Severi Luoto vs. Lisa Diamond


Previously, I posted my thoughts on Luoto et al. (2019)'s "A Life History Approach to the Female Sexual Orientation Spectrum". It was a mistake for me to have done so, as I neglected to read "Response to Commentaries: Life History Evolution, Causal Mechanisms, and Female Sexual Orientation" (2019), or "Female Bisexuality" (2022). 

"A Life History Approach to the Female Sexual Orientation Spectrum" generated some controversy in the field of sex research, generating several Commentaries that are addressed in "Response to Commentaries" (2019). One of these Commentaries was authored by Lisa Diamond & Jenna Alley, titled "Was It Good For Her? An Alternative Perspective on Life History Theory, Female Same-Sex Sexuality, and Pleasure". Severi Luoto and Lisa Diamond represent opposing perspectives on female sexual orientation, where the former emphasizes the influence of prenatal hormones while the latter emphasizes sociocultural factors.

In their critique, Diamond & Alley convincingly argues that the Target Article didn't give enough attention to "issues of early-life experience" or "the woefully understudied topic of pleasure". They comment: "We find it curious that although a key tenet of LHT is the role of early-life experiences in shaping the development of fast versus slow LH strategies, Luoto et al. (2018) devote almost no attention to variability in early-life experiences among subsets of nonheterosexual women." Much of their Commentary is devoted to the importance of sexual pleasure to female sexuality, because of how pleasure is "decoupled" from reproduction for the female sex.

Diamond & Alley are less persuasive in their stance on the butch and femme phenotypes: "We are not convinced by Luoto et al. (2018) that these subtypes represent "natural types" especially in light of the weak empirical basis for their claims and their surprisingly scant attention to the well-documented historical and cultural bases—and hence social malleability—of these categories." Instead of scientists, Diamond & Alley cite several articles written by feminists. They make no attempt to engage with the empirical evidence supplied by Luoto et al., dismissing it for unspecified reasons as "weak" and "relatively limited". 

The response from Luoto et al. (2019):

"Diamond and Alley (2019) argued that there is weak empirical evidence to support our thesis about the importance of butch/femme categories. This argument is astonishing. We provided broad evidence showing physiological, psychological, and behavioral differences between butch and femme women (see sections “Categories of Nonheterosexual Women” and “Psychological Characteristics of Nonheterosexual Women,” as well as Table 2 in Luoto et al., 2019). It appears that the main thrust of Diamond and Alley’s criticism is concerned with butch/femme as identity categories. However, this misses the important point that we made in the Target Article: that butch/femme may constitute important biological categories. These are two different things and may lead those who unscientifically (Bailey, 2019) view humans as performers of socially constructed gendered identities to misconstrue and become opposed to some of the main arguments made in the Target Article."

Lisa Diamond and Severi Luoto's perspectives are both valuable, and it is clear from their exchange that social environment and prenatal hormones contribute to the development of female sexual orientation. Those interested in this subject ought not repeat my mistake. Rather than Luoto et. al's earlier articles, it is best to read "Female Bisexuality" (2022). 

Related Blog Posts

References

Bailey, J.M. How to Ruin Sex Research. Arch Sex Behav 48, 1007–1011 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1420-y

Diamond, L.M., Alley, J. Was It Good for Her? An Alternative Perspective on Life History Theory, Female Same-Sex Sexuality, and Pleasure. Arch Sex Behav 48, 1315–1320 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1313-5

Luoto, S., Krams, I. & Rantala, M.J. A Life History Approach to the Female Sexual Orientation Spectrum: Evolution, Development, Causal Mechanisms, and Health. Arch Sex Behav 48, 1273–1308 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1261-0

Luoto, S. Response to Commentaries: Life History Genetics, Fluid Intelligence, and Extended Phenotypes. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 5, 112–115 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-019-0109-8

Luoto S, Rantala MJ. Female Bisexuality. In: Shackelford TK, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology. Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology. Cambridge University Press; 2022:94-132.

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