I am continually amazed by the things that come out of the mouths/keyboards of the Dartmouth population, particularly when comments are made in an anonymous forum. Here's one gem from this week's survey on the topic of homosexuality: "Homosexuality is a blight on this earth, and the fact that America and more liberal nations such as France and Canada legitimize it as a viable lifestyle shows the depravity of society for the sake of diversity and acceptance. The Dartmouth Mirror, by constantly running these kinds of surveys, demonstrates its ubiquitous status as an unimaginative sex-rag staffed by low-quality hacks." My advice to this dude would be to move out of our silly liberal nation to somewhere where they're less into personal liberties and freedom of speech. I hear homosexuality is punishable by execution in Afghanistan. Bon Voyage!
Another "unimaginative sex-rag" recently ran an article describing innate differences in the development of sexuality in males and females. ("Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes." The New York Times, April 10, 2007.) The article posits that women show greater flexibility with respect to sexual arousal than men, citing experimental evidence where subjects were shown photographs of desirable men or women. Straight men were aroused by images of women, and gay men by images of men. However female subjects, regardless of whether they described themselves as straight or gay, were aroused by images of both sexes. According to Dr. J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, "[Female] sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate... I'm not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men."
Marc Breedlove, a Michigan State University neuroscientist also cited in the article, goes on to clarify that the current consensus in scholarship seems to be that this divergence of the sexes is due to pre-natal factors. "The antecedents of sexual orientation in males are happening early in life, probably before birth, whereas for females, some are probably born to become gay, but clearly some get there quite late in life," he says.
The results of this week's survey seem to jive with these scientists' hypotheses. Even though only two and six percent of females reported being homosexual or bisexual respectively, nearly a quarter of female respondents said that they were "somewhat aroused" by sexual imagery featuring female homosexuality. In contrast, a total of 11 percent of male respondents identified as either homosexual or bisexual, but only four percent of male respondents reported being "somewhat aroused" by sexual imagery featuring male homosexuality.
One female commentator provides a culturally based explanation for the relative acceptance of homosexual behavior in women as compared to males: "From a young age, girls receive the impression that girl-on-girl action is hot, and for that reason many girls who are not lesbian or bisexual will become aroused by a lesbian situation, or resort to that activity only (and often) when drunk."
The relatively high incidences of same-sex sexual encounters (35 percent of females and 19 percent of males) seem to me to indicate that sexuality is less black and white than its popular dichotomous conception. (Though one commentator would certainly disagree, stating "If [you're a man and] you've hooked up with a dude, you're gay. There's no gray area.")
The Kinsey rating scale of sexuality, which is provided in the statistics section following this article seems a more accurate model by which to measure sexuality than simply gay vs. straight. However, as one commentator points out, the model is not without its flaws.
"While I appreciate the progressiveness of the Kinsey Scale, it necessarily places sexuality on a spectrum. Having a strong attraction to one sex does not necessarily mean having less of an attraction to the other sex. I am strongly attracted to the same sex, but also very attracted to the opposite sex. None of the options on the scale consider that you can be strongly attracted to both sexes or not attracted to either sex," he says.