How do we know that exclusive heterosexuality is normal?

[JellySlice]

Why do we think that the majority of people are heterosexual, and that this is natural? For women, at least.

Obviously hetero-sex is necessary for survival of the species, but sex among humans is for pleasure, communication and dominance, as well as for survival.

How do we know that the majority of women are not bisexual, with outliers being exclusively lesbian or exclusively hetero?

In even the most liberal of socities there is some socialisation to reject same-sex attraction - otherwise women would not struggle to accept it in themselves. Women who find men sexually attractive would not be deprived of sex by rejecting or suppressing their attraction to other women, so would not necessarily be distressed or notice that they were missing anything.

The short answer is we don't know. We never could, because people aren't raised in a vacuum.

I think Pear makes an interesting point about the porn, but I think the influence of porn on sexuality goes far deeper than simply young girls being revolted by what's expected nowadays. Insofar as I can tell, emerging sexuality is moulded by the individual's experience of sex within the culture (not having it themselves so much as being exposed to it); people unconsciously learn to be aroused by what they've been shown is 'normal' in their society.

I also think PurpleHoodie's description of three sexualities can be condensed down to two: monosexual and bisexual. Some people are exclusively attracted to a particular sex, and some people aren't. And I'm not convinced we're literally born with a preset orientation - you can't test a newborn for straightness, can you? I think it becomes fixed at some point (if you're monosexual), and that point may vary, and for some (most?) people that point is before they have conscious memory.

The search for a 'gay gene' seems like scrabbling for excuses to me though. As if finding a biological cause somehow legitimises homosexuality, when it should never have been considered not legitimate in the first place - orientation should be respected and deemed inviolable regardless of how it came to be.

Fair questions raised by Simon but this one made me laugh:

Do people regularly apply false and hurtful stereotypes about your sexuality?

Yes, yes they do! The whore stereotype is alive and well and girls and young women are being pushed hard to occupy it.

@PearPickingPorky

I've got teens and lots of friends with teens. I would say this is exactly what is happening. The teens in some milieu are completely stamping on the Kinsey scale!

Whenever I hear the 'sex positive' fems - I just see the porn now available at the click of a button and on a device in your hand: it's the most joyless stuff and it does not centre women's pleasure (some of them look dead behind the eyes). Girls are seeing this and voting with their feet. In fact if someone tells me their teen daughter is straight, I've started to wonder what it wrong with them (tongue in cheek).

We've let girls and boys down with what has been allowed to take hold and it's sad and worrying.

Positive depictions of generally joyful sex between women are (I think) more accepted in the mainstream media than male gay sex. I don't doubt that this is in large part because a lot of men enjoy watching it, and some of it may well be created with the male gaze in mind.

I think you'd have to ask every individual, which would be a big job; most people would tell you to mind your own (expletive deleted) business!

It would need to be a proper big survey, or a series of them across age groups and cultures.

I don't see why you'd want to know, really, except out of scientific interest. My concerns would be that the results might be used to coerce people the way lesbians are currently being coerced/bullied to accept male-bodied transwomen self-identified lesbians as potential partners! Apparently, half the people on lesbian dating websites these days are penis-havers. They live in hope...

Nobody can really tell you why they find certain types attractive as potential sexual partners and not others. It just is so in the final analysis. It's how people realise they are straight or gay or bi, isn't it?

If someone told me 50% of straight women are actually bi, it wouldn't make me look again at my female friends in a different light. I hug my lesbian friends (when it's not forbidden) but I don't get any frisson from them. Nor do I with most male friends, tbh, the person has to trigger that subtle, "Ooh, you're gorgeous!" feeling in the pit of the stomach. You'd only ever proceed without that feeling for bad reasons.

Stand by for a load of self-opinionated, entitled men telling women who they ought to find attractive and accept as sexual parrtners and educating us to "woman" better.

I am reminded of the tongue in cheek (or darkly satirical) remark that if ever one needed proof that sexuality was innate, the existence of female heterosexuality should put the matter beyond doubt.

So this!

I agree with Dido. 100% heterosexual here - unfortunately. Given the state of porn these days I'd be more than happy if all teenage girls could and would choose to be lesbians. It would serve a lot of men right. On the other hand, perhaps men won't care - so many are what we might call pornosexual now and can hardly get it up for a woman in real life.

• I think you'd have to ask every individual, which would be a big job; most people would tell you to mind your own (expletive deleted) business!

And even if you did that, the answers still would probably not be accurate.

@TyroBurningDownTheCloset

The short answer is we don't know. We never could, because people aren't raised in a vacuum.

I think Pear makes an interesting point about the porn, but I think the influence of porn on sexuality goes far deeper than simply young girls being revolted by what's expected nowadays. Insofar as I can tell, emerging sexuality is moulded by the individual's experience of sex within the culture (not having it themselves so much as being exposed to it); people unconsciously learn to be aroused by what they've been shown is 'normal' in their society.

