Category: Sex Science

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We’re having less sex because we’re too busy, not because of social media

Research suggests that adults and teenagers are having less sex now than 30 years ago. But is there more to the story, and why does it matter anyway?

 

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Adults and young people in the US seem to be having less sex than previous generations, according to a study published in November 2021. As is often the case, mobile phones have been named as the cause of this change in behaviour, but is that really what’s going on?

This finding was based on data from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), comparing over 8,500 individuals responses from 2009 and 2018.

The results echoed a similar study in the UK, called the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), which has been collecting information about the public’s sexual experiences for over three decades.

The Natsal researchers have found that with every survey, the average number of occasions of sex per week has decreased: in 1991, respondents said they had sex five times a month. In 2001, this was down to four times per month, and by 2012, the average number was three per month. Unfortunately, the fourth survey was postponed due to COVID-19, though the team hope to complete the study in 2022-23.

When asked if Brits are having less sex, Soazig Clifton, the academic director for Natsal at University College London, replied with “a resounding yes”. But it’s not just the case in the UK and the US. “If you look around the world, other comparable studies show a decrease as well. So, it seems to be a real international trend.”

Studies in Germany looking at sexual activity in men and women showed a decline from 2005 to 2016, which the researchers suggest could be due to “a reduced proportion of [individuals] living with a partner”. But Clifton says that extracting the data of only cohabiting couples, Natsal researchers still found a decrease in sexual activity over the three studies.

Both the Natsal UK study and the US NSSHB study split findings between adolescents and adults. Both found that the two groups were having less sex. For teens in particular, the US researchers found a significant difference in the instances of heterosexual sex – in 2009, 79 per cent of those between the ages 14-17 said they had not had sex in the past year. Nearly a decade later, 89 per cent of adolescents reported no sex.

Why aren’t the kids doing it?

Some have asked whether this could be down to young adults’ penchant (and perhaps preference) for social media and video gaming. Clifton warns that observational studies, like Natsal and NSSHB, “can’t easily answer the ‘why’ questions”.

“It is certainly theoretically plausible that people are spending so much time on their iPads and phones, connecting with others virtually rather than having sex with the person next to them,” says Clifton.

But it’s also possible that people feel more comfortable talking about sex now, compared with the 1990s, says Clifton. “Maybe people are more able to tell us that they’re not having sex. There is some statistical work we’ve done that shows we have a bit less reporting bias in our data. These decreases in biases would go along with the increased, more nuanced public conversation about sex.” However, Clifton explains this wouldn’t solely account for such a striking trend, though admits it might be part of the problem.

The idea that we are too busy – with phones, games or life in general – has been the subject of smaller, qualitative work by the Natsal. “The researchers worked with middle-aged women,” says Clifton. “And something that came up in that research was that women were too tired for sex. They had so much else going on in their life.”

“We looked at the first lockdown, which was particularly restrictive, and the impact on sex lives was really different for different groups of people.” The Natsal-COVID study showed that for people living with a partner, the frequency of sex was roughly the same as before the lockdown.

“In fact, most people didn’t report a change in their satisfaction with their sex lives. Some people say to me, ‘everyone will be having more sex because they were locked in a house together’. It’s just not the case.

“However, we were more likely to see a decline in frequency and satisfaction amongst people not living with partners, and amongst young people,” says Clifton.

Satisfaction, not frequency, is key, says Clifton. Prior to the pandemic, Natsal researchers found that most people believed others were having more frequent sex than they were having themselves. This misalignment could cause dissatisfaction in itself, one Natsal researcher wrote.

Why does it matter how much sex people are having?

“It’s part of the picture of understanding society, along with other areas of health and behaviours in our population,” says Clifton.

“Sometimes [sexual activity] gets dismissed as being less important than other aspects of people’s lives. For some people, it’s a really important part of their life.”

These studies are even more important in countries with related problems, like declining birth rates. “Some of the countries who have also seen the decline in sex are quite worried about their declining birth rate – understanding patterns of sexual behaviour and frequency of sex are an important part of that puzzle.

“The Natsal study covers a wide range of topics related to sexual health, much more than just how often people are having sex. We cover things like nonconsensual sex, STIs, and different reproductive health outcomes.”

In the UK, Clifton says that there are those that would like to be having more sex, though most participants who reported having no sex in the past year said they were not dissatisfied with their sexual lives. For couples and the importance of sex for sustaining relationships, Clifton says there is some evidence it’s quality, not quantity, that matters.

“We don’t need to be worried about whether our relationship is going to fall apart [because of it].”

In fact, 25 per cent of men and women who are in a relationship reported that they do not share the same level of interest in sex as their partner. What we see in the media, Clifton says, is a misrepresentation of what’s normal in terms of sex. Instead of making people feel bad about their sex lives, understanding averages can help us feel happier with what we’ve got, three times a month.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Research confirms men with older brothers are more likely to be gay, suggesting same-sex attraction has a biological basis

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New research shows having a greater number of older brothers increases the probability of a person entering a same-sex union at some point in their lives.

This finding, detailed in our paper published today in the Journal of Sex Research, offers a rare insight into the origins of sexual orientation.

The origins of sexual orientation

In recent decades, many countries have achieved remarkable progress towards equal treatment of LGBTIQ+ people, including greater public support and more protective legislation. But despite these encouraging developments, sexual minorities still experience high levels of stigma – and the origins of sexual orientation remain a matter of debate.

A growing body of research is attempting to shed light on why some people experience same-sex sexual attraction and others don’t. These studies have substantial implications for public opinion and debate, and subsequently the treatment of LGBTIQ+ people.

For example, we know people who view sexual orientation as a product of biological factors (such as hormones or genetics) are more likely to support sexual minorities and their civil rights, compared to those who view it as a product of social factors or individual choice.

The fraternal birth order effect

The “fraternal birth order effect” is one of the most well-documented patterns supporting a biological origin of human sexual orientation. This longstanding hypothesis proposes men’s propensity for homosexuality increases with the number of older biological brothers they have.

This effect has been attributed to a mother’s immune reaction to proteins produced by a male foetus. The proteins enter the mother’s bloodstream and trigger the production of antibodies that influence the sexual development of subsequent children.

These maternal antibodies accumulate over successive pregnancies with male foetuses, which means men with more older brothers are more likely to experience same-sex sexual attraction.

However, previous research documenting the fraternal birth order effect has relied on small and selective participant samples, which has led some scholars to question the authenticity of the phenomenon. Indeed, no study of a representative population sample has supported its existence – until now.

Our research

Our research used unique data from Dutch population registers. These data allowed us to follow the life trajectories of more than nine million people born between 1940 and 1990.

In previous studies we used this dataset to examine whether the gender of a married couple’s children affected the stability of their union, and to compare the academic performance of children raised by same- and different-sex couples. This time, we used it to provide a robust test of the fraternal birth order effect.

While the data did not contain direct measures of individuals’ sexual orientation, they did indicate whether they ever entered a same-sex marriage or registered partnership. We used this information as a proxy for homosexuality.

In the Netherlands, registered same-sex partnerships have been recognised since 1998, and same-sex marriage since 2001.

What we found

Our results show clear evidence of a fraternal birth order effect on homosexuality. Specifically, men with one older brother are 12% more likely to enter a same-sex union than men with one older sister, and 21% more likely than men with just one younger brother or sister.

The birth order and total number of siblings matter too. Men who are the youngest sibling are more likely to enter a same-sex union than men who are the oldest sibling, and the differences grow larger as the total number of siblings increases.

For example, the probability of a man entering a same-sex union is 41% greater if he has three older brothers, as opposed to three older sisters, and 80% greater than if he has three younger brothers.

The chart below illustrates some of our findings, showing the number of men who entered same-sex unions among those with up to three siblings. The sex of older siblings wields a considerable influence over same-sex union formation. On the other hand, the sex of younger siblings plays little to no role.

Data cover men born in the Netherlands between 1940 and 1990. The underlying statistical model accounts for birth year differences. This rules out the possibility that our results are due to age differences between the groups. Whiskers denote 95% confidence intervals.

Unlike earlier studies which focused almost exclusively on men, we documented the same pattern of results among women. We found women are also more likely to enter a same-sex union if they have older brothers.

This finding yields tentative support to arguments that maternal antibodies and foetal proteins also interact to influence womens’ sexual development.

What does it all mean?

Our results tell a clear and consistent story: the number and sex of one’s siblings play an important role in the development of their sexuality.

This evidence aligns squarely with perspectives that emphasise sexual orientation as an innate trait and a reflection of a person’s true self, rather than a product of “lifestyle choices” or a “fashion trend” as some suggest.

Of course, in an ideal society, the rights and respect people are afforded should not depend on whether their sexual identity is “innate” or “a choice”. But unfortunately, these issues still loom large in contemporary debate, further highlighting the importance of our findings.

A biological basis for human sexuality suggests harmful practices like conversion therapy can’t alter someone’s sexual orientation. It also discredits claims homosexuality can be “taught” (such as through sexual diversity education at schools) or “passed on” (such as through same-sex couples adopting children).

We acknowledge the diverging opinions on the value of research concerning the origins of human sexuality. Some feel such research is irrelevant because the findings should have no bearing on public attitudes or legislation, while others reject it for more hostile reasons.

Like others before us, we consider this research essential. Understanding the mechanisms behind sexual orientation can offer insights into what makes people who they are, and helps normalise the full spectrum of human sexual diversity.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Archaeology’s sexual revolution

Graves dating back thousands of years are giving up their secrets, as new ways to pin down the sex of old bones are overturning long-held, biased beliefs about gender and love

By I Emilie Steinmark

In the early summer of 2009, a team of archaeologists arrived at a construction site in a residential neighbourhood of Modena, Italy. Digging had started for a new building and in the process workers unearthed a cemetery, dating back 1,500 years. There were 11 graves, but it quickly became clear that one of them was not like the others. Instead of a single skeleton, Tomb 16 contained two and they were holding hands.

“Here’s the demonstration of how love between a man and a woman can really be eternal,” wrote Gazzetta di Modena of the pair, instantly dubbed “the Lovers”. However, according to the original anthropological report, the sex of the Lovers was not obvious from the bones alone. At some point, someone tried to analyse their DNA, but “the data were so bad”, says Federico Lugli at the University of Bologna, that it looked like “just random noise”.

For a decade, the assumption about the Lovers’ sex remained unchallenged. Then, in 2019, Lugli and his colleagues decided to try a newly available technique for determining the sex of human remains using proteins in tooth enamel. To their surprise, the Lovers were both male. The pair suddenly became potential evidence of a fifth-century same-sex relationship.

The skeletal remains of the Lovers of Modena. Researchers have determined both figures are male

The story of the Lovers is part of an ongoing sexual revolution in archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have had to rely on grave goods and the shape of bones to tell them whether a skeleton belonged to a man or a woman, but over the past five years, the use of new, sophisticated methods has resulted in a string of skeletons having their presumed sex overturned. The ensuing challenges to our ideas about sex, gender and love in past societies have not been without controversy.

The wider debate on sex in archaeology took off in earnest with the now-famous 2017 paper about a Viking warrior, found in a grave full of weapons in Birka, Sweden. The grave had been known since the late 19th century and had been presumed to contain a man, but it wasn’t until Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson from Uppsala University, Sweden and her team tested a DNA sample that anyone could be sure.

Traditionally with DNA analysis, you look for a gene linked to a sex chromosome, such as the AMELX gene on the X chromosome and its counterpart AMELY on the Y chromosome. As females usually have XX chromosomes and males usually XY, the logic goes that if there is significant AMELY present in the sample, it belongs to a male. Nowadays, the analysis takes into consideration much more of the genome, but the principle largely remains the same. And the DNA from the Birka Viking was clearly female.

But the notion of a female warrior did not fit with the existing ideas about the Vikings. According to convention, weaponry, in particular, swords, belonged with men and jewellery belonged with women. If this skeleton was a woman, some argued, the weapons and the warrior status should be re-evaluated. Hedenstierna-Jonson found this baffling, because everyone was fine with the warrior interpretation when the skeleton was thought to be a man, she says. “That cannot change just because we find out it’s a woman.”

Leszek Gardeła, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark and author of the book Women and Weapons in the Viking World, does not want to take a stance either way. “I think she could have been a warrior,” he says, but underlines that 90% of graves with weapons contain biologically male individuals. Weaponry in women’s graves is also no guarantee that they were warriors; an axe, for example, could be used for many things, including various Norse magic rituals often associated with women. “There was space in the mental universe of the Vikings for women warriors,” he says, “[but] I don’t think it was the norm.”

In any case, most agree that old ideas about “male” and “female” grave goods produce interpretations that are at best conventional and at worst biased. This is especially apparent when both feature in the same grave, such as the Viking grave discovered in 1867 at Santon Downham in Norfolk. “Most of the literature says it’s a double grave,” says Gareth Williams, a curator at the British Museum, “but there is no evidence to actually support that.” Only one skeleton, since lost, was originally reported. Rather than a double grave, the more obvious explanation could be a single grave of a person who did not strictly conform to gender norms. Williams thinks the grave probably contained a sword-wielding woman because “there were strict taboos against wearing anything that could be seen as effeminate” for Viking men.

A facial reconstruction of a Viking-Age woman buried with weapons at Nordre Kjølen, Solør, Norway.

Without the missing skeleton, the truth will stay unknown, but others are tackling similar cases with the new methods. Last August, Ulla Moilanen from the University of Turku, Finland, led the reassessment of a proposed “double” burial from early medieval Finland, which contained a single skeleton in female dress with swords. DNA analysis revealed that the grave belonged to a person with XXY chromosomes, or Klinefelter syndrome, who probably looked no different from an XY male. That is what makes this grave so interesting, argues Moilanen, “because a male-looking individual was dressed in clothes and equipped with jewellery usually associated with females”.

The obvious question to ask is: which long-standing analysis will be next to fall? After the Lovers of Modena paper, Lugli says, the team thought about testing other “lovers” buried across Italy. Contenders included the Lovers of Valdaro, housed at the National Archaeological Museum of Mantua, just an hour’s drive from Modena. The 6,000-year-old couple were buried nose to nose and with their arms pressed between their chests.

When they were first found, the Lovers were sexed by osteology, a visual examination of the bones that is still the most common way to identify sex remains. However, the technique is far from perfect. Some bones differ between males and females, but these changes are hormone-driven, says Rebecca Gowland, a bioarchaeologist at Durham University. Skeletons “have to have gone through puberty”, she says, so teens can be ambiguous. Additionally, skeletons are rarely complete and without key bones, such as the pelvis, osteology becomes a lot less reliable, even for adults.

The Lovers of Valdaro were teenagers when they died, one possibly as young as 16, so the osteological examination that declared them “female” and “probably male” could use some modern back-up – and it’s on its way. In the new year, a DNA project based at Tor Vergata University of Rome is set to reveal its results on the Lovers’ sex and potential familial relationships.

Beyond Lover couples, of which there are only a handful worldwide, two other groups will probably see more “sex reveals” in the future. One is hominids, the group of living and extinct apes that humans belong to. “[With] hominids, you’ve got poorly preserved skeletons of a species where you don’t know what the range of sexual dimorphism is, because you might just have bits of one or two of them,” explains Gowland. One very famous hominid known as Lucy, for example, was sexed by half a pelvis. “What if Lucy was Larry?”

While DNA analysis of hominids is possible, it can be tricky as the DNA can degrade to the point where there is little left to analyse. This is where tooth enamel comes into its own. “Compared to DNA, [enamel] survives really well,” says Gowland, who was part of the team that developed the technique.

A sketch of the grave of the Viking warrior in Birka, Sweden, by Hjalmar Stolpe, c1889.

Tooth enamel analysis exploits the same genetic difference as the traditional DNA approach. The AMELX and AMELY genes produce a protein called amelogenin, a component of tooth enamel. Parts of the protein, known as peptides, can be lifted from the tooth using a gentle acid and their chemical make-up, which is also sex-dependent, detected. “It’s revolutionising bioanthropology,” says Lugli, “because we now have an instrument for rapidly and inexpensively determining the sex of humans.”

The other group likely to see an increase in sex determinations is children, because they are otherwise so hard to sex reliably. Last December, a team led by researchers from the University of Colorado Denver established the sex of a 10,000-year-old infant girl from her tooth enamel. She had been found in a rich grave full of shell beads and stone pendants, showing not only that babies were dearly valued in the Mesolithic age, but specifically that girls were too.

So, are the Lovers of Modena evidence of a same-sex relationship 1,500 years ago? Similar to how the Birka Viking’s warrior credentials became the subject of controversy when her sex was published, the love of the Lovers is now being called into question. They could be brothers, which, because of the failed DNA analysis, cannot be ruled out. The authors of the 2019 study themselves propose that they might have been comrades-in-arms. However, previous work by Lugli’s colleagues rejected the idea that they were buried in a military cemetery. The dead didn’t show signs of repeated combat, there were both men and women, and a six-year-old child. So why revive the soldier hypothesis?

Lugli says that certain things changed: there was an in-depth analysis of the injuries and a skeleton that they thought was a young woman was actually a man. But, he says, “our interpretation was mostly from a historical perspective”. He thinks it’s unlikely that their parents would put the pair hand in hand to show their love, at that time. “But anything’s possible.”

In other words, the dead don’t bury themselves. But clearly they don’t excavate themselves either. “There’s a real lack of creativity about how other people lived their lives,” says Pamela L Geller, a bioarchaeologist specialising in queer and feminist studies at the University of Miami, “because we are so wedded to the categories that we have in place now.”

