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P1: FOM Archives of Sexual Behavior [asb]

PL113-227171

September 8, 2000

11:42

Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 29, No. 6, 2000

Editor’s Introduction

Two years ago, I invited members of the Editorial Board to guest edit an issue on a topic of their choosing. The first to accept was Gilbert Herdt. Along with his invited coeditor, Martha McClintock, he has assembled a provocative series of papers on sexual attraction and desire, a complex, enigmatic core of human sexuality. Richard Green Editor

525 C 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/00/1200-0525$18.00/0 °

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Guest Editors’ Introduction

On the Development of Sexual Attraction

This special issue opens a series of new and important questions regarding the development of attraction and desire in human sexuality studies. The articles span the range of high theory to high empiricism, and have a satisfying scope that includes developmental and biopsychology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and social survey and social psychological analysis. The authors respond to the questions: What is the development and form of attraction in earlier development? How shall we define attraction and its subsequent effects upon sexual behavior in adulthood? Moreover, several of the papers consider the earliest attraction and how we should understand the variation within or between the genders. In the modern period, it was customary to understand that one gender desires only the opposite gender, because of their differences in anatomy and hence of sexual nature, making the opposite sex an “object of attraction.” This old-fashioned view is being increasingly questioned in the biological and social sciences, and certainly, its status as a universal of human development is subjected to critical investigation in the following studies. Increasingly it appears that the range of attractions may be more diverse or “fuzzy” than this binary once implied for crosscultural human development. How do societies ‘stimulate’ and ‘regulate’ sexual desires, in the broad sense of what is “socially valued” and may be expressed in public? The sexual and the emotional or social appear to contextually interact. Such a view suggests that we cannot reduce “attraction” either to pure biology or purely to culture, as theorists in the past were wont to do. Conceptions of attraction are closer to what anthropologists have called “values”—the general disposition to desire and merit an ontological state or a culturally valued social role (to be a warrior, a husband, a chief) or aim in life (to be brave, virtuous, powerful, etc.). To desire the toys of Santa Claus as a child or the muscles of Arnold Scwartzanegger as an adult is to participate in a collective system of valued objects that lies halfway between the individual and culture. Growing up and being socialized into families, villages, or schools; becoming playmates and friends with age-mates; and having the company of a favorite peer, or a circle of buddies, are all means and social ways of forming sexual subjectivity, of objectifying the demands made upon children as they become habituated to systems of erotic and social desires. We thus have 527 C 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/00/1200-0527$18.00/0 °


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inscribed into our being—our private parts, and even in the whispers of the self— sexual and psychosexual markers that signify membership in society. Daryl Bem summarizes his significant theory (“Exotic Becomes Erotic,” or EBE) on how erotic attraction and subjective sexual excitement emerges out of perceived difference, as children feel generally psychophysiologically aroused by those who are “exotic” to them. Desire, in turn, stimulates fantasy, and in childhood development, Bem suggests, intrinsic personality temperament (and gender typicality or atypicality) serves to mediate between aspects of the self and the perception of the exotic other. In subsequent development these attractions and arousal, which may differ by gender, are likely to be expressed in sexual behavior and stable adult sexual orientations. Bem reviews the critical responses to his theory, including its gender bias, and answers his critics through a new conceptualization of the issues surrounding what arousal means to each gender. Michael P. Dunne, J. Michael Bailey, Katerine M. Kirk, and Nicholas G. Martin describe the variation within a survey of a national sample of Australian adult twins (N + 4, 901, age range: 19–52 years) to understand the emergence of attractions in development. The authors report a high percentage of individuals, 15.2% of the men, who report ever having homosexual behavior, while 11.5% report same-sex attractions, and 6.4% report that they are not heterosexual. These important findings also background their data on the emergence of first sexual attractions at ages 13.7 years for men and 16.3 years for women. The authors note that this is significantly later than other studies reported in the literature, including McClintock and Herdt’s (McClintock and Herdt, 1996). Their study provides much food for thought. However, it should be noted that Dunne’s study is a more representative sample from another society (Australia) than the research reports reviewed by McClintock and Herdt, and later by Herdt and McClintock. We do not know how the recruitment bias in these studies may have effected the age of first attraction. Perhaps, even more important, Dunne et al. herein defined attraction explicitly as “sexual,” whereas the studies reviewed by Herdt and McClintock, as well as Savin-Williams and Diamond’s reported later, used measures that were more vague and general regarding the meaning of attraction. In particular, this difference in measurement may account for the later Australian age of attraction reported by Dunne et al., and the gender disparity as well, particularly if Savin-Williams and Diamond are correct in arguing that females tend to associate their first attraction with emotional, rather than sexual, contexts. Richard C. Friedman and Jennifer I. Downey review psychoanalytic theorizing on sexual development, desire, and sexual fantasy. By focusing upon deep psychological structures, the meanings of arousal to men and women, and the nature of sexual fantasy in erotic experience, the authors review Freud’s prior theories, especially his oedipal and bisexual theories, which they critique, by contrast with contemporary ideas and psychoanalytic practice, particularly the understanding of


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homosexuality. Their linking of sexual development to narratives is most timely: “Sexual fantasies are stories told to Ourselves that are embedded in sexual feelings.” By linking this work to hormonal, pschophysiological, and sexual orientation, the authors open possibilities for the intersection of qualitative and quantitative study. Gilbert Herdt and Martha McClintock theorize that the development of attraction begins during adrenarche (ages 6–10) and reaches a memorable, and stable, representation by age 10. Reviewing the evidence for hormonal development, they build upon their previous study (McClintock and Herdt, 1996), and suggest that adrenal puberty, followed by gonadal puberty, expand the puberty process in human development upto gonadarche. Females and males, heterosexuals and homosexuals, in the United States, in the studies reviewed, were found to experience first attraction by age 10. In the comparison of New Guinea societies, the authors found that many cultures mark age 10 as being highly significant, especially for males, in their sexual transition or ritual initiation into adulthood. Precocious pubertal development in some minority children in the United States is also reviewed. The authors conclude that the age of 10 is not magical—only a convenience marker in the cultural reasoning of societies about powerful hormonal processes. Ritch C. Savin-Williams and Lisa M. Diamond review the literature on gender differences in the development of sexual identity. Their predominantly white, middle class, college sample reveals a young age of first same-sex attraction: a mean of 7.7 years for males and 9.0 years for females. By dividing their sample into those attracted in emotional versus sexual contexts, they were able to determine that males are significantly more likely to experience attraction in a sexual context, whereas females are significantly more likely to experience attraction in an emotional context. Likewise, this contextual difference seems to carry through in subsequent sexual behavior and identity changes, as females emphasize the emotional and relational elements of romantic and sexual bonds. Overlap is evident in the developmental pathways of both genders too. But as the authors summarize the evidence, the pathways leading from sexual desire to sexual behavior are not equivalent for males and females, when sexual orientation is held constant. Gilbert Herdt Guest Editor Program in Human Sexuality Studies San Francisco State University San Francisco, California 91432


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Exotic Becomes Erotic: Interpreting the Biological Correlates of Sexual Orientation Daryl J. Bem, Ph.D.1

Although biological findings currently dominate the research literature on the determinants of sexual orientation, biological theorizing has not yet spelled out a developmental path by which any of the various biological correlates so far identified might lead to a particular sexual orientation. The Exotic-Becomes-Erotic (EBE) theory of sexual orientation (Bem, 1996) attempts to do just that, by suggesting how biological variables might interact with experiential and sociocultural factors to influence an individual’s sexual orientation. Evidence for the theory is reviewed, and a path analysis of data from a large sample of twins is presented which yields preliminary support for the theory’s claim that correlations between genetic variables and sexual orientation are mediated by childhood gender nonconformity. KEY WORDS: sexual orientation; homosexuality; heterosexuality; erotic orientation; sexuality; path analysis; genetic correlates.

INTRODUCTION Biological findings currently dominate the research literature on the determinants of sexual orientation. Reports of correlations between various biological variables and homosexuality appear regularly in the professional journals and, just as regularly, receive instant replay in the mass media. As a result, some researchers, many journalists, and sizable segments of the lesbian/gay/bisexual community have rushed to embrace the conclusion that a homosexual orientation is coded in the genes, caused by prenatal hormones, or determined by brain neuroanatomy. Except for the reparative therapists, most of the personality, clinical, and developmental psychologists and psychiatrists who once dominated the discourse on 1 Department

of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853; e-mail: d.bem@

cornell.edu. 531 C 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/00/1200-0531$18.00/0 °


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this topic have fallen conspicuously silent. Many have probably become closet converts to biology because they cannot point to a coherent body of evidence that supports a developmental, experience-based account of sexual orientation. The general public is not far behind: In 1983, only 16% of Americans believed that “homosexuality is something that people are born with” (Moore, 1993); by 2000, that figure had more than doubled to 35% (Reuters, 2000). I find at least two aspects of the current zeitgeist scientifically problematic. The first is the premature rush to interpret correlation as causation. In the absence of any theory of—let alone, evidence for—a developmental pathway from the biological markers to sexual orientation, such an interpretation is still a leap of faith. At best, there seems to be an implicit, primitive gender-inversion theory of homosexuality: If, for example, a biological characteristic that is more prevalent in gay men than in heterosexual men happens also to be more prevalent in women than in men, then, ipso facto, that is somehow deemed to “explain” the homosexual orientation. It was my dissatisfaction with this default “theory” that challenged me to spell out a specific developmental process in which biological variables would interact with experiential and sociocultural factors to determine an individual’s sexual orientation. My Exotic-Becomes-Erotic (EBE) theory of sexual orientation (Bem, 1996) was the result of that effort. The second problematic aspect of the current zeitgeist is that it narrowly focuses on the question “What causes homosexuality?” This framing of the inquiry implicitly presumes that heterosexuality is so well understood, so obviously the “natural” evolutionary consequence of reproductive advantage, that only deviations from it require explanation. Freud himself did not so presume: “[Heterosexuality] is also a problem that needs elucidation and is not a self-evident fact based upon an attraction that is ultimately of a chemical nature” (Freud, 1905/1962, pp. 11, 12). I agree with Freud. In fact, I would go further and assert that even the use of gender as the basis for choosing a sexual partner is a problem that needs elucidation. Accordingly, EBE theory attempts to account for three major observations: First, most men and women in our culture have an exclusive and enduring erotic preference for either males or females; gender is, in fact, the overriding criterion for most people’s erotic choices. Second, most men and women in our culture have an exclusive and enduring erotic preference for persons of the opposite sex. And third, a substantial minority of men and women have an exclusive and enduring erotic preference for persons of the same sex. In seeking to account for these observations, EBE theory provides a single unitary explanation for both opposite-sex and same-sex desire—and for both men and women. In addition, the theory seeks to account for sex differences in sexual orientation and for departures from the modal patterns, such as bisexual orientations, orientations that are not enduring but fluid and changeable, and sexual orientations that are not even based on the gender of potential partners.


