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.
Highlights
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
Heterosexual and homosexual men showed larger mean differences in their arousal to male and female stimuli compared with men who have intermediate Kinsey scores. This pattern is consistent with the possibility that intermediate Kinsey scores are associated with relatively bisexual arousal patterns, it is consistent with an alternative explanation
Which Kinsey score was associated with the greatest degree of bisexual arousal? To answer this question, we focused on the standardized genital and self-report arousal composites, which correlated r(470) = 0.507, 95% CI (0.437, 0.572), P < 0.0001
Summary
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. (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. Robust results showed that bisexualidentified 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. Male sexual orientation is expressed on a continuum rather than dichotomously
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