Does male bisexuality exist?

Several years ago, a study from Northwestern University argued that male bisexuality doesn't exist. Strangely enough, a new study from the same university contradicted the first. Is there a social stigma adding to the controversy? Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From how stup works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen. There was

(00:20):
a study a couple of years ago from Northwestern University
that pretty much said, hey, you know, bisexual guys don't
really exist. No. They said that basically, guys who claimed
to be bisexual are either gay, straight, or lying, right,
which is actually a pretty offensive. However, it's prevalent sentiment.
Yea Um, But there's a new study, yes, a new

(00:43):
study by actually Northwestern University about bisexuality in men, and
they have found some evidence that it exists, which is
of no surprise to bisexual men. Right, you're like, oh, hey,
thanks science for finally acknowledging our existence. And we're focusing
this episode on male bisexuality, uh, not really focusing so

(01:06):
much on female bisexuality, just because this whole gay, straight
or lying thing has really been applied mostly to men,
and it seems like, for some reason, while we can
accept the notion of female bisexuality, guys, we are just
well we can't do it. Yeah, well, there seems to
be there seems to be some sort of ick factor.

(01:27):
As one person who was interviewed for an article about this,
I think it wasn't a male bisex as self identified
bisexual male. Yeah. He said that it seems like society
is okay with bisexual women but not so accepting of
bisexual men. That either maybe, um, you're just closeted and
you haven't come out yet, or you're just confused, and

(01:48):
so yeah, he said that there's an ick factor where
it's like it's not masculine to express interest in both
men and women. So let's back up a little bit
and talk about how researchers even evaluate and to prove
in quotes whether or not someone is the sexuality or
sexual preference that they identify as. And a lot of

(02:11):
it has to do with study participants watching pornography or
reading illicit materials and their genitals being hooked up to
machines basically that measure the blood flow and engorgement to
to tell whether or not they're turned on right exactly.
And in the first study, the two thousand five study

(02:33):
at Northwestern UM, they recruited participants through a variety of
media UM that weren't necessarily geared towards bisexual or self
identified by sexual people UM, some just planal alternative publications,
some publications geared towards the gay community UM, and they
ended up getting people who they judged were gay, straight,

(02:54):
or bisexual based on just their own responses to a
questionnaire in the In the current study, the more recent study,
they actually UM advertised in on websites and publications that
were geared towards more bisexual people. And one way they
pre selected two for for bisexual males was that the

(03:15):
men who participated in the study had to have been
in a serious relationship with both male and a female
UM I think at least once or twice UM. And
also to have had UH sexual relationships with both men
and women, rather than UM in the previous study, where

(03:36):
some men might have identified as bisexual but had never
been in relationships long term romantic relationships with both men
and women. Right. And in the first study, the reason
that they said, like, h No, they're not really bisexual,
they're just confused, or they're lying or whatever was that
the men being studied either responded only to the male

(03:59):
pornography or the female pornography not to both. And so
they said, well, this obviously proves since you're not aroused
by both men and women in these videos, then obviously
bisexuality is not a thing right in the In the
words of The New York Times, which reported on that
two thousand five study, bisexual desires are sometimes transient and

(04:19):
are still poorly understood. Indeed, yeah, they cited study by
The Advocate that found that prior to identifying themselves as gay,
of gay men had described themselves as bisexual. So there
was definitely an attitude that like, oh, well, you're just
on the road to being gay. Well, and Dan Savage Um,
who is a sex advice columnist, UM talked about this

(04:44):
new study in particular in this issue of male bisexuality,
and Um he explains that, you know, in his case,
at least when he was younger and was first out
of the closet, he first identified as by sexual just
for fear of societal repercussion if he was saying that
he was, you know, really only interested in sexual relationships

(05:07):
with men. And so just from that, there is anecdotal
evidence that yes, sometimes, um, perhaps younger gay males might
identify as bisexual before they're being comfortable identifying completely as homosexual.
But UM, by saying that, you know, extrapolating anecdotal evidence
to the entire population obviously is not correct, right and

(05:29):
talking about, um, what aroused what videos aroused these study
participants in the new study, um, these self identified bisexual
men did respond to both the male and female videos,
while gay and straight men did not. And you know,
they point out that men with bisexual arousal patterns may
experience temporal fluctuations in their attractions and arousal to men

(05:51):
and women. So it's not like I'm fifty fifty um
attracted to men and women. It's more like, you know,
as one guy interviewed said, like today I'm i be
more attracted to men and slightly attracted to women, but
tomorrow might be all about women and you know, not
look at men. And there was one of the senior
authors of that two thousand five study who said, for men,