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OVERVIEW OF EBE THEORY The central proposition of EBE theory is that individuals can become erotically attracted to a class of individuals from whom they felt different during childhood. Figure 1 shows how this phenomenon is embedded in the overall sequence of events that leads to an individual’s erotic attractions—the component of sexual orientation addressed by the theory. The sequence begins at the top of the figure with Biological Variables (labeled A) and ends at the bottom with Erotic Attraction (labeled F). A → B. According to the theory, biological variables such as genes or prenatal hormones do not code for sexual orientation per se but for childhood temperaments, such as aggression and activity level. B → C. A child’s temperaments predispose him or her to enjoy some activities more than other activities. One child will enjoy rough-and-tumble play and competitive team sports (male-typical activities); another will prefer to socialize quietly or play jacks or hopscotch (female-typical activities). Children will also prefer to play with peers who share their activity preferences; for example, the child who enjoys baseball or football will selectively seek out boys as playmates. Children who prefer sex-typical activities and same-sex playmates are referred to as gender conforming; children who prefer sex-atypical activities and opposite-sex playmates are referred to as gender nonconforming. C → D. Gender-conforming children will feel different from opposite-sex peers, and gender-nonconforming children will feel different from same-sex peers. D → E. These feelings of being different produce heightened physiological arousal. For the male-typical child, it may be felt as antipathy or contempt in the presence of girls (“girls are yucky”); for the female-typical child, it may be felt as timidity or apprehension in the presence of boys. A particularly clear example is the “sissy” boy who is taunted by male peers for his gender nonconformity and, as a result, is likely to experience the strong physiological arousal of fear and anger in their presence. However, the theory claims that every child—conforming or nonconforming—experiences heightened, nonspecific physiological arousal in the presence of peers from whom he or she feels different. For most children, this arousal in neither affectively toned nor consciously experienced. E → F. Regardless of the specific source or affective tone of the childhood arousal, it is subsequently transformed into erotic attraction. Steps D → E and E → F thus encompass specific psychological mechanisms that transform exotic into erotic (D → F). It is important to emphasize that Fig. 1 is not intended to describe an inevitable, universal path to sexual orientation but the modal path followed by most men and


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Fig. 1. The temporal sequence of events leading to sexual orientation for most men and women in a gender-polarizing culture.


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women in a gender-polarizing culture like ours, a culture that emphasizes the differences between the sexes by pervasively organizing both the perceptions and realities of communal life around the male–female dichotomy (Bem, 1993). EVIDENCE FOR THE THEORY Exotic Becomes Erotic (D → F) The central proposition that individuals can become erotically attracted to a class of individuals from whom they felt different during childhood is very general and transcends erotic orientations that are based on gender. For example, a light-skinned person could come to eroticize dark-skinned persons through one or more of the processes described by the theory. To produce a differential erotic attraction to one sex or the other, however, requires that the basis for feeling different must itself differentiate between the sexes; that is, to arrive at a sex-based erotic orientation, an individual must feel different for sex-based or gender-related reasons. Simply being lighter-skinned, poorer, more intelligent, or more introverted than one’s childhood peers does not produce the kind of feeling different that produces differential homoerotic or heteroerotic attraction. Data consistent with this analysis comes from an intensive, large-scale interview study conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area by the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research (Bell et al., 1981a). Using retrospective reports from adult respondents, the investigators compared approximately 1,000 gay men and lesbians with 500 heterosexual men and women to test several hypotheses about the development of sexual orientation. The study (hereinafter, the “San Francisco study”) yielded virtually no support for current experience-based theories of sexual orientation, including those based on processes of learning or conditioning or on family psychodynamics. The study did find, however, that 71% of the gay men and 70% of the lesbians in the sample reported that they had felt different from their same-sex peers during childhood, a feeling that was sustained throughout childhood and adolescence for most respondents. When asked in what ways they had felt different, they overwhelmingly cited gender-related reasons. Gay men were most likely to say that they had not liked boys’ sports; lesbians were most likely to say that they had been more masculine than other girls were and had been more interested in sports than other girls. In contrast, fewer than 8% of heterosexual men or women said that they had felt different from same-sex childhood peers for gender-related reasons. Those who had felt different from their peers tended to cite such reasons as having been poorer, more intelligent, or more introverted. (All statistical comparisons between gay and heterosexual respondents were significant at p < 0.0005.) Several other studies have also reported that gay men and lesbians recall having felt different from same-sex peers on gender-related characteristics during


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childhood (e.g., Newman and Muzzonigro,1993; Savin-Williams,1998; Telljohann and Price, 1993; Troiden, 1979). The major weakness in all these studies, including the San Francisco study, is that they rely on adults’ retrospective reports of childhood feelings. On the other hand, the respondents in some of the studies were relatively close in time to their childhood years; in one study, for example, 88% of gay male youths as young as 14 years reported having felt different from other boys on gender-related characteristics throughout their childhood years (Savin-Williams, 1998). Moreover, the link between childhood gender nonconformity and sexual orientation (described in the next section) has been confirmed in over 50 studies, including prospective ones (Bailey and Zucker, 1995; they also discuss the retrospective problem at length). Gender Conformity and Nonconformity: The Antecedents of Feeling Different (C → D) Feeling different from one’s childhood peers can have any of several antecedents, some common, some idiosyncratic. The most common antecedent is gender polarization. Virtually all human societies polarize the sexes to some extent, setting up a sex-based division of labor and power, emphasizing or exaggerating sex differences, and, in general, superimposing the male–female dichotomy on virtually every aspect of communal life (Bem, 1993). These gender-polarizing practices ensure that most boys and girls will grow up feeling different from opposite-sex peers and, hence, will come to be erotically attracted to them later in life. This, according to the theory, is why gender becomes the most salient category and, hence, the most common criterion for selecting sexual partners in the first place and why heteroeroticism is the modal preference across time and culture. Thus, the theory provides a culturally based alternative to the assumption that evolution must necessarily have programmed heterosexuality into the species for reasons of reproductive advantage. Obviously heterosexual behavior is reproductively advantageous, but it does not follow that it must therefore be sustained through genetic transmission. As long as prevailing environments support or promote a reproductively successful behavior sufficiently often, it will not necessarily get programmed into the genes by evolution. This is true even in species whose sexual choices are far more “hardwired” than our own. For example, it is presumably reproductively advantageous for ducks to mate with other ducks, but as long as most baby ducklings encounter other ducks before they encounter a member of some other species (including ethologists), evolution can simply implant the imprinting process itself into the species rather than the specific content of what, reproductively speaking, needs to be imprinted (Hess and Petrovich, 1977). Analogously, because most cultures ensure that boys and girls will see each other as exotic, it would be sufficient for evolution to implant an exotic-becomes-erotic process into our species rather than


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Table I. Percentage of Respondents Reporting Gender-Nonconforming Preferences and Behaviors During Childhood Men Response Had not enjoyed sex-typical activities Had enjoyed sex-atypical activities Atypically sex-typed (masculinity/femininity) Most childhood friends were opposite sex

Women

Gay (n = 686)

Heterosexual (n = 337)

Lesbian (n = 293)

Heterosexual (n = 140)

63

10

63

15

48

11

81

61

56

8

80

24

42

13

60

40

Note. Percentages have been calculated from the data given in Bell et al. (1981b, pp. 74, 75, 77). All chi-square comparisons between gay and heterosexual subgroups are significant at p < 0.0001.

heterosexuality per se. In fact, an exotic-becomes-erotic process is actually a builtin component of sexual imprinting in some species. For example, Japanese quail reared with their siblings later prefer their slightly different-appearing cousins to their own siblings (Bateson, 1978). This has been interpreted as a mechanism that prevents inbreeding—a biologically promoted incest taboo. How, then, does a child come to feel different from same-sex peers? As cited earlier, the most common reasons given by gay men and lesbians in the San Fransisco study for having felt different from same-sex peers in childhood were sex-atypical preferences and behaviors in childhood—gender nonconformity. In fact, in the path analyses of the San Francisco study, childhood gender conformity or nonconformity was not only the strongest but the only significant childhood predictor of later sexual orientation for both men and women (Bell et al., 1981a). As Table I shows, the effects are large and significant. For example, compared with heterosexual men, gay men were significantly less likely to have enjoyed boys’ activities (e.g., baseball and football) during childhood, more likely to have enjoyed girls’ activities (e.g., hopscotch, playing house, and jacks), and less likely to rate themselves as having been masculine. These were the three variables that defined gender nonconformity in the study. Additionally, gay men were more likely than heterosexual men to have had girls as childhood friends. The corresponding comparisons between lesbian and heterosexual women are also large and significant. It is also clear from the table that relatively more women than men reported enjoying sex-atypical activities and having opposite-sex friends during childhood. As these data confirm, enjoying male-typical activities is common for a girl in our society, implying that being a tomboy is not sufficient by itself to cause her to feel different from other girls. In fact, we see in the table that the difference between the percentages of lesbians and heterosexual women who report having enjoyed


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boys’ activities during childhood (81% vs. 61%, respectively) is less than half the size of the difference between them in their aversion to girls’ activities (63% vs. 15%). Moreover, this latter difference is virtually identical to that between gay men and heterosexual men in their reported childhood aversions to boys’ activities (63% vs. 10%). As noted in the previous section, the San Francisco study does not stand alone. A meta-analysis of 48 studies confirmed that gay men and lesbians are more likely than heterosexual men and women to recall gender-nonconforming behaviors and interests in childhood (Bailey and Zucker, 1995, p. 49). As the authors observed, “these are among the largest effect sizes ever reported in the realm of sex-dimorphic behaviors.” Prospective longitudinal studies come to the same conclusion. In the largest of these, 75% of gender-nonconforming boys became bisexual or homosexual in later years compared with only 4% of gender-conforming boys (Green, 1987). In six other prospective studies, 63% of gender-nonconforming boys later had homosexual orientations (Zucker, 1990). Currently there are no prospective studies of gender-nonconforming girls. How Does Exotic Become Erotic? (D → E → F) EBE theory proposes that exotic becomes erotic because feeling different from a class of peers in childhood produces heightened nonspecific physiological arousal (D → E), which is subsequently transformed into erotic attraction (E → F). To my knowledge, there is no direct evidence for the first step in this sequence beyond the well-documented observation that novel (“exotic”) stimuli produce heightened physiological arousal in many species, including our own (Mook, 1999); filling in this empirical gap in EBE theory must await future research. In contrast, there are at least three mechanisms that can potentially effect the second step, transforming generalized arousal into erotic attraction (Bem, 1996). Only one of these, the extrinsic arousal effect, is discussed here. In his first-century Roman handbook, The Art of Love, Ovid advised any man who was interested in sexual seduction to take the woman in whom he was interested to a gladiatorial tournament, where she would more easily be aroused to passion. However, he did not say why this should be so. A contemporary version of Ovid’s claim was introduced by Walster (Berscheid and Walster, 1974; Walster, 1971), who suggested that it constitutes a special case of the 2-factor theory of emotion by Schachter and Singer (1962). This theory states that the physiological arousal of our autonomic nervous system provides the cues that we feel emotional but that the more subtle judgment of which emotion we are feeling often depends on our cognitive appraisal of the surrounding circumstances. According to Walster, then, the experience of erotic desire results from the conjunction of physiological arousal and the cognitive causal attribution (or misattribution) that the arousal is elicited by a potential sexual partner.


