differenceblog, posts by tag: sexual orientation - LiveJournal

Lisa Diamond (Psychology and Gender Studies, Univ. Utah) made news this week with her research demonstrating that women with a bisexual identity did not identify as heterosexual or lesbian after ten years (EurekaAlert 2008, links to full article.) However, the news stories don't mention that Diamond's work is published in a special issue of the journal Developmental Psychology all about "sexual orientation across the lifespan."

However, Diamond's work is extremely specific to women. J. Michael Bailey suggests that Diamond's work corroborates his own findings that "women don't do sexual orientation the same way men do" (ABC news, 2008). Diamond is quoted in the same article as saying: "this is not to say that bisexual men 'don't exist' -- a claim that some researchers have made, but with which I disagree -- but simply to say that we need separate studies of male bisexuality in order to determine its own unique features."

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Diamond spoke in favor of the penile plethysmograph study in Benedict Carey's infamous "Gay, Straight, or Lying" article (NYT 2005), which is enough to get her a spot on the Dan4th "enemies list". Except that I'm not finding the hole in these studies (pun intended). While I don't particularly like the results, I haven't found a problem with the methodology that would explain the incredibly consistent findings that women's sexuality is just different than men's. I have no argument against these studies except for "your statistics fail to match my experience." Which is (a) not an argument and (b) not entirely true. However, I startled the hell out of my sleepy boyfriend this morning by musing out loud that "I can't imagine all those guys sucking dick just to get girls."

How much of our brain's gender is visible in our hands? Sanders and Waters (2001) found that performance on sexually dimorphic tasks was predicted not by sex, but by finger ridge count (dermatoglyphics). Most people have more ridges on their right fingertips than their left. "Male-favouring" tasks were better performed by people with more right ridges. "Female-favouring" tasks were better performed with more on their left fingers. Kimura and Carson (1993) found that the left-asymmetry was more prevalent in women and homosexual men than in the general population. Mustanski et al (2002) (with everyone's favorite "sex expert" J. Michael Bailey contributing) found that left-handedness was more prevalent in homosexual women than heterosexual women, but not in homosexual men versus heterosexual men. Mustanski found no association between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and sexual orientation. Williams et al (2000) is one of many sources to report a sexual dimorphism in finger length ratios that may reflect sexual orientation as well (see also: Rahman and Wilson, 2003, Brown et al (2002)).

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Are you looking at your hands yet? In my previous life, I read palms a little. I even volunteered as a palm reader in a charity carnival in junior high. At that point, I was taking my cues largely from the patterns I learned from my mother and from books on palmistry. After college, I still read palms -- but at that point I was trading the readings for free drinks. I also learned to do the readings more as a "warm read" -- taking cues from people's reactions more than from anything I saw on their hands.

Gay men and women have many challenges in the workplace. Some are similar; some are different. Chung and Harmon (1994) suggest that gay men are more likely to be interested in traditionally feminine careers than straight men, although they found that masculinity/femininity was not a predictor (as determined by BSRI). Adams et al (2005) did not find that Latino gay and lesbian youth felt restrictions on their career choices based on either their gender or sexual orientation.

Nam Cam Trau and Härtel (2004) suggest that the extra energy needed by gay men to explore and consolidate their gay identity takes away time that straight men have available to put towards career exploration. In addition, they suggest that the lack of a female partner at business social events makes personal bonding with those in a position to help these men advance difficult. Nam Cam Tau and Härtel feel that these are challenges that probably face lesbians as well. However, this study included both out and closeted gay men. Peplau and Fingerhut (2004) work from the assumption of openness in their study of lesbian workplace issues. They find that stereotypes about lesbians depict them as more competent and committed workers than their straight counterparts.

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In the 1995 movie Jeffrey, Nathan Lane's character "Father Dan" says: "I'm a Catholic priest. Historically, that falls somewhere between chorus boy and florist." The idea of traditionally gay careers is well established (at least for men). However, given the general artifact of lesbian invisibility, I was very surprised by Peplau and Fingerhut's results based on a survey of heterosexual undergraduates. In the study, the students were given written examples of a "straight woman" and a "lesbian", but in real life, that distinction is rarely so straightforward.

Another issue I had with the studies used today was the sample sizes. Adams interviewed eight people; Nam Cam Trau and Härtel interviewed five. Finding a reasonable sample of willing participants for gay and lesbian studies is a constant issue.

