Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 88, Issue 1, September 2011, Pages 112-115
Biological Psychology

Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men revisited

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.06.015Get rights and content

Abstract

Men who identify themselves as bisexual report feeling sexually aroused by both men and women. However, past research has not demonstrated that such men exhibit substantial genital arousal to both male and female erotic stimuli, suggesting that they identify as bisexual for reasons other than their genital arousal pattern. The purpose of the present study was to examine arousal patterns among bisexual men who were recruited using stringent criteria involving sexual and romantic experience with both men and women in order to increase the likelihood of finding a bisexual arousal pattern. Bisexual men in the present study demonstrated bisexual patterns of both subjective and genital arousal. It remains unclear which pattern is most typical of contemporary bisexual men: the present results supporting a bisexual arousal pattern, or previous results not finding one. In either case, understanding men with bisexual arousal patterns could help illuminate the etiology and development of male sexual orientation.

Highlights

► Bisexual men have not shown a bisexual genital arousal pattern in past research. ► We examined sexual arousal patterns of highly selected bisexual men. ► On average, they had bisexual subjective and genital sexual arousal patterns. ► It remains unclear how common bisexual arousal patterns are. ► Men with bisexual arousal patterns remain an intriguing, under-studied group.

Introduction

Some men who have had sexual experiences with both men and women identify as bisexual. However, there is a long history of skepticism about whether these men also have substantial sexual attraction toward both sexes (Krafft-Ebing, 1886, Freund, 1974). In part, this uncertainty exists because it is common for self-identified homosexual men to have first identified as bisexual, despite later professing they were never genuinely attracted to women (Rosario et al., 2006). Similarly, some bisexual men appear to have exclusively homosexual attractions, but identify as bisexual for reasons of perceived social acceptability (Stokes et al., 1997). It is also possible that some bisexual men may engage in sexual activity with both men and women because they are especially sexually open-minded, even if they are strongly sexually attracted to members of only one sex.

If some men's bisexuality is motivated by sexual attraction to both sexes, this should be evident in their pattern of sexual arousal. A man's pattern of genital arousal, in particular, provides an objective and highly valid measure of his underlying sexual orientation (Bailey, 2009). Heterosexual men typically exhibit substantially greater genital responses to female sexual stimuli (i.e., sexual stimuli featuring only women) than to male sexual stimuli, whereas homosexual men show the opposite pattern (Chivers et al., 2004, Freund, 1963, Freund et al., 1989, Sakheim et al., 1985). In contrast, studies of genital arousal patterns in bisexual men have generally not demonstrated that such men are substantially aroused by both male and female stimuli (Cerny and Janssen, 2011, Rieger et al., 2005, Tollison et al., 1979). For example, Rieger et al. (2005) had self-identified bisexual, homosexual and heterosexual men watch erotic videos featuring two male performers as well as videos featuring two female performers. Unlike the homosexual and heterosexual men in the experiment, bisexual men reported substantial subjective (i.e., self-reported) arousal to both kinds of stimuli. However, their genital arousal pattern was no more bisexual than that of homosexual and heterosexual men. Bailey (2009) has argued that male sexual orientation is best conceptualized as a pattern of sexual arousal toward a category or categories of person (e.g., adult males, adult females, or both male and female adults). Thus, uncertainty about bisexual men's arousal patterns raises uncertainty about their underlying sexual orientations as well as their motivations for identifying and behaving bisexually.

Past research not finding bisexual genital arousal patterns among bisexual men may have been affected by recruitment techniques. For example, bisexual men in those studies needed only to identify as bisexual and to self-report bisexual attractions (e.g., Rieger et al., 2005). Thus, the bisexual samples of previous studies may have been populated by men who had never or rarely behaved bisexually and perhaps identified as bisexual for reasons other than strong arousal to both sexes. More stringent criteria pertaining to sexual and romantic experience with members of both sexes may increase the likelihood that bisexual participants identify as such because they exhibit a true bisexual arousal pattern. Additionally, bisexual participants in past studies were partly or exclusively recruited from the gay community. For example, the bisexual sample of Tollison et al. (1979) was recruited from a university gay student union. Thus, past studies may have unintentionally oversampled bisexual-identified men with homosexual arousal patterns. In the current study, we revisited this issue by assessing a subpopulation of bisexual men who seemed especially likely to show bisexual arousal both because of a recruitment source likely to reach such men and because of stringent inclusion criteria.

We examined whether bisexual-identified men who are recruited from bisexual-specific sources and have had sexual and romantic experience with members of both sexes have a distinct and bisexual pattern of genital and subjective arousal compared with the arousal patterns of homosexual and heterosexual men.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 35 bisexual men, 31 homosexual men, and 34 heterosexual men from the greater Chicago area who were recruited from Internet personal advertisement lists for those respective populations. In particular, bisexual men were recruited from a list of advertisements where men sought to have sex with both members of heterosexual couples. To be eligible, bisexual participants were required to have had at least two sexual partners of each sex and a romantic relationship of at least three

Results

For both subjective and genital arousal, we calculated the dependent variable Minimum Arousal, defined as mean arousal to the less arousing sex. For example, if a man had a smaller mean genital arousal to videos of women than to videos of men, his genital Minimum Arousal score was his average genital arousal to videos of women. Following Rieger et al. (2005), we reasoned that if bisexual men tend to have bisexual arousal patterns, they should have higher arousal to their less arousing sex

Discussion

On average, the bisexual men in our sample had distinctly bisexual patterns of both genital and subjective arousal. That is, their arousal responses to their less arousing sex tended to be higher than those of homosexual and heterosexual men. Even bisexual men's arousal patterns were not completely undifferentiated, however. Their genital Minimum Arousal averaged approximately half of their arousal to the more arousing sex, suggesting a marked preference for stimuli of one sex, even though the

Acknowledgements

We thank John Sylla, Kevin J. Hsu, and Joan Linsenmeier. This work was supported by a grant from the American Institute of Bisexuality.

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