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Although not all investigators agree that it arises from a cognitive attribution process, there is now extensive experimental evidence that an individual who has been physiologically aroused will show heightened sexual responsiveness to an appropriate target person. In one set of studies, male participants were physiologically aroused by running in place, by hearing an audio tape of a comedy routine, or by hearing an audio tape of a grisly killing (White et al., 1981). No matter how they had been aroused, these men reported more erotic interest in a physically attractive woman than did men who had not been aroused. This effect has also been observed physiologically. In two studies, preexposure to a disturbing (nonsexual) videotape subsequently produced greater penile tumescence in men and greater vaginal blood volume increases in women when they watched an erotic videotape than did preexposure to a nondisturbing videotape (Hoon et al., 1977; Wolchik et al., 1980). In other words, generalized physiological arousal, regardless of its source or affective tone, can subsequently be experienced as erotic desire. At that point, it is erotic desire. My proposal, then, is that an individual’s protracted and sustained experience of feeling different from same- or opposite-sex peers throughout childhood and adolescence produces a correspondingly sustained physiological arousal that gets eroticized when the maturational, cognitive, and situational factors coalesce to provide the critical defining moment. The precise timing of this moment, however, is influenced by several factors, including actual sexual experience with opposite- and same-sex peers. A recent review suggests that, in general, men and women recall their first sexual attractions, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, as occurring when they were between 10 and 10.5 years of age (McClintock and Herdt, 1996). Nevertheless, social norms and expectations inevitably influence an individual’s awareness and interpretation of early arousal. Most individuals in our culture are primed to anticipate, recognize, and interpret opposite-sex arousal as erotic or romantic attraction and to ignore, repress, or differently interpret comparable same-sex arousal. We should also expect to see secular changes and cohort effects. For example, the heightened visibility of gay men and lesbians in our society is now prompting individuals who experience same-sex arousal to recognize it, label it, and act on it at earlier ages than in previous years (Dubé, 1997; Fox, 1995; Savin-Williams, 1995, 1998). The Biological Connection (A → F) versus (A → B) As outlined in Fig. 1, EBE theory proposes that to the extent biological factors such as the genotype, prenatal hormones, or brain neuroanatomy influence an individual’s later sexual orientation, they do so only indirectly, by intervening earlier in the chain of events to influence a child’s preference for sex-typical or sex-atypical activity and peer preferences—his or her gender conformity or nonconformity. More specifically, the theory specifies that any link between, say, the genotype and gender nonconformity (A → C) is composed of two parts: a link between


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the genotype and childhood temperaments (A → B) and a link between those temperaments and gender nonconformity (B → C). This implies that the mediating temperaments should possess three characteristics: First, they should be plausibly related to those childhood activities that define gender conformity and nonconformity. Second, because they manifest themselves in sex-typed preferences, they should show sex differences. And third, because they are hypothesized to derive from the genotype, they should have significant heritabilities. (For general discussions and reviews of childhood temperaments, see Goldsmith et al., 1987; Kohnstamm et al., 1989.) One likely candidate is aggression and its benign cousin, rough-and-tumble play. Gay men score lower than heterosexual men on measures of childhood aggression (Blanchard et al., 1983), and parents of gender-nonconforming boys specifically rate them as having less interest in rough-and-tumble play than do parents of gender-conforming boys (Green, 1976). Second, the sex difference in aggression during childhood is one of the largest psychological sex differences known (Hyde, 1984). Rough-and-tumble play in particular is more common in boys than in girls (DiPietro, 1981; Fry, 1990; Moller et al., 1992). And third, individual differences in aggression have a large heritable component (Rushton et al., 1986). Another likely candidate is activity level, considered to be one of the basic childhood temperaments (Buss and Plomin, 1975, 1984). Like aggression, differences in activity level would also seem to characterize the differences between male-typical and female-typical play activities in childhood. Moreover, gendernonconforming boys and girls are lower and higher on activity level, respectively, than are control children of the same sex (Bates et al., 1973, 1979; Zucker and Green, 1993). Second, the sex difference in activity level is as large as it is for aggression. Even before birth, boys in utero are more active than girls are (Eaton and Enns, 1986). And third, individual differences in activity level have a large heritable component (Plomin, 1986; Rowe, 1997).

A Test of the EBE Model There have now been several studies showing a correlation between an individual’s sexual orientation and his or her genotype. In one, a sample of 115 gay men who had male twins, 52% of identical twin brothers were also gay compared with only 22% of fraternal twin brothers and 11% of adopted brothers (Bailey and Pillard, 1991). In a comparable sample of 115 lesbians, 48% of identical twin sisters were also lesbians compared with only 16% of fraternal twin sisters and 6% of adopted sisters (Bailey et al., 1993). A subsequent study of nearly 5,000 twins who had been systematically drawn from a twin registry confirmed the significant heritability of sexual orientation for men but not for women (Bailey


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and Martin, 1995). Finally, an analysis of families in which there were two gay brothers, suggested a correlation between a homosexual orientation and the inheritance of genetic markers on the X chromosome (Hamer and Copeland, 1994; Hamer et al., 1993). But these same studies also provided evidence for the link proposed by EBE theory between an individual’s genotype and his or her childhood gender nonconformity. For example, in the 1991 study of male twins, the correlation on gender nonconformity between gay identical twins was as high as the reliability of the nonconformity measure would permit, 0.76, ( p < 0.0001), compared with a nonsignificant correlation of only 0.43 between gay fraternal twins (Bailey and Pillard, 1991). This implies that even when sexual orientation is held constant, there is a significant correlation between the genotype and gender nonconformity. Similarly, the 1993 family study found that gay brothers who shared the same genetic markers on the X chromosome were more alike on gender nonconformity than were gay brothers who did not (Hamer and Copeland, 1994; Hamer et al., 1993). Finally, childhood gender nonconformity was significantly heritable for both men and women in the large twin registry study—even though sexual orientation itself was not significantly heritable for the women (Bailey and Martin, 1995). Because this twin registry study is based on a very large sample and includes heterosexual as well as bisexual and homosexual individuals, the data can be used in a path analysis to test the EBE model against the competing default model that the genotype is more directly linked to sexual orientation or is linked via some alternative but unspecified path. In particular, the EBE model predicts that any correlation between the genotype and sexual orientation is mediated by gender nonconformity and, hence, should vanish when gender nonconformity is entered into the path model. In contrast, the default model predicts that the correlation between the genotype and sexual orientation should remain unaffected when gender nonconformity is entered into the path model. The path analysis presented here is based on the fact that monozygotic twins will be more similar than dizygotic twins on any trait with nonzero heritability. This is equivalent to saying that zygosity is itself correlated with trait similarity across pairs of twins; the higher the heritability of the trait, the higher the correlation. Accordingly, the unit of analysis here is the twin pair, and each variable is a measure of the pair’s similarity on the three variables at issue. (The variables are actually all coded in the direction of dissimilarity.) Genetic similarity (zygosity) is coded as 0 for monozygotic twin pairs and as 1 for dizygotic pairs. The similarity of a pair’s childhood gender nonconformity is the absolute value of the difference between their scores on a multi-item scale of childhood gender nonconformity; and, the similarity of their sexual orientations is the absolute value of the difference between their scores on the 7-point Kinsey scale of sexual orientation, which ranges from 0 = exclusively heterosexual to 6 = exclusively homosexual. A full description of


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Fig. 2. Path coefficients between genetic similarity (zygosity), childhood gender nonconformity similarity, and sexual orientation similarity for male and female twin pairs. ∗ p < 0.001.

the twin sample and the methodology of the study appears elsewhere in this issue (Dunne et al., 2000).2 As shown in Fig. 2, the pattern of path coefficients is consistent with the EBE model for both male and female twin pairs: For both sexes, there is a significant path between the genotype and childhood gender nonconformity and a further significant path between childhood gender nonconformity and sexual orientation, but there is no remaining, direct link between the genotype and sexual orientation.3 2 Michael

Bailey has generously provided the relevant data for these path analyses and, even more generously, given me permission to publish them here even though he and his collaborators have not yet published their own genetic analyses of these data. 3 To ensure that this pattern of results is not simply an artifact of differing distributions of the two continuous variables (childhood gender nonconformity similarity and sexual orientation similarity), a logistic analysis (Darlington, 1990) was also performed in which these two variables were first transformed into dichotomous variables with identical distributions. Following Dunne et al. (1999), a twin pair was considered concordant for sexual orientation if both twins were either exclusively heterosexual (Kinsey scores of 0) or not (Kinsey scores greater than 0). The difference scores on childhood gender nonconformity were then dichotomized so that the number of concordant pairs on this variable equalled the number of pairs who were concordant on sexual orientation. In this way, both variables were given “an equal chance” of being correlated with genetic similarity. This alternative analysis yielded the same correlational patterns and the same significance levels as the analysis depicted in Fig. 2.


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Other Biological Correlates In addition to the genotype, prenatal hormones and brain neuroanatomy have also been correlated with sexual orientation in some studies (for summaries, reviews, and critiques see Bailey, 1995; Bem, 1996; Byne and Parsons, 1993; Zucker and Bradley, 1995). But these correlations—even if they turn out to be replicable and not artifactual—do not necessarily controvert the EBE account. Any biological factor that correlates with one or more of the intervening processes proposed by EBE theory could also emerge as a correlate of sexual orientation. For example, any neuroanatomical feature of the brain that correlates with childhood aggression or activity level is likely to emerge as a difference between gay men and heterosexual men, between women and men, and between heterosexual women and lesbians. Even if EBE theory turns out to be wrong, the more general point—that a mediating personality variable could account for observed correlations between biological variables and sexual orientation—still holds. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES As noted earlier, Fig. 1 is not intended to describe an inevitable, universal path to sexual orientation but only the modal path followed by most men and women in a gender-polarizing culture like ours. Individual differences, including apparent exceptions to the theory, can arise in a number of ways. First, of course, the theory could simply be wrong or incomplete in fundamental ways. But some of the apparent exceptions to the sequence of events laid out in Fig. 1 are arguably theory-consistent variations. One such possibility is that some individuals enter the EBE path in the middle of the sequence rather than at the beginning. For example, some children may come to feel different from same-sex peers not because of a temperamentally induced preference for sex-atypical activities but because of more idiosyncratic factors, such as a physical disability, an illness, or an atypical lack of contact with samesex peers. Some of the gay men and lesbians in the San Francisco study reported that although they had been gender conforming in their childhood behaviors, they still felt different from their same-sex peers for gender-related reasons. Moreover, even the sex-typical lesbians in the study were more likely than heterosexual women to report that most of their friends in grade school had been boys. And, consistent with the subsequent steps in the EBE path, this was the strongest predictor of homosexual involvements in adolescence and their homosexual orientation in adulthood. Cultural factors can also enter to create individual differences that appear to be exceptions to the EBE model. For example, some children might have an activity preference that is gender neutral or even sex typical in the wider culture but gender deviant in their own peer subculture. A contemporary example is the


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boy who is a clever computer hacker: He would be considered a “regular guy” or even a hero in some male subcultures but a gender-deviant “nerd” in others. Similarly, a child can be permissibly gender nonconforming in some ways—and hence not feel different from same-sex peers—if he or she is gender conforming in other ways that are more gender-defining in his or her subculture. And finally, changes in the wider culture can produce cohort effects; behaviors that are gender nonconforming in one cohort can become more or less so in a later cohort. For some individuals, the erotic attractions predicted by EBE theory might be supplemented or even superseded by erotic attractions acquired after adolescence. For example, the same-sex eroticism of most of the bisexual men and women in the San Francisco study appeared to be a socially learned, post-adolescent “add-on” to an already established heterosexual orientation. Not surprisingly, these bisexual respondents differed from their exclusively homosexual counterparts on some of the major antecedent variables as well. For example, the path correlation between gender nonconformity and same-sex eroticism was only 0.18 for the bisexual women, but it was 0.62 for the exclusively homosexual women. In fact, 80% of the bisexual women and 75% of the bisexual men in the study reported that as children they had been sex-typically feminine or masculine, respectively. Finally, some women who would otherwise be predicted by the EBE model to have a heterosexual orientation might choose for social or political reasons to center their lives around other women. This could lead them to avoid seeking out men for sexual or romantic relationships, to develop affectional and erotic ties to other women, and to self-identify as lesbians or bisexuals (Kitzinger, 1987), which in turn leads to the topic of sex differences. SEX DIFFERENCES One of the more audacious claims made for EBE is that it provides a single unitary explanation for both opposite-sex and same-sex desire—and for both men and women. Not everyone is convinced, however, and I have been challenged to defend the theory against the charge that it is androcentric: valid for men, perhaps, but not for women (Bem, 1998; Peplau et al., 1998). To be sure, there is now substantial evidence that men and women differ from one another on several aspects of sexuality, irrespective of their sexual orientations (Peplau et al., 1998). As I tell my students, if you want to understand the sexuality of gay men, think of them as men; if you want to understand the sexuality of lesbians, think of them as women. But most of these differences have to do with the primacy or intensity of erotic desire, the relative emphasis on the physical attributes of potential partners, and the willingness to engage in impersonal sex without romantic involvement. Such differences are not pertinent to EBE theory’s account of how erotic orientations develop.


