‘Sexuality’ can mean many different things.
Many people are not entirely sure what the letters LBGTQI refer to, but one thing that is clear is that sexuality is more diverse than it used to be.
To understand that diversity, it’s useful to unpack the idea of ‘sexuality’, by looking in some detail at how social and behavioural scientists have
thought about a more precise concept, ‘sexual orientation’.
Generally four criteria are used to explain sexual orientation: physiological response, sexual attraction, sexual behaviour and sexual identity.
I’ll talk about the advantages and disadvantages of these criteria, and teases out some of the
complexities in the relationship between sexual feelings, behaviour and identity.
Sexual orientation is an enduring form of sexual and emotional attraction a person has toward men, women or members of both sexes.
It’s often categorised in terms of being heterosexual (attracted to members of a different sex), bisexual (attracted to members of both
sexes) or homosexual (attracted to members of the same sex).
Commonly used terms to indicate sexual orientation in Western societies include being ‘straight,’ ‘bi,’ ‘gay,’ ‘lesbian’ or ‘queer.’
Sexual orientation is one aspect of a person’s broader sexual interests and capacity for sexual response.
As well as sexual interest in people of a certain gender, people’s broader sexual interests might
include preferences about partner age, looks, physical appearance, height, and personality,
It can include preferences for certain types of sexual acts, how often to have sex, and when or where it should take place.
In relation to the four criteria used to understand sexual orientation, the FIRST is physiological
responses to potentially erotic stimuli, like pictures of naked human bodies.
These physical responses can be measured by researchers in a laboratory setting.
The advantage of this criterion is that it seems to provide direct evidence of physical arousal over which individuals have little conscious control.
But there are also a number of possible disadvantages to this approach.
To begin with, visual cues might not be equally arousing to men and women.
At one time, in the 1940s and 50s, Alfred Kinsey and colleagues’ research was thought to show
that men were more sexually responsive to visual erotica than women.
However, more recent studies suggest that sex differences in this area are fairly small.
Also, this type of research may not be feasible with large, randomly selected groups of people.
People may also be able to distract themselves, block arousing cues or become aroused by stimuli not intended in the research so the
research depends upon the cooperation of participants.
Finally, the results of physical arousal may not predict the *direction* of a person’s affections, or how they define themselves.
The SECOND criterion used to measure sexual orientation is that researchers can ask people
whether they’re sexually attracted to men, women or members of both sexes.
Researchers can also ask people about the direction of their sexual desires and fantasies in relation to sexual partners.
This criterion has a couple of important advantages.
It most closely approximates to how people generally understand sexual orientation.
As a result, this measure has been used the most in population studies of sexual orientation.
It also allows sexual orientation to be measured for people who have not had sex, such as
people who are virgins or people who are celibate.
But, again, this criterion also has some potential disadvantages.
Key terms like ‘sexual’ and ‘attraction’ need to have mutually shared meanings, if questions are to be properly understood and answered.
This might be an issue when conducting research with people from different cultural backgrounds.
This criterion also depends on the honesty of respondents in providing truthful information.
If certain sexual orientations are disvalued or stigmatised in a society where research is being carried out, then people with those orientations
might be less likely to be open about them.
This will be a particular issue if they have any concerns about the nature of the research, or how it will be used.
The THIRD criterion for measuring sexual orientation concerns a person’s sexual *behaviour*.
Researchers can ask people who they’ve had sex with, and what gender their partners were.
The questions can be quite specific here, such as how many men or women with whom a
person has had genital contact to orgasm, over, say, the past five years.
This approach has a couple of advantages.
It’s useful in survey research for gaining information to develop preventative strategies for HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.
Because certain behaviours can be a transmission route for infection of diseases like HIV/AIDS, knowing about people’s sexual
behaviour can help health workers to develop strategies to minimise the risks of infection.
It can also be useful to correlate feelings and behavioural criteria of sexual orientation to see
whether people actually have sex with those they’re most attracted to.
The potential disadvantages include that it also depends on the honesty of respondents, which can be affected by whether the behaviour is
illegal or stigmatised in society and how the research is done.
Sexual behaviour can also be affected by a range of factors that have little or nothing to do with a person’s sexual feelings.
For example, a person’s sexual behaviour might be affected by their moral beliefs, so that a homosexual person might refrain from same-sex
sexual behaviour if they regard homosexuality as a sin.
Sexual behaviour can be affected by opportunity, so that men or women in prison might engage in same-sex sexual activity, not because they
prefer that, but because they’re denied access to opposite sex partners.
And sexual behaviour can be affected by the desire to make money.
For example, sex workers will have sex with clients for money, but they may not feel any desire or attraction to their customers.
The FOURTH criterion used to measure sexual orientation is sexual identity.
Here researchers ask people how they define and classify themselves, and whether they see
themselves as heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual.
Respondents may answer in the same terms as the researchers, or use terms which reflect the
culture of their social group, pride about sexual orientation or solidarity with similar people.
The advantage of this criterion is that it can provide useful information on people’s self understanding, as well as on their political
orientations and community membership.
But, once again, this depends on people’s honesty in answering the questions.
People might not be honest in answering about stigmatised sexual orientations, or might not like
having to pigeon-hole themselves into a certain category.
Another disadvantage of this criterion is that sexual identity may have little or nothing to do with sexual orientation.
For example, some feminists in the 1970s defined themselves as lesbians to show political solidarity
with other women, even though they were not particularly sexually attracted to women.
There are gay men and lesbians who don’t object to being seen as ‘straight’ or ‘heterosexual’,
because they have not yet ‘come out’ publicly as homosexual.
Some gay men and lesbians temporarily identify themselves as ‘bisexual’ in the process of coming out, before they finally come out as ‘homosexual.’
There are also reported cases of men who are *not* homosexual identifying themselves as gay,
because they have gay friends and like participating in the gay community.
In short, the relationship between sexual identity and actual sexual orientation can be very complex.
An important sociological question, then, is whether greater social tolerance of sexual diversity leads to greater consistency across
people’s sexual feelings behaviours and identities.
It may also have significant political and legal implications.
As a recent discussion of young people’s increasingly tolerant feelings about sexual orientation suggests: