tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post112063932852274793..comments2024-03-08T04:09:09.836-06:00Comments on Mixing Memory: Does Male Bisexuality Exist?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-23011641467253466272007-06-12T15:56:00.000-05:002007-06-12T15:56:00.000-05:00Hi,I'm very interested in this study, but I have b...Hi,<BR/><BR/>I'm very interested in this study, but I have been unable to find an actual copy of it. Is there anyway you could send me a copy?<BR/>ourhomeplanet@gmail.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1130891297167474602005-11-01T18:28:00.000-06:002005-11-01T18:28:00.000-06:00Wow, so much ignorance, spurious stereotyping, so ...Wow, so much ignorance, spurious stereotyping, so little time...<BR/><BR/>"True bisexuals are rare to find"<BR/><BR/>False. True bisexuals are extremely easy to find, in my experience. All sorts of people get turned on by both men and women. I find them easily, and I'm one of them. Why is this so hard for some people to accept?<BR/><BR/>"Self proclaimed people live bisexual lives day in and day out, reality makes that clear. Of course bisexuality exists. It is also a known fact that research is often initiated with the researcher having preconceived outcomes to their hypothoses and whether subconciously or otherwise the results will often be coherent with their initial assumptions of the truth. Just open your eyes, look around and step away from paper based results, the world is a much better teacher an identifier of trends and realities."<BR/><BR/>Bingo. Bailey is a charlatan. If he's a scientist, that is only further evidence that science is full of charlatans. <BR/><BR/>Chris:<BR/>"bryan, nice comments. let me just quickly say that the sample size is not, itself, a problem. The problem lies in whether the sample is representative. Our statistical tools are designed to measure probabilities based on relatively small samples (the old joke among statisticians is that for most parametric statistics, infinity = 30), and can produce a valid picture of the population if the small sample is representative."<BR/><BR/>Well, Chris, there must be something very wrong with his study, because the results are ridiculously out of line with reality. "Do bisexual men exist" is as stupid (and bigoted) a question as "Do black people have intelligence?" The world is full of men (and women) who are sexually turned on by both sexes, and who are open about this. Anyone who denies this clearly has an agenda that involves ignoring reality in the first place. <BR/><BR/>Bryan Cruickshank:<BR/>"For example -- what is the reaction to the average straight man to two girls doing it by themselves without any guys for a few minutes? What is their reaction to a guy and a girl doing it? I think most of my straight guy friends would be more attracted to the one with the guy in it. Does that make them more gay?"<BR/><BR/>A minor quibble: there can be penetration between women (fisting, dildos, etc). I find it hot, and penetration is indeed hot. <BR/><BR/>Good comments, though. Like I said, Bailey is an utter charlatan. He's interested in distorting and concealing the truth outright. He's not interested in revealing it. <BR/><BR/>Manduca:<BR/>"I'm thinking also that arousal in response to a video of women having sex with each other might not correlate with attraction to women for bisexual men the same way it could for straight men. For example, bisexual men, presumably having had gay sexual experiences and possibly having more connections to lesbian and bisexual women, might see lesbian sexual experience as something that exists complete without male participation and thus find it less sexually evocative and arousing. Straight men might have a more conventional porn-narrative interpretation in which lesbian sex is only a warm-up and inevitably leads to heterosexual sex."<BR/>Speaking for myself (a bisexual man) and other bisexual men I know, I find purely F-on-F scenes to be a big turnon. I also find them a turnon when they have male participation. Please don't fall into the pit of false dichotomies. I can honestly tell you that from my experience, bisexual men aren't any less into lesbian porn than self-proclaimed straight men. Bailey's study supposedly found otherwise, but he's a dogmatist with an agenda. <BR/><BR/>dfeuer:<BR/>"Along with the limitations of plethysmography, I think the study suffers from its exclusive reliance on visual stimuli. Some bisexuals report being attracted differently to men and women: one possibility is that multiple senses (I would guess vision and smell) are involved in bisexual arousal."<BR/><BR/>I (and all the other bisexual men I know) are VISUALLY aroused by both men and women. Of course, being a self-serving crank, Bailey would ignore this.