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slash: scientific proof at last!
Sep. 13th, 2005 11:14 pmI've been meaning to post about this. It's about an article I read in the Sunday Telegraph two weeks ago (and now, of course, I can't find it to link to).
The article was about the search for a 'homosexual' gene. (So, of course, I read it immediately.) Apparently, tests were done on women and men to determine correlation levels between arousal and sexual orientation (don't ask me how). It was found that men who identified themselves as heterosexual became aroused when viewing images of men and women having sex and also images of just women. They did not respond to images of men. Men who identified themselves as homosexual became aroused when viewing images of men but not when viewing images of women. Interestingly, men who identified themselves as bisexual responded to images of men, not to images of women.
Now here comes the really intriguing bit: guess what women responded to? No matter what their sexual orientation, they became aroused at any sexual image at all! They became aroused when viewing images of men and images of women. Arousal was not related to sexual orientation!
I love this! This is proof positive! (For something.) It so totally slots into my experience of the slashy life: it's 99 per cent women! Gay men might, at a pinch, indulge in a bit of slashiness but straight men, on the whole, simply can't get off on other men. While we women, we don't care about orientation! Even if we're lesbian, we can get off on the manly goodness.
It doesn't quite explain the rarity of femslash, this is true. I will just have to wait around for another Sunday Telegraph article to be enlightened on that point.
Today I had another thought. It occurred to me that men need to be reinforced in their sexual identity perhaps more (or in different ways?) than women. Boys tend not to like girly things, novels with girls as heroines and so forth. I used to think, in my halcyon feminist days, that this was a patriarchal nurture bias thing. Now I'm thinking that girls don't mind so much because they can identify with boyish things as well as girly things, just as women can get off on both men and women.
This doesn't stop me being so very straight identified. I just love men! But that's another post's worth. (It has to do with post-modernism, the 1980s and the reappearance of the tops of men's ears.)
The article was about the search for a 'homosexual' gene. (So, of course, I read it immediately.) Apparently, tests were done on women and men to determine correlation levels between arousal and sexual orientation (don't ask me how). It was found that men who identified themselves as heterosexual became aroused when viewing images of men and women having sex and also images of just women. They did not respond to images of men. Men who identified themselves as homosexual became aroused when viewing images of men but not when viewing images of women. Interestingly, men who identified themselves as bisexual responded to images of men, not to images of women.
Now here comes the really intriguing bit: guess what women responded to? No matter what their sexual orientation, they became aroused at any sexual image at all! They became aroused when viewing images of men and images of women. Arousal was not related to sexual orientation!
I love this! This is proof positive! (For something.) It so totally slots into my experience of the slashy life: it's 99 per cent women! Gay men might, at a pinch, indulge in a bit of slashiness but straight men, on the whole, simply can't get off on other men. While we women, we don't care about orientation! Even if we're lesbian, we can get off on the manly goodness.
It doesn't quite explain the rarity of femslash, this is true. I will just have to wait around for another Sunday Telegraph article to be enlightened on that point.
Today I had another thought. It occurred to me that men need to be reinforced in their sexual identity perhaps more (or in different ways?) than women. Boys tend not to like girly things, novels with girls as heroines and so forth. I used to think, in my halcyon feminist days, that this was a patriarchal nurture bias thing. Now I'm thinking that girls don't mind so much because they can identify with boyish things as well as girly things, just as women can get off on both men and women.
This doesn't stop me being so very straight identified. I just love men! But that's another post's worth. (It has to do with post-modernism, the 1980s and the reappearance of the tops of men's ears.)