At the same time, although scientific methods can take away some of the guesswork, “there’s just some stuff we’re not going to know about the past”, Geller says. Who loved whom is one of those things, as is people’s sense of identity. Archaeologists can only try, as best they can, to reconstruct the lives of past people based on the available data. Gardeła says it is a matter of respect for the people of the past. “Every grave tells a different story,” he says, “because they were all real humans. They had their own unique lives.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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People Have Been Having Less Sex

— Whether They’re Teenagers or 40-Somethings

Among the young, social media, gaming and “rough sex” may contribute to this trend

By Emily Willingham

Human sexual activity affects cognitive function, health, happiness and overall quality of life—and, yes, there is also the matter of reproduction. The huge range of benefits is one reason researchers have become alarmed at declines in sexual activity around the world, from Japan to Europe to Australia. A recent study evaluating what is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence, showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex and partnered masturbation. The findings show that adolescents report less solo masturbation as well.

The decreases “aren’t trivial,” as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. The researchers obtained the self-reported information from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and used responses from 4,155 people in 2009 and 4,547 people in 2018. These respondents to the confidential survey ranged in age from 14 to 49 years.

The study itself did not probe the reasons for this trend. But Scientific American spoke with its first author Debby Herbenick, a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health–Bloomington, and Tsung-chieh (Jane) Fu, a co-author of the paper and a research associate at the school, about underlying factors that might explain these changes.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

Given that research in other parts of the world has already indicated decreases in partnered sex, what do your recent findings add to the picture?

HERBENICK: Our study tracks the declines, too, and extends the research because Jane [Fu] and our larger team tracked sex behaviors in really detailed ways. We looked at penile-vaginal sex, partnered masturbation, and giving and receiving oral sex. And we saw declines across all categories. And we included adolescents, too. The decline in adolescent masturbation is interesting, and we were the first to include it. That one deserves a lot more attention.

What might explain declines among young people?

FU: We need more studies to tell us why. But for young people, computer games, increasing social media use, video games—something is replacing that time. During that period from 2009 to 2018, different types of social media emerged. This is always evolving, especially for younger people.

HERBENICK: We don’t expect there to be one explanation or one driver in these decreases. We fully expect that there are multiple things going on for different age groups, different partnership status, different genders. You don’t need those individual pieces to explain a big part of a notable decrease, but … each one [might]  explain a percentage point or two.

Is there any contribution from increases in people expressing an asexual identity?

HERBENICK: We don’t know why more people are identifying as asexual, but I do think more people are aware of it as a valid identity. Even compared with when I started teaching human sexuality in 2003, I routinely had one student in my class who might identify as asexual. Now I have three or four. That’s striking to me. I love that young people are aware of so many different ways to put into words how they feel about themselves. For many of them, they feel that it’s okay to opt out of sex.

In your paper, you bring up increases in “rough sex” as potentially contributing to declines. Can you explain what you mean by rough sex, and how it could be playing a role in these changes?

HERBENICK: Especially for those 18 to 29 years old, there have been increases in what many people call rough sex behaviors. Limited research suggests that an earlier idea of this was what I would consider fairly vanilla rough sex: pulling hair, a little light spanking. What we see now in studies of thousands of randomly sampled college students is choking or strangling during sex. The behavior seems to be a majority behavior for college-age students. For many people, it’s consensual and wanted and asked for, but it’s also scary to many people, even if they learn to enjoy it or want it. It’s a major line of research for our team: to understand how they feel, what the health risks are and how that fits into the larger sexual landscapes.

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Why the Kinsey Scale still matters 70 years on

— And what every queer person needs to know about it

Two Barry sisters read review of the Alfred Kinsey Report on Women over the shoulder of Beverly Lawrence

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard the phrase “sexuality is a spectrum”. In a way, we have Dr Alfred Kinsey to thank for that.

By Matthias Walsh

In 1948, American biologist Dr Kinsey and associates Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin developed the Kinsey Scale. Also known as the Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, the seven-point scale was created to represent the team’s findings from years of research – that human sexuality was not as black and white as it was originally thought to be.

Kinsey’s highly controversial work ushered in a new era of studies on sexuality, thus earning him the title of “father of sexology”. But over 70 years later, does Kinsey’s work still hold up? Is the Kinsey scale still a reliable representation of the spectrum of sexual orientation? Or has it become a relic of the past?

Who was Dr Kinsey?

Dr Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor at Indiana University. Prior to his work on human sexual behaviour, Kinsey spent 20 years as an entomologist, collecting and identifying dozens of species of gall wasps.

It wasn’t until the early 1930s that Kinsey became interested in the study of sexuality. At this point, he began teaching sexual education classes to graduate, senior, and married students, where he would also hand out questionnaires for his research on sexual histories.

By 1947, Kinsey established the Institute for Sex Research (now known as the Kinsey Institute). Armed with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey and his team pored over hundreds and thousands of sex histories to study sexual relationships and sexual behaviour in the human world.

Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey and His Staff
Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey (white shirt) working with his staff on the final phases of his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Behavior (Getty)

What is the Kinsey Scale?

The Kinsey Scale is a visual representation of the research findings that Kinsey and company published in Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948). Together with Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953), the two books became collectively known as the Kinsey Reports. Considered some of the most influential scientific books of the century, the Kinsey Reports sold almost 1 million copies and were translated to 13 languages.

According to Discover Magazine, Kinsey’s research found that 37 per cent of men had been in a same-sex experience by the age of 45, while 13 per cent of women had had a same-sex encounter. As explained by the Kinsey Institute, the reports showed that “sexual behaviour, thoughts, and feelings towards the same or opposite sex were not always consistent across time”.

As such, the Kinsey Scale broke free from what was the traditional categorisation of sexual orientation at the time – heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual – and instead presented the following broader seven-point rating system:

0 – Exclusively heterosexual
1 – Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2 – Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3 – Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4 – Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5 – Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6 – Exclusively homosexual
X – No socio-sexual contacts or reactions

“The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats”, wrote Kinsey in the report. “Not all things are black nor all things white…only the human mind invents categories to force facts into separate pigeonholes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning sexual behaviour the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex”.

In short, Kinsey believed that sexual orientation was not as rigid as most people believed at the time. Instead, he saw that many people exhibited all types of sexual behaviour, even if it contradicted the labels with which they identified. As such, Kinsey sought to normalise the idea that sexual orientation is more akin to a spectrum than a strict binary.

Understandably, upon its release, Kinsey’s research was met with a lot of controversy. For many, Kinsey’s insistence that humans could be more than either gay or straight was an affront to everything they knew about themselves. It also meant that once you exhibited some type of homosexual behaviour – even if you didn’t identify as a homosexual or experienced same-sex attraction – then you could find yourself in some very hot water.

You have to remember that, at the time, homosexuality was considered illegal in most parts of the world, including the US and the UK. In fact, the main reference book in psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), didn’t remove homosexuality from its list of diagnoses until the early 70s.

An unidentified couple sit on the grass during the New York City Pride March, New York, New York, 1980s or 1990s. (Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen/Getty Images)

Is the Kinsey Scale test accurate?

So there is no such thing as a Kinsey Scale “test” or a Kinsey Scale “quiz”, per se. While it was once used to measure the balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality in a person relative to their history of sexual attraction and experience, it isn’t really used as a diagnostic tool anymore. Instead, think of it more as a representation of the sexual fluidity of human beings!

But if you really wanted to, technically speaking, you can study the scale and decide on your position on it.

Is the Kinsey Scale still relevant today?

The short answer: yes and no.

Kinsey and his associates moved the needle in terms of how a person’s sexual orientation is studied and understood. However, that doesn’t make their work infallible, especially when compared to what we know today.

Here’s how the scale misses the mark:

The scale fails to represent asexuals

On the Kinsey Scale, asexuals are lumped under the “X” rating, which is defined as people who have had “no socio-sexual contacts or reactions”. However, for many asexuals, this is simply not an accurate representation.

Asexuality is defined as the lack of sexual attraction to others. For many, asexuality is a sexual identity in the same way as being gay, lesbian, or bisexual are. It’s also considered an umbrella under which various forms of asexuality exist, from demisexuality (people who only feel sexually attracted to those they form emotional bonds with) to akoisexual (people who experience attraction but do not wish to have those feelings reciprocated).

The scale conflates sexual attraction and sexual activity, while leaving out sexual identity

Kinsey’s research focused mostly on the sexual behaviours that his interviewees acted upon. What he and his associates failed to consider was that sexual behaviour is not the same as sexual attraction. On top of this, one’s sexual feelings and behaviours do not necessarily reflect how one would identify.

The scale implies that attraction to one sex cancels out attraction to another

This is something that a lot of bisexual people have gripes with. The Kinsey Scale implies that the more attraction you have towards one gender, the less you have towards another. While behaviour can be measured (as in, you can count the number of sexual experiences a person has had), attraction is much harder to quantify.

This implication is especially frustrating for bisexual people who often feel invalidated by both gay and straight people. Many bisexuals feel that if their attraction is not a 50-50 split between the same and the opposite sex, that their bisexuality is somewhat invalid.

But take for example a bisexual woman who is attracted to both men and women but has only dated men exclusively. If you follow the scale, that woman is a “0 – exclusively heterosexual”, despite the fact that she feels sexual attraction to other women.

Kinsey Scale bisexual
People marching with anBi, a bisexual organisation, carry a bisexual flag in the 43rd L.A. Pride Parade in West Hollywood, California. (Getty)

Is there another sexuality scale aside from the Kinsey Scale test?

