I've long suspected that bisexuality, in many men, is the stage
between shame and acceptance. That is, men who call themselves
"bisexual" are often gay men who aren't quite ashamed anymore of
their homosexual inclination but who, for any number of reasons,
also aren't fully accepting of it. By calling themselves bisexual,
they cling to some thin reed of their heterosexual identity.
A new study, following other studies reaching similar
conclusions, lends support to these suspicions by concluding there
are few, if any, bisexual males, defined here as those who are
about equally aroused by both sexes. The study is being criticized
by gay-left groups that have an ideological and political
investment in the "B" in "GLBT." While the study is not definitive
- what study could be? - and more work needs to be done to shore up
its conclusions, the criticisms of it have not been very
persuasive.
"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual
and homosexual," wrote Alfred Kinsey. "The world is not to be
divided into sheep and goats." Kinsey considered sexual orientation
a spectrum along which many people were somewhere between the
extremes of total homosexuality and total heterosexuality.
Ever since, "queer" theorists have argued that sexual
orientation is itself a social construct. The categories "gay" and
"straight" are creations of language and culture. Sexuality is
plastic; it can change and be molded. In this view, everyone is in
some sense bisexual.
Now a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto is publishing
a study that questions this fashionable academic view. The
researchers studied 101 men, about equally divided among men who
called themselves gay, straight, and bisexual. They then showed the
men pornographic images involving only women or only men, and
measured their genital arousal.
Unsurprisingly, the straight men were aroused by the images of
women. Also unsurprisingly, the gay men were aroused by the images
of men.
And what aroused the men who called themselves bisexual?
Three-fourths of them were aroused only by the images of men;
one-fourth of them were aroused only by the images of women; and
none of them were aroused by the images of both men and
women. That is, their arousal patterns were indistinguishable from
either the gay or straight men. In the memorable headline of the
New York Times, the "bisexual" men in the study were
either "Straight, Gay, or Lying."
The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force was predictably
"stunned."
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, never missing a
chance to promote a dull conformity of language, called the
Times headline itself "derogatory."
The criticisms of the study have been underwhelming. One
criticism has been that the sample size - 101 men, of whom 33
identified as bisexual - was too small. One could make that
criticism of just about any sample size, and more is almost always
better in these matters. But gay advocates have relied on studies
with even smaller sample sizes to argue that homosexuals make good
parents. There's also not much reason to believe a larger sample
size would have yielded significantly different results, especially
given that the findings are consistent with past studies of
bisexual arousal and sexual behavior.
A second criticism has been that the sample - drawn from
personal ads in gay and alternative newspapers - was not
representative of all bisexual men. Some bisexual men, for example,
may not self-identify as bisexual and thus wouldn't be in the
study. Yet there's no reason to believe that these men would have
exhibited different arousal patterns. Indeed, one would expect a
greater degree of bisexual arousal in bisexual men who
actually identify themselves as bisexual.
A third criticism has been to attack one of its leaders, Michael
Bailey, some of whose past work on transgenders has been ethically
questionable. Whatever the merits of Bailey's past work, this
wasn't Bailey's study; he was part of a team of researchers who
designed and conducted it. Plus, the study is either flawed or not
based on its own methodology, not based on past criticisms of one
of its authors.
Other criticisms have focused on supposed methodological "flaws"
that don't affect the study's central conclusion. For example, some
critics have noted that about 30% of the men had no physiological
reaction to any of the porn they were shown. But so what? That may
prove the porn was bad, or that some men just don't respond to
sexually explicit images, but there's no reason to believe their
lack of response biased the study away from finding bisexuals.
A final criticism has involved playing with the definition of
"bisexual" in order to come up with more such people. If "bisexual"
means anybody who has any degree of arousal, however small, to both
sexes, then surely there are a large number of bisexuals.
Others have insisted that sexual orientation is more complicated
than mere sexual attraction, and includes emotional attraction as
well. Fair enough, but surely bisexual must involve some
sexual element. If "bisexual" means anybody who calls himself
"bisexual," regardless of whether he's actually sexually attracted
to both sexes, then words lose all meaning.
If, however, "bisexual" means a person who has roughly equal
erotic attraction to both sexes, then there are very few male
bisexuals. Most people mean the latter when they use the word
"bisexual," and it is this definition under which the study found
there are no male bisexuals.
Clearly there are straight men who occasionally have gay sex
when circumstances limit their preferred sexual outlet, as in
prison. Clearly there are gay men, some of whom are married to
women, who have straight sex because they're ashamed of their
homosexual orientation or afraid of the consequences of being found
out. These are not bisexuals.
Clearly, for queer theorists and their allied political groups,
there is an ideological motivation behind the idea of bisexuality.
They will defend it, damn the truth. And for some men, having sex
with men who claim to be attracted to women is a fetish.
Clearly there are men who call themselves bisexual, whether for
political reasons or fetishistic reasons or because they simply
aren't yet able to accept that they're gay.
Our goal should be to free this last group from the identity
prison of bisexuality, not to build higher walls around them in the
service of political correctness. We may not like that the world is
divided into sheep and goats, but that's preferable to pretending
we live in a world of mythical unicorns.