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There is, however, one sex difference that is pertinent to EBE theory: Women’s sexual orientations are more fluid than men’s. Many studies, including a national random survey of Americans (Laumann et al., 1994), have found that women are more likely to be bisexual than exclusively homosexual, whereas the reverse is true for men. Nonheterosexual women are also more likely to see their sexual orientations as flexible, even “chosen,” whereas men are more likely to view their sexual orientations in essentialist terms, as inborn and unchangeable (Whisman, 1996). For example, men who come out as gay after leaving heterosexual marriages or relationships often describe themselves as having “finally realized” their “true” sexual orientation. Lesbians in similar situation, however, are more likely to reject the implication that their previous heterosexual relationships were inauthentic or at odds with who they really were: “That’s who I was then, and this is who I am now.” The greater fluidity of women’s sexual orientations is consistent with EBE theory. As noted earlier, Fig. 1 describes the path to sexual orientation in a genderpolarizing culture. But in our society, women grow up in a (phenomenologically) less gender-polarized culture than do men. Compared with boys, girls are punished less for being gender nonconforming, and, as the data in Table I reveal, they are more likely than boys to engage in both sex-typical and sex-atypical activities and are more likely to have childhood friends of both sexes. This implies that girls are less likely than boys to feel differentially different from opposite-sex and same-sex peers and, hence, are less likely to develop exclusively heteroerotic or homoerotic orientations. It is even possible that some of today’s nonheterosexual women may be giving a preview of what sexual orientations would look like in a less gender-polarized future. It is possible that we might even begin to see more men and women who, instead of using gender as the overriding criterion for selecting a partner, might base their erotic and romantic choices on a more diverse and idiosyncratic variety of attributes. As I remarked in my original article, “Gentlemen might still prefer blonds, but some of those gentlemen (and some ladies) might prefer blonds of any sex” (Bem, 1996, p. 332). EBE THEORY VERSUS WHAT? Many of my biologically oriented friends and colleagues tell me that they think EBE theory is very clever—and very wrong. They may be right. The existing data are far from decisive, and I am genuinely open to the possibility that biological factors influence sexual orientation more directly than EBE theory would have it. But as much as I prefer being right to being wrong, I will be content if EBE theory does no more than provoke some affirmative competition. To my knowledge, there is no competing theory for a more direct or alternative path between the genotype and sexual orientation. It is not that such a theory has been advanced, tested, and found wanting, but that it has not yet been made.


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In their public statements and published articles, my biologically oriented colleagues dutifully point out that correlation is not cause. But, as I have commented elsewhere (Bem, 1996), the reductive temptation of biological causation is so seductive that the caveat cannot possibly compete with the excitement of discovering yet another link between the anatomy of our brains and the anatomy of our lovers’ genitalia. Unfortunately, the caveat vanishes completely as word of the latest discovery moves from Science to Newsweek. Surely the public can be forgiven for believing that we are but one NIH grant away from pinpointing the penis preference gene. REFERENCES Bailey, J. M. (1995). Biological perspectives on sexual orientation. In D’Augelli, A. R., and Patterson, C. J. (Eds.), Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Identities over the Lifespan, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 102–135. Bailey, J. M., and Martin, N. G. (1995). A twin registry study of sexual orientation. Paper presented at the twenty-first annual meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Provincetown, MA. Bailey, J. M., and Pillard, R. C. (1991). A genetic study of male sexual orientation. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 48: 1089–1096. Bailey, J. M., Pillard, R. C., Neale, M. C., and Agyei, Y. (1993). Heritable factors influence sexual orientation in women. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 50: 217–223. Bailey, J. M., and Zucker, K. J. (1995). Childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation: A conceptual analysis and quantitative review. Dev. Psychol. 31: 43–55. Bates, J. E., Bentler, P. M., and Thompson, S. K. (1973). Measurement of deviant gender development in boys. Child Dev. 44: 591–598. Bates, J. E., Bentler, P. M., and Thompson, S. K. (1979). Gender-deviant boys compared with normal and clinical controls boys. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 7: 243–259. Bateson, P. P. G. (1978). Sexual imprinting and optimal outbreeding. Nature 273: 659–660. Bell, A. P., Weinberg, M. S., and Hammersmith, S. K. (1981a). Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Bell, A. P., Weinberg, M. S., and Hammersmith, S. K. (1981b). Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women. Statistical Appendix, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Bem, D. J. (1996). Exotic becomes erotic: A developmental theory of sexual orientation. Psychol. Rev. 103: 320–335. Bem, D. J. (1998). Is EBE theory supported by the evidence? Is it androcentric? A reply to Peplau et al. Psychol. Rev. 105: 395–398. Bem, S. L. (1993). The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Berscheid, E., and Walster, E. (1974). A little bit about love. In Huston, T. (Ed.), Foundations of Interpersonal Attraction, Academic Press, New York, pp. 355–381. Blanchard, R., McConkey, J. G., Roper, V., and Steiner, B. W. (1983). Measuring physical aggressiveness in heterosexual, homosexual, and transsexual males. Arch. Sex. Behav. 12: 511–524. Buss, A. H., and Plomin, R. (1975). A Temperament Theory of Personality Development, Wiley, New York. Buss, A. H., and Plomin, R. (1984). Temperament: Early Developing Personality Traits, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Byne, W., and Parsons, B. (1993). Human sexual orientation: The biologic theories reappraised. Arch. Gen Psychiat. 50: 228–239. Darlington, R. B. (1990). Regression and Linear Models, McGraw-Hill, New York. DiPietro, J. A. (1981). Rough and tumble play: A function of gender. Dev. Psychol. 17: 50–58.


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Dubé, E. M. (Artist). (1997). Sexual Identity and Intimacy: Development Among Two Cohorts of Gay and Bisexual Men. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Dunne, M. P., Bailey, J. M., Kirk, K. M., and Martin, N. G. (2000). The subtlety of sex-atypicality. Arch. Sex. Behav. 29: 549–565. Eaton, W. O., and Enns, L. R. (1986). Sex differences in human motor activity level. Psychol. Bull. 100: 19–28. Fox, R. C. (1995). Bisexual identities. In D’Augelli, A. R., and Patterson, C. J. (Eds.), Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Identities over the lifespan, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 48–86. Freud, S. (1905/1962). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Basic Books, New York. Fry, D. P. (1990). Play aggression among Zapotec children: Implications for the practice hypothesis. Aggressive Behav. 17: 321–340. Goldsmith, H. H., Buss, A. H., Plomin, R., Rothbart, M. K., Thomas, A., Chess, S., Hinde, R. A., and McCall, R. B. (1987). Roundtable: What is temperament? Four approaches. Child Dev. 58: 505–529. Green, R. (1976). One-hundred ten feminine and masculine boys: Behavioral contrasts and demographic similarities. Arch. Sex. Behav. 5: 425–426. Green, R. (1987). The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Hamer, D., and Copeland, P. (1994). The Science of Desire: The Search for the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior, Simon and Schuster, New York. Hamer, D. H., Hu, S., Magnuson, V. L., Hu, N., and Pattatucci, A. M. L. (1993). A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation. Science 261: 321–327. Hess, E. H., and Petrovich, S. B. (1977). Imprinting, Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Stroudsburg, PA. Hoon, P. W., Wincze, J. P., and Hoon, E. F. (1977). A test of reciprocal inhibition: Are anxiety and sexual arousal in women mutually inhibitory? J. Abnorm. Psychol. 86: 65–74. Hyde, J. S. (1984). How large are gender differences in aggression? A developmental meta-analysis. Dev. Psychol. 20: 722–736. Kitzinger, C. (1987). The Social Construction of Lesbianism, Sage, London. Kohnstamm, G. A., Bates, J. E., and Rothbart, M. K. (1989). Temperament in Childhood, Wiley, New York. Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., and Michaels, S. (1994). The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. McClintock, M. K., and Herdt, G. (1996). Rethinking puberty: The development of sexual attraction. Current Directions in Psychol. Sci. 5: 178–183. McGue, M., and Lykken, D. T. (1992). Genetic influence on risk of divorce. Psychol. Sci. 3(6): 368– 373. Moller, L. C., Hymel, S., and Rubin, K. H. (1992). Sex typing in play and popularity in middle childhood. Sex Roles. 26: 331–353. Mook, D. G. (1999). Motivation: The Organization of Animal and Human Action, Norton, New York. Moore, D. W. (1993). Public polarized on gay issue. The Gallup Poll Monthly, 30–34. Newman, B. S., and Muzzonigro, P. G. (1993). The effects of traditional family values on the coming out process of gay male adolescents. Adolescence 28: 213–226. Peplau, L. A., Garnets, L. D., Spalding, L. R., Conley, T. D., and Veniegas, R. C. (1998). A critique of Bem’s “Exotic Becomes Erotic” theory of sexual orientation. Psychol. Rev. 105: 387–394. Plomin, R. (1986). Development, Genetics, and Psychology, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Reuters. (2000). Most in U. S. favor laws barring gay discrimination. Reuters Limited, February 8. Rowe, D. C. (1997). Genetics, temperament, and personality. In Hogan, R., Johnson, J., and Briggs, S. (Eds.), Handbook of Personality Psychology, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 367–386. Rushton, J. P., Fulker, D. W., Neale, M. C., Nias, D. K. B., and Eysenck, H. J. (1986). Altruism and aggression: The heritability of individual differences. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 50: 1192–1198. Savin-Williams, R. C. (1995). Lesbian, gay male, and bisexual adolescents. In D’Augelli, A. R., and Patterson C. J. (Eds.), Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities over the Lifespan, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 165–189. Savin-Williams, R. C. (1998). “. . . And then I Became Gay,” Routledge, New York. Schachter, S., and Singer, J. E. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychol. Rev. 69: 379–399.


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Telljohann, S. K., and Price, J. P. (1993). A qualitative examination of adolescent homosexuals’ life experiences: Ramifications for secondary school personnel. J. Homosexual. 26: 41–56. Troiden, R. R. (1979). Becoming homosexual: A model of gay identity formation. Psychiatry 42: 362–373. Walster, E. (1971). Passionate love. In Murstein, B. I. (Ed.), Theories of Attraction and Love, Springer, New York, pp. 85–99. Whisman, V. (1996). Queer by choice, Routledge, New York. White, G. L., Fishbein, S., and Rutstein, J. (1981). Passionate love and the misattribution of arousal. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 41: 56–62. Wolchik, S. A., Beggs, V. E., Wincze, J. P., Sakheim, D. K., Barlow, D. H., and Mavissakalian, M. (1980). The effect of emotional arousal on subsequent sexual arousal in men. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 89: 595–598. Zucker, K. J. (Ed.). (1990). Gender Identity Disorders in Children: Clinical Descriptions and Natural History, American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC. Zucker, K. J., and Bradley, S. J. (1995). Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents, Guilford Press, New York. Zucker, K. J., and Green, R. (1993). Psychological and familial aspects of gender identity disorder. Child Adolesc. Psychiat. Clinics North Am. 2: 513–542.


