Women's Sexual Attraction And Fantasies Are More Fluid Than Men's, Says 50,000-Strong Study

During the early 2000s, researchers found that women’s genital responses demonstrated far less gender-specific arousal than men’s did. This sparked years of investigations into the underlying causes and produced various experiments focusing on different sexual stimuli and responses (genital response, pupil dilation, viewing time, reaction time, brain activity, and so on).

Over and over again, the research showed that men were more responsive to stimuli associated with their preferred gender, whereas women’s responses were mostly inconsistent. This gave rise to the idea that women were more “gender-nonspecific” when it came to their sexual desire. However, much of this work has focused on the physiological measures of sexual arousal in laboratory settings and often with small sample groups.

This has meant that psychological feelings related to attraction and fantasy have been neglected in comparison. In order to overcome this, the authors of this new study turned their attention to participants’ subjective experiences by examining self-reported feelings and subconscious associations. They also tried to identify patterns related to a broader array of sexual orientations than previous work.

The team analyzed three large preexisting datasets that provided information on gender identity and sexuality for over 50,000 people. They also focused on participant’s self-reported sexual orientation that consisted of exclusively straight, mostly straight, bisexual/pansexual, mostly gay/lesbian or exclusively gay/lesbian. This was a more nuanced set of categories than in previous studies, which have tended to focus on three categories of straight, bisexual, or gay/lesbian. 

They also assessed participants’ self-reported sexual fantasies, sexual attractions, and any indirect measures of sexual attraction (if they were available).

Participants placed their attraction to men or women on a numerical scale and reported how often they had erotic fantasies involving either. This information was then combined with indirect cognitive measures gained through a tool known as the Men/Women Implicit Association Test (IAT). 

“In the IAT,” the team explain in their paper, “participants observe words and/or images that appear on the computer screen, one at a time. Participants are required to categorize each item into one of four categories, as fast as they can.”

For example, they might be asked to sort words or images into the target categories of “Men” and “Women” or the attribute categories of “I Am Sexually Attracted” and “I Am Not Sexually Attracted”.

The idea is that the speed at which participants sorted these items could indicate automatic associations – a fast response indicates a strong mental connection, while slower responses suggest weaker ones.

In addition, the team used another cognitive association tool – the Questionnaire-Based Implicit Association Test (qIAT) – which provides statements, rather than images or words, that need to be categorized.

The results reinforced previous findings demonstrating that men are generally much more gender-specific than women. Men’s attractions and fantasies were heavily concentrated on their preferred gender with almost zero response to the non-preferred gender.

In contrast, women were more “fluid”. Women reported higher levels of attraction and more fantasies concerning their non-preferred gender. This suggests women are more psychologically open to attraction outside their primary orientation. However, the study challenged the idea that women were “gender non-specific”. Rather than being attracted to everything, the results showed that straight women have a clearer preference for men in both self-reported and indirect measures – it’s just less “exclusive” than it is for men.

When it came to participants in sexual minority groups, the results were significantly different, sometimes disappearing or reversing all together. For instance, lesbian women frequently demonstrated levels of gender-specificity that were as high or sometimes higher than those of gay men.

“Across these datasets, we found consistent gender differences in gender-specificity: on average, women exhibited less gender-specificity than men in self-reported sexual orientation, sexual attraction, and sexual fantasies, and in indirect measures of sexual attraction,” the team wrote.

“However, this gender difference varied by sexual orientation group – in lesbian and gay participants, the difference was typically smaller, absent, or even reversed, depending on the specific measure.”

So, what might be causing these results? One theory the authors examined posited that men are simply more sexually driven than women. However, the data does not support this. If this were the case, men should have reported more attraction to anyone, regardless of their preferred gender. Instead, it was straight women who reported attraction to more types of people.

A second theory draws attention to the influence of social norms. Heterosexual masculinity is far more prescriptive than it is for other sexual groups. As such, men receive more social stigma and even legal sanctions, in some contexts, for expressing interest in other men. This may lead straight men to more firmly express their preferences. This seems to be supported by the data and could explain why women, who experience less social stigma for sexual flexibility, were less specific.

The researchers also examined the idea of sexual objectification. This argues that in most Western cultures, the female body is heavily sexualized in media, art, and advertising. From an early age, both men and woman are trained to see the female form as a sexual object, which could create a “learned” or automatic arousal response to female stimuli regardless of a person’s self-reported orientation.

The results do offer some support for this explanation as across the whole study, attraction to the non-preferred gender was higher when that gender was female.

“The pattern of gender differences in gender-specificity observed here and in previous studies suggests the possible interaction of several sociocultural factors, including the objectification of women, lower sexual satisfaction among straight women, and the greater importance of a high sex drive and heteronormativity in the construction of men’s sexuality,” the team conclude.

“The involvement of such factors is supported by the discrepancies between self-report and indirect measures described above, as the latter may be less sensitive to sociocultural norms.”

The team suggests future studies could look into cross-cultural perspectives to assess the universality of gender differences and gender-specificity, as well as the role played by other sociocultural factors. 

The study is published in The Journal of Sex Research.