Michael Bailey and bisexuality - again

Hello!
I am not in the UK at the moment. Not, indeed, anywhere with a reliable internet connection, but I read this and thought of you dear followers, regular readers, and people who find this site via Google, Twitter, Sex is Not the Enemy, Bipolar Bisexual,Mark Simpson and other sites that link to me.
It's about Michael Bailey, he who has been so controversial in denying that bi men are really bi.
The piece below (which was posted on the academic bi yahoo group) begs so very many questions - but I thought it interesting to throw it out there and see what you think.
Lots of love and post soon...
Sue x

The Daily Northwestern - NU Prof. Bailey researching possible 'gay
gene'
See piece here

Recent research from Northwestern Prof. J. Michael Bailey raises new questions in the science behind sexual orientation, namely bisexuality and the prototypical "gay gene."

In his studies on bisexuality, Bailey, a psychology professor, and a team of researchers look at sexual arousal patterns to objectively determine sexual orientation in men and women. Bailey tracks the subject's brain activity while they are looking at erotic pictures to essentially determine "what turns them on," he said.

One new finding is in the sexual orientation of women. Bailey said he found most of his female subjects to be scientifically bisexual, even if they subjectively thought otherwise.

"Women don't work in the way we thought, based on a lot of research we did five to 10 years ago," he said. "Women, at least in the laboratory, get aroused to both stimuli."

This changes everything, Bailey said.

"Now I don’t even know if women have something like a sexual orientation," he said.

About two-thirds of women are showing arousal patterns that differ from what they consider to be their orientation, said Adam Safron, a research consultant on the project.

"Women are not being driven in their arousal pattern in the same way as males," he said.

Male arousal patterns were less flexible than female patterns, Bailey said. Men who believed themselves to be bisexual were aroused by both female and male stimuli but exhibited a stronger arousal to males than females. Bailey published a paper in 2005 suggesting bisexual men do not have bisexual arousal patterns. If sexual arousal patterns are the key to sexual orientation and his research is accurate, male bisexuality may not actually exist, Bailey said.

"I never meant to suggest bisexual men were lying about their sexuality," he said. "But there has been some skepticism about if bisexual men are really bisexual in the same way gay men are gay or straight men straight."

Safron said the science behind sexual orientation can get complicated.

"In terms of what people tell you they like, you can't always trust what they tell you, especially with something as emotionally involved as sexuality," he said.
...

Gay brains again

Another week, another study on how men’s and women’s, and gay and straight people’s brains are oh so different….

According to this report, gay men and straight women apparently performed better at certain language tasks. Lesbians and straight men had better spatial awareness. Etc. There’s more about it on the link above.

Now then, now then…

It seems that what you make of this study (of 90 people, so of course it can be translated to everyone in the world?!?) depends on what you already believe. So: it might mean that, as evolutionary biologist Dr Qazi Rahman says on the BBC site “As far as I’m concerned, there is no argument any more – if you are gay, you are born gay.”

Well, I’m not an evolutionary biologist, or indeed any kind of scientist, but it seems to me that there are still plenty of arguments to be had. Indeed, that there are gaping holes in this kind of research.

Now, in the aftermath of plagiarist psychiatrist Raj Persaud, I would like to announce that I have not necessarily thought up all these ideas on my ownsome: they have come as a result of reading various sites and blogs, such as this and this.

Problem one is that people doing these studies have such a dichotomous view of sexuality – categorically and forever straight or categorically and forever gay (although may take some time to realise this) – that they overlook the many subtleties that even people who don’t like out and proud bisexuality can agree exist.

For instance:

* How do these researchers define straight or gay? Is it the relationship the person is in? Is it self-identification? Or what?

* Just say that you accept the idea that the brains of gay and straight people differ. Is this a cause or an effect of their being gay/straight? Might their brains change back again if they behave in ways that aren’t gay/straight? (Only partly a joke.)

* But of course my main objection to this sort of study is that they divide everyone absolutely definitely and forever into heterosexual or homosexual. The most casual glance around the world shows that many people are at least on some kind of continuum between straight and gay. What happens to those people who are gay when they are young and straight when they are older? Are “situationally gay” – say in prison?

* And of course, that’s not to mention all of us who actually ARE bisexual.

