote published by the New York Times.
Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and the new study's senior author, added, "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."
Other researchers criticized the technique used as too crude to capture the complexity of sexual attraction.
"To claim on the basis of this study that there's no such thing as male bisexuality is overstepping, it seems to me," said Dr. Gilbert Herdt, director of the National Sexuality Resource Center in San Francisco. "It may be that there is a lot less true male bisexuality than we think, but if that's true then why in the world are there so many movies, novels and TV shows that have this as a theme -- is it collective fantasy, merely a projection? I don't think so."
When asked if there would be political implications over this study, Steven Fisher, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, said, "The American people don't care if the person who discovers the cure for cancer is gay, straight, transgender or bisexual. No matter what, no one should be discriminated against because of who they are."
http://www.gay.com/news/article.html...07/05/1&page=1
Interesting stuff for sure, ive see numerous posts on message boards by both gay and straight webmasters saying that bisexuality 'doesnt exist' and that you are either gay or straight, what do you folks think of this new study?
Regards,
Lee
