Jabbour, Jeremy and Holmes, Luke and Sylva, David and Hsu, Kevin J and Semon, Theodore L and Rosenthal, AM and Safron, Adam and Slettevold, Erlend and Watts-Overall, Tuesday M and Savin-Williams, Ritch C and Sylla, John and Rieger, Gerulf and Bailey, J Michael (2020) 'Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men.' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (31). pp. 18369-18377. ISSN 0027-8424

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Abstract

The question whether some men have a bisexual orientation—that is, whether they are substantially sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has remained controversial among both scientists and laypersons. Skeptics believe that male sexual orientation can only be homosexual or heterosexual, and that bisexual identification reflects nonsexual concerns, such as a desire to deemphasize homosexuality. Although most bisexual-identified men report that they are attracted to both men and women, self-report data cannot refute these claims. Patterns of physiological (genital) arousal to male and female erotic stimuli can provide compelling evidence for male sexual orientation. (In contrast, most women provide similar physiological responses to male and female stimuli.) We investigated whether men who self-report bisexual feelings tend to produce bisexual arousal patterns. Prior studies of this issue have been small, used potentially invalid statistical tests, and produced inconsistent findings. We combined nearly all previously published data (from eight previous studies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), yielding a sample of 474 to 588 men (depending on analysis). All participants were cisgender males. Highly robust results showed that bisexual-identified men’s genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than were those who identified as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. These findings support the view that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sexual orientation; bisexuality; sexual arousal; Kinsey scale; sexuality
Divisions:	Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of
SWORD Depositor:	Elements
Depositing User:	Elements
Date Deposited:	21 Jul 2020 07:25
Last Modified:	06 Jan 2022 14:16
URI:	http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/28270

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