If you’re looking for a more nuanced model for identifying your sexual orientation, consider the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid and the Storms Scale. There are other scales out there – around 200 or so, in fact – but these two are by far the most popular.

The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid was first introduced in 1978 by psychiatrist and sex researcher Dr Fritz Klein. Appearing in his book The Bisexual Option, the Klein Grid was created as a learning tool to give people a more holistic understanding of the complexity of human sexuality. The Grid is made up of seven variables and three situations – past, present, and ideal.

The Storms Scale, on the other hand, was developed by psychologist Michael Storms in the early 80s. The scale focuses more on eroticism rather than sexual behaviour.

Does the Kinsey Scale still matter?

The Kinsey Scale was once a groundbreaking model of human sexuality at a time when the very idea of sexual orientation as anything but a binary was considered taboo. As such, it’s relevant in that it’s a seminal work in the field of sexology.

It’s also important to note that, for some people, having some kind of label or system of identification helps those who are questioning to better understand who they are and to find their “tribe”. In this way, the scale can still be a useful tool for those who are still exploring their sexuality.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Search for Gay Genes

— Should Queer People Support It?

Efforts from scientists trying to identify “gay genes” are part of a longstanding, problematic tradition of research focused on how minority groups are genetically different.

by and

To many of us, the attractions of gay sex are pretty obvious. But some scientists continue to wonder why people do it. If gay sex isn’t reproductive, why hasn’t natural selection weeded out all the queers? Why, after all this evolutionary time, isn’t everybody straight?

Increasingly, people think that sexuality is biologically innate. Sexual preferences shouldn’t be changed and they can’t be, simple as that. Per the famous Gaga refrain, we are “born this way.” Indeed, scientists may have helped to promote these beliefs. Some say not only that genes largely decide your sexuality, but also that genes help to explain why gay people exist at all.

Case in point: A recent paper published in Nature Human Behavior looked to see whether genes associated with having gay sex are also associated with having more reproductive sex. Specifically, its scientists were curious whether ‘gay genes’ in straight people could help straight people to have sex with more partners. They found that they do, as the genetic markers found in gay people were also found in those who see themselves as open to new experiences and risk-takers. In a nutshell, gay genes may exist because they help straight people get over their inhibitions and get laid more. This might explain why evolution hasn’t gotten round to pruning away the gays yet.

At this point, you might be laughing like us. But on a serious note, this study isn’t a one-off for this research team. In 2019, the same team published a study in Science about genes associated with ever having had gay sex. The study was highly publicized, receiving coverage from Nature, NYTimes, NPR and Slate. Outlets, quoting the study’s authors, proclaimed it to sound the death knell of the ‘gay gene.’

Far from doing that, the study shifted from searching for a single gay gene to looking for many gay genes. Like the recent Nature Human Behavior study, the 2019 Science study was a ‘genome-wide association study’ (GWAS). Using fancy statistics, the latest technologies, and a massive data set involving half a million people, the 2019 study concluded that there are five genes significantly associated with ever having had gay sex, and that the cumulative effects of thousands of genes might help to explain differences in sexual behavior. In other words, while the ‘gay gene’ might be dead, long live the ‘gay genome.’

Genetic research on sexuality and other complex behavior traits is growing fast. Some LGBTQ+ advocates claim it shows that being gay is “natural” and “not a choice,” and that the proliferation of sexual genetic research is something to straightforwardly celebrate.

However, we think the implications of this research are far more complicated. While both the Nature Human Behavior and Science studies were conducted by LGBTQ+ scientists with good intentions, they join a longstanding and problematic tradition of research focused on showing how minority groups are genetically different.

gay-genes-is-homosexuality-a-choice
A celebration in San Francisco after the Supreme Court decided same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits in June 2013.

Genetic research on homosexuality began in earnest in the 1990s. Scientists claimed that genes on the X chromosomes are associated with male homosexuality. Long before then, ‘eugenics,’ or social movements to control human reproduction in order to increase the “fitness” of national populations, played a role in the oppression of gay people. Eugenics research reached its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to the forced sterilization and genocide of not only queer people, but also Jewish and disabled peoples in Nazi Germany, and largely Black, brown and immigrant peoples in the U.S. Even after the second world war, eugenic policies and movements continued to haunt LGBTQ+ communities. 

Today, most research agrees that a person’s sexuality is formed through a combination of social, biological and environmental factors. Yet many across the political spectrum continue to describe sexual preferences as biologically innate and fixed at birth. Some researchers suggest that those who believe sexual preferences are inborn tend to have more tolerant attitudes towards gay men and lesbians.

Others argue that “born this way” doesn’t actually increase people’s tolerance of sexual minorities. Instead, it is used to rationalize whatever beliefs people already have about sexuality, whether conservative or liberal. On one hand, it has helped to defend beliefs that queer people are less biologically fit, and therefore appropriate targets for reproductive control. On the other hand, “born this way” arguments have lent considerable support to LGBTQ+ advocacy. Campaigns to legally ban conversion therapy, a form of medical abuse that seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation, have successfully used “born this way” rhetoric to strengthen their cases.

In any event, increasing ‘tolerance’ towards queer people isn’t the goal. Instead of being tolerated, queer people should be fully accepted, embraced and celebrated. Feminist scholar Suzanna Walters reminds us that attitudes of tolerance towards sexual minorities may do more harm than good by implicitly othering them. It is telling that while there has long been a search for a gay gene, “no one is looking for a straight gene.” Scientists feel no need to explain the existence of straight people because it is assumed that straight people belong. By contrast, sexual minorities need an evolutionary rationale in order to belong.

Political scientist Joanna Wuest also notes that despite helping to ban conversion therapy, “born this way” arguments sometimes conflict with queer people’s own experiences. Many radical queers consider their sexual identity to be a choice entwined with their politics. Meanwhile, those with fluid identities and those who’ve questioned their sexuality for a long time have a hard time identifying with a picture of sexuality as stable, fixed, and innate. As political scientist Nina Hagel writes, “born this way” may uphold “untenable ideals of self-knowledge.” It may force people to get trapped on a side or pick a side before they are ready to.

Scientists feel no need to explain the existence of straight people because it is assumed that straight people belong. By contrast, sexual minorities need an evolutionary rationale in order to belong.

Soon after the publication of the 2019 Science study, an app claiming to be based on the study was developed that offered a “How Gay Are You?” genetic test through the online genetic prediction platform GenePlaza. We already see technology being developed that allows parents to pick embryos based on the embryos’ genomes and associated health risks. It is therefore not a far stretch of the imagination to also worry that genetic research on sexuality could eventually be used to develop tools to screen for and eliminate ‘gay embryos.’ 

We’re not saying that scientists should avoid researching sexuality. Many of us are understandably curious about where our desires come from, and science can help us to better understand each other as long as their research meets high standards. We are saying there’s no guarantee that today’s search for a gay genome will support queer liberation. Believing sexuality to be biologically innate might lead some to see LGBTQ+ people as biologically unfit. It’s difficult to know, as the political consequences of science are often complexly dependent on historical context. But for every person who uses “born this way” to win legal battles for gay rights, we know there is someone else who uses it to paint gay people as bad seeds of the human race.

Queer people should not uncritically celebrate research that gives new life to “born this way” arguments. Genetic research on sexuality is still in progress (and at this stage, a little laughable). Regardless, even if there is strong evidence we have yet to see, the idea that being gay is natural doesn’t guarantee the procurement of gay rights. It’s high time we moved the fight for LGBTQ+ recognition and survival away from the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate and into new directions. Millennials may have worshipped Lady Gaga, but many of us are ready to chant a new slogan.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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First FDA-Approved Sex Therapy App

Lover, the digital therapeutic app for improving people’s sex lives and treating sexual problems, is the first sexual app to be approved by the FDA.

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FDA Approval for Lover App

Lover, the digital therapeutic for improving people’s sex lives and treating sexual problems, has been approved by the FDA for its Safer Technologies Program. The app, co-founded in 2019 by Dr Britney Blair and entrepreneurs Jas Bagniewski and Nick Pendle, has been downloaded over 200k times across 166 countries in the last year and reports an 87% ‘satisfaction’ rate for users who want to improve their sex lives.

The STep program aims to enable people to access safer medical devices for ‘less serious’ (ie ‘non life-threatening or reasonably irreversible’ ) for the improvement of health outcomes. The FDA has stated that Lover has been shown to provide “significant safety advantage in treating and/or diagnosing less serious diseases or conditions” and “can also provide an important public health benefit.”

Co-Founders Nick Pendle and Jas Bagniewski say,

“We are delighted to be the first digital therapeutic for sex approved by the FDA. Since our launch, Lover has always aimed to be the most effective sexual wellness app on the market, and the FDA’s approval into their STeP program is the ultimate endorsement of this. We have long-believed the product, exercises and educational content we have built with Dr. Britney Blair and her team of experts can help millions of people enjoy better sex and happier relationships, and we’ve been proven to be a safe and an efficient way to deal with sexual problems. Lover works, and we couldn’t be prouder that following a rigorous review, the FDA agrees with us.”

