Patterns of Genital Sexual Arousal in Transgender Men

 

Genital responses to men or women in relation to self-reported sexual attraction in (a) cisgender men (n = 145), (b) transgender men (n = 25), and (c) cisgender women (n = 178). On the x-axis, lower scores indicate more self-reported attraction toward women, 3 indicates an equal bisexual attraction, and higher scores indicate more attraction toward men. On the y-axis, negative scores indicate more genital sexual arousal toward women (standardized within participants), 0 indicates equal arousal, and positive scores indicate more arousal toward men. Each dot represents a participant. The thin solid lines in (b) connect data of repeatedly measured participants. In all graphs, the thick solid lines represent regression estimates, and the dashed lines above and below them represent 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The statistics represent main effects of sexual attraction on genital sexual arousal to men or women. (Raines et al., 2021)

MTFs have been shown to display male-typical sexual arousal patterns, but what about FTMs? Raines et al. (2021) found male-shifted patterns in a small sample of FTMs with a wide range of sexual orientations. 5 FTMs were exclusively or near exclusively gynephilic, 4 FTMs were exclusively or near exclusively androphilic, and 16 FTMs ranged from Kinsey 2-4. Most of the participants were on testosterone treatment: "In the present sample, 20 participants used testosterone supplements, whereas five did not. We could not detect reliable differences in effect depending on the use of testosterone (results not discussed above), but because the latter group was so small, this null finding may not be reliable."

Raines et al. (2021) interpreted their findings like so: "The present findings suggest the existence of both male-typical and female-typical sexual-arousal patterns in transgender men because they showed some gender-specific sexual arousal, similar to cisgender men, but also showed bisexual arousal, similar to cisgender women." Missing from this interpretation is sexual orientation differences in cisgender women. Although women show bisexual arousal, gynephilic women show some gender-specific arousal, making their patterns in between male-typical and female-typical responses (Bailey, 2009) (Bailey et al., 2016) (Chivers, 2017). Given the small sample size, it is unclear whether gynephilic FTMs truly differ from gynephilic women. If they are truly more similar to gynephilic men, it is also unclear whether this is induced by exogenous testosterone or not.

A most striking finding is the higher gender-specificity in androphilic FTMs, which differs from the nonspecific responses of androphilic women. This raises the question of whether androphilic FTMs are male-shifted in terms of their biology, although it is unclear whether the finding was due to small sample size or the effects of testosterone.

Raines et al. (2021) also report a key finding with respect to sexual fluidity: "one of the repeatedly measured transgender men had a change in self-reported sexual attraction (from Kinsey 1 to 5), and this was reflected in a change in arousal." This confirms that physiological sexual arousal and self-reported sexual attraction are both subject to change, at least in the female sex. Rather than a stable trait, female sexual orientation might be better modeled as a dynamical system.

Unfortunately, Raines et al. (2021) declined to report the size of the change in genital arousal. The change in self-reported sexual attraction was large, shifting from near exclusively gynephilic to mostly androphilic. Did the change in genital arousal also shift from near exclusively gynephilic to mostly androphilic? This is important, as gynephilic females are reported to be less sexually fluid than ambiphilic females. If this individual's genital arousal was originally near exclusively gynephilic, a follow-up question would be to investigate whether he was 'stable' in his gynephilia or 'fluid', as there are differences between 'stable lesbians' and 'fluid lesbians'. The other possibility is that the shift in genital arousal was much smaller, possibly from one degree of ambiphilia to another degree of ambiphilia. This would be a less interesting finding, as the sexual fluidity of ambiphilic females is already well-documented.

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References

Bailey, J. M. (2009). What is sexual orientation and do women have one?. In Contemporary perspectives on lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities (pp. 43-63). New York, NY: Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09556-1_3

Bailey, J. M., Vasey, P. L., Diamond, L. M., Breedlove, S. M., Vilain, E., & Epprecht, M. (2016). Sexual Orientation, Controversy, and Science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(2), 45-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100616637616 (Original work published 2016)

Chivers, M. L. (2017). The specificity of women’s sexual response and its relationship with sexual orientations: A review and ten hypotheses. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(5), 1161-1179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0897-x

Raines, J., Holmes, L., Watts-Overall, T. M., Slettevold, E., Gruia, D. C., Orbell, S., & Rieger, G. (2021). Patterns of genital sexual arousal in transgender men. Psychological Science, 32(4), 485-495. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620971654 

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