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The Subtlety of Sex-Atypicality Michael P. Dunne, Ph.D.,1,4 J. Michael Bailey, Ph.D.,2 Katherine M. Kirk, Ph.D.,3 and Nicholas G. Martin, Ph.D.3

Memories of sex-atypical behavior and interests in childhood usually differ between homosexual and heterosexual people. However, variation within these broad groups has not previously been explored in detail, especially among women. We utilized data from a postal survey of a nationwide sample of Australian adult twins (n = 4,901, age range: 19–52 years). Among men, 15.2% reported homosexual behavior (ever), 11.5% said they had been sexually attracted to the same sex, and 6.4% said they were not heterosexual; the corresponding figures for women were 7.9, 10.6, and 3.5%. A continuous measure of childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) was sensitive to slight variations in homosexual attraction and behavior. In particular, among both men and women who identified as heterosexual, there were significant differences between “complete” heterosexuals and those who admitted to only one or a few same-sex behaviors but no homosexual attraction. Among men, CGN scores distinguished between heterosexuals who admitted to same-sex behavior only and those who admitted to some homosexual attraction. The sexual subgroups also differed on a measure of gender atypicality in adulthood. Implications for developmental theories of sexuality are discussed. KEY WORDS: sexual orientation; attraction; childhood gender nonconformity.

INTRODUCTION The link between sex-typicality in childhood play and interests, and sexual orientation in adolescence and later life, is a fascinating aspect of human sexual development. Although noted many times over the years, the strength of the 1 School

of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208-2710. 3 Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia. 4 To whom correspondence should be addressed at School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, 4059, Queensland, Australia; e-mail: m.dunne@ qut.edu.au. 2 Psychology



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association was illustrated most clearly by Bailey and Zucker (1995) in a metaanalysis of data from 41 studies. When retrospective reports of homosexual and heterosexual adults were compared, the average effect size across a range of childhood behaviors was substantial (1.19 standard deviation units). Prospective studies, although fewer in number and limited mainly to clinical samples of males, similarly suggest that sex-atypicality of childhood behavior is an important precursor of homosexual orientation (Green, 1987; Zucker, 1990). This observation is a central element of Bem’s developmental theory of sexual orientation (“Exotic Becomes Erotic,” or EBE), where biologically mediated aspects of personality in childhood (temperament and sex-typical/atypical behavior) are thought to underlie feelings that the self is similar to, or different from, people of the same sex (Bem, 1996). According to Bem, those from whom we feel most different as children are “exotic,” and subsequently become “eroticized” during early puberty. These attractions may be expressed in early sexual behaviors and stable sexual orientation in later life. Enthusiasm for this model must be tempered by at least two serious questions. First, recalled childhood sex-typed behavior may vary more within, rather than between, individuals grouped on the basis of their sexual orientation, and hence the true predictive value of sex-atypical behavior in childhood for adult sexual orientation may be low. In Bailey and Zucker’s meta-analysis, the great majority of retrospective individual studies had recruited people who self-identified as either homosexual or heterosexual (Bailey and Zucker, 1995). Within these broad groups, there was substantial variation in recalled childhood behaviors, and sexual orientation per se accounted for less than 40% of the variance in sex-atypicality. Bailey and Zucker (1995) suggested that the variance in childhood sex-atypicality within groups could reflect the existence of subtypes, and sex-atypicality may be etiologically important for only some of these. To date, relatively few studies have explored childhood sex-typicality among people with different degrees of homosexual or heterosexual attractions, behavior, and orientation. Among 392 male Australian twins who rated themselves as heterosexual, McConaghy et al. (1994) found low but significant correlations between degree of adult homosexual attraction and dislike of rough-and-tumble play, outdoor and contact sports, and a childhood desire to be of the opposite sex. Also in Australia, Phillips and Over (1992) found bisexual men to be intermediate between gay and straight men on ten measures of childhood sex-typed behavior. In contrast, males in the USA interviewed by Bailey (1989; cited in Bailey and Zucker, 1995), female twins in the USA (Bailey et al., 1993), and primarily heterosexual women interviewed in Australia by McConaghy and Silove (1991) did not show a continuous relationship between the degree of homosexual feelings and childhood sex-atypicality. There is clearly a need for more data, especially from women. A second, important question in this type of research is whether the apparent association between childhood behavior and later orientation arises from intentional or unintentional distortion of recall; for example, heterosexuals might


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underestimate the true level of sex-atypicality (Risman and Schwartz, 1988; Ross, 1980). This might arise if there are strong social expectancies for, or against, reporting childhood cross-gender interests and behaviors. On this basis, one might predict a difference in retrospective reports between polar opposites (such as gays and straights). However, what if there are significant differences between the recall of people who identify as heterosexual but who vary only slightly in their degree of homosexual attraction or experience? A social expectancy explanation would be less plausible. In this study, we examine self-reports of sexual orientation, behaviors and attractions, and childhood sex-atypicality, from a nationwide sample of 4,901 Australian adult twins. More than 95% of these people could be placed in one of five groups: a nonheterosexual group (who said they were bisexual or gay/lesbian and who reported both homosexual attractions and behaviors), and four groups of people who said they were heterosexual, but who differed in their degree of homosexual attractions and behaviors. The primary aim of this paper was to examine the sensitivity of a retrospective measure of sex-atypicality before the age of 13 (childhood gender nonconformity, or CGN) to subtle variations in homosexual attraction and experience.

METHODS Subjects Participants were drawn from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Twin Register (ATR). The ATR is a volunteer register that was begun in 1978 and has about 25,000 twin pairs of zygosity types and all ages enrolled and in various stages of active contact. Participants for this sexuality study were recruited from two phases of a large twin-family study of alcohol use and abuse (Heath et al., 1994). The twins were residing in eight states and territories of Australia. There is a disproportionate number of young women and people with higher than average levels of education (Baker et al., 1996). In relation to psychological factors, comparisons with normative data indicate that participants are generally representative of the Australian population in terms of personality, depression, and alcohol consumption (Dunne et al., 1997a). Diversity within this primary cohort in terms of religious affiliation, social attitudes, and age at first sexual intercourse has been documented elsewhere (Dunne et al., 1997b,c; Martin et al., 1986). During 1992, we asked all ATR twins aged between 17 and 50 years who had completed a postal “Health and Lifestyle” survey between 1988 and 1990 (N = 9,112) about their willingness to receive a questionnaire regarding sex. Specifically, they were asked: “We have applied for funding to carry out an anonymous study of sexual behavior and attitudes. Would you be willing to receive a questionnaire with explicit questions on these topics?” All those who said “Yes” were


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mailed the sex questionnaire. When subjects received the sex questionnaire, they were asked to complete a consent form with their name, date of birth, and signature, which they had to return separately to indicate whether or not they had consented to complete the sex questionnaire. Anonymity was assured, and we asked cotwins privately to choose the same 10-digit identification number so that we could match their questionnaires. Approximately two weeks after initial mailing of the sex questionnaire, all twins were sent a reminder letter. Consent forms were logged as they were returned and subsequently all twins who had not returned a consent form were followed up once by telephone. Because we received many queries from twins asking whether they should complete the questionnaire if their cotwin had decided not to participate, we sent a further letter urging such “singles” to cooperate. Twenty-eight percent explicitly refused to participate, and 54% (4,901) completed questionnaires. The remainder (18%) initially agreed to participate but did not respond when contacted (following one letter or one phone call). Our response rate was not substantially lower than that of other large-scale mail sex surveys, which have typically achieved responses from between 55 and 65% (Biggar and Melbye, 1992; Sundet et al., 1992). In recent analyses, we have compared the individuals who returned the sex survey consent form with those who did not, on a range of psychological and behavioral characteristics derived from data collected in other thematically unrelated research interviews carried out with these twins between 1988 and 1995 (Dunne et al., 1997a, 1998). There was some indication of a modest participation bias; people who returned consent forms and those who initially agreed to participate but could not subsequently be contacted had generally more liberal sexual attitudes, more novelty-seeking and less harm-avoidant personalities, had an earlier age of first sexual intercourse and a greater likelihood of childhood sexual abuse than people who explicitly refused to participate in the sex survey. However, the effect sizes were small, suggesting that the behavioral data in the mailed sex survey probably do not seriously misrepresent sexual activity and attitudes. Measures Childhood Gender Nonconformity The male and female measures of CGN included items retrospectively assessing childhood sex-typed behavior (i.e., participation in sex-stereotypic games and activities) and gender identity (i.e., internal feelings of maleness or femaleness). Childhood was defined as being before the age of 12. Our CGN measures were adapted from several published scales, by taking relevant items (e.g., those related to childhood rather than to adulthood) and in some cases, rewriting the items so that they were appropriate for Australian participants (e.g., “cricket” rather than “baseball”). For males, items were taken


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from the Gender Identity Scale for Males (Freund et al., 1977), the Childhood Play Activities Checklist (Grellert et al., 1982), the Recalled Childhood Gender Behaviors Questionnaire (Mitchell and Zucker, 1992), and the Physical Aggressiveness Scale (Blanchard et al., 1983). For females, items were taken from the Childhood Play Activities Checklist, the Recalled Childhood Gender Behaviors Questionnaire, and the Masculine Gender Identity Scale (Blanchard and Freund, 1983). All of these scales have been shown to differ reliably between homosexual and same-sex heterosexual individuals, as indeed have all scales of similar content (Bailey and Zucker, 1995). Both the male and female questionnaires contained 24 items, but the items differed between the two versions, and therefore male and female scores are not comparable. Items varied in their response format, and included both dichotomously rated items and rating scales. Scree tests of the principal components suggested that for each sex, one general factor primarily accounted for the item intercorrelations. Items were standardized within sexes and summed to yield a total CGN score. Coefficient alpha was 0.79 for both male and female CGN. Continuous Gender Identity (CGI) This scale consisted of seven items taken from Finn (1987). The items assessed participants’ self-concepts as masculine or feminine (e.g., “In many ways I feel more similar to women/men than to men/women.”) using 7-point rating scales. A subscale including these items (as well as some other items, primarily concerning childhood gender nonconformity) distinguished homosexual from same-sex heterosexual individuals (Finn, 1987). Separate scree tests for each sex were both consistent with a single factor underlying CGI item intercorrelations. Items were summed to yield total scores, and coefficient alpha was 0.52 for men and 0.57 for women. Self-Identification of Sexual Orientation This was determined with the question “Do you consider yourself to be heterosexual (straight), bisexual, or homosexual (lesbian/gay).” Respondents were asked to choose one option. We provided a definition, which stated (for females) “Heterosexual means that sexually, you desire contact only with men; bisexual means that you desire contact with both men and women; homosexual means that you desire contact only with women.” Sexual Attraction We used a Kinsey-type rating for the question “Which of the following best describes your sexual feelings at present?” There were seven response options,


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ranging from (for women) “I am attracted to men only, never to women” (scored 0), “I am almost always attracted to men, but on rare occasions I am attracted to women” (scored 1), through to “I am attracted to women only, never to men” (scored 6). Following this, we asked “Have you ever been sexually attracted to a female?” “Have you ever been sexually attracted to a male?”

Yes Yes

No No

In this paper, we have considered a person as positive for same-sex attraction if he/she scored 1 or more for the Kinsey-type question about current attractions, and/or ever answered “Yes” to the single question about same-sex attractions.

