What is Sexual Orientation?

In his most recent Substack essay, Michael Bailey argues that "men’s sexual orientations are equivalent to their sexual arousal pattern" but "women’s sexual orientations are not", noting that "the mechanisms that guide women’s sexual preferences and choices remain uncertain". Indeed, Bailey (2009) interrogated whether women have a sexual orientation, described as "a mechanism, analogous to a compass, that directs our sexuality". "What is Sexual Orientation and Do Women Have One?" raises the possibility that women do not have this mechanism, explaining their "indifferent" sexual arousal patterns. The key exception is lesbians, who are described as having "a much-attenuated version of the male pattern".

Meredith Chivers (2017) reviewed the research on women's sexual arousal patterns, agreeing with Bailey that androphilic women are mostly nonspecific. However, she also identified conditions where androphilic women display gender-specific patterns, including:  

  • Sex-Typed Cues: Men's faces (Imhoff et al., 2010)(Nummenmaa et al., 2012)(Hahn et al., 2015), male torsos and prepotent male genitalia (Ponseti et al., 2006)(Nummenmaa et al., 2012)(Timmers et al., 2013)(Spape et al., 2014)
  • Measurements of Genital Arousal: Vaginal lubrication (Sawatsky et al., 2018), and smooth regression splines of vaginal photoplethysmograph data (Pulverman et al., 2015)(but see my Commentary)
Gender-specific patterns have also been found in hypothalamic activation in response to odorous stimuli (Savic et al., 2001)(Savic et al., 2005)(Berglund et al., 2006), and mildly gender-specific activations of brain regions associated with sexual activity have also been reported (Sylva et al., 2013). 

Rather than lacking sexual orientation, Chivers (2017) suggests that women could have sexual orientation alongside nonspecific responses to sexual stimuli. Unlike in men, women's sexual orientation might only be detectable when stimuli are stripped of contextual elements, such as viewing prepotent genitalia or naked torsos. Otherwise, "sexual responses to gender cues may be superseded by contextual features" (Chivers, 2017). 

In turn, Lisa Diamond (2008) proposes that women's sexual responses are composed of two different features: proceptivity and arousability. Where proceptivity could be gender-specific, arousability could be nonspecific. Rather than a stable trait, she proposes that sexuality is better modeled as a changing pattern or dynamical system (Diamond, 2023)(Diamond et al., 2020)(Diamond, 2007). 

Model of sexual affective development
Safron & Hoffman (2017)

Building off of Chivers (2017), Safron & Hoffman (2017) propose that the development of sexual orientation can conceptualized through models of affective learning. Individuals might be born with innate biases, which can be reinforced or diverted through learning. This model describes feedback loops, where preferences are learned through affective experiences, but those preferences influence the future experiences an individual is likely to have. Sexual orientation only crystallizes after a critical mass of learning through sensitive periods of development is achieved. 

Hormones might exert some influence over this development. In animals, male-typical hormone levels are needed at all critical stages of development (i.e., prenatal, neonatal, pubertal) in order to completely masculinize behavior (Burke et al., 2023). These models could explain the interplay between genetics, hormones, and learning in the development of sexual orientation. 

Further Reading

Related Blog Posts

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

Berglund, H., Lindström, P., & Savic, I. (2006). Brain response to putative pheromones in lesbian women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(21), 8269-8274.

Burke, F. F., Hinks, M., Salia, S., Sparkes, K. M., & Swift-Gallant, A. (2023). Using animal models to study the interplay between the Biodevelopmental Pathways underlying human sexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(7), 2979-2984.

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

Diamond, L. M. (2007). A dynamical systems approach to the development and expression of female same-sex sexuality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(2), 142-161.

Diamond, L. M. (2008). The evolution of plasticity in female-female desire. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 18(4), 245-274. 

Diamond, L. M. (2023). What Develops in the Biodevelopment of Sexual Orientation?. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(7), 2985-2991.

Diamond, L. M., Alley, J., Dickenson, J., & Blair, K. L. (2020). Who counts as sexually fluid? Comparing four different types of sexual fluidity in women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(7), 2389-2403.

Imhoff, R., Schmidt, A. F., Nordsiek, U., Luzar, C., Young, A. W., & Banse, R. (2010). Viewing time effects revisited: Prolonged response latencies for sexually attractive targets under restricted task conditions. Archives of sexual behavior, 39(6), 1275-1288.

Nummenmaa, L., Hietanen, J. K., Santtila, P., & Hyönä, J. (2012). Gender and visibility of sexual cues influence eye movements while viewing faces and bodies. Archives of sexual behavior, 41(6), 1439-1451.

Pulverman, C. S., Hixon, J. G., & Meston, C. M. (2015). Uncovering category specificity of genital sexual arousal in women: The critical role of analytic technique. Psychophysiology, 52(10), 1396-1408.

Safron, A., & Hoffmann, H. (2017). What does sexual responsiveness to one’s nonpreferred sex mean?. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(5), 1199-1202.

Savic, I., Berglund, H., Gulyas, B., & Roland, P. (2001). Smelling of odorous sex hormone-like compounds causes sex-differentiated hypothalamic activations in humans. Neuron, 31(4), 661-668.

Savic, I., Berglund, H., & Lindström, P. (2005). Brain response to putative pheromones in homosexual men. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(20), 7356-7361.

Sawatsky, M. L., Dawson, S. J., & Lalumiere, M. L. (2018). Genital lubrication: A cue-specific sexual response?. Biological Psychology, 134, 103-113.

Spape, J., Timmers, A. D., Yoon, S., Ponseti, J., & Chivers, M. L. (2014). Gender-specific genital and subjective sexual arousal to prepotent sexual features in heterosexual women and men. Biological Psychology, 102, 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.07.008.

Sylva, D., Safron, A., Rosenthal, A. M., Reber, P. J., Parrish, T. B., & Bailey, J. M. (2013). Neural correlates of sexual arousal in heterosexual and homosexual women and men. Hormones and Behavior, 64(4), 673-684.

Timmers, A.D., Hildebrand,L., & Chivers, M.L. (2013, August). Category specificity and prepotent sexual cues. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Chicago, IL.

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