Do "straight" women exist?

[GlennB]

Maybe some people don't - I'm no expert, but the ones who scream the loudest that they're all straight are so often the ones caught with rent boys.

Possibly because some people have some reason to scream that they're straight, like a perceived need to maintain a reputation? Single male politicians with no apparent hetero sexual history, and the like?

Others (like me) have decades of devoted heterosexuality as a history and will not be found in a secretive relationship with another bloke, simply because we feel no attraction to men whatsoever.

Not everybody claiming innocence is secretly guilty, TA, and the fact that the most guilty scream loudest doesn't infect all the innocent somehow.

Actually, this reminds me of your "Usain Bolt must be doping because he's so good" argument over in Sport

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... For example, we know that women under-report sexual activity. How much is always a question, but there are ways to figure that out (that's how we know it's under-reported). So any data you get from self-reporting on the part of females can be treated as the lowest theoretical limit; the reality is certainly higher.

What? Not women I know. Maybe you are confusing not bragging about one's conquests with under-reporting.

[side note] I was shocked in my teens to hear a guy who I'd only dated had told everyone he scored. I didn't know guys actually did that. [/sidetrack]

... Measuring physiological signs of arousal gets around that, at the expense of over-estimating (depending on the signs you pick). So you can use the two to bracket the actual value (with some serious caveats, of course).

IF you have evidence said physiological signs of arousal are valid measurements of arousal.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... Maybe some people don't - I'm no expert, but the ones who scream the loudest that they're all straight are so often the ones caught with rent boys.

Yes but the other variables there are generally religious guilt and political motivation.

I wouldn't be the least bit embarrassed to be attracted to women. But I'm not. Just like Tik, other women simply don't turn me on.

 

[luchog]

Yeah because I have such a reputation in this forum of not looking at the facts.

On certainly issues, definitely.

And of exaggerating or distorting the positions of opponents to strawman levels. Like insisting earlier in the thread that the creators of this study were just trying to insist that all women were bisexual out of some twisted male fantasy; rather than just addressing the flaws in the study, which no one else seems to have disputed.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I have no clue what you are talking about luchog, are you objecting to my semantics?

This is the opening paragraph of the OP link:

When it comes to what turns them on, women are either bisexual or gay, but rarely straight, according to a new study by the University of Essex.

It's not a credible assertion.

 

[Meadmaker]

I have no clue what you are talking about luchog, are you objecting to my semantics?

This is the opening paragraph of the OP link:
It's not a credible assertion.

The issue is that there are two different "articles" being confused.

There is a real research paper, published in a scientific journal, and there's the summary article linked in the OP.

The real research paper doesn't have anything to do with being gay, straight, or bisexual. That was an interpretation on the part of the summary authors, and it was an incorrect interpretation.

 

[The Shrike]

What of cultures like the Sambia? If you ain't drinking from a man, you ain't no man.

Pederasty has been at various times a socially acceptable practice in different cultures the world over. It's very difficult for a heterosexual man, having been raised in a 20th/21st Century Western culture, to imagine being raised in a culture in which it is perfectly normal - or in fact, demanded - to engage in behaviors we would define as homosexual.

Thus, while I have no sexual attraction to men, I can envision some kind of attraction spectrum, strongly influenced by cultural norms, that under different circumstances would render me otherwise. When in doubt, check out bonobos - our very close relatives live in a sexual free-for-all, and they seem to be quite happy about it.

 

[caveman1917]

Thus, while I have no sexual attraction to men, I can envision some kind of attraction spectrum, strongly influenced by cultural norms, that under different circumstances would render me otherwise. When in doubt, check out bonobos - our very close relatives live in a sexual free-for-all, and they seem to be quite happy about it.

Gender itself is a social construct, no wonder that "heterosexuality", "homosexuality", "bisexuality" etc are as well.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The issue is that there are two different "articles" being confused.

There is a real research paper, published in a scientific journal, and there's the summary article linked in the OP.

The real research paper doesn't have anything to do with being gay, straight, or bisexual. That was an interpretation on the part of the summary authors, and it was an incorrect interpretation.

No, the issue is I said the study was bunk (regardless of any homosexual implications) and then documented how their methodology did not support the conclusion the researchers claimed.