Sexual Behavior Two questions were used to estimate numbers of same- and opposite-sex partners. For women, we asked “During your entire life, approximately how many men have you had sexual contact with?” Response options included none, 1 only, 2, 3–5, 6–10, 11–20, 21–50, over 50. This was followed by a question about female partners. Sexual contact was defined as “any activity which made you sexually excited and in which your genitals (for women, vagina) made contact with any part of the other person.” Same-sex experience (ever) was scored positive if the person chose any except the first response option.

Openness and Accuracy of the Respondents’ Self-Reports This survey raised many issues that may be particularly sensitive to response bias (Wiederman, 1993). It is conceivable, for instance, that people who identify as heterosexual but who have some same-sex feelings and behaviors may find it difficult to be completely open and accurate when answering questions about their sex lives, even within an anonymous questionnaire. This would introduce a serious bias in the present study if such people were less self-disclosing than “complete” heterosexuals or people who identified as gay or bisexual. We included two questions that may indicate willingness to self-disclose: 1. “To what extent do you feel you were able to be completely open in answering this questionnaire?” 2. “How accurately do you believe your answers to the above questions reflect your true feelings and behavior?” For each question, the response options were “completely,” “moderately,” “not very,” and “not at all.”


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RESULTS Demographic Characteristics There were 1,824 males (mean age: 30.5 years, range: 19–52 years) and 3,077 females (mean age: 31.1 years, range: 19–52 years). Among the males, 30% were 41% were married, 22% lived in de facto relationships, 30% were single, and 8% were divorced, separated, or widowed. Among women, 40% were married, 22% in de facto relationships, 27% were single, and 10% divorced, separated, or widowed. In comparison to average Australian adults, these volunteers were quite highly educated, with 31% of males and 24% of females having completed a university degree. Eighty-three percent of men and 69% of women were employed in a paid job. We have compared the volunteers for this sex survey with twins in the longitudinal Australian research registry who refused to participate in this particular study: there were no major differences in demographic background, although volunteers were slightly more likely to be female, married, employed, and highly educated (Dunne et al., 1997a). Sexual Diversity Within the Sample Figure 1 shows the percentages of participants who considered themselves to be nonheterosexual, those who admitted to ever having been sexually attracted to someone of the same sex, and those who reported any sexual contact (which

Fig. 1. Same-sex attractions, behaviors, and orientation.


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Dunne, Bailey, Kirk, and Martin Table I. Numbers of Opposite-Sex and Same-Sex Partners (Lifetime Estimates)

Males Opp-Sex (%) Same-Sex (%) Females Opp-Sex (%) Same-Sex (%)

0

1

2

3–5

6–10

11–20

21–50

50+

5.1 84.7

12.6 6.9

8.4 2.0

21.6 2.2

18.2 1.1

17.5 1.0

12.6 0.9

3.9 1.3

3.7 92.2

20.8 4.3

12.8 1.1

28.6 1.4

19.1 0.6

10.0 0.3

3.9 0.1

1.1 0.0

included sexual excitement and genital contact). It is clear that although the prevalence of homosexual attraction was similar among men and women, men were approximately twice as likely to have had any same-sex contact, and to consider themselves to be bisexual or gay. Of the 112 men who said that they were not heterosexual, 57 (50.9%) were bisexual whereas 55 (49.1%) were gay. Among 103 women who considered themselves nonheterosexual, 82 (79.6%) were bisexual whereas 21 (20.4%) were lesbian. The great majority of both men (97.2%) and women (96.3%) said that they had been sexually attracted to someone of the opposite sex at some time in their lives; this included 96.5% of bisexual men, 44.4% of gay men, 98.8% of bisexual women, and 71.4% of lesbians. Respondents estimated the number of men and women with whom they had had sex during their lifetime. The figures in Table I show a predictable pattern, with men reporting a higher number of partners than women did. Interestingly, men and women had the same modal category for heterosexual partners (“3–5”), with the excess for men clearly evident in the “11–20” and “21–50” categories. Among both men and women who experienced any sexual behavior with the same sex, the modal number of partners was 1; this included 45.1% (121/268) of men and 54.1% (125/231) of women who reported same-sex contact.

Classification of Sexual Subgroups There was little evidence for true bipolarity in sexual orientation. For example, the majority of men (64.3%) and women (67.7%) who admitted to at least some sexual behavior with the same sex (defined by us to include sexual excitement as well as genital contact) identified as heterosexual. Similarly, large proportions of this sample of men (46.3%) and women (69.6%) who admitted to same-sex attraction (ever) also preferred to see themselves as heterosexual. We grouped people on the basis of three variables: self-identification as heterosexual/nonheterosexual, the presence or absence of same-sex attractions, and the presence or absence of same-sex partners. This produced eight groups, as shown in Table II. Three of these groups (C, E, and G) contained few people (less than 1% of the sample).


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Table II. Sexual Subgroups Characteristics Group A B C D E F G H

Male

Female

Same-Sex attraction?

Non-Hetero identity?

Same-Sex behavior?

n

%

n

%

Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No

Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No

95 57 13 84 1 108 0 1363

5.5 3.3 0.8 4.9 0.1 6.3 0.0 79.2

74 92 25 293 0 63 2 2352

2.6 3.2 0.9 10.1 0.0 2.2 0.1 81.1

Approximately four in every five men and women appeared to be “completely” heterosexual; they self-identified as such and reported no same-sex attractions or behaviors. There was no sex difference in the prevalence of “complete” heterosexuality ( p = 0.130). However, self-identification as nonheterosexual was twice as common among men than it was among women (χ 2 = 26.2, p < 0.0001). Women who said that they had been sexually attracted to the same sex, but who identified as heterosexual and did not report same-sex behavior, were twice as common as men in this category (10.1% vs. 4.9%; χ 2 = 38.6, p < 0.0001). In contrast, same-sex behavior in the absence of same-sex attraction or nonheterosexual identification was significantly more common among men than women (6.3% vs. 2.2%; χ 2 = 49.9; p < 0.0001). Childhood Gender Nonconformity (CGN) The composition of our CGN measure is described in detail in the Methods section. Scores for men ranged from 0 to 37.5, with a mean of 13.3 (SD = 6.4); high scores indicate greater sex-atypicality in childhood. Among women, CGN scores ranged from 0.5 to 38.5, with a mean of 13.4 (SD = 6.6). Figure 2 summarizes data from men and women in each of five sexual subgroups (excluding groups C, E, and G because of small numbers). There was a clear linear trend for greater childhood gender nonconformity as people moved away from “complete” heterosexuality. Two-way analysis of variance included sexual subgroup, age-category, and their interaction, with analyses conducted separately for men and women. Among men, the main effect of sexual subgroup was significant (F(4,1661) = 65.98, p < 0.0001), and there was an interesting pattern in the results of Duncan’s multiple range tests, with post hoc contrasts revealing significant differences between three of the four subgroups of men who identified as heterosexual and the one group who identified as bisexual/homosexual. The CGN measure appears to be sensitive to fairly subtle variations, which is evident in the significant difference between “complete”


558

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Fig. 2. Childhood gender nonconformity among five sexual subgroups.

heterosexual men and men who had some same-sex behavior but who otherwise identified as heterosexual and reported no same-sex attraction. In turn, this latter group had significantly lower CGN scores than did men who reported some same-sex attraction (with or without same-sex behaviour). Finally, all groups were significantly different from the men who identified as bisexual or homosexual. A somewhat similar pattern occurred among women. The main effect of sexual subgroup was significant (F(4,2811) = 47.12; p < 0.0001). Post hoc comparisons revealed that “complete” heterosexual women differed from women who reported some same-sex behavior but no homosexual attraction or orientation. In contrast to men, however, CGN scores did not differentiate between selfidentifying heterosexual women with same-sex behavior who did, or did not, report any same-sex attraction. All four nominally heterosexual groups had significantly lower CGN scores than the bisexual/lesbian women had. These findings should be seen in the context of reported numbers of partners. The great majority of Group “F” men (94/108, or 87%) and Group “F” women (46/63, or 73%) reported having had sex with only one or two people of the same sex in their lifetime. It seems, therefore, that CGN is able to differentiate between


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“complete” heterosexuals and heterosexuals who (probably) engaged in either single or sporadic homosexual contact. Another interesting finding is that, among men and women who said they were heterosexual but who admitted to some samesex attraction, CGN scores did not differentiate between those who had, or had not, experienced homosexual behavior. In these analyses of variance, subjects were grouped in four age bands (19– 24 years, 25–34 years, 35–44 years and 45–52 years). Among men, there was a significant main effect of age on CGN scores (F(3,1673) = 4.57; p = 0.0034). Post hoc contrasts revealed that the lowest CGN scores were reported by the youngestage group (mean = 12.59), and these were significantly lower than CGN scores reported by men aged 35–44 years (mean = 14.1). Among women, the main effect of age was also significant (F(3,2792) = 8.81; p < 0.0001), although a different age-cohort effect emerged: it was the women from the youngest-age group who reported the most sex-atypicality in childhood (mean = 13.86), and this differed significantly from the those in the oldest-age group (mean = 12.34). Importantly, there was no significant interaction between age and sexual subgroup for either men ( p = 0.685) or women ( p = 0.355), indicating that the magnitude of the association between childhood sex-atypicality and sexual subgroup was fairly constant across all ages.

Continuous Gender Identity (CGI) The participants also rated how masculine or feminine they felt at the time of the study. Data for each of the five main sexual subgroups are shown in Table III. For both men and women, there were significant main effects of subgroup, reflecting greater femininity among males, or masculinity among females, with increasing distance from “complete” heterosexuality (males: F(4,1661) = 44.71, p < 0.0001; females: F(4,2778) = 74.45, p < 0.0001). Duncan’s post hoc comparison means revealed that “complete” heterosexuals (Group H) differed from all other subgroups, Table III. Continuous Gender Identity Male Groupa A B D F H a Group

Female

n

Mean

SD

Contrastb

n

Mean

SD

Contrastb

93 55 82 106 1326

11.3 10.4 10.7 9.5 8.7

3.4 3.0 3.5 2.5 2.0

b,f,h a,f,h a,f,h a,b,d a,b,d,f

73 89 283 63 2290

11.3 9.1 9.6 9.1 8.1

3.2 2.3 2.8 2.4 1.8

b,d,f,h a,h a,h a,h a,b,d,f

A: Bisexual/homosexual attractions, identity and behavior; B: Hetero identity, with some same-sex attractions and same-sex behavior; D: Hetero identity, some same-sex attraction, but no same-sex behavior; F: Hetero identity, no same-sex attraction, but some same-sex behavior; H: Hetero identity, no same-sex attraction or behavior. b Duncan’s multiple range post-hoc comparison significant at p < 0.05.