I also think PurpleHoodie's description of three sexualities can be condensed down to two: monosexual and bisexual. Some people are exclusively attracted to a particular sex, and some people aren't. And I'm not convinced we're literally born with a preset orientation - you can't test a newborn for straightness, can you? I think it becomes fixed at some point (if you're monosexual), and that point may vary, and for some (most?) people that point is before they have conscious memory.

The search for a 'gay gene' seems like scrabbling for excuses to me though. As if finding a biological cause somehow legitimises homosexuality, when it should never have been considered not legitimate in the first place - orientation should be respected and deemed inviolable regardless of how it came to be.

Fair questions raised by Simon but this one made me laugh:

Do people regularly apply false and hurtful stereotypes about your sexuality?

Yes, yes they do! The whore stereotype is alive and well and girls and young women are being pushed hard to occupy it.

Yes, I think something like this is my intuitive impression - human sexuality is built with a certain amount of flexibility to account for the social and cultural conditions individuals find themselves in. So their experience of how sex works in their culture at some point coalesces with their own basic physiology to respond sexually within that environment. I also think this might account for certain things like development of fetishes, at least to some extent. It's like imprinting gone wrong.

There are some interesting conclusions you could draw from that if it's true. One thing is that typically our culture has a lot of sexual material - but fake sexual material - on display, including to children and youths, all the time. We tend to assume it goes over their heads, but maybe it doesn't, in the sense that it shapes their emerging understanding of sexuality. If a pre-pubescent kid can get turned on by seeing a wetsuit and become a rubber fetishist, who's to say that similar messages, albeit less unusual ones, aren't being given to other kids that age.

The fact that it's fake sex though is significant IMO. Historically most kids probably had more exposure to real sex, in the sense that things like privacy were limited or even non-existent in many places. But that's pretty garden variety sex, generally people aren't getting up to some sort of BSDM scenario with all the trappings in their one room house. You need privacy and time for that stuff. So influences on whatever you'd call this capacity of our sexual response to be socialised are now far more unrealistic, weird, and maybe not really something that's attainable or healthy to practice in many cases.

@ErrolTheDragon

* I think you'd have to ask every individual, which would be a big job; most people would tell you to mind your own (expletive deleted) business! *

And even if you did that, the answers still would probably not be accurate.

Yes. At least 90% of people feel their sexuality is innate I'd say, but feeling that way doesn't tell us a whole lot about whether or not it is. I think it suggests that whatever the roots, they are early for most, but you can't leap to innate based on that. Many things we feel are innate, aren't.

You can't argue people into or out of gut feelings like who they're sexually attracted to. It's been tried often enough for us to know it's futile.

Likewise, you can't ask people why they feel the way they do because it's unlikely to be something they can understand or articulate.

Likewise, you can't ask people why they feel the way they do because it's unlikely to be something they can understand or articulate.

And if we are able to articulate it, we're told that whatever we're experiencing isn't an orientation but something else, some other element of sexual expression. Testament to the strength of the 'born this way' narrative, I suppose. If it's explicable and informed by lived experience, it doesn't count.

I do find this thread fascinating. I never really believed in female heterosexuality as the norm until I read threads like this on Mumsnet. I'm attracted to men and women, as are just about all of my female friends who I'm close enough to discuss these things with. I always thought that "I'm only attracted to men" was one of those polite social lies like "I really couldn't eat another slice of cake"and not something that it was actually common to experience.

"Attracted to" can mean different things, too. Sexual attraction and attraction to someone as a long term partner and romantic attraction are all somewhat different.

I always thought that "I'm only attracted to men" was one of those polite social lies like "I really couldn't eat another slice of cake"and not something that it was actually common to experience

Apart from the women I know who are lesbian I've never heard any of my female friends express any attraction to other women. I admire beautiful/ elegant/ stylish women but as objects of beauty or whose style I might try to copy - I'm not attracted to them.

I'm not clear what the point of this thread is. Many gay and lesbian people are adamant their orientation is innate and they knew from an early age.

@VirginiaWolverine

I do find this thread fascinating. I never really believed in female heterosexuality as the norm until I read threads like this on Mumsnet. I'm attracted to men and women, as are just about all of my female friends who I'm close enough to discuss these things with. I always thought that "I'm only attracted to men" was one of those polite social lies like "I really couldn't eat another slice of cake"and not something that it was actually common to experience.

I read an interesting article ages ago about women in middle life going off men and turning to women instead, and it occurred to me that this might be a quite sensible evolutionary strategy. If you were a cave-woman, once you'd actually had some kids, you wouldn't necessarily need someone to impregnate you again, just someone to help you look after them. Erm.. actually, come to think of it, scratch "if you were a cave-woman" :D

A horny lesbian cave woman, you say...?