Sheesh, didn't anyone question the methodology?
And this method of measuring sexual attraction/arousal couldn't possibly have false positive results?
You know, that logical fallacy: people sexually aroused do X
does not mean all people doing X are sexually aroused.
Not buying it.

People took my flippant remarks too seriously about the researchers' confirmation bias that all women like a little bit of girl on girl sex:

The same way the people who designed the study want girl on girl sex to be the norm.

I was accused of not looking at the study.

Any evidence to support your slandering of the scientists responsible?
Shhhh, actually reading the study is cheating. Just watch the responses.

Evidence?

Then I was chastised for not knowing there was free access somewhere.

If you haven't read the article, you don't know what the conclusion is.
No, the article is not behind a pay wall. It is freely available on Researchgate.net and linked to directly from Google Scholar.
http://www.researchgate.net/profile...y_of_Women/links/5631288c08ae13bc6c356050.pdf

...Stop trying to drag facts into this. They just get in the way of a perfectly good agenda.

And then I was simply insulted:

On certainly issues, definitely.
And of exaggerating or distorting the positions of opponents to strawman levels. Like insisting earlier in the thread that the creators of this study were just trying to insist that all women were bisexual out of some twisted male fantasy; rather than just addressing the flaws in the study, which no one else seems to have disputed.

But the bottom line, I was right from the time I read the news report, to the time I looked at the abstract to the time I did look at the actual study.

From the paper:
So, is that a reliable measure of arousal? I've already shown that the pupil response is not an accepted valid measure of sexual arousal in women.
From Wiki:
Here's the link to the validity of the tool: Agreement of Self-Reported and Genital Measures of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women: A Meta-Analysis
Look people, it was a crappy study. Isn't an evaluation of methodology something we should all be looking at before repeating the findings as if the results were actually meaningful? These researchers used two less than reliable measures. That's called bad research!

The researchers failed science 101: make sure your objective measure is a valid measure of what you are claiming it measures.

 

[catsmate]

Given the similarity of the methodology to that used for sexual offender testing, I'm on the fence as to its accuracy; particularly as it does appear to be properly controlled, with at least some of the variables taken into account. I think a great deal more testing would be needed, and should include more extensive physiological response testing. However, this is not the first study to find female sexuality to be more fluid than male sexuality. Still not enough hard data to make any kind of conclusive determination, though.

Finally, a reasoned answer! Yes the methodology is dubious, and the accuracy of the arousal model isn't guaranteed to be accurate but it's an interesting start.

I skimmed the study. It definitely did not say everything the article claimed it did. More crappy reporting going on here. The study simply found that female sexuality, while encompassing the extremes of pure hetero/homosexuality, had a great deal more flexibility, and a lot less of the extremes, than popular belief would hold. Nothing entirely controversial there, since its no the first study to find that.

I do have some issues with the methodology, particularly the reliance on a fairly limited physiological measurement. Better data is needed before we can draw any useful conclusions.

Absolutely, lots of hype but some interesting ideas that justify further research.

Because simply asking a woman if she is straight, bi or gay doesn't give you the answer you seek?

Because it doesn't accurately reflect reality.
Seriously, you're advocating relying purely on anecdotal surveys?

Strictly speaking, science is observational. This means (I think) that for a scientific study of sexuality the scientist has to be in the bedroom to observe what is actually going on. Animal scientists are actually observing the sex before documenting it.

You know you could read the research and the methodology used.

And just what is being defined as 'arousal'? Has it been shown to be specific to sexual arousal? Did they put little sensors on women's clits?

The preferred method, for decades, is to measure vaginal blood flow. It's considered generally accurate (when baselined properly) and not as subjective as asking the testees.

 

[catsmate]

I have no clue what you are talking about luchog, are you objecting to my semantics?

This is the opening paragraph of the OP link:
It's not a credible assertion.

You could actually read the paper.... I did link to it.
But maybe that'd contradict your opinions.

 

[ponderingturtle]

And just what is being defined as 'arousal'? Has it been shown to be specific to sexual arousal? Did they put little sensors on women's clits?

That was my understanding. Well I think into the vaginal canal to look at blood flow but on the genitals certainly.

 

[catsmate]

That was my understanding. Well I think into the vaginal canal to look at blood flow but on the genitals certainly.