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I just want to reiterate that bisexual men exist; I'm one of them, and I know many others. Bailey is full of sh*t. Anyone who takes him seriously is simply clueless.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1127157950589891012005-09-19T14:25:00.000-05:002005-09-19T14:25:00.000-05:00I just have to say one thing, just because someone...I just have to say one thing, just because someone says they are bisexual does not mean that they will be attracted to men and women equally. Just because the "bi" is in there does not mean it is a fifty fifty sort of situation. True bisexuals are rare to find, many bisexuals say they are bi because THEY feel it is better being bi than to be gay, but in reality they are gay. But come on guys, if you are gay I would hope that by this time and day in age you would know that there is no changing who you are, so once you accept it yourself you will be much happier. And one last thing, most bisexual people don't care who they end up with, be it a man or a women, as long as they are happy in the long run, but unfortunately there is more stigma towards bisexual men than there are to women which makes it a bit harder for bisexual men to be comfortable in their own skin...<BR/>craziefull@hotmail.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1123059072152382072005-08-03T03:51:00.000-05:002005-08-03T03:51:00.000-05:00It really amuses me how researchers believe that b...It really amuses me how researchers believe that by finding a statistically significant result that they can come to definite conclusions. Self proclaimed people live bisexual lives day in and day out, reality makes that clear. Of course bisexuality exists. It is also a known fact that research is often initiated with the researcher having preconceived outcomes to their hypothoses and whether subconciously or otherwise the resluts will often be coherent with their initial assumptions of the truth. Just open your eyes, look around and step away from paper based results, the world is a much better teacher an identifyer of trends and realities.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1122853959711269802005-07-31T18:52:00.000-05:002005-07-31T18:52:00.000-05:00Great response, and thread. To add to what stand_u...Great response, and thread. To add to what stand_up_philosopher wrote, I've read first-person accounts of men who claim that blonde women give them a 'soft on' and they're only aroused by women of x ethnicity. This is not in itself a problem with the present study if ethnicity of the video subjects was randomized... which brings me to my request to be emailed the article to doonbrat at yahoo dot com.<BR/><BR/>Oh, and yeah my 1st person anecdotal datum as a bi male - there's much more to my orientation than arousal. Not for me either the typical gay porn (sweat muscle jockstrap grunt grunt in twos threes and more by the pool or on the bed/couch/hay) OR straight porn designed for consumption by straight men (with the obligatory 'lesbian' scenes featuring uberfemmes whose fingernails should <I> never </I> be brought close to such sensitive parts). But the sight of a slender man on his knees making ardent love to a dildo before he surrenders to the attentions of the woman who's strapped it on...<BR/><BR/>Oh and I do have a general physical preference - for femmy bois of all genders/sexes/orientations. But there are so many other turn ons besides looks and plumbing - an astute point made, a politics aligned with mine, a poem startling in its honesty...<BR/><BR/>Dev AmritAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1121714795938218382005-07-18T14:26:00.000-05:002005-07-18T14:26:00.000-05:00bryan, nice comments. let me just quickly say that...bryan, nice comments. let me just quickly say that the sample size is not, itself, a problem. The problem lies in whether the sample is representative. Our statistical tools are designed to measure probabilities based on relatively small samples (the old joke among statisticians is that for most parametric statistics, infinity = 30), and can produce a valid picture of the population if the small sample is representative.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1121670565637951732005-07-18T02:09:00.000-05:002005-07-18T02:09:00.000-05:00Here's my take:1. I realize plethysmography is all...Here's my take:<BR/><BR/>1. I realize plethysmography is all the rage, but it seems to me kind of funny that the entire world jumps on a study that just happens to prove male bisexuality doesn't exist but female bisexuality is left out. Why? Because yet again society cannot handle any homosexual behavior by men, without it becoming an orientation, but with women, it's acceptable because it plays into male dominated hetero culture. I realize this scientist didn't consciously plan it this way, but it nevertheless seems to me a suspicious turn of events that this study exactly correlates with general American societal mores and stereotypes.<BR/><BR/>2. The idea that a bunch of self-proclaimed bisexual men have a greater response one way or the other to either sex is simply not a surprise. Get any group of bisexuals together, and you will find that none have a sexuality that really matches. I have only met a couple of folks who seemed to have parallel proportions of tastes to mine. The reality is all self-proclaimed bisexuals are different, but what you will find in each of them is that, despite an entire society attempting to keep them from existing, and receiving anything but a so-called privelege from the society, they recognize they have just enough of a preference for either sex that they feel compelled to acknowledge it. This idea of the bisexual equally attracted to both sexes cracks me up; it's as much of an obsession amongs society at large as polarity as some kind of God-dictated natural state. This is a fucking human conceit.<BR/><BR/>3. How about putting one of these dick measurers on the Bonobos and the Chimps, hmm? Our closest genetic relative fucks everything that moves all day long. You got primarily gay monkeys, primarily straight monkeys, and some monkeys in between. Assuming these animals are pre-freudian -- could this scientist please explain what their "non-sexual" reasons are for humping each other non-exclusively?<BR/><BR/>4. Am I the only one that thinks 101 people out of 6 billion is a little small for a sample?<BR/><BR/>5. Last -- the reality is, not to be coy, but in my own experience, when I have fallen for girls, though I lead a primarily gay lifestyle, I can't tell you exactly what has happened, but I found myself with crushes on women now an then with all the accoutrements of the usual fantasies. And yet, I love sex with men! Were these crushes entirely non-sexual? No, I don't think so. But were there non-sexual elements to the crushes? I'm sure. Were there sexual elements? Yes, I think so. <BR/><BR/>6. I've also been attracted to transgendered women - chix with dix. I love dick, but I have found myself attracted to specifically to these gorgeous transexuals -- even more than to men. Is it years and years of repression simply allowing me a composite of my physical attraction in the disguise of the more acceptable societal object for male attraction. Probably. But I wonder when it gets to the point where I have no attraction to masculine men whatsoever, yet I know I like that penis. Did he show films of really hot transexuals? <BR/><BR/>7. See I think what is going on is that it's not just that this guy is getting the answers to the questions he wants, it's the way he is asking the question that is the problem. For example -- what is the reaction to the average straight man to two girls doing it by themselves without any guys for a few minutes? What is their reaction to a guy and a girl doing it? I think most of my straight guy friends would be more attracted to the one with the guy in it. Does that make them more gay? The reality is they find the penetration exciting. But according to this study, it seems the presence of dick is a serious issue that changes everything. And what about my gay friends, and me for that matter, who are more turned on by straight porn but would never even dream of sleeping with a woman? The reality is there are a lot more genuine sexual questions and reasons this guy has not bothered to explore. It's a simplistic study. It's not off-base in assuming that there are men out there claiming to be bisexual who are simply covering up a near total penchant for gay sex. This is a fact. But the problem is there are so many questions left that weren't asked that are nevertheless purely sexual -- not non-sexual.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1121547729884462112005-07-16T16:02:00.000-05:002005-07-16T16:02:00.000-05:00Hi Chris - I appreciate your breaking down the art...Hi Chris - <BR/><BR/><BR/>I appreciate your breaking down the article. <BR/><BR/>You said "The evidence is in their measures of subjective arousal. If subjective arousal doesn't measure attraction, then I have no idea what it measures." What about subjective arousal measuring what a person thinks he or she should find arousing?<BR/><BR/>I'm thinking also that arousal in response to a video of women having sex with each other might not correlate with attraction to women for bisexual men the same way it could for straight men. For example, bisexual men, presumably having had gay sexual experiences and possibly having more connections to lesbian and bisexual women, might see lesbian sexual experience as something that exists complete without male participation and thus find it less sexually evocative and arousing. Straight men might have a more conventional porn-narrative interpretation in which lesbian sex is only a warm-up and inevitably leads to heterosexual sex. <BR/><BR/>These complications don't lend themselves to a simple resolution I can identify. So I'm just sayin'.