Morgan et al (2001) found both men and women ranked "interesting work" as a high priority when determining their career choices, as determined by college major. However, the two groups seemed to find different things interesting: men were more likely to be enrolled in math or physical science programs, whereas women were more likely to choose education or arts/humanities. No difference was found in the fields of health care, social sciences, or business. Morgan et al also found that women listed interpersonal goals as more important, and status goals as less important, than their male counterparts.

Fernandez et al (2006) suggest that sexism is related to college program choice. They found in undergraduates at the University of Vigo (Spain) that both men and women in technical programs expressed more sexist attitudes than those in other programs. Nadya Fouad's 2006 review on vocational psychology calls gender and sexual orientation "contextual influences" on career choice, but notes that little research has been done on sexual orientation. More discussion of sexual orientation's influence on career development will follow tomorrow.

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My college career was just as mixed up as the rest of my life has been. When the application asked for my "first choice" major, I answered "mathematics." My second-choice major was listed as "theatre." Unsurprisingly, I got my first choice, although I ended up changing majors from math to theatre a mere three months into my college career. Two years into that program, I switched my concentration from "performance" to "technical" (although my course load was so mixed up by this point that I ended up graduating with a "generalist" degree -- a "Bachelor of Science in Theatre Generalism", actually). A decade later, I find myself two years into a psychology program, but increasingly drawn to (and intimidated by) biology.

Judy Skatssoon (6/4/2007), writing for news.com.au, says that the University of Warwick has "dealt heterosexual women a final indignity." Skatssoon is referring to research by Michael Tlauka that found differences in mental rotation ability, with straight men scoring the highest while straight women scored the lowest. However, although the news articles attribute this work to Tlauka, the paper published in April's Archives of Sexual Behavior was published by Maylor et al (2007).

Tlauka et al (2005) tested men and women with paper and computer maps in a virtual store, and found that men required less time and made fewer mistakes than their female counterparts. Martin et al's 2007 review of the effect of testosterone and estrogen finds that gender differences in spatial ability are "large and robust."

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Mental rotation tasks (MRT) are probably one of my favorite topics because they really do seem to consistently break down by gender. The fact that Maylor et al found that ability appeared to vary by sexuality (determined by self-identification, on an internet survey) continues to tie sexuality and gender together in a way that I politically deny and inwardly fear may be true. Research that classifies by sexuality often seems to suggest that lesbians are more "manly" and gay men more "womanly" than their straight counterparts. I don't know what to make of it, but it feels to me as if they are asking the wrong questions.

Gender roles in heterosexual dating have been extensively studied. For example, Karl Grammer (1990) suggests that males use body language to signal dominance, whereas women's body language indicates both submission and "bodily self-presentation." Grammer (2000) points out ten years later that women seem to be in control of opposite-sex interactions, despite this role-play of submission.

Studies of gender roles in same-sex dating are rarer. Klinkenberg and Rose (1994) studied "dating scripts" for lesbians vs. gays, and found that "talk/laugh/joke" was an item mentioned by almost all participants, with no gender differences. However, the men's scripts mentioned only "self-initiated actions", whereas the several of the women's scripts mentioned "partner-initiated actions (e.g. 'partner picked me up')." Sergios and Cody (1985) found that "social assertiveness" had no effect on how likely a gay man was to request a subsequent date; only "physical attractiveness" influenced how much the subject "liked" their partner in this experiment.

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It is tempting to use gay and lesbian experiences to confirm stereotypes about gendered behavior in dating. This weekend a friend told me about the concept of "lesbian sheep": "if you are a female sheep, what you do to solicit sex is stand still". This has led to "lesbian sheep" being a term to refer to any potentially sexual relationship where both parties wait for the other to act. This term is overwhelmingly used for female-female relationships, but not exclusively so. In my personal (and therefore meaningless) experience, I'd like to say that not all men know how to make the first move either (and I don't just mean me).

Jiang et al (2006) tested the effect of "invisible" erotic pictures on the attention of gay/bisexual and heterosexual males and females. After comparing attraction/repulsion to male or female erotic stumuli, Jiang et al found that while gay men responded like heterosexual women to the suppressed images, gay/bisexual women responded in between this group and the heterosexual men. Lykins et al (2006) found that both men and women focused less on faces and more on bodies in response to normally presented erotic (vs. non-erotic) stimuli, and the results suggested that women's attentional patterns may be more affected than men's by the erotica context. However, Lykins et al point out that because their study showed different pictures to the male and female groups (heterosexually delineated) comparison between groups is not valid.