(06:11):
arousal is orientation, which doesn't really take into account the
fluidity of gender and sexuality. I think that it kind
of puts men in this box of if you're bisexual,
then you know, anything in anyone you look at, you
will be aroused by and that's not the case, and
we don't kind of put that same sexual pressure on

(06:33):
bisexual women. It seems like we're not expecting by sexual
women and just you know, for just be some kind
of sexual Smorga's board, right exactly. Um, there is an
interesting article on hetero flexibility, which is a term I
had never heard before, but it's a term that makes sense. Um.
Rich Savan Williams, the director of Sex and Gender Lab

(06:54):
at Cornell University, and Kenneth Cohen, a clinical psychologist at
Cornell Counseling and Psychological Services, took a look at young
men who are secure in their heterosexuality and yet they
seem to be aware of this potential to experience more
than just relationships with women, and they broke down there's
all these sub types, um, And what I thought was interesting,

(07:16):
you know, in addition to the actual article or some
of the responses that it got online, some of the
comments were talking about how, um, these are just normal
heterosexual friendships with the body issues and homophobia removed. So
this isn't exactly the same thing as bisexuality that these
guys are talking about, but sort of like a shift

(07:37):
in male relationships, which I thought was interesting the release
from the quote heterosexual straight jackets right that, Um, that
one of the interviewees mentions, and um, the whole head
of reflexibility think makes sense because for for women, it
is not only acceptable but even expected for really close

(07:58):
girlfriends to share deeper emotional bonds. And you know, it
isn't that that far of elite perhaps in our mind,
from that close bonding where we can you know, hug
each other and comfort each other when we're crying and
be very emotive to kind of just naturally transition into
possibly something more sexual. Whereas with men, just because of

(08:20):
the masculinity constructs that uh, we have to deal with,
it might not be as succeptable to even just cross
into those bounds of close and intimate friendships. Right. Was
interesting that these researchers were pointing out is that there
seems to be this broad range of of these guys
who fall into this hetero flexible category. Um, but they

(08:42):
all seem to draw the line at actual intercourse. So
they were okay possibly like fantasizing about their friends or
other guys they were they were okay with having you know,
intimate relationships and almost having a partner like relationship, but
just without the sex right secifically intercourse, because I have

(09:02):
a feeling that some head reflexibility might include um manual
or oral sex, but I have a feeling yet that
line would come actual intercourse. But since we're talking about
physical sexual acts, I do think it's important for us
to re emphasize the fact um that this initial Northwestern study,

(09:24):
the two thousand five one, the the goole gay straighter
line conclusion one missed out on is that, uh, sexual
orientation is not just comprised of sex and fantasy and arousal. Yeah.
A lot of responses to these studies have involved people saying,
you know, just because I am turned on by something

(09:46):
or these these people in the study were turned on
by something. That doesn't mean that they're one way or
another that they're bisexual, gay, or straight, because you can
watch a video and be turned on by something but
not necessarily actually want to do it yourself or not
want to do it with those people yourself or for you,
and fords those actual relationships sexual relationships with people um

(10:08):
and Ellen Rithstrom, the president of the Bisexual Resource Center,
talking about the new study, which it's still drawing criticism
even though it reinforces what bisexual people already know, says
that this unfortunately reduces sexuality and relationships to just sexual stimulation.
What I love is that people express their bisexuality in
so many different ways. So I think that kind of

(10:29):
sums up what a lot of the commenters on these
articles we're talking about that it's it's more than just
what you see in porn, that that affects who you are.
And I think in addition to that, it comes down
to differences in how we apply the notion of sexual
fluidity to females and to males. And I think that

(10:51):
we are far more, far more black and white and
rigid for whatever reason, with how we apply that two men.
And I think that it has a lot to do
you with um, with the whole masculinity construct in what
is and is an acceptable And it's like once you
cross the line into um, you know, something that would
be more more feminine, then it's like we can't I

(11:15):
don't know, it's like they can't straddle the line anywhere. Women. Yeah,
it seems like women can move around the spectrum the continuum,
if we're getting into Kinsey can move around the continuum
much more easily than men can. And speaking of Alfred Kinsey, um,
you know, you were just talking about black and white,
very rigid context. He said that males do not represent

(11:37):
two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not
to be divided into sheep and go to the living.
World is a continuum and each and every one of
its aspects. All right, thank you, Alfred, Thank you, Alfred.
And I think that's something that that we need to
keep in mind. And you know, again speaking about constructs,

(11:59):
we read this article on Salon that's sort of it
kind of deconstructed the Northwestern study and they talked to
one guy who calls himself gay or straight depending on
who he's dating, because he said it's just easier for
people around him to deal with it than try to
explain like, well, no, I mean I like everybody right,
you know, because it just seems like people are not
they can't wrap their heads around it sometimes. So maybe

(12:21):
that's also pointing out the pitfall, potential pitfalls of of labeling,
because at some point, maybe all of the boxes get
a little too rigid. It can be handy for kind
of classifying different people, but maybe it's just not always
that necessary, and maybe we put too much importance on
what box you do check. Yeah, I was looking at

(12:43):
one website for a UM there's a bisexual group in
the UK, and they took a look at Kinsey's um
his chart like zero is purely heterosexual and six is
purely homosexual, and then he has like little things in between,
and they're like, well, no, three can't be bisexual. They
were arguing that everything between zero and six should be bisexual.

(13:07):
So there's that to think about. So we've talked about
bisexuality within the human population, and you know, for for
people who are still kind of skeptical about whether or
not bisexuality is a and I'm putting big quotes here,
some kind of natural or unnatural behavior, we have to
at least bring up the binobo, which is a bisexual primate.

(13:33):
I didn't know this about binobos before we started researching
this UM. And according to uh the Yurkes Primate Center,
which is here in Atlanta, but noobo's engage in sexual
activity about every ninety minutes, and that sexual activity male
male female male female female about every ninety minutes as
a way of diffusing conflict within colonies or food and

(13:56):
territory can be scarce, so I'll say, people whatever, get
anything done. Maybe, um, bisexuality as a peacekeeping tool right
in the animal kingdom? Yeah? Who knew? But yeah, every
ninety minutes, that seems that's an awful lot. It's funny
because one of the researchers from that center was interviewed
and they were asking him, um, well, okay, chimpanzees fight like,

(14:20):
let's say there's food to be fought over. There's not enough.
It has to be distributed, so they'll fight over it
and then they will distribute it somehow. But these primates,
the banobo monkey, they just have at it and then
they're like, ah, everything, let's all just distribute the food. Food.
Everyone so relaxed now? Really answered for morphizing these Yes,

(14:44):
I'd imagine they're pretty chilled out. I think we've covered it. Then,
does male bisexuality exist? Answer Caroline, Yep, yeah, but they
could have told us that. They could have told us that. Yeah.
So uh, I really want to hear though, um, our
bisexual listeners out there, whether or not you've ever had
to deal with that anti bisexual prejudice bisexual males out there,

(15:10):
have you gotten the gay street are lying line before
let us know your thoughts and experiences. Mom stuff at
how stuff works dot com is the address. I would
also like to know if as a bisexual male it
has made it easier or harder to meet people dating wise.
I don't know if that like complicates things for other

(15:31):
people with our rigid constructs and everything. So with that again,
email address mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And first of all, I want to give a on
air thank you to Monica who uh during our Drag
Queen podcast, we talked about this whole mummy situation with

(15:52):
Dorian Corey, famous uh drag Queen, and after during Corey died,
a mummy was owned in her closet and so we
wanted to know more information about this mummy situation and
Monica sent us a paper published by Indiana University Press
called The Drag Queen and the Mummy that explains the

(16:16):
whole thing. And I just want to say thank you
because while I unfortunately have not had time to read
The Drag Queen the money because it just came in
right before we record this podcast. Thank you to our
enterprising researching listener. You get a gold star. Okay, this
email is from Joseph, this is also about our drag

(16:36):
Queen podcast. He says that I'm transgendered and have been
transitioning for the last eleven months, and I've never been
a drag queen or done drag, And he just has
a couple of things that he thinks we left out
of the podcast, and field should be mentioned. Many professional
drag queens alter their bodies with female hormones, even if
the end goal isn't transitioning into a woman. Most drag

(16:58):
queens originally identify or identify as gay men. It's less
common to see straight men perform on stage drag in
a gay club, the typical setting for a drag show,
while drag queens can be community leaders or m c s.
As you mentioned, the core of drag is done for
entertainment purposes. Drag done without an audience would just be
called cross dressing smiley face. Usually, a drag queen is

(17:20):
putting on an act as a character and first to
themselves as she, even though they'll acknowledge their male attributes.
Drag queens serving as mcs are typically known for their
humorous self deprecation or insults. It's kind of like a
mix between a lip sync performer, a stand up comic,
and a mild burlesque performance, and the queen part of
the drag queen etymology most likely refers to a queen

(17:40):
queu e A n which is based vernacular for a
female prostitute, according to Gay Histories and Cultures and Encyclopedia
by George E. Higrity. So thank you Joseph for that insight,
and thanks to all of you who have emailed in
once again, Mom's Stuff and All Stuff Works dot Com
is email address, or you can find us on Facebook

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