Do Women Have a Sexuality?
Very interesting article in the latest New York magazine--The Science of Gaydar. A particular passage caught my interest. I'm pasting the entire thing below because it's really worth reading:
In many other studies, though, lesbians have appeared less unique than gay men, leading some people to wonder if their sexual orientation is innate. Michael Bailey—who, as a heterosexual researcher, is a minority in this field—even doubts the existence of female sexual orientation, if by orientation we mean a fundamental drive that defies our conscious choices. He bases this provocative gambit on a sexual-arousal study he and his students conducted. When shown pornographic videos, men have an undeniable response either to gay or straight images but not both, according to sensitive gauges attached to their genitals—it’s that binary. Female sexual response is more democratic, opaque, and unpredictable: Arousal itself is harder to track, and there is evidence that it defies easy categorization. “I don’t yet understand female partner choices very well, and neither does anyone else,” Bailey wrote me in an e-mail. “What I do think it’s time to do is admit that female sexuality looks in some ways very different from male sexuality, and that there is no clear analog in women of men’s directed sexual-arousal pattern, which I think is their sexual orientation. I am not sure that women don’t have a sexual orientation, but it is certainly unclear that they do.”
He contends that what they have instead is sexual preference—they might prefer sex with women, but something in their brains can still sizzle at the thought of men. Many feminist scholars agree with this assessment, and consider sexuality more of a fluid than an either-or proposition, but some don’t. “I think women do have orientations, but they don’t circumscribe the range of desires that women can experience to the same degree as men,” says Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, who is writing a book on the subject. “For women, there’s more wiggle room. You can think of orientation as defining a range of possible responses, and for women, it’s much broader.”
Bailey stops short of saying that lesbianism is a myth (although he has notoriously declared that true male bisexuality doesn’t exist and dismissed many transgender people as peculiar sexual fetishists, drawing lasting enmity from gay and trans groups). But it may be less hard-wired. And it appears to have separate triggers and correlates that haven’t been identified yet. In studies of twins, there is a lower correlation of sexual orientation between female siblings than male siblings, for instance. “We’re at a place,” agrees Diamond, “where everyone agrees that whatever is going on is quite distinct between the sexes.”
Fascinating, right? Most would agree that women's and men's sexuality is different (I'm including gay/lesbian sexuality, and recognize this discussion is confined to a binary for ease of analysis). Whether this difference is biological or social is difficult to determine--the fact that Bailey is basing his conclusions on a study which tested arousal (which can be both socially and biologically determined) doesn't do much to settle the matter.
The social influences are a given. I would argue that biology definitely influences sexuality as well. Since that which makes biological men different from biological women, by definition is sex (both organs and role in sexual behavior and reproduction), it makes sense that the two sexes would have some deeply-rooted difference built into their sexuality. The determination of the form or extent of that difference, however, is nearly impossible.
The Lisa Diamond comment in the second paragraph above comes closest to capturing the distinction between male and female sexuality--women do have orientations, but their orientation does not necessarily confine their desires (at least not to the same degree it does men).
This discussion falls in line with the reason pornography has historically not appealed to women. It has traditionally been created around a very rigid and direct concept of sexuality. The way it's shot, the action captured, the appearance of actors, and so on, all were built upon a very male definition of sexuality. "Women's Porn" has not tended to be very good either, because all it is (generally) is a slight variation on male-oriented porn. Different looking actors, different angles, etc. The foundation is still fundamentally generally incongruent with female sexuality. (Yes, I know I'm essentializing here--there are obviously exceptions on both the people and porn front--but I'm ok with making general statements to make my point clear.)
So what's the answer? Innovation! Creativity! Injecting FUN into portrayals of sex! A few directors are getting it, but there is a dire need for creative people to experiment outside the bounds of what's been getting created for the past 40 years.
Visual aid: Tinto Brass with model
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