“Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited.” That’s the headline of this controversial article within the New York Times discussing a new “study” dealing with bisexuality–specifically Bisexual men.
[…]But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.
The study, by a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto, lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.
People who claim bisexuality, according to these critics, are usually homosexual, but are ambivalent about their homosexuality or simply closeted.[…]
“I’m not denying that bisexual behavior exists,” said Dr. Bailey, “but I am saying that in men there’s no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation.”[…]
Hence the controversy–which centers not only around the biphobic wording of the headline but also the findings purported within the article as G.L.A.A.D. elaborates…
On July 5, “The New York Times” published an article by Benedict Carey titled “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited.” The article examined the findings of a forthcoming study that the “Times” says “lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.”
The claims put forward in the article, combined with the derogatory headline, are raising questions not only about the “Times'” reporting on this study, but also about the study itself.[…]
It isn’t until eight paragraphs later that readers encounter the first warning against drawing hasty conclusions based on the Bailey study’s small sample.
But it’s the article’s headline — “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited” — that has generated the most concern and anger among bisexual community leaders and members. This sensationalistic, derogatory headline (not written by the article’s author) impugns the honesty and integrity of bisexual people everywhere, accusing them of lying and deceiving others about their sexual orientation.[…]
We here at ‘Alas‘ are no strangers to the issue of Biphobia and discussions dealing with the unique struggles and even prejudice Bisexual people face, in a society that is hostile to those who don’t fall into strictly one side of the sexual orientation spectrum, whether it be heterosexuality or homosexuality. ‘It just has to be one extreme–there can be no middle ground and it “doesn’t exist” anyway, specifically in men’. So much b.s.
Perhaps this can be attributed to some extent to our culture’s unwillingness to discuss sexuality in an open and frank manner and accept it, and not allow ourselves to be caught up in archaic and puritanical sexual-phobias, or even constricting gender/sex roles. Maybe?
It’s the Patriarchal mind set – either/or, gotta have even numbers, one way or the other, you’re either with us or against us. They see the world as binary. I’m bisexual, but I prefer the word “Pansexual” because there are as many variations on this theme as there are people. I also like the reference to the Great God Pan, who is sadly lacking in this puritanical culture.
I get really tired of people trying to make me be straight or gay. I’m both. I’m neither. I’m just me.
The sexual continuum is wide and people fall anywhere along the line. The straightest people will have gay sex in prison. Gay people have married and had children since the Roman Empire fell and it became verboten to be gay.
There’s a trend in the scientific community to try and identify the source of gayness. What’s most telling about this movement is that it only concerns itself with male sexuality. I just read a book called “Adam’s Curse” that tries to blame it on the effects of Mitochondrial DNA trying to eliminate male fetuses. (That makes it the mother’s fault.) None of these things ever addresses people who like vanilla and chocolate. To my knowledge, no one has ever really studied bisexuality – they try to extrapolate from bullshit surveys like the one cited here – there are so many variables to attraction that even attempting to define it is pointless.
Some of us just aren’t going to fit into a neat little box, so they might as well stop trying to label us. They need to drop this mechanistic approach to the universe. They want the reality to work like a computer, but it won’t. Everything is alive – living organisms are wild and varied and may follow trends, but rarely follow rules.
I got this from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) today.
ACTION ALERT: New York Times Suggests Bisexuals Are “Lying” — Paper fails to disclose study author’s controversial history
First paragraph:
Sorry about the line breaks. Sloppy copy-and-paste work, I’m afraid.
the study’s senior author, j. michael bailey, has somewhat of a history of small sized samples and questionable research procedures:
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/LynnsReviewOfBaileysBook.html
interesting that the times left this tidbit out of their article as well…
You know, the thing that I thought when I read this article–damn, it was a couple of days ago so I hope I’m not getting this wrong–was that the means to test arousal seemed very, very problematic from a feminist viewpoint. Showing gay male porn and “straight” porn and seeing what was arousing?
So what if one of the subjects just wasn’t particularly turned on by, ya know, female degradation? (Not that I necessarily believe that all straight porn is inherently degrading, although most of the mainstream stuff out there is undoubtedly so.) Whoops, he’s not turned on, he must be gay and in denial. (Huh–what if you took a group of straight women and found they weren’t particularly aroused by the mainstream porn out there? DO WE HAVE AN EPIDEMIC OF LESBIANISM? Quick, somebody call the NYT! Front page material!)