User Efficacy Data

To be approved Lover provided user efficacy data which reported the distress level that a specific sexual issue was causing on a scale of 1-10. On average a distress level is usually around 6.9/10, when a user joins. After 2 weeks this is shown to drop to 3.7/10 on average.

Other efficacy stats reported by the app state that users had less distress connected to their sexual issues after using the app (87%), that the women were more easily and more consistently able to climax (92%) and an increased libido for females following app exercises (70%). For men, 94% reported less distress after the Erectile Dysfunction course and 62% of men reported improved erections.

Lover bills itself as being a ‘science-based approach to solving sexual problems,’ guiding users through a process of self-discovery through personalised advice and educational content. After a private 30 minute consultation of personalised 1-2-1 coaching and goal-setting, clinically proven advice and exercises are curated to steer users towards a fulfilling, healthy sex life, which the co-founders believe is essential to personal wellbeing and relationship satisfaction.

What the FDA Approval Means for Lover

The co-founders set out to provide a service that was not prohibitively expensive, yet as informative and effective as face-to-face therapy, or even prescribed medication. Using an app also eliminates the embarrassment that so many experience when having to speak to a professional face-to-face: Lover is completely private and personalised.

Co-Founder Dr. Britney Blair says,

“To receive this approval is a game-changer for us as it means Doctors and Clinicians can feel even more comfortable in recommending us as a viable alternative to traditional forms of care for sexual dysfunction. For most of us, sex and sexuality is a core part of our identity and crucial to relationship satisfaction. It affects our confidence, and our ability to connect with ourselves and our partner. Prioritising your sex life and your sexual pleasure may very well help you move the through the world happier, healthier and more satisfied in your relationship. Going to see a doctor about your sexual health is not easy. It can be embarrassing to talk about, time-consuming and expensive. With Lover, we hope we can help many more people than my team could ever see at our clinic. We want to make sexual wellness accessible to everyone.”

Lover is free to download and the first activity in your personalised goal is free to use. There are 2 membership options: 3 month access for $59.99 (£51.99 in UK) or annual access for $119.99 (£102.99 in UK).

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Do You Think You’re Exclusively Straight?

Influencing People’s Perceptions of Their Sexual Orientation

By University of Sydney

Scientific research has shown that sexuality exists on a spectrum. But how certain are people about where they fit on it? A new University of Sydney study suggests that people’s reported sexual orientation can change after reading about the nature of sexual orientation.

Published in peer-reviewed journal, Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study found that a significant number of heterosexual people report being less exclusive in their sexual orientation as well as more willing to have same-sex experiences after reading one of two 1-page informational articles.

Lead author, Dr. James Morandini, said: “Did we change people’s sexual orientation via our interventions? Surely not. I think our study may have changed how people interpreted their underlying sexual feelings. This means two people with identical sexual orientations could describe their sexual orientation quite differently, depending on whether they have been exposed to fluid or continuous ways of understanding sexuality.”

One informational article read by participants suggested that scientific research has found that there are many gradations of sexual attraction towards men and women, and people can fall anywhere along the continuum, from exclusive attraction to men to exclusive attraction to women. Another informational article showed that sexual orientation can change over time, and thus can be fluid.

All participants self-identified as ‘straight’ before the study began. Compared to a control group, after reading the first article, participants were 28 percent more likely to identify as non-exclusively heterosexual, and 19 percent indicated they would be more likely to be willing to engage in same-sex sexual activities. Overall, the rate of ‘non-exclusive heterosexuality’ more than quadrupled after this activity. Similar, albeit weaker, effects were found when people read that sexual orientation is better characterized as fluid rather than stable throughout life.

The study‘s senior author, Associate Professor Ilan Dar-Nimrod from the School of Psychology, said: “This is not that surprising given that ‘non-exclusive heterosexuals’ (as opposed to bisexual, gay or lesbian individuals), although being the biggest same-sex attracted group, are not well captured in our society’s representations and even vernacular.”

He added: “Given the social value that our society attach to these labels, however, such a shift may have far-reaching implications. It also suggests that certain level of same-sex sexual attraction may be much more common than previously estimated.”

Methodology

A national Australian sample of 460 individuals (232 women, 228 men) who identified as ‘straight’ prior the study took part in an online panel study.

They were instructed to read an article that suggested that scientific research found one of the following:

  • There are many gradations of sexual attraction towards men and women and people can fall anywhere along the continuum from exclusive attraction to men to exclusive attraction to women.
  • Sexual orientation exists in three discrete, non-overlapping categories: gay, bisexual, and straight.
  • Sexual orientation can change throughout one’s lifetime.
  • Sexual orientation is stable once a person identifies which gender they are attracted to.
  • Control (no discussion of sexual orientation but instead discussing global warming). 

They were then asked to rate their sexual orientation on a 9-point scale from exclusively heterosexual (1) to exclusively homosexual (9) and provide information on how certain they are about their sexual orientation and how willing they are to engage in same-sex sexual encounters.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Your Immune System Makes You Sexually Attractive

Desire may be influenced by the similarity of two people’s immune systems

By Jesse Smith, MS

When you feel it, you know it. The feeling of wanting someone is so fundamental to being human. But, what is sexual attraction? What is it that really pulls you in? Is it their eyes? Their waist? Their hair? What if what really turned you on were tiny proteins sticking off the surface of your lover’s white blood cells? Sounds hot.

Researchers are finding evidence that sexual attraction may be due in part to the similarity — or dissimilarity — between two people’s immune systems.

There are dozens of theories about what causes sexual attraction. Some say sexual attraction arises from assessing a member of the opposite sex for mating fitness. There have been theories thrown out that the width of hips in a woman is a sign of childbearing ability. Similarly physical attributes of men such as height or muscle mass may be signs of an ability to provide and protect.

Of course, these theories are simplistic and outdated and may fail to explain the nuance at play. For example, what evolutionary role does the small of one’s back or the skin on their neck play in reproduction? Likewise, the reproduction theory of sexual attraction outright ignores same-sex attraction.

So if physical characteristics fail to explain sexual attraction, perhaps the answer lies beyond what the eye can perceive. Maybe the clues to sexual attraction are found in our sense of smell. The ability to smell — known as olfaction — is a unique sense shared between mammals, reptiles, and insects.

The human olfactory system is unique in that it enjoys privileged access to the deeper recesses of our brain that other senses do not.

Olfaction serves dozens of purposes including communication, protection, and—you guessed it — mate selection.

Olfactory and limbic system.

The human olfactory system is unique in that it enjoys privileged access to the deeper recesses of our brain that other senses do not. Unlike sight, hearing, and touch — which are required to go through a deep brain region called the thalamus that regulates sensory signals before being sent to the cerebral cortex—olfactory signals follow a direct conduit to a neural complex deep in the brain known as the limbic system.

This grouping of neural ganglia controls everything from fear, memory, and reward. Given the close relationship between smell and the limbic system, it is no wonder that smells can evoke such strong feelings in humans. Likewise, because much of olfaction initially bypasses our conscious brain, smell is likely to influence us in ways that we are unaware of on a conscious level.

Is your immune system attractive?

Most people know the immune system as the system that protects against infection. In a basic sense, it is a system of cells and proteins that work in concert to identify and eliminate foreign pathogens from the body.

Genetic diversity almost always equates to evolutionary fitness. That’s hot!

What gives a person’s immune system the ability to identify foreign items from native or “self” is a complex molecular identification card known as the mean histocompatibility complex (MHC). In humans, this is commonly referred to as human leukocyte antigens (HLA). Nearly all human cells possess an HLA of differing classes within the MHC. Collectively, this grouping of antigens protruding off a cell’s outer surface is regularly monitored by immune cells such as T-cells to make sure they fit in as “self.”<

When humans reproduce, the genes within our HLA get shuffled. Like most of the genes in our genome, this genetic shuffling is what leads to genetic diversity. Genetic diversity almost always equates to evolutionary fitness. That’s hot!

A group in Dresden, Germany, has argued that humans have evolved the means of detecting the similarity of a potential mate or partner’s immune system based on their HLA makeup. While it’s still a matter of controversy, the authors of the study, published in 2016, suggest that HLA diversity in mate selection may result in progeny that are better suited to fight off infection.

Can you smell or taste an immune system?

Studies in rats have shown that they are capable of detecting differences in the MHC of other rats. How they are able to do this is still a matter of debate. The most obvious possible explanation may be that clues are detected through the olfactory system.

One research group determined that the composition of the MHC has an influence on which microorganisms inhabit the skin of mucosa of an animal. An animal with one microbiome may emit a different odor from another with a different microbial makeup.

Other studies have found that portions of the proteins that make up the MHC itself — the actual protein regions of the HLA — are detectable in bodily fluids such as sweat, saliva, and urine. Based on this, an animal may be able to directly sense another animal’s MHC through taste or smell. Given the similarity of the HLA system in humans, it is reasonable to assume similar processes are at hand in humans.

A research group in Switzerland published findings in 1995 revealing that women rated the smell of a T-shirt worn by men as more appealing when the men’s HLA makeup was most dissimilar to the woman’s. Interestingly, that effect reversed based on whether a woman was on birth control or not, but that is a topic for another discussion.