<BR/><BR/>CiaoManducahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00101512541168116130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120844969863998352005-07-08T12:49:00.000-05:002005-07-08T12:49:00.000-05:00dfeur, that's an interesting possibility that I ha...dfeur, that's an interesting possibility that I hadn't considered. It would be an interesting line of research, too. <BR/><BR/>standup, yes, it's Brooks' description of what a "stand up philosopher" is, from the movie, to which the unemployment worker replies, "Oh, a bullshit artist."Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120775655282516652005-07-07T17:34:00.000-05:002005-07-07T17:34:00.000-05:00Along with the limitations of plethysmography, I t...Along with the limitations of plethysmography, I think the study suffers from its exclusive reliance on visual stimuli. Some bisexuals report being attracted differently to men and women: one possibility is that multiple senses (I would guess vision and smell) are involved in bisexual arousal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120772445895058842005-07-07T16:40:00.000-05:002005-07-07T16:40:00.000-05:00sorry, it's john@protevi.com. "stand_up_philosophe...sorry, it's john@protevi.com. <BR/><BR/>"stand_up_philosopher" comes from Mel Brooks' <I>History of the World, Part I</I> where "Philosophus" is a "stand_up_philosopher." Is that where your quote comes from? It's been so long since I've seen the movie.<BR/><BR/>I need to read up more on the use in psychology of porn and penile plethysmography for a project I'm working I'm calling "political physiology." it might be better to continue that discussion offline, via email. I appreciate your remarks very much, though I'm not entirely convinced you can solve the complexity problem by factorial analysis. but more on that later. thanks, JPAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120770995762734462005-07-07T16:16:00.000-05:002005-07-07T16:16:00.000-05:00stand up (great name, by the way... "I coalesce th...stand up (great name, by the way... "I coalesce the vapors of human existence into a viable and meaningful comprehension"), I'd be happy to send you the article, but I will need an email address to send it to.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120770784513645822005-07-07T16:13:00.000-05:002005-07-07T16:13:00.000-05:00I have to admit that I don't think the porn is a p...I have to admit that I don't think the porn is a problem. It appears that the failure to detect arousal in 1/3 of the male participants is an artifact of the measuring technique, and one that the experimenters recognize. In other studies, the difference between the number of males who have to be dropped due to failure to meet statistical thresholds of arousal, and the number of females (and transsexuals) who are dropped for the same reason, is highly statistically significant. It's hard for me to imagine (and I can't think of any evidence that would support the idea) that this is because men are pickier about their porn, or find the conditions more uncomfortable. There is a long history of using videos in these sorts of studies, and they consistently get arousal out of most men, while the failure to get arousal in some men appears to be primarly due to the inadequacy of the measuring techniques.<BR/><BR/>On the epistemological issue. As anyone who's taken a course on experimental methods in the social/behavioral sciences will tell you, this is the foremost problem researchers face. Human behavior is complex, and we know this. It is simply impossible to remove all the potential confounding variables from an experimental context. The goal, then, is to do your best to limit the trouble that confounds cause through the inclusion of control groups/conditions that differ only in one theoretically-relevant way. In the present study, this is done through contrasting responses to sexual videos and nonsexual videos, and through contrasting the responses of gay, straight, and bisexual males. This doesn't rule out alternative causes of bisexual behavior (it's not meant to; it's simply meant to contrast their behavior as described in the previous sentence), and the method thus in no way violates the epistemological lessons that we might learn from complexity theory.