You picks your scientists, you takes your choice
Problem two. It is interesting to look at this research in the light of the study by US psychologist Lisa Diamond – whose book haven’t read yet but which is currently mentioned a lot on the internet as she’s been in a film I also haven’t seen called Bi the Way. She says that women’s sexuality (not all women; some) is fluid – meaning geared towards individuals, rather than men or women. She’s not the only one of course, Michael Bailey – mentioned disapprovingly elsewhere on this blog – did research showing something similar. So if the way straight and lesbian women feel desire is extremely similar (more Bailey’s view than Diamond’s and something I certainly don’t believe) then there’s an interesting conflict here: how do this other group of scientists decide which women are definitively straight or lesbian?

Butch and femme brains
Problem three. They also seem to be – I say seem, because I haven’t read the original document – to be conflating sexual orientation with gender expression here. Gay men = straight women. Lesbian woman = straight man. This reminds me of the old-fashioned and simply untrue view that if you are a camp or effeminate man, then you have to be gay.

There are lots of online “is your brain male or female” quizzes. I remember I did one and came out as having an absolutely androgynous brain. Well, I hope I am empathetic towards others but I’m not keen on endless phone chatting; like dressing up (stereotypically female) and am fairly “visually stimulated” – ie I like looking at attractive people like straight men seem to. Does this really mean I am born to be bi?

Of the two heterosexual men (my son and my partner) with whom I am in close contact, one loves ironing, the other loves chatting on the phone, and both shrieked with terror at a huge bee which I had to shoo out of an open window. I hate ironing and am quite good at map-reading. Perhaps I am “hard-wired” to be bisexual then?

Born which way?
When I have written about “gay brains” before, some people have commented on this site that they knew they were bi from a young age, that it felt natural to them, that therefore they were “born that way”. Nevertheless, just because something feels innate, doesn’t mean it is. It doesn’t mean it isn’t, either. Personally I don't think it matters in the least but many people strongly disagree.

Another scientific report was published today about cancer and how one man’s illness was treated using his own immune cells. The researchers there are “cautiously optimistic”. Why aren’t researchers into the “causes” of sexuality ever similarly cautious about their results?

Nothing natural?

In the Independent newspaper today, they had a long and involved piece entitled Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory.
Briefly, a man whose brain was operated on to try to suppress his appetite suddenly recovered very vivid memories from 30 years ago. The more research is done on the brain, the more scientists find that manipulating it in some way alters how people act, think, feel and so on.

Another piece from the New York magazine forwarded to me by the New York Area Bisexual Network looked at various sorts of research that has been done by scientists from different fields looking at the so-called causes of homosexuality – length of fingers, chromosomes and so on and so forth. It also suggested that various stereotypical traits of lesbians and gay men might be biologically based, which to me beggars belief – it’s ahistorical and ignores cultural and geographical differences. I remember, for instance, when men having long hair was considered to be a sign of homosexuality. Who would that even occur to now?

“They’re born that way” seems to be the notion du jour – of this and pretty much every other age - and popular opinion likes to go down the common sense track, where if it seems to be true – because of repetition and stereotype, then it must be true. So male hairdressers are gay and female footballers are lesbian. Perhaps bisexuals are footballing hairdressers then?

So is that it then? We are all born gay or straight (or bisexual – although no one seems to be researching that). And we’re all man/woman, male/female, masculine/feminine and that’s that? Isn’t that just a tad simplistic? I think so.

In short, there’s a massive gulf between people who think sexuality is constructed in society - that we end up as we do because of our individual experiences in this particular space and time – and those that think our sexuality is a result what is going on in our brains / with our chromosomes bla de bla.

Science or queer theory?
I am particularly struck by this now as I’ve been reading queer theory for the first time in my life. I’ve always known it existed, but never having been schooled in it I was a bit intimidated, to be honest. But if you start from the beginning, say here it’s not as scary as all that even if it is a bit hard to pin down and define.
Anyway, while thinking that gender is formed in society, that gender is not glued to biological sex (what is that anyway?), and that sexuality is simply a role you play might be all very well to some readers of this blog, it wouldn’t really play in Peoria (do people still say that?)!

Now, I’m well aware that I don’t know enough about science on the one hand, or queer theory on the other, to have a properly informed opinion but that never stopped anyone in this debate. In any case, if you know a lot about one you are not likely to know a lot about the other.

It has always seemed to me, though, that the way people experience and express their sexuality varies so terribly much between cultures, both historically and geographically, that it has to be nonsense to say anyone is born to be gay/bi/whatever.

But hey – I’m a both/and type of bisexual. Do we have to throw out the born that way baby with the biological bathwater? Many people feel that their sexuality is such a deep and profound part of themselves that it is “natural”. They don’t feel that it is a role they can put on and take off. But are they right? What role does biology and neuroscience have to play in sexuality? Answers on a rather large postcard please.