Male and Female Sexuality and Arousal Differences

Author: Northwestern University
Author Contact: northwestern.edu
Published: 29th Oct 2022
Peer-Reviewed Publication: Yes
Additional References: Sexuality Publications

Summary: The fact that female sexual arousal patterns are not all predicted by their sexual orientations suggests that male and female minds and brains are very different.

Definition

Sexual Arousal

Men and women experience sexual arousal (also known as sexual excitement) very differently, physiologically and psychologically. Sexual arousal describes the physiological and psychological responses in preparation for sexual intercourse or exposure to sexual stimuli. Several physiological responses occur in the body and mind as preparation for sexual intercourse and continue during intercourse. Male arousal will lead to an erection, and in female arousal, the body's response is engorged sexual tissues such as nipples, vulva, clitoris, vaginal walls, and vaginal lubrication. Mental and physical stimuli, such as touch, and the internal fluctuation of hormones, can influence sexual arousal.

Main Document

Three decades of research on men's sexual arousal show patterns that track sexual orientation - gay men overwhelmingly become sexually aroused by images of men and heterosexual men by images of women. In other words, men's sexual arousal patterns seem obvious. But a new Northwestern University study boosts the relatively limited research on women's sexuality with a surprisingly different finding regarding women's sexual arousal.

In contrast to men, both heterosexual and lesbian women tend to become sexually aroused by male and female erotica and, thus, have a bisexual arousal pattern.

"These findings likely represent a fundamental difference between men's and women's brains and have important implications for understanding how sexual orientation development differs between men and women," said J. Michael Bailey, professor and chair of psychology at Northwestern and senior researcher of the study "A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal." The study is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.

Bailey's main research focus has been on the genetics and environment of sexual orientation. He is one of the principal investigators of a widely cited study that concludes that genes influence male homosexuality.

As in many areas of sexuality, research on women's sexual arousal patterns has lagged far behind men's, but the scant research on the subject does hint that, compared with men, women's sexual arousal patterns may be less tightly connected to their sexual orientation.

(Article continues below image.)

(Continued...)

The Northwestern study strongly suggests this is true. The Northwestern researchers measured the psychological and physiological sexual arousal in homosexual and heterosexual men and women as they watched erotic films. There were three types of erotic films:

• Those featuring only men.
• Those featuring only women.
• Those featuring male and female couples.

As with previous research, the researchers found that men responded consistently with their sexual orientations. In contrast, homosexual and heterosexual women showed a bisexual psychological and genital arousal pattern. That is, heterosexual women were just as sexually aroused by watching female stimuli as by watching male stimuli, even though they prefer having sex with men rather than women.

"In fact, the large majority of women in contemporary Western societies have sex exclusively with men," said Meredith Chivers, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Northwestern University, a psychology intern at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the study's first author. "But I have long suspected that women's sexuality is very different from men's, and this study scientifically demonstrates one way this is so."

The study's results mesh with current research showing that women's sexuality demonstrates increased flexibility relative to men in other areas besides sexual orientation, according to Chivers.

"Taken together, these results suggest that women's sexuality differs from men's and emphasize the need for researchers to develop a model of the development and organization of female sexuality independent from models of male sexuality," she said.

The study's four authors include Bailey and three graduate students in Northwestern's psychology department, Chivers, Gerulf Rieger, and Elizabeth Latty.

"Since most women seem capable of sexual arousal to both sexes, why do they choose one or the other?" Bailey asked. "Probably for reasons other than sexual arousal."

Sexual arousal is the emotional and physical response to sexual stimuli, including erotica or actual people. It has been known since the early 1960s that homosexual and heterosexual men respond in specific but opposite ways to sexual stimuli depicting men and women.

Films provoke the greatest sexual response, and films of men having sex with men or women having sex with women provoke the largest differences between homosexual and heterosexual men. That is because same-sex films offer clear-cut results, whereas watching heterosexual sex could be exciting to both homosexual and heterosexual men, but for different reasons.

Typically, men experience genital and psychological sexual arousal when they watch films depicting their preferred sex but not the other sex. Men's specific pattern of sexual arousal is such a reliable fact that genital arousal can be used to assess men's sexual preferences. Even gay men who deny their homosexuality will become more sexually aroused by male sexual stimuli than by female stimuli.

"The fact that women's sexual arousal patterns are not all predicted by their sexual orientations suggests that men's and women's minds and brains are very different," Bailey said.

To rule out the possibility that the differences between men's and women's genital sexual arousal patterns might be due to the different ways that genital arousal is measured in men and women, the Northwestern researchers identified a subset of subjects: postoperative transsexuals who began life as men but had surgery to construct artificial vaginas.

In a sense, those transsexuals have the brains of men but the genitals of women. Their psychological and genital arousal patterns matched those of men - those who liked men were more aroused by male stimuli, and those who liked women were more aroused by female stimuli - even though their genital arousal was measured the same way women were.

"This shows that the sex difference that we found is real and almost certainly due to a sex difference in the brain," said Bailey.

References and Source(s):

Male and Female Sexuality and Arousal Differences | Northwestern University (northwestern.edu). SexualDiversity.org makes no warranties or representations in connection therewith. Content may have been edited for style, clarity or length.

Post to Twitter Add to Facebook

Latest Sexuality Publications
The above information is from our reference library of resources relating to Sexuality that includes:
	Research Reveals Connection Between Partner's Gender and Women's Orgasm Expectations Study investigates factors influencing orgasm rates for women across sexual orientations. Publish Date: 4th Apr 2024 - Updated: 5th Oct 2024
	Sex Lives in Britain Revealed Study reveals the number of sexual partners we have changes as we age, and there are some surprising results. Publish Date: 8th Sep 2023 - Updated: 14th Dec 2023
	Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to all Creation by Olivia Judson– a book review The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex: A delightful opportunity to watch things get weird and wild in the name of science and sex. Publish Date: 14th Jun 2023
	Survey Finds 1 in 15 Changed Reported Sexual Identity Over a Six-Year Period Report reveals over 6% of the UK population aged 16 and over, or 1 in 15, changed their reported sexual identity over a 6 year period. Publish Date: 12th Jun 2023