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120770526812209202005-07-07T16:08:00.000-05:002005-07-07T16:08:00.000-05:00please send me a copy of the file if you would. th...please send me a copy of the file if you would. thanks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120770176193789052005-07-07T16:02:00.000-05:002005-07-07T16:02:00.000-05:00a serious comment after the last fun one. we'd hav...a serious comment after the last fun one. we'd have to have some idea about the singularity of sexual response before we can talk about using porn, which can only represent singular subjects. i don't know, but i think it's reasonable that the 1/3 of the subjects who didn't respond didn't like the specifics of the video in a lab set up. maybe they don't like labs. maybe they only dig asian chicks while the videos had white girls. or black girls. or tall and slightly pudgy but fairly butch white girls. or skinny white boys. or skinny and short dark skinned black guys. or tall and muscular light skinned cabalasians who vaguely look like tiger woods, but not too much, because that would be a little creepy you know, especially if he didn't take off his golf spikes. and so on, into the infinity of kink that turns people on or off. or maybe it was the time of day? or time of the week / month / hormonal cycle? too soon or too long from the last "real" sex the subjects had? maybe the lights were glaring in the videos and our subjects prefer twilight? maybe the music was hideous? maybe it wasn't on satin sheets, which is the only thing that works for that person?<BR/><BR/>what i'm trying to get to is this: it seems to me sexual response / "orientation" is a complex evolutionary system in the technical sense of the term, using Peter Allen's work: 'The Dynamics of knowledge and ignorance: learning the new systems science,' in Matthies, et al., <I>Integrative Systems Approaches to Natural and Social Dynamics</I>, NY: Springer-Verlag, 2001. <BR/><BR/>If this is so, the real problem is Bailey's epistemology. bailey seems to have a classic architecture to his study: do whatever you can to isolate a one to one relation between independent and dependent variables, in this case, penile blood flow, which Bailey tries to provoke by different types of videos, and a generic "sexual orientation," which is self-reported and then correlated with the blood flow. "orientation" is then said to explain physical arousal which then determines the truth or falsity of subjective reports. but an epistemology taking its lessons from complexity theory would have to acknowledge multiple causes that cannot be factored out to find a single determining cause. not that you can't do science with multiple factored systems, but you can't do it by searching for the single factor that provides a truth value for the dependent variable.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120763944628992152005-07-07T14:19:00.000-05:002005-07-07T14:19:00.000-05:00Evanston only has high quality porn.Evanston only has high quality porn.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120740517339930312005-07-07T07:48:00.000-05:002005-07-07T07:48:00.000-05:00"Six two-minute videos": wham, bam, thank you, Ma'..."Six two-minute videos": wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am, or Sir! What if some of the subjects needed to see some foreplay to get enough blood to the penis to be measurable? What if they don't like videos at all? What if the videos were poor quality, grainy, cheezy 70s porn?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120693627285370622005-07-06T18:47:00.000-05:002005-07-06T18:47:00.000-05:00I'd like a copy, if you don't mind....I'd like a copy, if you don't mind....Bora Zivkovichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10763808287050592569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120672652621323882005-07-06T12:57:00.000-05:002005-07-06T12:57:00.000-05:00heather, I got the article from Bailey. I'd be hap...heather, I got the article from Bailey. I'd be happy to send you, or anyone else, the file, since Bailey freely gave it with no restrictions. It's not on any article databases yet, because it's still in press, so getting it from Bailey (or me) is really the only option.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417970139690159046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8182098.post-1120654640762731622005-07-06T07:57:00.000-05:002005-07-06T07:57:00.000-05:00Yep, science reporting frequently sucks. Yours is...Yep, science reporting frequently sucks. Yours is by far the best response I've seen to the Times article. Very smart and thorough. You should link to it on some of the other blogs so that everyone can be better informed.<BR/><BR/>Where did you get the original article? I have access to research databases through my university, but they don't include articles that are in press...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com