What if attraction has nothing to do with reproduction?

The immune system attraction argument is limited in that it pertains mainly to reproduction. This obviously excludes same-sex attraction. If attraction to immune system diversity were based on HLA diversity and fitness in progeny alone, then it would fail to explain sexual attraction in homosexual relationships. The study out of Dresden specifically excluded participants in same-sex relationships.

Going back to the theory of attraction by smell, one study found that people preferred the smell of people with similar sexual orientations. In particular, gay men showed a unique preference for the smell of both heterosexual women and other gay men over heterosexual men. This study did show some distinct preferences for specific groups but failed to correlate with sexual orientation.

It is entirely possible that people of any sexual orientation may be attracted to dissimilar HLA makeups regardless of sex or sexual orientation, which would weaken the reproductive argument. Clearly, the lack of scientific investigation into same-sex relationships is a gap in our current understanding of sexual attraction.

It is safe to say that human attraction is multifaceted and complex. The pull that creates human want and desire is likely based on myriad factors ranging from obvious to subtle. Research seems to show that humans — along with other mammals — are capable of detecting HLA and MHC makeups that are less similar to their own, and do appear to show a preference for those.

Based on this, several dating services have popped up that aim to match couples based on genetic makeup. Unfortunately, the evidence is not convincing enough to ensure attraction or compatibility based on genetics alone, so buyer beware.

In the end, the research on HLA dissimilarity is intriguing and sheds light on the processes involved in determining who we find attractive. However, on its own, it is not enough to explain the complex experience of sexual attraction. With further insight and more comprehensive research, we may be able to determine what role HLA diversity plays in sexual attraction.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why has same-sex sexual behaviour persisted during evolution?

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Same-sex sexual behaviour may seem to present a Darwinian paradox. It provides no obvious reproductive or survival benefit, and yet same-sex sexual behaviour is fairly common — around 2-10% of individuals in diverse human societies — and is clearly influenced by genes.

These observations raise the question: why have genes associated with same-sex sexual behaviour been maintained over evolutionary time? Given that evolution depends on genes being passed down through the generations via reproduction, how and why were these genes passed down too?

In a new paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, my colleagues and I tested one possible explanation: that the genes associated with same-sex sexual behaviour have evolutionarily advantageous effects in people who don’t engage in same-sex sexual behaviour.

Specifically, we tested whether those genes are also associated with having more opposite-sex partners, which might therefore confer an evolutionary advantage.

To investigate this, we used genetic data from more than 350,000 people who had participated in the UK Biobank, a huge database of genetic and health information.

These participants reported whether they had ever had a same-sex partner, and also how many opposite-sex partners they had had in their lifetime.

We analysed the association of millions of individual genetic variants with each of these self-reported variables. For both variables, there were not only one or a few associated genetic variants, but very many, spread throughout the genome. Each had only a tiny effect, but in aggregate, their effects were substantial.

We then showed that the aggregate genetic effects associated with ever having had a same sex partner were also associated — among people who had never had a same-sex partner — with having had more opposite-sex partners.

This result supported our main hypothesis.

Further exploration

We then tried replicating and extending our findings.

First, we successfully replicated the main finding in an independent sample.

Second, we tested whether our results still held true if we used different definitions of same-sex sexual behaviour.

For example, did it still hold true if we tightened the definition of same-sex sexual behaviour to cover only those individuals with predominantly or exclusively same-sex partners (rather than including anyone who has ever had one)?

Our results remained largely consistent, although statistical confidence was lower due to the smaller sub-samples used.

Third, we tested whether physical attractiveness, risk-taking propensity, and openness to experience might help to account for the main result.

In other words, could genes associated with these variables be associated with both same-sex sexual behaviour and with opposite-sex partners in heterosexuals?

In each case, we found evidence supporting a significant role for these variables, but most of the main result remained unexplained.

So we still don’t have a solid theory on exactly how these genes confer an evolutionary advantage. But it might be a complex mix of factors that generally make someone “more attractive” in broad terms.

Simulating evolution

To investigate how the hypothesised evolutionary process might unfold, we also constructed a digital simulation of a population of reproducing individuals over many generations. These simulated individuals had small “genomes” that affected their predispositions for having same-sex partners and opposite-sex reproductive partners.

These simulations showed that, in principle, the kind of effect suggested by our main result can indeed maintain same-sex sexual behaviour in the population, even when the trait itself is evolutionarily disadvantageous.

Two men hold hands while walking on grass
The study involved Western participants – so the next step will be to look at other populations.

Crucially, our simulations also showed that if there were no countervailing benefit to genes associated with same-sex sexual behaviour, the behaviour would likely disappear from the population.

These findings give us intriguing clues about the evolutionary maintenance of same-sex sexual behaviour, but there are important caveats too.

An important limitation is that our results are based on modern, Western samples of white participants – we cannot know to what extent our findings apply to other ethnicities or cultures in different places and times. Future studies using more diverse samples may help clarify this.

On a final note, I am aware some people believe it is inappropriate to study sensitive topics such as the genetics and evolution of same-sex sexual behaviour. My perspective is that the science of human behaviour aims to shine a light on the mysteries of human nature and that this involves understanding the factors that shape our commonalities and our differences.

Were we to avoid studying sexual preference or other such topics due to political sensitivities, we would be leaving these important aspects of normal human diversity in the dark.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sex in space:

Could technology meet astronauts’ intimate needs?

As plans for space exploration expand, how will sex and desire be addressed in these larger, longer missions?

by Simon Dubé and Dave Anctil

The 2018 movie A.I. Rising explores how machines could fulfill desires and support humans during space travel. Lo and behold, it might contain the solution to problems related to space exploration.

Astronauts, despite their rigorous training, remain humans with needs. For and colonization to succeed, we need to overcome taboos, consider and desires and provide concrete, realistic solutions based on science rather than conventional morality.

Can humans thrive for prolonged periods of time in small groups and in closed, isolated environments? Can humans contend with limited possibilities of relationships, intimacy and sexuality?

Sex tech might have the answer.

As researchers exploring human-machine erotic interactions, we are interested in their implications and potential applications for human well-being—even beyond our home planet.

Sex in space

Space exploration and colonization is one of humanity’s greatest endeavors, but it comes with challenges. One of them is to make the space journey human compatible, that is, physically and psychologically viable. Given that intimacy and sexuality are basic needs, they become central issues for human- compatibility.

How will humans have sex in space? Can we propagate the species beyond Earth? What will intimate relationships look like aboard spaceships and settlements?

As of now, NASA and other space agencies have denied that any sexual activity has ever occurred during a space mission. Either sex in space hasn’t happened, or no one is talking about it. Nonetheless, imminent prolonged human missions to the moon and Mars raise concerns regarding the future of intimacy and sexuality in space.

One important concern is that space exploration and colonization will limit people’s opportunities for relationships, intimacy and sexuality for long periods of time. In the very near future, human missions will only include small crews and settlements. Fewer people mean fewer opportunities for intimacy —making it difficult to find partners to connect with and potentially increasing tension between crew members.

 

For instance, it might be difficult to find partners that fit our personality, preferences and sexual orientation. And when a relationship ends, people are stuck on a ship with an ex-partner—possibly impairing a crew’s mood and the teamwork necessary to survive in dangerous environments.

Human needs

While some people might be able to withstand a policy of total abstinence, it might be detrimental to the physical and mental health of others —especially as larger groups venture into space. Yet NASA seems afraid of tackling issues of intimacy and sexuality in space. In 2008, Bill Jeffs, spokesperson for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said: “We don’t study sexuality in space, and we don’t have any studies ongoing with that. If that’s your specific topic, there’s nothing to discuss.”

Given what we know about human sexuality, this position seems irresponsible. It prevents research from examining basic questions about sexual health and well-being in space. For instance, how do we deal with hygiene and the messiness of human sex in zero-gravity? How will we maintain a crew’s psychological well-being if people must endure long periods lacking in erotic stimulation and affection? Is imposed abstinence a reasonable solution, based on empirical evidence?

Sex tech and ‘erobots’

One solution could be to make erotic technologies available to crews and settlers in space.

This could include sex toys—any object used for sexual enhancement or stimulation—which could be used for sexual pleasure and gratification. But sex toys do not address the social dimensions of human erotic needs. This is where erobots come in.

The term erobots characterizes all virtual, embodied and augmented artificial erotic agents and the technologies that produce them. Examples include sex robots, erotic chatbots and virtual or augmented partners. Erobotics is the emerging transdisciplinary research studying human-erobots interactions and related phenomena.

Unlike previous technologies, erobots offer the opportunity of intimate relations with artificial agents tailored to the needs of their users. Erobotic technologies polarize public and academic discourses: some denounce them as promoting harmful norms, while others defend their potential benefits and health, education and research applications.

Erobots represent a practical solution to tackle the inhuman conditions of space exploration and colonization. Moreover, erobotics could enable us to approach questions of intimacy and sexuality in space from scientific, relational and technological perspectives.

