I was thinking about sexuality today (instead of revising for finals). Sexuality confuses me so much....how is it that I like girls. It cannot be personality alone because otherwise I would have feelings towards a lot of blokes I know. So surely there must be a degree of sexual attraction to women??? But then I start thinking....if I met someone and had no idea what their gender was...would I be attracted to them (like people who fall in love over the internet...how does that work?) And if lesbians are attracted to girls then why are some attracted to butch women, who dress like men and some act like men? You cant tell me they are attracted to that person because they enpower femininity, because their outward appearance is rather masculine. In which case why are those lesbians outwardly sexually attracted to those women and not men? What the hell defines sexuality? I started thinking about it after I watched "She's the man".....loser you might say....but actually its a portrayal of Shakespeares "Twelth night". And it got me thinking about the psychology of sexuality. Olivia falls in love with Cesario (in reality Cesario is Viola,a woman, impersonating a man). What has she fallen in love with? And on discovering the truth about her love's true gender ( a woman)....does she just fall out of love? Damn now I've confused everyone who just read that post, but I just thought I'd ramble a bit. What are other people's thoughts on this...or am I just thinking way too much about it!:icon_bigg
Well they did a case study on men a women that ended up with intresting results. The tests were bases on attraction. Attraction relies on a number of things. The sound of your voice, the symmetry of your face, your smell, your status. For the guys they played 2 sound bites and they were to rate which voice was more atractive to them. What they didn't know was that it was the same woman but they recorded her voice twice, once when she was at the peak of fertility and then when she wasent. Suprisingly the guys picked her "peak" voice. Scientist think that this is based on our subconcious biological instinct to mate. With the women, they had men run on a treadmill untill their shirts where soaked with sweat. They placed the drenched shirts in containers and asked a pannel of girls to sniff the jars and rate the smells on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 (dont remember). Well turns out that the women who were at the peak of fertility found most of the smells to be sweet while the ones who wern't found the smells to be rather nasty. Biology plays a lot into how we pick and choose what we do and do not like. I mean butch women give off a certain scent while lipsticks don't...I really don't know, all these studies are being done to heterosexuals so I cant back up any ideas but the reasons we like someone, in my perspective, is probably a factor of both nature and nurture but i like to side on the nature side more so than the nurture. (I'm taking Human Sexuality starting next week. Maybe I can answer more of your question once the class is said an done with) :cD
I fall in love with a person, man or woman, but im sexually attracted to the penis and lack of boobies. I know alot of women who if you transplanted who they were into a mans body i would be ALL over that. If someone dresses like a woman, but i know at the end of the day that person packs a penis under it all, i can still be attracted to them (personally) and often am.
Thats really interesting legnaj. I would do that module if it was offered on my course. It would be great if you posted some random facts when you've started it. That makes sense....I suppose I could use the reverse and say I'm attracted to the boobies and not the penis! But Greg what if you fell in love with a gay Transman, who hadnt had any reconstructive surgery. He's still a man but doesn't technically have a penis. I guess it would depend on the person.
Wow, you all gave such interesting replies and I don't have anything to compare to them so just want to say that it was an interesting read and that this topic is why it is hard to classify yourself as a certain sexuality in my opinion.
I could never be with someone without the penis, cause thats what is sexually attractive. I could love someone, but it would not be a "whole" relationship.
Sure no problem but I think Greg's "Whole Relationship" idea just jammed the last nail in the coffin on the subject for now.
Interesting. I never thought about sexuality as a biological factor before, to me it's always been a matters of the heart kind of thing, which now I guess is proven flawed. One more question answered. Thank you.
Regarding butch women, most of them are still clearly female. (I've only seen two people who are physically female and I thought were guys - kd laing and the FtM kid I know.) So it could be they're attracted to the mix of feminine features (such as boobs) plus masculine features. My brother, who is heterosexual, says he tends to notice boobs and butt. Apparently girls have differently-shaped butts than guys. From what I've heard, heterosexual women often seem to notice chest and butt on guys - apparently the 'topless scene' in Twilight got quite a reaction from the audience (mostly heterosexual teenage girls). In terms of online dating, well, there are two parts to romance. The sexual attraction and the emotional bond. Many people can readily form emotional bonds to someone they've never met in person. (Weirdly enough, I can't. It's hard to convince my brain that they're really a person and not a computer. And if I talk to someone both on and offline, part of me thinks of offline them and online them as separate people.) Now, for some people, the emotional bond can probably induce sexual attraction. I know this is true of demisexuals (they feel asexual until they fall in love), and it's possible it's true of some sexuals as well, but they're less likely to notice because usually the sexual attraction comes first. However, it could be that sexuals who form online relationships are using a similar process of attraction as demisexuals. Though most of them probably wouldn't fall for the 'wrong' gender because they'd ask about gender, and lying about that would be enough of a betrayal of trust to turn them off. Then again, some people insist on getting a picture early on in the relationship. In which case they could be going on sexual attraction to the person in the picture. (And could be in a for a disappointment if the person sent a picture of someone else, or an out-of-date picture.)
Hmm, interesting. Hasn't it got something to do with how genes are switched on and off in utero, due to the amount of androgens we are exposed to or something? It's supposed to make our brains confused about gender and that has a knock on effect on who we are sexually attracted to. Clearly my brain thinks I'm a man in certain ways because I fancy girls...
Well, I have heard that women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are less likely to turn out heterosexual, while women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome are more often heterosexual than most women. So there may be something to the hormonal theory there.
That's kind of funny, because last year I had to make a blood test because of hormones and it turns out I have more masculine hormones than normal. And that day I kind of thought that was one of the reasons I am a lesbian, maybe? But I guess not EVERY lesbian has this problem. So, I may be wrong.
Maybe, as Human Difference would state, our cause of sexuality varies among us. In my own case, I remember hearing that for a male being gay can be caused by over-exposure of estrogen in the womb or something to that nature. Personally, I think this might have been what happened to me because sometimes I feel like my mental state flips through two channels: Passive/Rational(Estrogen) and Primal/Emotional(Testosterone). Anyone else feel like that?