Neither of these studies report the menstrual cycle stage of female participants, which may be an issue. Gizewski et al (2006) studied fMRI results of 25 women during mid-luteal phase (post ovulation) and during menses. Self-reported arousal in women was similar to men's at the mid-luteal test, but significantly lower at menses. Some activation differences between mid-luteal and menstrual phases were reported (e.g. reduced in the left thalamus at menses). However, between-sex differences were more robust than menstrual phase differences.

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One big concern I have with studies using "erotic stimuli" is the source of the images. Lykins et al wrote that they got their images of females from Playboy's website, and images of males from Falcon Studio's website. Both of these websites design their erotic content for men. Unfortunately, I can't think of any source for erotic images of men by women that would match Playboy on production values. Obviously, more women-driven erotica needs to be produced, in the name of science!

As early as John Corso (1959), it has been documented that women tend to have more sensitive hearing than men, and have less variability in hearing sensitivity than men do. McFadden (1998) notes that not only are women more sensitive to noise, but that they also have stronger evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs) (sounds produced by the inner ear, and a measure of ear health). McFadden suggests that the differences may be due to hormonal effects, based on twin studies (pre-natally) and menstrual cycle studies (post-natally).

Here's where McFadden gets very interesting. McFadden and Pasanen (1998) examined differences EAOEs between heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals (both male and female). McFadden found that homosexual and bisexual women's EAOEs fell in between heterosexual women's and heterosexual men's. Bisexual and homosexual men did not show any significant difference from heterosexual men. McFadden feels that this suggests hormonal -- and possibly structural brain -- differences between homosexual and heterosexual women.

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Well, I obviously can't offer any personal experience on this one. I didn't even know you could make your ears make noise, so I haven't gone around clicking into people's ears. I believe that
McFadden found the results he reported, but his extrapolation seems a little enthusiastic. I was particularly interested in this study because it's the first one I've seen using women as the comparison group in a heterosexual/homosexual group. I have read so many arguments suggesting that women's sexuality is largely socially based (e.g. Roy Baumeister's 2000 review) that these findings struck me as unusual.

Abbey and Melby (1986) found that males perceived more sexual intent than females in both ambiguous and nonambiguous nonverbal situations. Levesque et al (2006) also found that men attributed more sexual interest after brief interaction than women, but that women tended to generalize attraction to positive personality characteristics more than men. Levesque et al also found that masculine women tended to sexualize opposite-sex interactions more than feminine women, but there were no differences between "masculine" and "feminine" men (rated using the BSRI).

Levesque et al did not provide the ages or recruitment methods of their participants, nor was I able to find this information about Abbey and Melby's experiments, although later studies by Abbey (e.g. 1987, 1995) use college student samples. Also, no studies seem to have been done to assess the level of sexual intent inferred by gay men and lesbians in same or opposite sex pairings.

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In my experience, men assume no one is hitting on them, and women assume everyone is hitting on them. Obviously, this is an oversimplification. I've known and dated guys who were supremely arrogant and women who were painfully self-conscious. However, I still found that the arrogance in men tended to translate to thinking they would get a positive response to flirtation, and the self-deprecating women assumed that the flirtation was non-serious, or sexual only. It's a self-fulfilling observation in my case. I tend to assume that no one is flirting with me because they see me as male, and wonder if they're seeing me as something else if they make their intentions known.

Burnham et al (2003) found that men in current committed relationships (whether married or unmarried) had 21% lower saliva testosterone levels than single men. Gray et al (2004) confirmed these results, and found that this effect was more pronounced in afternoon and evening samples of testosterone levels than in morning samples. However, it is not clear whether partnering causes lower T levels, or whether lower T levels increase the chance of partnering.

Van Anders and Watson (2006) found that single people with lower testosterone levels in Phase 1 of their study were more likely than high-testosterone subjects to be partnered at follow-up (6+ months later). Interestingly, van Anders and Watson also looked at testosterone levels in women, and took sexuality into account. They found that lower testosterone levels were associated with partnered status in heterosexual men, and non-heterosexual women, but not with heterosexual women or non-heterosexual men.

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I've been lucky enough to be in one stable, committed relationship since before I began injecting testosterone. This makes me fairly rare among the transmen I know. Transition is necessarily a stressful, self-absorbed period in a person's life, and this tends to make maintaining a relationship difficult. The suddenness of the hormonal changes (in the case of ftms, the simultaneous onset of menopause and second puberty) can make the most trivial interactions difficult, as well. Therefore, I doubt the effect of hormone administration on the relationships of transsexuals is a good comparison model for hormone levels in the general population.