orichalcum

So, the NYTimes has this interesting article about bisexuality which claims, based on a recent study, that men may not actually be aroused by more than one gender, even if they consider themselves bisexual.

Now, regardless of the somewhat dubious aspects of that study (in particular, (1/3rd of the men in all groups didn't have any physiological response to the porn at all), I find it kinda offensive that the article focuses on a general lack of bisexuality, with opening grafs like "But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men." In fact, if you read down to the very bottom of the article, way back in the paper edition, you find that for women, there's lots of evidence of bisexuality, and it might even be the norm.

But, as is so often true in studies of sexuality, women are largely ignored because they're not the norm and because their sexual orientation can't be easily categorized, so gets thrown into the dumpster as "ambiguous."

You also get horrific quotes like: "In follow-up interviews over the last 10 years, Dr. Diamond has found that most of these [self-described bisexual] women have had relationships both with men and women.

"Most of them seem to lean one way or the other, but that doesn't preclude them from having a relationship with the nonpreferred sex," she said. "You may be mostly interested in women but, hey, the guy who delivers the pizza is really hot, and what are you going to do?"'

Cuz, as we all know, bisexual women are the kind of women who will jump random delivery guys all the time....see general stereotypes about "oversexed" being connected with "bisexual."

If it turns out that biologically, men are either gay or straight, that's really interesting, although I personally feel that orientation involves more than just arousal. But that doesn't mean that bisexuality doesn't exist, and for once, it would be nice to see a study of sexuality that gave equal time to the majority of the population.