A new study conducted by Northwestern researchers found bisexual men are sexually stimulated by images of both genders. For Medill senior Chris Garcia, the results confirm what he’s known for years: he’s attracted to men and women.
“I don’t find it too terribly surprising,” Garcia said. “It’s proving to everyone else that I exist.”
Garcia, a member of the LGBT Resource Center’s social group Bi-Plus, came out as homosexual in high school. Once in college, he said he realized the gay label didn’t quite fit.
“For me, identifying as bisexual is important because it respects the fact that I have strong emotional and some sexual feelings toward women,” he said. “But it’s one of those things that really doesn’t affect that many people outside of me. Everyone knowing that I’m bisexual isn’t a big deal. It’s just a way for me to be connected to a different community or to know what I am.”
While Garcia isn’t shocked by the study’s results, they mark a departure from older research questioning men’s sexual fluidity. In 2005, NU researchers failed to find evidence that bisexual men were also aroused by females. This time around, researchers required participants to have had at least one three-month relationship with one person of each sex, and specifically targeted men who self-identified as bisexual, said Adam Safron, a NU researcher and psychology graduate student. The men who described themselves as bisexual exhibited erectile responses to sexual videos of males and females.
“This is the first clear evidence of bisexual men showing uniquely bisexual arousal patterns in the laboratory,” Safron said.
Next, he said, the team will conduct a similar study on bisexual women.
By proving bisexual arousal patterns exist, the study helps validate a lifestyle that has gotten flack from both sides of the sexual orientation spectrum, Garcia said.
“It’s very tricky to identify as bisexual in the gay community,” he said. “If you’re gay and in a relationship that everyone perceives to be heterosexual, then it’s almost like you’re no longer part of the community that you once belonged in.”
Society more readily accepts female sexual fluidity but boxes men into the stricter gender roles of effeminate or masculine, Garcia said. Bisexuality, therefore, can be seen as a transitional phase.
“It’s sort of a cliche in the LGBT community that you’re either gay, straight or lying,” said Aubrey Blanche, a fifth-year senior in Weinberg and Medill. “I hope this study would help bisexual men experience less discrimination in their own community. For some people, bisexuality is confusing because people understand extremes, but they don’t necessarily understand straddling the center.”
As a teenager, Blanche said she felt attracted to both men and women. She said she completely came out as bisexual six months ago when she began dating her now ex-girlfriend.
“I personally wondered if it was a phase, but I think after relationships with both men and women, it’s just something that is part of my personality, which I consider lucky,” she said. “I get to sort of gender-blind date.”
Medill junior Zach Wichter, however, said he came out as bisexual before gay so he could explore his identity more gradually.
“It feels safer to come out as bisexual first, which I know has caused problems for the bisexual male community because then, a lot of people perceive bisexuality as a stopover on the way to gay,” he said. “That’s obviously not true. I know plenty of men who are legitimately bisexual.”
While the research supports the legitimacy of bisexual arousal, some question whether physical attraction alone tells the whole story of sexuality.
NU sociology professor Hector Carrillo said although he is happy with the study’s results, it’s important to differentiate between arousal, attraction and identity. Carrillo is currently working on Project Teal, a study of men who identify as heterosexual but seek homosexual relations online. He said his research suggests that in addition to being sexually fluid, men may exhibit sexual “elasticity” by demonstrating sexual desire for men while maintaining a heterosexual identity.
This latest research suggests progress is being made in the subject of bisexuality, but Garcia said he still takes every study measuring sexuality by arousal “with a grain of salt.”
“I think that we encourage these results because they help prove that bisexual people exist, but there’s also so much that’s emotional and choice-driven,” he said. “If I went after people that I was exclusively sexually attracted to, I’d get my heart broken every other day.”
