Can Guys Swing Both Ways?

By Aaron Bailey in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 5, 2005 3:14PM

Chicagoist never really had a "bisexual" phase. We jumped straight to gay, which is why we've never fully understood guys who claim to like both sides of the fence. A new study shows our suspicions may have been warranted.

Researchers at Northwestern University asked 101 young adult men to rate their sexual orientation on a scale of 0 to 6: 0-1 indicating dudes who claim to like the chicks, 5-6 for the boys who like the other boys and 2-4 being the alleged "bisexuals."

The researchers then sat the guys in a room alone, hooked them up to a device that measured arousal and turned on the porn. (Chicagoist wasn't successful in finding photos of such a sensor.) The self-identifying gay men were excited by images of men, naturally. The heteros were aroused by the videos of chicks (especially chick-on-chick action). A shocking three-quarters of the "bisexuals" got it up for the dude porn but not for the girl porn indicating they aren't so bisexual, now are they?

The NY Times reports that a similar study of bisexual women showed most were aroused by both men and women.

With a small sample, we wonder if more testing is needed before we can bring our bisexual friends in for therapy. Besides, if you would were hooked up to some cold sensor and shown porn while scientists in white lab coats watched you like a rat, would you show your true sexual orientation?

As one sociologist put it, "The last thing you want is for some therapists to see this study and start telling bisexual people that they're wrong, that they're really on their way to homosexuality." Not that there is anything wrong with that.