I, meanwhile, am not entirely sure that there are straight women.
(Every woman I have met has fallen into one of the following categories: 1) She would not know if she were non-straight, due to inadequate self-examination or understanding of the concept of orientation. 2) I would not know if she were not straight, due to not having a close enough relationship with her or due to social constraints on her end preventing her from being out or due to the topic never having come up. 3) I know her to be bisexual, gay, asexual, or some other non-straight sexuality.)
Counterexamples are welcome to present themselves, of course.
Reminds me of a study I read about. They basically showed men and women different types of porn and measured genital arousal. The results were straightforward for men: if they identified as straight, girl-on-girl porn caused the greatest arousal, girl-on-guy was ok, and guy-on-guy caused almost no arousal. For gay men, the results were reversed. For girls, there were no simple categories, and their identification as straight or gay didn’t predict which images would be the biggest turn-on.
The thread seems to be resurrected, so I’ll present myself. :)
I am a cissexual slightly genderqueer exclusively androsexual monogamously married woman. I think about sexuality and orientation a lot. Including my own. I don’t recall ever being sexually or romantically attracted to a woman. Intellectually, monosexuality seems a little weird to me, but nevertheless it seems to describe me. In fact I think of my monosexuality as a gender fetish, but I hesitate to apply that paradigm to other people’s monosexuality.
That is one of the most delightfully precise explanations of personal gender identity and sexual preferences I have ever seen. Also, as an exclusively monosexual male, I agree with your thoughts that monosexuality is understandable but doesn’t seem optimal from an individualistic standpoint.
My impression from attending a women’s college was that by the fourth year, most women who came in identifying as straight had experienced some attraction to other women. And those who came in saying “My life would be so much easier if I liked girls” were more likely to be dating women by the end (though no data on whether their lives were actually easier!)
Not necessarily true—it’s possible you had an implicit “given that she is straight” at work when you were interpreting evidence. If you conditioned on her being straight it makes perfect sense that you’d have no evidence one way or the other from a blind prior.
(People conditioning on such things is extremely common—for a much less innocuous example, consider what “no thanks, I don’t want to” looks like to someone who is conditioning on “this person wants me to”)
You’re right, actually. This occurred to me when posting the above. I started from “She’s a girl who says she is straight” and then updated down to .9 based on what I learned.
I think you both need to clarify your definitions a bit. It seems to me that females have a lot more scope for physical intimacy with other females in western society without generally being considered non-straight than males do. A straight female expressing physical attraction/admiration for other females is not considered grounds for doubting self-reported sexuality the way it might be for males.
It’s true that evidence one has for classifying people’s sexual orientation can be different for men and women. Thus I have female friends who, if they were men and behaved toward men the way they now behave toward women, my beliefs about their sexual orientation would alter dramatically. But such behaviors don’t define heterosexuality. An Anglo-American man who compliments other men on their attractiveness, holds hands or is affectionate toward other men is giving us evidence that he is gay or bisexual. But these facts don’t make him gay or bisexual. Facts about who wants to have sex with and who he wants to have romantic relationships define his sexual orientation.
People really aren’t comfortable with their naive notion of heterosexuality? It’s true that these concepts, like all cultural and social concepts, might break down upon extremely close examination. There are often degrees and exceptions. But I think we can use them just fine.
I more or less agree with your interpretation but it seems to me that the crux of any disagreement you have with Alicorn may well be over your respective defintions of ‘straight’ for males and females rather than a disagreement over the prevalence of certain behaviours.
Examples of behaviours that are quite common between girls I consider ‘straight’ but I would consider an indication of homosexuality in (western/anglo-american) males: holding hands; kissing on the lips; sharing a bed; overtly sexual dancing; commenting on the sexual attractiveness of other females. Would you consider any of these behaviours evidence that your girlfriend is not straight? Would Alicorn consider any of them evidence that a girl is not straight? That’s where I think some clarification is needed.
I’m actually not sure how much my data point suggests a disagreement with Alicorn. After all this is my girlfriend and I’m still only 90% sure she is straight.
Actually, I think all of those behaviors are evidence of non-heterosexuality in women they’re just weak and easily trumped by other kinds of evidence. After all, pretty much every non-straight girl I know does these things and only some of the straight girls I know do them. None are, of course, constitutive of non-heterosexuality. Incidentally, none are a pattern with my girlfriend.
For what it’s worth, I know a few women (2 certainly, 1 arguably) who strike me as reasonably self-aware, are at least as familiar with the concept of orientation in the abstract as I am, whose sex lives I’m reasonably well acquainted with, who have expressed sexual attraction to and initiated/accepted sexual intercourse with a number of men, and who have expressed (sometimes with regret) their lack of sexual attraction to and have never initiated/accepted sexual intercourse with any women.
Calling them straight seems reasonable to me… certainly I would call myself gay were all of that true of me.
That said, I can certainly imagine all of them having sex with another woman were the circumstances perfectly aligned (at least, I suppose I can imagine it; I’ve never actually done so and it seems vaguely impolite to do so now, especially since I’m at work).
So you think it is possible for a woman to be fully gay but not fully straight? That seems unlikely. According to Bailey, Kim, Hills & Linsenmeier (1997) 1% to 2% of women describe themselves as as having a primary or exclusive female orientation. On the continuum of sexuality, that leaves a vast potential area of women who likely have totally straight sexual orientations.
I, meanwhile, am not entirely sure that there are straight women.
(Every woman I have met has fallen into one of the following categories: 1) She would not know if she were non-straight, due to inadequate self-examination or understanding of the concept of orientation. 2) I would not know if she were not straight, due to not having a close enough relationship with her or due to social constraints on her end preventing her from being out or due to the topic never having come up. 3) I know her to be bisexual, gay, asexual, or some other non-straight sexuality.)