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and that people who identified as bisexuals/homosexuals differed from each group. In general, the intermediate heterosexual groups did not differ significantly from each other on this measure. The main effects of age on CGI scores were significant both for men (F(3,1642) = 4.44; p = 0.0041) and women (F(3,2778) = 10.83; p < 0.0001). Post hoc contrast revealed a fairly linear age-cohort effect, with the oldest men and women reporting the least gender nonconformity as adults. The interaction between age and sexual subgroup in CGI scores was not significant for men ( p = 0.08) and was modest for women (F(12,2778) = 1.92; p = 0.021). Openness and Accuracy of Self-Reports The majority of respondents believed that they had been “completely open” in answering the questionnaire (see Table IV). In the case of men in the five different sexual subgroups, the percentage of men who said that they were completely open ranged from 83.5% of “complete” heterosexuals (Group H) to 87.7% of those who said that they were heterosexual but who reported some same-sex attraction and behavior. There was slightly more variance in this measure among the female subgroups, with the percentages of those who were completely open ranging from 81% in Group D to 90% in Group B. Fewer people believed that their answers provided a “completely accurate” reflection of their true feelings and behaviors (see Table IV). Among males, there was little variance between sexual subgroups (ranging from 57% in Group C to 65% in Group B). The groups of women differed somewhat, from 51% of group F to 64% of Group B. We assume that self-reports of heterosexuality are least sensitive to reporting biases. Using the “complete” heterosexual group (Group H) as a reference point in chi-square tests, we found that the percentages of respondents in each of the smaller subgroups who said that they were completely open, or that their answers Table IV. Percentages Who Reported That They Had Been “Completely Open” and That Answers Were a “Completely Accurate” Reflection of True Feelings, by Sexual Subgroup Males

Females

Groupa

Open

Accurate

Open

Accurate

A B D F H

87.4 87.7 84.2 87.0 83.5

64.2 64.9 57.3 64.5 61.2

87.8 90.1 81.0 87.1 82.6

55.4 64.4 54.4 50.8 59.4

a Group

A: Bisexual/homosexual attractions, identity and behavior; B: Hetero identity, with some same-sex attractions and same-sex behavior; D: Hetero identity, some samesex attraction, but no same-sex behavior; F: Hetero identity, no same-sex attraction, but some same-sex behavior; H: Hetero identity, no same-sex attraction or behavior.


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provided a completely accurate reflection of their true experiences, did not differ significantly from Group H on either measure for both males and females. DISCUSSION Consistent with previous research, we found substantial differences between self-identifying homosexuals/bisexuals and heterosexuals in their recall of sexatypical play and interests during childhood. This basic demarcation of two groups yielded the single largest difference in means (see Fig. 2). This is a robust finding, which seems entirely predictable (Bailey and Zucker, 1995; Bell et al., 1981). In addition, though, we have found the measure of CGN to be very sensitive to subtle variations in distance away from “complete” heterosexuality. Variation within groups of people who identify as heterosexual has previously been observed among males (McConaghy and Silove, 1991; McConaghy et al., 1994), but not among females. Among both men and women, most notable was the observation that CGN scores differed significantly between “complete” heterosexuals and self-identifying heterosexuals who admitted no same-sex attractions but some homosexual behavior. Further, this effect was not limited to recollections of childhood. Self-rated adult feelings of masculinity and femininity also were sensitive to subtle variation in homosexual attractions and behaviors among people who identified as heterosexual. Are these findings artefactual? Differences between homosexuals/bisexuals and heterosexuals in social norms for or against recall of gender atypicality could influence their inclination to report feelings truthfully. However, this seems an unlikely explanation for the relatively linear increase in CGN across the five sexual subgroups observed here: what social script could plausibly dictate, for example, greater willingness to report childhood feminine interest, friendships, and avoidance of rough-and-tumble play among men who have one or a few same-sex contacts ever, but who otherwise don’t classify themselves as bisexual or homosexual? Also, consider that we found very similar associations between CGN and sexuality in both men and women. Would we expect social norms to exert equivalent influence on recall of CGN in both sexes, when most social prescriptions regarding gender roles and stereotypes have quite different effects on men and women? It remains possible that the difference in CGN between self-identifying heterosexual and homosexual/bisexual groups is real, but that the trend within the heterosexual group is artefactual, and arises simply because of greater openness among a minority of heterosexuals to talk about their true feelings. We examined this indirectly by gauging the extent to which respondents felt totally open and whether, on reflection, their answers provided an accurate picture. Assuming that people who identify as completely heterosexual have the least reason to dissimulate, we compared them to all other groups. On neither measure was there a


562

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significant difference between “complete” heterosexuals and heterosexuals who admitted to some same-sex feelings or behavior. Implications for Developmental Theory It is clear from this and other works (McConaghy et al., 1994) that the majority of people who admit to ever having homosexual attractions or behavior also consider themselves to be heterosexual. This group is more than twice as large as the number of people who self-identify as bisexual or homosexual. At one level, it may be possible to dismiss the (perhaps) transient homosexual attraction and occasional behavioral experimentation by heterosexuals as being uninformative as far as essential impulses are concerned; variation within heterosexual groups could arise mainly because of social and interpersonal influences experienced by some individuals but not others. However, the apparent sensitivity of our measures of sex-atypicality to subtle variations in sexual experience suggests otherwise. Higher than average sex-atypicality among some heterosexuals could indicate that these people are more likely than most to reach one of the lower thresholds of a homosexual continuum. In terms of Bem’s EBE theory, slight sex-atypicality might engender slight homoeroticism, and this could explain why some heterosexual people respond to opportunities for homosexual experimentation, whereas most do not (Bem, 1996). Unfortunately, variation within heterosexual groups has not been examined in most etiologic studies of homosexuality, such as family studies of genetic linkage and sibling sex ratios, which rely heavily on self-selected samples of overtly homosexual people (Bailey and Pillard, 1991; Bailey et al., 1993; Blanchard and Bogaert, 1996; Hamer et al., 1993). In a separate analysis of these twin data, we found substantial familial aggregation of homosexual orientation (defined in terms of Kinsey-type measures of sexual attractions and fantasy), but our confidence intervals for heritability estimates were so wide that we could not reject the null hypothesis of no genetic influence (Bailey et al., 2000). Importantly, though, childhood gender nonconformity was significantly heritable for both men and women, which indicates that this precursor of homoeroticism may have a genetic basis (Bem, 1996). Adequate empirical tests of etiologic theory must include data on multiple thresholds along a continuum of homosexuality. As Pattatucci (1998) recently said “Definitions set parameters and thus constrain possibilities” (p. 370). Estimates of the variance “explained” by genetic, hormonal, and other biological factors will always differ depending upon how narrowly the trait is defined. We suggest that future developmental studies should include measurement of sex-atypicality as part of multidimensional assessments of attractions, fantasies, and overt orientation. One final point which now seems justifiable to make is that apparently sporadic


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homosexual behaviors should not be dismissed as uninformative, but rather should be seen as a potential signal of true psychosexual variation. Limitations Despite the large size of this nationwide sample, and the relatively broad assessment of sexuality, this study has some significant limitations. It is based on a postal survey of twins in a longitudinal research cohort, and thus can’t be seen as a true reflection of the population; indeed, there were some differences in sexual behaviors between the twins who volunteered and those who refused (Dunne et al., 1997c, 1998). Although we have no reason to believe that the distribution of sexual experiences of twins is unusual (McConaghy et al., 1994), we have no normative data on Australians against which to compare. The use of a twin sample would probably minimize the total variance in the data if, as appears likely, there are significant correlations between twins in many aspects of sexuality (Bailey et al., 1993, 2000; Dunne et al., 1997b). One effect would be to minimize the denominator in the calculation of F statistics. It is uncertain, therefore, whether the statistically significant association between recalled childhood sex-atypicality and degree of homosexual orientation found here would emerge to the same degree in nontwin samples. Another possible complication is that the present sample is very large, and smaller studies might not have sufficient power to detect subtle effects. These patterns should be examined in future surveys with various groups, including random probability samples from otherwise unselected populations. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Funded by a grant to JMB from the US National Institute of Mental Health (USA) and a Commonwealth AIDS Research Grant (Australia) to NGM and MPD. The authors thank Ann Eldridge, John Pearson, Olivia Zheng and Dr Gu Zhu for assistance, and the twins for their cooperation. REFERENCES Bailey, J. M., Dunne, M. P., and Martin, N. G. (2000). Genetic and environmental influences on sexual orientation and its correlates in an Australian twin sample. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 78: 524–536. Bailey, J. M., and Pillard, R. C. (1991). A genetic study of male sexual orientation. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 48: 1089–1096. Bailey, J. M., Pillard, R. C., Neale, M. C., and Agyei, Y. (1993). Heritable factors influence sexual orientation in women. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 50: 217–223. Bailey, J. M., and Zucker, K. J. (1995). Childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation: A conceptual analysis and quantitative review. Dev. Psychol. 31: 43–55.


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Baker, L. A., Treloar, S. A., Reynolds, C., Heath, A. C., and Martin, N. G. (1996). Genetics of educational attainment in Australian twins: Sex differences and secular changes. Behav. Genet. 26: 89–102. Bell, A. P., Weinberg, M. S., and Hammersmith, S. K. (1981). Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Bem, D. (1996). Exotic becomes Erotic: A developmental theory of sexual orientation. Psych. Bull. 103: 320–355. Biggar, R. J., and Melbye, M. (1992). Responses to anonymous questionnaires concerning sexual behavior: A method to examine potential biases. Am. J. Public Health 82: 1506–1512. Blanchard, R., and Bogaert, A. F. (1996). Homosexuality in men and number of older brothers. Am. J. Psychiat. 153: 27–31. Blanchard, R., and Freund, K. (1983). Measuring masculine gender identity in females. J. Cons. Clin. Psychol. 51: 205–214. Blanchard, R., McConkey, J. G., Roper, V., and Steiner, B. W. (1983). Measuring physical aggressiveness in heterosexual, homosexual, and transsexual males. Arch. Sex. Behav. 12: 511–524. Dunne, M. P., Martin, N. G., Bailey, J. M., Heath, A. C., Bucholz, K. K., Madden, P. A. F., and Statham, D. J. (1997a). Participation bias in a sexuality survey: Psychological and behavioral characteristics of responders and nonresponders. Int. J. Epidemiol. 26(4): 844–854. Dunne, M. P., Martin, N. G., Statham, D. J., Slutske, W. S., Dinwiddie, S.H., Madden, P. A. F., Bucholz, K. K., and Heath, A. C. (1997b). Genetic and environmental contributions to variance in age at first sexual intercourse. Psychol. Sci. 8: 211–216. Dunne, M. P., Martin, N. G., Pangan, T., and Heath, A. C. (1997c). Personality and change in the frequency of religious observance. Pers. Indiv. Diff. 23: 527–530. Dunne, M. P., Bailey, J. M., Martin, N. G., and Heath, A. C. (1998). Self-disclosure of sensitive personal experiences among people who refused to volunteer for a sex survey. Paper presented at: International Academy of Sex Research Conference, Sirmione, Italy (June, 1998). Finn, S. E. (1987). The structure of masculinity and femininity self ratings. Unpublished manuscript. Freund, K., Langevin, R., Satterborg, J., and Steiner, B. (1977). Extension of the gender identity scale for males. Arch. Sex. Behav. 6: 507–519. Green, R. (1987). The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’ and the development of homosexuality, Yale University Press, New Haven. Grellert, E. A., Newconb, M. D., and Bentler, P. M. (1982). Childhood play activities of male and female homosexuals and heterosexuals. Arch. Sex. Behav. 11: 451–478. Hamer, D. H., Hu, S., Magnuson, V. L., Hu, N., and Pattatucci, A. M. (1993). A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation. Science 261: 321–327. Heath, A. C., Bucholz, K. K., Slutske, W. S., Madden, P. A. F., Dinwiddie, S. H., Dunne, M. P., Statham, D. J., Whitfield, J. B., Martin, N. G., and Eaves, L. J. (1994). The assessment of alcoholism in surveys of the general community: What are we measuring? Some insights from the Australian twin panel interview survey. Int. Rev. Psychiat. 6: 295–307. Martin, N. G., Eaves, L. J., Heath, A. C., Jardine, R., Feingold, L. M., and Eysenck, H. J. (1986). Transmission of social attitudes. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 83: 4364–4368. McConaghy, N. (1987). Heterosexuality/Homosexuality: Dichotomy or continuum? Arch. Sex. Behav. 16: 411–424. McConaghy, N., Buhrich, N., and Silove, D. (1994). Opposite sex-linked behaviors and homosexual feelings in the predominantly heterosexual male majority. Arch. Sex. Behav. 34: 565–577. McConaghy, N., and Silove, D. (1991). Opposite sex behaviours correlate with degree of homosexual feelings in the predominantly heterosexual. Aust. N. Z. J. Psychiat. 25: 77–83. Mitchell, J., and Zucker, K. J. (1992). The Recalled Childhood Gender Behaviors Questionnaire: Psychometric properties. Paper presented at: International Academy of Sex Research Conference, Barrie, Ontario. Pattatucci, A. M. (1998). Molecular investigations into complex behavior: Lessons from sexual orientation studies. Hum. Biol. 70: 367–386. Phillips, G., and Over, R. (1992). Adult sexual orientation in relation to memories of childhood genderconforming and gender nonconforming behaviors. Arch. Sex. Behav. 21: 543–558. Risman, B., and Schwartz, P. (1988). Sociological research on male and female homosexuality. Ann. Rev. Sociol. 14: 125–147. Ross, M. W. (1980). Retrospective distortion in homosexual research. Arch. Sex. Behav. 9: 523–531.