Even without knowing the lead author’s history, something smelled fishy about this study…
Moraine – I do find it telling that they focus on male bisexuality, too. I find the research methodology even more questionable though. Firstly, what a person responds to in porn and what they respond to in real life are not necessarily the same. Secondly, from what I can tell his own results don’t actually support the claims he’s making.
This has come up, almost inevitably, on other feminist blogs in the last few days. I had a few thoughts, most of which I already expressed over at the Alley Notebooks.
The study assumes that arousal = orientation, and that orientation is one thing. First, orientation is not necessarily a unified whole. What is sometimes called “affectional orientation” does not always map onto sexual orientation so closely. There are plenty of people who identify as gay or straight, and would never consider a relationship with a person of their non-preferred sex, but have sexual partners both male and female. Surely there are also people whose relationships with both sexes take on romantic elements, but who have sexual partners of only one sex: it is easy to dismiss this as either inhibition or politics, but that may not be all there is to it.
People do of course work out language for this when they need it — for example women who refer to themselves as “lesbian-identified bisexual.” It may be inexact, but for the most part people figure out how to talk about who they are.
Second, as BritGirl say, arousal and orientation are of course closely related, but not quite the same thing. Arousal in actual sexual contact might be a pretty good proxy for sexual orientation — but that’s not what the authors measured. They measured arousal to images. Images are not people.
As pointed out above, Bailey has a personally driven agenda — possibly related to his own sexuality issues — to “disprove” male bisexuality. He cannot get a real sample for his work because his nasty comments (including about transsexuals) have alienated so many folks in the GLBT community that people won’t sign up for his study. He apparently got this sample by advertising in a gay paper, skewing his bi sample to bi men that read gay papers.
It is interesting, in a patriarchal world, that bisexuality in men has provoked so much more anxiety than in women. Everyone has a pet theory about this, I guess. At least in part, though, I think we have so reduced women to their sexuality that it seems almost inevitable that two sex objects would be sexual together, especially for the benefit of the male gaze. I would guess, in large part, this turns simply on a refusal to take female sexual identity seriously, because we as a society won’t see women as subjects. When a woman says she’s bisexual, patriarchy says, “of course you are, dear.” When a man claims an identity, though, he has to be reckoned with. IIRC, there was a whole prior thread on this that I didn’t follow, so if I’m rehashing a dialogue that’s been done to death here, I apologize.
I have a whole group of straight female friends who are into slash fiction and Queer As Folk. They get turned on by watching two guys together. I also know lesbians who watch the show specifically for the guys. I wonder what that researcher would make of that?
Also, attraction isn’t automatic. Just because you are attracted to, say, women, doesn’t mean every picture of every woman you see will arouse you. It’s just a stupid premise. Most of us are attracted to individuals, not to a type.
>>the study’s senior author, j. michael bailey, has somewhat of a history of small sized samples and questionable research procedures:
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/LynnsReviewOfBaileysBook.html
interesting that the times left this tidbit out of their article as well… >>
(Hi, Nexy! Thanks for your tireless work on the Michfest boards!)
Questionable research procedures? What, you mean like having sex–excuse me, _allegedly_ having sex–with one of his subjects/patients during the course of his “study”? Or not letting any of the subjects know that they’re taking part in a study that will eventually be published? Or getting information from them through the arguably extortionate practice of offering them referral letters for SRS if they agree to interviews? Or accusing them of lying if they don’t tell him things that would support his narrow, binary hypothesis?
Bailey is a self-serving bigot who wouldn’t know proper methodology if it walkedup to him and bit him.
Bailey has a long history of well-regarded research that has been peer reviewed and quoted broadly by well-regarded researchers. His research was used by the plaintiffs in the Boy Scout case and by the Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans to back pro-gay positions.
Trans activists have busily been trying to trash him since his book that questioned the basis of gender identity among trans, and now it appears the bis have him in their radar. Just because research doesn’t feel politically correct or consistent with one’s agenda doesn’t mean that there aren’t some interesting points to raise or can be a source for further investigation.
I thought that a lot of the rebuttals on this thread, particularly Morgaine’s, did a fine job of showing the limits of Bailey’s research. And it’s easy to trot out the “well-regarded” schtick if you own ox isn’t being personally gored by some character who is determined to prove –through very peculiar methods– that you can’t possibly exist. “Well-regarded” by who, exactly ?
If these rebuttals are “P.C.,” I’d say that we need more “P.C.” especially dealing with NYT, which seems to publish a remarkable amount of dubious trash given its supposed reputation as the gold-standard of newspapers. :D
Alis,
You make a fair point. I would just say that critics of SS parenting make the EXACT same attacks about research showing that kids do fine with SS parents as have been made against Bailey. Small sample size, dubious participants, biased premise, lack of peer review.