Counterexamples are welcome to present themselves, of course.
Reminds me of a study I read about. They basically showed men and women different types of porn and measured genital arousal. The results were straightforward for men: if they identified as straight, girl-on-girl porn caused the greatest arousal, girl-on-guy was ok, and guy-on-guy caused almost no arousal. For gay men, the results were reversed. For girls, there were no simple categories, and their identification as straight or gay didn’t predict which images would be the biggest turn-on.
The thread seems to be resurrected, so I’ll present myself. :)
I am a cissexual slightly genderqueer exclusively androsexual monogamously married woman. I think about sexuality and orientation a lot. Including my own. I don’t recall ever being sexually or romantically attracted to a woman. Intellectually, monosexuality seems a little weird to me, but nevertheless it seems to describe me. In fact I think of my monosexuality as a gender fetish, but I hesitate to apply that paradigm to other people’s monosexuality.
That is one of the most delightfully precise explanations of personal gender identity and sexual preferences I have ever seen. Also, as an exclusively monosexual male, I agree with your thoughts that monosexuality is understandable but doesn’t seem optimal from an individualistic standpoint.
My impression from attending a women’s college was that by the fourth year, most women who came in identifying as straight had experienced some attraction to other women. And those who came in saying “My life would be so much easier if I liked girls” were more likely to be dating women by the end (though no data on whether their lives were actually easier!)
I’m around 90% confident my girlfriend is straight.
Update- She has a date with a girl next week. So… oops. :-)
Update #2-- And now.… she is in a long-term relationship with a woman.
Feels like I should tie a bow around this, in memory of old Less Wrong. They got married 6 months ago.
Huh, that sure was an interesting series of comments. Thanks for updating this after so many years and providing a tiny bit of data (and humour).
I’ve gone on dates with a couple guys just to check—I’m still pretty definitely straight.
Polls show that about 10% identify as non-straight, so your initial estimate wasn’t bad.
One would hope that dating someone would provide enough evidence to make a better estimate than a blind prior.
Not necessarily true—it’s possible you had an implicit “given that she is straight” at work when you were interpreting evidence. If you conditioned on her being straight it makes perfect sense that you’d have no evidence one way or the other from a blind prior.
(People conditioning on such things is extremely common—for a much less innocuous example, consider what “no thanks, I don’t want to” looks like to someone who is conditioning on “this person wants me to”)
You’re right, actually. This occurred to me when posting the above. I started from “She’s a girl who says she is straight” and then updated down to .9 based on what I learned.
I think you both need to clarify your definitions a bit. It seems to me that females have a lot more scope for physical intimacy with other females in western society without generally being considered non-straight than males do. A straight female expressing physical attraction/admiration for other females is not considered grounds for doubting self-reported sexuality the way it might be for males.
It’s true that evidence one has for classifying people’s sexual orientation can be different for men and women. Thus I have female friends who, if they were men and behaved toward men the way they now behave toward women, my beliefs about their sexual orientation would alter dramatically. But such behaviors don’t define heterosexuality. An Anglo-American man who compliments other men on their attractiveness, holds hands or is affectionate toward other men is giving us evidence that he is gay or bisexual. But these facts don’t make him gay or bisexual. Facts about who wants to have sex with and who he wants to have romantic relationships define his sexual orientation.
People really aren’t comfortable with their naive notion of heterosexuality? It’s true that these concepts, like all cultural and social concepts, might break down upon extremely close examination. There are often degrees and exceptions. But I think we can use them just fine.
I more or less agree with your interpretation but it seems to me that the crux of any disagreement you have with Alicorn may well be over your respective defintions of ‘straight’ for males and females rather than a disagreement over the prevalence of certain behaviours.
Examples of behaviours that are quite common between girls I consider ‘straight’ but I would consider an indication of homosexuality in (western/anglo-american) males: holding hands; kissing on the lips; sharing a bed; overtly sexual dancing; commenting on the sexual attractiveness of other females. Would you consider any of these behaviours evidence that your girlfriend is not straight? Would Alicorn consider any of them evidence that a girl is not straight? That’s where I think some clarification is needed.
I’m actually not sure how much my data point suggests a disagreement with Alicorn. After all this is my girlfriend and I’m still only 90% sure she is straight.
Actually, I think all of those behaviors are evidence of non-heterosexuality in women they’re just weak and easily trumped by other kinds of evidence. After all, pretty much every non-straight girl I know does these things and only some of the straight girls I know do them. None are, of course, constitutive of non-heterosexuality. Incidentally, none are a pattern with my girlfriend.
Which category do you yourself fall into? (Or would you prefer not to answer that question?)
I’m bi.
For what it’s worth, I know a few women (2 certainly, 1 arguably) who strike me as reasonably self-aware, are at least as familiar with the concept of orientation in the abstract as I am, whose sex lives I’m reasonably well acquainted with, who have expressed sexual attraction to and initiated/accepted sexual intercourse with a number of men, and who have expressed (sometimes with regret) their lack of sexual attraction to and have never initiated/accepted sexual intercourse with any women.
Calling them straight seems reasonable to me… certainly I would call myself gay were all of that true of me.
That said, I can certainly imagine all of them having sex with another woman were the circumstances perfectly aligned (at least, I suppose I can imagine it; I’ve never actually done so and it seems vaguely impolite to do so now, especially since I’m at work).
So you think it is possible for a woman to be fully gay but not fully straight? That seems unlikely. According to Bailey, Kim, Hills & Linsenmeier (1997) 1% to 2% of women describe themselves as as having a primary or exclusive female orientation. On the continuum of sexuality, that leaves a vast potential area of women who likely have totally straight sexual orientations.