Eye response is preferred as it's less intrusive but the clitoral photoplethysmograph is considered the most accurate method. Interestingly some of the same researchers as the current paper (Gerritsen and van der Made) were involved in the development of such techniques.
Which I'm sure SG will jump on to claim it doens't work.

 

[Belz...]

I'm basing the opinion on research and observation.

No you're not. You're assuming that the spectrum of sexual orientation stops at some arbitrary point.

 

[3point14]

Most titillating thread ever. Well, on this board.

Unfortunately, wrecked by Ginger pointing out the study is deeply flawed.

 

[luchog]

This is the opening paragraph of the OP link:
It's not a credible assertion.

Really, you don't say? Hrm... I seem to recall someone else saying that... oh yeah, it was ME. You're just repeating what I said. Since you appear to have missed it the last few times, I'll say it again: The statements made in the article are not supported by the study it references. It's a matter of bad reporting.

You can take the article writers to task for that, no problem. But you were attacking the study itself for something it did not, in fact, say; only for what a lazy and sensationalist article writer claimed it said. Who else does that? Hrm...

 

[The Atheist]

No you're not. You're assuming that the spectrum of sexual orientation stops at some arbitrary point.

Nope.

Haven't said it and don't believe it. Humans can be all sorts of things, even Cliff Richard.

 

[Ziggurat]

Humans can be all sorts of things

... except completely heterosexual.

 

[Oystein]

Because simply asking a woman if she is straight, bi or gay doesn't give you the answer you seek?

This would assume reliable self-awareness.

Some people just know and will self-report that they are really intelligent, empathic and surely not xenophobic. I mean who'd know better than themselves?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You know you could read the research and the methodology used.

You know you could read my posts. You know you could read the friggin citations I posted.

The preferred method, for decades, is to measure vaginal blood flow. It's considered generally accurate (when baselined properly) and not as subjective as asking the testees.

Preferred method for decades? That isn't saying much about the quality of research in this field when they use discredited methodology.

Eye response is preferred as it's less intrusive but the clitoral photoplethysmograph is considered the most accurate method. Interestingly some of the same researchers as the current paper (Gerritsen and van der Made) were involved in the development of such techniques.
Which I'm sure SG will jump on to claim it doens't work.

Yes, because SG has posted citations documenting the fact those techniques do not work.

Here are my links again. Note, I did read the paper. Note, I did address the methodology, with citations. Note that I posted evidence refuting the reliability of both the pupil response and the vaginal blood flow to measure arousal in women.

Here's the links again to the validity of the tools:

Eyes Reveal Sexual Orientation in men but not in women.

In women, things are more complex, Savin-Williams said. Gay women show more pupil dilation to images of other women, similar to the pattern seen in straight men. But straight women dilate basically equally in response to erotic images of both sexes, despite reporting feelings of arousal for men and not women.

Agreement of Self-Reported and Genital Measures of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women: A Meta-Analysis

We identified 132 peer- or academically-reviewed laboratory studies published between 1969 and 2007 reporting a correlation between self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal, with total sample sizes of 2,505 women and 1,918 men. There was a statistically significant gender difference in the agreement between self-reported and genital measures, with men (r = .66) showing a greater degree of agreement than women (r = .26).

Further:

A gender difference in concordance has implications for the design and interpretation of future research on sexual response. First, sexual response research on women cannot exchange self-report or genital measures of sexual arousal, particularly when the latter is measured using photoplethysmography, because one may find very different associations depending on which aspect of sexual response is assessed.....

In contrast, a woman’s genital responding might reveal little about her sexual interests. If a woman showed a genital response to depictions of children, it might indicate that she was sexually interested in children, but it might also reflect the nonspecificity of female genital responding observed by Chivers and her colleagues with respect to gender and, to a lesser extent, species (Chivers et al., 2004, 2007; Chivers & Bailey, 2005; Suschinsky et al., 2009). Thus, genital assessments of women for forensic purposes—such as the assessment of female sex offenders—may not be clinically informative.

And if that isn't enough, here's a final comment:

We have focused on explanations for low female concordance in our discussion of these results, but one might also wonder why male concordance is so high. From this perspective, the typically low concordance observed among women is the norm,

Ie, not reliable in women.

You all owe me an apology for accusing me of not reading the study and not being objective about the methodology. Not that I expect to get one, or even an honest look at the problems with the methodology in this study.