I'm not clear what the point of this thread is. Many gay and lesbian people are adamant their orientation is innate and they knew from an early age.

Sure, as are many heterosexual people. Yet if they lived in certain places and times there is a good chance they would engage in a certain amount of homosexual activity, and there was often no concept of homosexuality or heterosexuality as such.

The "born that way" frame has always bothered me because it buys into the bigots' worldview, at least to some extent.

Why shouldn't you choose whatever partners you fancy? So what if it's a preference? How is it any business of anyone else?

The 'born that way' mantra derives from the successful fight against racism. (Unfinished, but successful in the sense that it's not longer acceptable to be an out racist in polite society.) Race is definitely a matter of being born that way, and somewhere along the line, people absorbed the message that it's revolting to put people down over a skin color they don't control.

So far, so good.

But now everything is being shoehorned into that frame. (No gay gene has been found, by the way.) Every trait has to be genetic or you have no right to make your own choices.

Balderdash. It's only the right wing that thinks they can perch on your shoulder and tell you what kind of sex to have. What business is it of theirs? or anybody's?

I think we need to proudly embrace differences both based on genetics and on choice.

Don't forget the differences that are neither genetic nor freely chosen, but rather a product of experience.

Let's not make this a left/right issue though; I've had Labour voters suggest I need psychological help with my aversion to men. Dickheads lurk throughout the political spectrum, and as a known csa victim I can confirm lefty voters are quite capable of assuming an unwillingness to throw oneself at men must be trauma-related and so needs fixing.

Surely we could argue asexuality is also inate. Ignoring those animals that reproduce asexually, some animals are asexual for a variety of reasons. I Remember watching a programme about in some pack animals there are obviously animals that are designated as non procreators, and as such dont seem to show much evidence of any wish for sex even if their status in the group is changed. I also read something about a highish percentage of male rams not wanting to mate, and that in groups of gerbils some seem to actively avoid mating but take on a caretaker role instead.

Ill see if i can dig some stuff out

Good point. The trait of a sexuality can persist evolutionarily even if it’s “genetic” for any of the same reasons gay people can.

1. kin or other group selection

2. complex genetics and/or gene by environment effects

Ultimately like a pp said, it shouldn’t matter if sexual orientation is fixed, changeable, genetic, or environmental. We should still respect people’s wishes.

I'm finding the replies here really interesting. It's curious that some posters seem to feel that this is a 'wrong' question, and that sexuality just is, and is immutable and inexplicable. Asking questions is not necessarily the same as challenging or denying.

Many people do have strong feelings about their sexuality, but many do not. For everyone whose experience is A, and they therefore find B implausible or unthinkable , there will be someone whose experience is B, and they therefore find A implausible or unthinkable.

I know nothing of sociology, but it strikes me that being bisexual probably holds more evolutionary advantages for women than being heterosexual.

I know nothing of sociology, but it strikes me that being bisexual probably holds more evolutionary advantages for women than being heterosexual

I think you might projecting your own bias there.

The thing about evolutionary theory on this point is that there are a TON of ways you can get various sexualities to be maintained in populations. And if we look across animals we see a lot of them.

In humans we don’t know which is operating because we simply can’t do the experiments.

We can try to guess only on how things look relative to Our relatives the other great apes. Doesn’t provide much answer because bonobos are more bisexual and chimps Are more mono sexual.

@ErrolTheDragon

Sure - but if you'd had to learn to write right handed, and then years later someone was asked about you, they would have said you were right handed. An inherent characteristic can be apparently modified by socialisation. So it can lead to mistakes in data and inaccurate conclusions.

So, in relation to the OPs question, do we at this point have accurate data about innate levels of homosexuality?

Unless you're a stubborn bugger like me. They forced me to write with my right hand aged six. I let them browbeat me into it and the next few years were torture. Because we were not only marked for the correctness of our work but also for neat handwriting. Mine wasn't.

But I loved drawing and I just couldn't with my right. So I staged my first revolt aged six when they tried to force me to draw with my right (as the common belief was that letting me draw with my left would undermine my right-handed writing).

I just refused to sit until the teacher gave up. I had the only cockerel facing right in my year. Pleased me unreasonably every time I saw it in the hallway afterwards, where the school put the best ones up.

I really wasn't a rebel. Followed every rule. But I just refused to do this. Because it felt wrong at a physical level.

I did read up on handedness being learned, and how not to condition one's children to use their right hand. My kids all started out with a preference for the left hand that vanished before school despite my awareness. Now I wonder if that wasn't more to do with the fact that I handed them everything with my left. As they spent more time at nursery, it meant spending more time with right-handed people, both teachers and children. As this process caused no issues at all, I do wonder if it's not left-handedness that we inadvertently condition children out of but being ambidextrous.

What's my bias, Dido?