Why Women Love All

Three decades of research on men’s sexual arousal show patterns that clearly track sexual orientation—gay men overwhelmingly become sexually aroused by images of men and heterosexual men by images of women.

Three decades of research on men’s sexual arousal show patterns that clearly track sexual orientation—gay men overwhelmingly become sexually aroused by images of men and heterosexual men by images of women.

But a new Northwestern University study has found that the case is surprisingly different for women’s sexual arousal. Both heterosexual and lesbian women tend to become sexually aroused by both male and female erotica, and thus have a bisexual arousal pattern. These findings 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. The researchers measured the psychological and physiological sexual arousal in homosexual and heterosexual men and women as they watched erotic films. Men responded in consistence with their sexual orientations. In contrast, both homosexual and heterosexual women were just as sexually aroused with female stimuli as with male stimuli, even though they preferred having sex with men rather than women. The study’s results mesh with current research showing that women’s sexuality demonstrates increased flexibility relative to men in areas other other than just sexual orientation.