Just because we don’t like the research’s conclusion doesn’t mean it’s bad research.
i can’t speak for other trans people, only for myself. that bailey questions gender identity (which is something i question myself) is not the issue – that he used a small sample of trans women for his study, all of whom he found in local gay bars, and applied his conclusions to *all* trans women, is part of the issue. that he didn’t inform and gain consent from his subjects regarding his research, is another part of the issue. that he was intimately involved with at least one of his subjects is another part of the issue.
i’m happy to entertain various theories regarding my life, but to do so based on a small number of trans people, all of whom were gathered from the chicago gay bar and club scene, seems a bit biased to me.
(hi piny – and the rumors are false – i am very tired :) )
>>Trans activists have busily been trying to trash him since his book that questioned the basis of gender identity among trans, and now it appears the bis have him in their radar. Just because research doesn’t feel politically correct or consistent with one’s agenda doesn’t mean that there aren’t some interesting points to raise or can be a source for further investigation. >>
Uh, actually, there’s a long and “well-regarded” history of anti-trans research and research bias, one that gets much longer and starts including contributions by transpeople when “anti-trans” includes philosophy and research that comes to anti-_transition_ conclusions. And attacking all of the wrongheaded, inaccurate, or bigoted bullshit that comes out of the mouths of putative scientists and thinkers would leave us _very_ little time for strongly-worded letters to Kaiser demanding that they cover the cost of packing harnesses under psychiatric care.
There are reputable, representative, methodologically sound studies on transpeople. Unsurprisingly enough, their findings tend to be much less negative than Bailey’s.
And–splitting hairs, I know, but it’s a postmodern specialty–he didn’t “question.” He outright rejected.
Speaking for my people, we have a problem with him and him in particular not because his research has come to anti-trans conclusions, but because his research is COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC. It doesn’t even deserve to be called research. He separates transwomen into two categories: the “homosexual transsexual,” an early transitioner, a formerly effeminate gay men who wants to be attractive to men; and the “autogynephilic” transsexual, a late-transitioner, always attracted to women, who fetishize female genitalia and want to possess them.
This claim is inaccurate. Period. It’s a generalization that simply is not true of transwomen. These qualities–sexual orientation, late or early coming-out, gender presentation, place on the “butch/femme” spectrum–cannot be separated into this dichotomy. It’s just not true; it doesn’t happen to fit _any_ of the transwomen I know. And it’s amazing that transpeople’s word on the subject isn’t given any credence at all.
And then Bailey says stuff like this: “prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to… Juanita is a very attractive postoperative transsexual who has worked as a call girl both before and since her operation… she does not feel degraded and guilty about what she does for a living. I suspect that this reflects an aspect of her psychology that has remained male… her ability to enjoy emotionally meaningless sex appears male-typical. In this sense homosexual transsexuals might be especially suited to prostitution… Homosexual transsexuals… lust after men.” (p. 184…185, 191) *
…which contains so many unsupported generalizations about gender, womanhood, prostitution, and transsexual experience that it alone should get him laughed out of the academy.
Instead of whining about PC attack trannies, and how the all-powerful shemale lobby has declared a fatwa on poooooor little J. Michael, why not respond to the claims transpeople are making?
These are the ones I’ve heard:
1) He had sex with one of his subjects during the course of his study.
2) He doesn’t give any data tables, merely anecdotes, and very few of them.
3) He did not keep contemporaneous notes, relying instead on his recollections.
4) He made no attempt to ensure a representative sample–and it wasn’t one.
5) Some of his subjects were not told that they would be subjects; they believed him to be their therapist.
6) Some of them were given referral letters in exchange for seeing him, and there was no provision made for the potential conflict between being someone’s gender arbiter and trying to get honest, uncensored answers from them.
7) Whenever his patients/subjects didn’t tell him things that supported his beliefs, he accused them of lying.
* Link
Res Ipsa, I’m not interested in shutting down debate. I’m interested in improving it. Responsible researchers have to recognize and limit the conclusions they draw from their research to what the research shows, not what they want it to show. And responsible researchers have to recognize and either avoid or frankly discuss methodological factors that may impact the results.