Erobots could provide companionship and sexual pleasure to crew members and settlers. Beyond the capabilities of sex toys, erobots can incorporate social dimensions into erotic experiences. They could help with loneliness and the inevitable anxieties borne out of solitude. They could act as surrogate romantic partners, provide sexual outlets and reduce risks associated with human sex.

Addressing human desire, intimacy and reproduction will increase in importance as we move towards space colonization.

Erobots could also provide intimacy and emotional support. And finally, erobots’ sensors and interactive capabilities could help monitor astronauts’ physiological and psychological health —acting as a complement to daily medical exams.

Erobots can take many forms and be made of light material. They can manifest through virtual or augmented reality and be combined with sex toys to provide interactive and immersive erotic experiences. The same technology could also be employed to enact erotic experiences with loved ones back on Earth.

Moving into space

To harness erotic technology’s potential for human space missions, we must build collaborations between academia, governmental space programs and the private sector.

Erobotics can contribute to space research programs. As a field grounded in sexuality and technology positive frameworks, it recognizes the importance of intimacy and sexuality in human life and promotes the development of technology geared towards health and well-being.

And ultimately, we must shed our taboos regarding technology and as we journey to the final frontier.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Saying sex increases cancer risk is neither totally correct, nor in any way helpful

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A study published recently claims to have found a link between having had ten or more sexual partners and an increased risk of cancer. But it’s not as simple as that.

While having a sexually transmissible infection (STI) can increase the risk of certain types of cancer, using a person’s lifetime number of sexual partners as a marker of their likely sexual health history is one of several flaws in this research.

The evidence from this study isn’t strong enough to conclude that having had multiple sexual partners increases a person’s risk of cancer.

Misinterpreting these findings could lead to stigma around STIs and having multiple sexual partners.

What the study did

The research, published in the journal BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, used data from 2,537 men and 3,185 women participating in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a nationally representative study of adults aged 50+ in England.

The average age of participants was 64. Most were married or living with a partner, white, non-smokers, drank alcohol regularly, and were at least moderately active once a week or more.

Participants were asked to recall the number of people with whom they had ever had vaginal, oral or anal sex in their lifetime. The researchers grouped the responses into four categories shown in the table below.

The researchers then examined associations between lifetime number of sexual partners and self-reported health outcomes (self-rated health, limiting longstanding illness, cancer, heart disease and stroke).

The researchers controlled for a range of demographic factors (age, ethnicity, partnership status, and socioeconomic status) as well as health-related factors (smoking status, frequency of alcohol intake, physical activity, and depressive symptoms).

What the study found

Men with 2-4 partners and 10+ partners were more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, compared to men with 0-1 partners. There was no difference between men with 0-1 partners and 5-9 partners.

Compared to women with 0-1 partners, women with 10+ partners were more likely to have been diagnosed with cancer.

Women with 5-9 partners and 10+ partners were also more likely to report a “limiting longstanding illness” than those with 0-1 partners.

The authors don’t specify what constitutes a limiting longstanding illness, but looking at the questions they asked participants, we can ascertain it’s a chronic condition that disrupts daily activities. It’s likely these ranged from mildly irritating to debilitating.

There was no association between number of sexual partners and self-rated general health, heart disease or stroke for either men or women.

Notably, while statistically significant, the effect size of all these associations was modest.

What does number of sexual partners have to do with cancer risk?

There is a reason for investigating whether a person’s lifetime number of sexual partners has anything to do with their cancer risk. If you’ve had a lot of sexual partners, it’s more likely you’ve been exposed to an STI. Having an STI can increase your risk of several types of cancer.

For example, human papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for 30% of all cancers caused by infectious agents (bacteria, viruses or parasites), contributing to cervical cancer, penile cancer, and cancers of the mouth, throat and anus.

Viral hepatitis can be transmitted through sex, and having chronic hepatitis B or C increases the risk of liver cancer.

Untreated HIV increases the risk of cancers such as lymphomas, sarcomas and cervical cancer.

How can we make sense of this?

The authors of the study acknowledge the numerous limitations of the analysis and recommend further work be done to confirm their findings. We must interpret their results with this in mind.

Their use of lifetime number of sexual partners as a proxy measure for STI history is a key problem. While there is an association between having a higher number of partners and an increased risk of STIs, many other factors may be important in determining a person’s risk of being infected with an STI.

These include whether they’ve practised safe sex, what type of infection they might have encountered, and whether they’ve been vaccinated against, or treated for, particular infections.

Further, the analysis was based on cross-sectional data – a snapshot that doesn’t account for changes over time. Participants were asked to recall information from the past, rather than having measurements taken directly at different time points. It’s not possible to establish causation from a cross-sectional analysis.

Even if the association is confirmed in prospective, longitudinal studies, the findings may not apply to other groups of people.

Recent advances in vaccine development (such as the wide availability of the HPV vaccine), better STI prevention (such as the use of pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis – PreP and PEP – for HIV) and more effective therapy (for example, direct-acting antiviral agents to treat hepatitis C) will reduce the impact of STIs on cancer risk for those who can access them.

People with higher numbers of sexual partners were more likely to smoke and drink frequently (increasing the risk of cancer), but also to do more vigorous physical activity (decreasing the risk of cancer).

For women, a higher number of sexual partners was associated with white ethnicity; for men, with a greater number of depressive symptoms. Although the researchers controlled for these factors, these points highlight some inconsistencies in the pattern of results.

The researchers also couldn’t explain why a greater number of sexual partners was associated with a higher likelihood of a limiting chronic condition for women, but not for men.

Ultimately, this study raises more questions than it answers. We need further research before we can use these results to inform policy or improve practice.

The paper concludes by saying enquiring about lifetime sexual partners could be helpful when screening for cancer risk. This is a very long stretch based on the evidence presented.

This approach could also be harmful. It could invade privacy and increase stigma about having multiple sexual partners or having an STI.

We know experiencing stigma can discourage people from attending sexual health screenings and other services.

It would be better to put limited health resources towards improving prevention, screening and treatments for STIs.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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This Pioneering Sex Researcher Experimented on Herself

Marie Bonaparte’s interest in the clitoris went an inch too far.

By Mark Hay

In the mid-2000s, Kim Wallen, an Emory University psychobiologist with an interest in the roots of sexual experiences, told his colleague Elisabeth Lloyd, of the University of Indiana, Bloomington, about “a far-fetched idea” that he’d been mulling over for a couple of decades: Might individual variations in the shape of biologically female genitalia at least partially explain why some people with vaginas find it easier or harder than others to orgasm during penetrative sex? Lloyd’s own research, which went a long way in advancing popular understanding of female orgasms, had found that three-fourths of women don’t report consistently achieving orgasm from penetrative sex. But neither she nor any other modern sex researcher Wallen was aware of had tried to figure out whether anything physical might account for that.

Lloyd knew of one researcher who’d had the same idea, decades before Wallen, and published a mostly forgotten paper on it, in 1924. Intrigued, Wallen tracked down the text and discovered that its author, A.E. Narjani, was a pseudonym for an early, and unexpected, modern sex researcher: Marie Bonaparte, princess of Greece and Denmark, great-grandniece of Napoleon, heir to the fortune of Monte Carlo and aunt to Britain’s Prince Philip.

Born in 1882, Bonaparte had an irrepressibly sharp mind, a penchant for no-holds-barred confessional writing and a deep desire for sexual satisfaction. She wrote and spoke openly about her sex life and desires. That’s how we know her 50-year marriage to Prince George of Greece and Denmark was loving but largely sexless — most likely because he was predominately, if not solely, sexually attracted to men — and that Bonaparte had a slew of affairs, including a long-running one with 11-term French Prime Minister Aristide Briant. Her interests were so well-known that when Bonaparte persuaded Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi to make a bust of her in 1909, it morphed into Princess X, a big bronze phallus. 

Although we often think of the 19th and early 20th centuries as sexually repressed eras, Bonaparte’s sexual interests weren’t entirely unusual. Alison Downham Moore, a historian of European sexuality at Western Sydney University who is writing a chapter on Bonaparte for an upcoming book on women who changed the world, explains that there was plenty of contemporary scholarly and medical dialogue about female sexual pleasure.

Prince George I of Greece and Denmark and wife Princess Marie Bonaparte.

But a good amount of sexual dialogue of the era was dominated by long-standing beliefs that female sexuality was all about the vagina. Medicalized fears of masturbation and overt female sexuality had slowly gained purchase since at least the 18th century. In 1905, Sigmund Freud distilled these threads of thought into a biologically ignorant yet popular theory that clitoral stimulation and masturbation were immature, and that any woman interested in anything but vaginal penetration needed psychological help. “This was a really strange idea,” says Moore, but a widespread one “that probably just resulted in many women not ever experiencing any kind of orgasm.”  

Bonaparte was steeped in this toxic sexual ideology. She started a correspondence with Freud in 1924, and by 1925 had become one of his favorite psychoanalytic patients, undergoing at least two hours of analysis every day. She noted that she could have orgasms with clitoral stimulation, but not solely through vaginal stimulation, and viewed herself as clinically frigid because of that. 

Bonaparte openly broke with Freud in the 1920s, seeking physical, not psychological, causes of her so-called frigidity and refusing to write the clitoris off as irrelevant or immature. Her search led her to measure the contours of 243 women’s genitals, gather data on their orgasmic experiences and publish her 1924 paper arguing that the distance between the clitoris and the vaginal opening might account for the trouble some women experienced with climaxing via penetration alone. Her theory was that women with clitorises 2.5 centimeters or fewer from their vaginal openings might get more clitoral stimulation via penetration than those with clitorises farther away. Lloyd and Wallen later confirmed Bonaparte’s finding, based on analyses of both her dataset and another one, in 2010.

Lloyd and Wallen call Bonaparte’s research groundbreaking, especially given the trickiness, even to this day, of taking genital measurements and the prevailing anti-clitoris attitudes of Bonaparte’s time. Hers was an important counterpoint to the widespread advance of those attitudes, says Moore.

Unfortunately, Bonaparte took her research too far. She and Austrian gynecologist Josef Halban developed a surgery known as the Halban-Narjani procedure, which severed the suspensory ligaments around the external clitoris and pulled it closer to the vaginal opening. Bonaparte subjected herself to the surgery, previously only performed on cadavers, in 1927, but found herself still frigid — she likely suffered scarring around her clitoris and a subsequent lack of sensitivity. Meanwhile, mainstream gynecologists tore her to shreds by identifying cases of women with clitorises more than 2.5 centimeters from their vaginal openings who could orgasm during intercourse. Bonaparte lacked the statistical knowledge to understand that these findings did not invalidate her theory, and so resigned herself to the belief that her work and conclusions had been wrong.

Freud’s shadow eventually blotted out her work. Today, Bonaparte is primarily known for her work establishing Freudian psychoanalysis in France, propping up the Psychoanalytic Publishing House with her fortune and helping Freud and a couple hundred other Jews escape the Nazis in the late ’30s. She became a psychoanalyst, and supposedly subjected François Mitterrand to an impromptu session during Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, in 1953, while they were both bored. The few modern sex researchers and activists who know about her, Moore says, “have tended to underestimate her as merely a lackey of Freud.”

It’s hard not to wonder where Bonaparte’s research could have led if she hadn’t been ground down by personal misfortunes and prevailing Freudian theories. But in remembering Bonaparte and unearthing her work to build upon it, as Lloyd and Wallen have done, we can perhaps move toward the nuanced, open understanding she sought.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Number Of Teens Coming Out Doubles, But Suicide Attempts Still Troublingly High

by John Anderer

As recently as 10 years ago, the idea of coming out and being accepted as homosexual or bisexual felt unthinkable for countless LGBQ teens. Society has seen significant progression in recent years, though, and a new study finds that the number of U.S. teens openly identifying themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning has doubled between 2009 and 2017. Unfortunately, despite progress in this regard, the study also notes that LGBQ teenage suicide attempt rates are still disturbingly high.

In 2009, the LGBQ teenage attempted suicide rate was five times that of their straight peers. In 2017, while the rate did see a slight decline, it was still four times higher than the attempted suicide rate among straight teens.

“Large disparities in suicide attempts persisted even as the percent of students identifying as LGBQ increased. In 2017, more than 20% of LGBQ teens reported attempting suicide in the past year,” says lead study author Dr. Julia Raifman, assistant professor of health law, policy & management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, in a release.

“It’s critical that health and educational institutions have policies and programs in place to protect and improve LGBQ health, such as medical school curricula and high school health curricula that are inclusive of sexual minority health,” Dr. Raifman adds.

Raifman and her team believe that LGBQ rights, or perhaps lack thereof, play a significant role in subsequent teenage suicide attempts. In a separate study conducted in 2017, Raifman found that the legalization of same-sex marriage coincided with a 7% decrease in all high school student suicide attempts. Additionally, numerous previous research projects have noted that anti-LGBQ policies are seriously detrimental to the LGBQ community’s overall mental health.

“Our new paper indicates that an increasing number of teenagers are identifying as LGBQ, and will be affected by anti-LGBQ policies that may elevate these already very high rates of suicide attempts” she says.

Only six U.S. states continuously collected data on sexual orientation among teens between 2009-2017; Rhode Island, Maine, Delaware, Illinois, North Dakota, and Massachusetts. Among those six, only Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Illinois kept track of the gender of sexually-active students’ partners, and made a distinction between consensual sexual activity and sexual assault. So, the research team were left with sexual orientation data on 110,243 high school students, and further information on the consensual sexual activity of 25,994 students within that larger group.

Using all that data, researchers determined that the percentage of high school students openly identifying themselves as LGBQ doubled from 7.3% in 2009 to 14.3% in 2017. Breaking those statistics down a bit further, the percentage of openly gay or lesbian students increased from 1.4% to 2.8%, bisexual teens went up from 3.9% to 7.2%, and teens unsure about their sexuality increased from 2.0% to 4.3%. Meanwhile, the number of sexual active high schoolers who reported same-sex sexual activity went up from 7.7% to 13.1%.

In 2009, and again in 2017, roughly 6% of heterosexual high school students reported attempting suicide over the previous year. In comparison, 26.7% of LGBQ teens attempted suicide in 2009, and 20.1% did the same in 2017.

High school can be a tough time for anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, and the results of this study make it clear that LGBQ teens are in need of additional support and acceptance as they navigate the pitfalls of growing up.

The study is published in Pediatrics.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Homosexuality may have evolved for social, not sexual reasons

We propose same-sex attraction evolved to allow greater social integration and stronger same-sex social bonds.

By

How did homosexuality in humans evolve?

Typically, this question is posed as a paradox.

The argument is this: gay sex alone can’t produce children, and for traits to evolve, they have to be passed onto children, who get some form of competitive advantage from them.

From this perspective, some argue homosexuality should not have evolved.

In a paper published yesterday by myself and Duke University professor Brian Hare, we propose human sexuality (including homosexuality) evolved as an outcome of the evolution of increased sociability in humans.

We argue many of the evolutionary forces that shaped human sexuality were social, rather than based on reproductive ability.

This is our “sociosexual hypothesis” for the evolution of gay sex and attraction.

Sex for bonding

For humans, and many other animals, sex is not just about reproduction.

In our closest primate relative, the bonobo, straight and gay sex have vital roles in play, social transactions, barter of food, same-sex social bonding and bonding between mating pairs.

We shouldn’t limit our thinking about the evolution of sex to its reproductive functions. We must also consider its social functions.

Based on the social behaviour of primates (and other social mammals), we argue our species’ recent cognitive and behavioural evolution was driven by natural selection favouring traits that allowed better social integration. This is called prosociality.

Early humans that could quickly and easily access the benefits of group living had a strong selective advantage. We believe this led to the evolution of a whole range of traits including reduced aggression, increased communication, understanding, social play and affiliation.

Species such as the bonobo, that evolved for high prosociality, evolved to use sexual behaviour in many social contexts. This results in an increase of sex in general, greater diversity in the contexts of sex, and an increase in gay sex.

We believe something similar happened in recent human evolution. Gay sex and attraction may have evolved because individuals with a degree of same-sex attraction benefited from greater social mobility, integration and stronger same-sex social bonds.

This may sound counterintuitive, given gay people are socially marginalised, ostracised and even criminalised in many societies.

However, our argument addresses the early evolution of human sexuality, not how relatively recent phenomena like religion and religion-based legal structures have responded to sexual minorities.

Supporting facts

Many studies since the pioneering research of Alfred Kinsey and colleagues have emphasised that sexual minorities occur across all cultures, and the levels of gay and bisexual people in populations have been quite stable over time.

Our hypothesis predicts that bisexuality and people who identify as “mostly straight” should be more common than people who identify as exclusively gay, and this is the case.

Recent genetic analyses confirm hundreds of genes influence sexuality in complex ways.

We quite randomly inherit half our genes from each parent. Each person’s genetic makeup is unique, so it would be highly unlikely to find two people with exactly the same set of genes influencing their sexuality.

Thus, variation is expected, and individuals fall along a spectrum ranging from a majority who are straight, to a minority who identify as gay.

Our hypothesis for the evolution of homosexuality would predict this kind of variation in human sexuality, and can help explain why it is generally stable across cultures.

We believe sexuality is a highly complex trait, interwoven with sociality. Attraction, sexual behaviour, social bonds and desire all contribute to its complexity.

Asking the right questions

Height is another feature influenced by hundreds of genes, many of which interact with our external environments in complex ways.

We see a continuous variation in human height – some very tall and very short people exist.

We might draw on nutritional ecology to explore the evolution of human height, but would not feel the need to introduce special evolutionary arguments to explain the existence of tall or short people.

No special explanation is necessary. They are simply exhibiting natural, genetically influenced variations in height.

Similarly, we think asking how gay sex and attraction evolved is the wrong question.

A more useful question to ask is: how did human sexuality evolve in all its forms?

In doing do, we acknowledge homosexuality does not present a paradox needing a special explanation. It is simply a result of our species’ recent sociosexual evolution.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!