This study would draw a lot less fire if the conclusion were, “self-identified bisexual men exhibit penile arousal to porn which tend to indicate a preference for images of one sex over the other.” It also would have been nice to see the press release say, “because the sample group of bisexual men was drawn primarily from respondents answering advertisements in publications with a predominantly gay readership, the research sample may include more men who identify with gay culture than are present in a random sample of self-identified bisexual men.” But that doesn’t sell a lot of papers.
>>You make a fair point. I would just say that critics of SS parenting make the EXACT same attacks about research showing that kids do fine with SS parents as have been made against Bailey. Small sample size, dubious participants, biased premise, lack of peer review>>
Yes, and both Michael Berube and Osama Bin Laden have beencalled anti-American. All accusations don’t carry equal weight.
The question is, then, can the research be reasonably defended against these attacks? In the case of studies of children of SS parents, I think they can be.
Small sample size: Fair critique. However, the sample sizes are not unusually small as family-based social science research goes.
Dubious participants: Not true of all studies. At least one of the best-known studies of kids of SS parents used a national database of family data which has an excellent reputation and has been used in probably hundreds of studies.
Biased premise: I’m not exactly sure what this critique means in the context of SS parenting studies. It doesn’t seem to me that the premise of most of these studies – which is to run a battery of standard psychological exams on children of SS parents and compare them to the results of the same tests performed on the children of OS parents – is biased in any obvious way.
Not peer-reviewed: This critique is simply untrue; every one of the many studies I’ve seen of the children of SS parents was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal.
* * *
My point is, these are not unreasonable questions to ask of a study – ANY study. But, as Piny says, just because these critiques have been leveled at many kinds of studies, doesn’t make the critique equally valid in every case.
Agreed. But I’m not convinced that “shoot the messenger” is the only reason to find whasisname’s studies dubious.
Why does bisexuality have to mean an exactly equal attraction to each sex? Personalities and sexuality aren’t usually as neatly defined as that, and surely it’s perfectly possible to be bisexual and have a “bias” in one direction or the other?
Sarah- it doesn’t have to if you’re capable of holding more than two ideas in your head. That’s where the real problem comes in. Too many of these bigots need to see the world as black or white.
Res Ipsa, read the article again: “Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal” to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern and the study’s lead author.
What do you get if you multiply four by zero? What does this tell us about the prevalence of bisexuality, if we accept the data and the authors’ stated assumptions?
Re: hf’s question “what does this tell us about the prevalence
of bisexuality”, one could add, “what does this tell us about the
prevalence of any sexuality” since the alleged
4x arousal for one sex over the other occured in the gay, straight
and bi groups.
RE What Ramki said, if you were to take the results of this study at face value and ignore the sketchy methodology, what it would seem to suggest is that MOST people are bisexual to some degree. Which isn’t at all the way the NYT is spinning it.
BritGirl, not to quibble, but if we were to ignore the methodology and take this study at face value, on my account, we’d really just come away with “so, what does the term ‘bisexual’ men, anyway?”
(1) If most men who identify as gay have some sexual arousal to women, and most men who identify as straight have some sexual arousal to men, and if bisexual means having some sexual arousal to members of both sexes, then most men are bisexual. (I’m excluding women because the study’s conclusions were different for men than for women and because all the debate has been about the conclusions for men.) (2) If most men show some arousal to either sex, but only choose romantic partners among one sex, and if “bisexual” means choosing romantic partners from among both sexes, then “bisexual” is neither a term that refers to arousal nor to sexual behavior, but rather is a misnomer for what one might call “bi-affectional.”
(3) The study’s authors want to say that most men show some arousal to both men and women, but “bisexual” means showing more arousal to men than straight men, and to women than gay men. However, there’s not a “baseline” either of sexual arousal to men for straight guys, or to women for gay guys. Instead, these are self-chosen identities that may conflate sexual arousal and activity (which may be good proxies but will sometimes differ), and also romantic attractions (as I’ve said, this doesn’t map onto sexual arousal or conduct all that well). So, even measuring only arousal, one might predict a bell-curve distribution for “gay” men, a bell curve for “straight” men, and a bell-curve of self-identified bisexual men in the middle, strongly overlapping the two. Now, it’s not absurd to try to draw lines and say, “real” bisexual begins here and ends here. It’s not absurd, but it is unenlightening, arbitrary and patronizing.
It seems to me it makes much more sense to accept that the “sexual orientation” terms we commonly use are all very rough approximations that wrap in a number of variables.
Of course, in this fairly sophisticated crowd, that’s not so hard to do, and out in the hinterlands where many folks don’t know that they know more than one or two GLBT folks, the lack of easy pidgeonholes is awfully inconvenient. But the world is complicated.