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Sundet, J. M., Magnus, P., Kvalem, I. L., Samuelson, S. O., and Bakketeig, L. S. (1992). Secular trends and sociodemographic regularities in coital debut age in Norway. Arch. Sex. Behav. 21: 241–252. Wiederman, M. W. (1993). Demographic and sexual characteristics of nonresponders to sexual experience items in a national survey. J. Sex. Res. 30: 27–35. Zucker, K. J. (1990). Gender identity disorders in children: clinical descriptions and natural history. In Blanchard, R., and Steiner, B. W. (Eds.), Clinical Management of Gender Identity Disorders in Children and Adults, American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC, pp. 1–23.


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Psychoanalysis and Sexual Fantasies Richard C. Friedman, M.D.,1,3 and Jennifer I. Downey, M.D.2

Psychoanalysis began as a depth psychology, heavily based on the sexual experiences and memories of patients. A long-term treatment, utilizing a free association method, psychoanalysis has provided a window onto the meanings and functions of fantasy, including sexual fantasy. Although psychoanalysis has produced some scientific research, the field has tended to rely on observational data collected from individuals studied in depth. Sex research on the other hand, carried out by investigators from different disciplines is based on empirical investigation. Each field has made contributions fundamentally important to the other. In this article, we review psychoanalytic ideas about human sexuality and distinguish those that have been invalidated by systematic research from those that remain useful. Perhaps, the single most important revision of psychoanalytic theory during the past century was concerned with the psychological development of girls and women. We separately discuss the development of the sexes, and stress the need for bridge building between psychoanalysis and sex research. KEY WORDS: psychoanalysis; fantasy; sexual fantasy; ambivalence.

INTRODUCTION Psychoanalysis is a depth psychology that originated from the study of sexually tinged fantasy. A problem present in the field from its inception, however, has been the lack of a definition of erotic fantasy or even a general sense of agreement about its specific attributes. One reason for this may be that Freud blurred the distinction between the sexual and that which nonpsychoanalytically oriented laypersons might consider nonsexual. He believed that stimulation of various zones 1 Department of Psychiatry, and Payne Whitney Clinic, Cornell University Medical College, New York,

New York. 2 New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New

York, New York. whom correspondence should be addressed at 225 Central Park West, #103, New York, New York 10024.

3 To



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of the body, oral, anal, and phallic, led to pleasureful sensations, which he considered sexual (Freud, 1940). The psychoanalytic literature, therefore, contains countless articles, nominally about sexuality, discussing bodily zones invested with the so-called “libidinal” energy. The libido theory, placed sexual “energy” at the center of all human motivation and all psychopathology, is outdated and only of historical interest. The topic of sexual fantasy is more complex in women than men, and we reserve consideration of its meaning(s) in women until later in this article. In men, by sexual fantasy we mean subjectively experienced narratives that are associated with psychophysiological changes that occur during sexual excitement; and which always include a consciously experienced emotion that is explicitly sexual or lustful. These fantasies are experienced during masturbation, and are mobilized by pornography and many other stimuli of daily life (Freund et al., 1974; Masters and Johnson, 1966; Paredes and Baum, 1997; Stoller, 1979). THE FUNCTION OF FANTASIES Freud suggested that daydreams were a continuation of childhood play and were the product of wishes that compensated for life’s frustrations. Person has pointed out that fantasies are a type of imaginative thought that serve many different functions (Person, 1995). As Freud observed, they may represent wishes evoked in response to frustration in order to convert negative feelings into pleasurable ones. They may soothe, enhance security, and bolster self-esteem, or repair a sense of having been abandoned or rejected. Fantasies may (temporarily) repair more profound damage to the sense of self that occurs as a result of severe trauma. They also frequently serve role rehearsal functions, as occurs, for example, in little girls who consider dolls to be their “babies” and who play “house” as preparation for becoming adult mothers. Organized as images, metaphors, and dramatic action, fantasies in the form of artistic productions and mythology have been part of the human heritage probably for the entire life of our species. Freud provided a new framework for understanding these universal forms of human expression by noting that they could be critically analyzed in a similar fashion as all other products of the mind. THE MEANINGS OF FANTASY: CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS The story line of a fantasy, meaningful in itself, also symbolically expresses additional hidden meanings. Underneath one narrative is another, and under that yet another, arranged in layers as is the mind itself. A fundamental discovery of Freud’s, and one that remains valid today (unlike many of his ideas about human sexuality), is that some aspects of mental functioning are not subject to conscious


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recall. Even when unconscious, they may influence motivation. Connections between conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories occur in the form of “associations.” Just as neural networks exist in the brain, so do psychic networks in the mind, although the precise correspondences between the two have not yet been clarified (Olds, 1994). Freud termed his unique method of exploring the pathways of these connections as “psychoanalysis.” His initial explorations in his self-analysis, carried out at the end of the nineteenth century, led to the awareness that the closer one comes to mental processes that are out of awareness, the more the rules governing mental organization appear to change. Although the thinking processes of ordinary daily life are more or less “logical,” unconscious mentation seems to be organized more like dreams. In dreams, many ideas, memories, and feelings may be represented by a single image. The narrative line of a dream consists of strings of such symbols and emotions that may or may not be ordinarily connected with the images as usually experienced during waking life, all arranged without regard to ordinary time/space rules of the physical universe. In dreams everyone can be anyone—man, woman, or child, or even nonhuman—and all is possible. Freud termed the organization of the unconscious part of the mind the “primary process” and contrasted it with the “secondary process”—the system of organization of ordinary, everyday thinking (Freud, 1940). A perspective about fantasy, unique to psychoanalytic psychology, is that beneath the immediately coherent narrative line of waking fantasy are disguised stories that carry hidden meanings. These latent narratives consist of memories of real and imagined events linked in the imagination of the present. Since single symbols can represent multiple meanings, the amount of information carried by sequences of symbols is vast. Another core psychoanalytic idea is that one reason why some story lines are unconscious is because they contain wishes that are unacceptable to the conscience. The mind has the capacity to erase from its awareness certain unpleasant ideas, but not the power to completely eliminate their motivational force. SEXUAL FANTASIES Sexual fantasies are stories told to ourselves that are embedded in sexual feelings. These depend in both sexes on adequate enough blood levels of androgen (Money and Ehrhardt, 1972). Pharmacological blockade of the effects of androgen eliminates sexual feelings and thus the motivation to participate in sexual activity. The reason this is important from a psychoanalytic perspective is that psychoanalysts specialize in illuminating unconscious motivation. A psychoanalyst would immediately ask whether elimination of sexual feelings from the conscious mind actually meant that they were totally absent; could they be unconscious? Of course, there is no definitive way of proving that they are not. Total loss of sexual interest, however, and of erotic activity without positive evidence that sexual motivation is present, suggests otherwise (Bradford, 1995). Thus, when sexual


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fantasy is eliminated by antiandrogens, it is best conceptualized as absent from the mind. Since personality functioning is preserved when this occurs, it is an empirical demonstration that Freud’s ideas about the central importance of the role of sexuality in total personality functioning were incorrect.

MALE SEXUAL FANTASY In physiologically normal adults, the most important influence on the contents of sexual fantasy is probably gender. Male sexual fantasies are best understood as part of the psychology of men; female sexual fantasies in the context of the psychology of women.

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX Psychoanalytic ideas about the development of sexual fantasy have been greatly influenced by Freud’s speculations about the Oedipus complex. In keeping with scientific progress, these have required extensive revision since his death. Here we consider his thoughts about males, of which only some have withstood the test of time. Freud, a physician and neurologist, was fascinated with the Oedipal myth long before he ever made systematic observations about human psychology (Sulloway, 1979). His ideas about the role of the Oedipus complex were formulated in the late 1890s and remained unchanged throughout his life. According to Freud, the sexual development of children is biologically determined to occur in two waves of intensity; or, in Freud’s terms, “diphasically.” As he put it: . . . It is further found that these phenomena which emerge in early childhood form part of a regular process of development, that they undergo a steady increase and reach a climax toward the end of the fifth year after which there follows a lull. During this lull, progress is at a standstill and much is unlearned and undone. After the end of this period of latency as it is called, sexual life is resumed with puberty, or, as we might say, it has a second efflorescence. Here we come upon the fact that the onset of sexual life is diphasic; that it occurs in two waves, this is unknown except in man. . . . (Freud, 1905)

Freud believed that human beings are biologically determined to be erotically attracted to their opposite-sexed parents. He considered this incestuous wish to be a part of the biological heritage of all people and to increase in intensity during early childhood, reaching a peak between ages 4 and 5. As a result of his incestuous desire, the boy finds himself in a competitive relationship with his father. As part of a “complex” of linked feelings, associated with the erotic desire for his mother, is rage at his father. The child fears retaliation from his father for his incestuous and parricidal wishes. Freud termed the boy’s fear “castration anxiety,” although he actually meant fear of penectomy. Freud viewed castration fear as the third


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component of the Oedipus complex (after desire for the mother and competition with the father). The child’s next developmental stage was characterized by two central psychological processes—identification with the father and repression of the Oedipus complex. These processes were associated with the formation of the “superego,” a name given by Freud for what is generally termed as the conscience. Repression of the Oedipus complex and identification by the son with his father leads to the capacity to experience guilt, to regulate impulses, and to develop normal morality. Freud also proposed that as a result of the repression of the Oedipus complex, children went through a period of “latency,” which gets terminated by the hormonal surge of puberty. We have criticized Freud’s ideas about the Oedipus complex elsewhere and refer the interested reader to Friedman and Downey (1995) for a more extensive discussion of this issue. The major aspects of the theory that have become obsolete are as follows: 1. Freud’s ideas about the timing of developmental processes affecting or influencing psychosexuality were found to be invalid. Freud reviewed the sparse database available to him for possible effects of prenatal hormones on neuroembryology and behavior, and rejected the likelihood that they had an important effect. This has proved to be erroneous. Thus, his exclusive emphasis on postnatal biopsychological events was misguided (Gorski, 1991; Money, 1998; Money and Ehrhardt, 1972). 2. Also invalid was his belief about the chronology of sexual desire, e.g., his discussion of the “biphasic” nature of childhood sexuality. The concept of a universal norm consisting of an intense surge of sexual arousal at age 4–5 followed by latency has little empirical support. There is actually substantial variability in the way sexuality is experienced and expressed, depending on constitutional as well as sociocultural influences. Early genital exploration, including masturbation, commonly occurs prior to age 4–5 (Galenson and Roiphe, 1981), although there is no reason to believe that such activity is “normative.” Throughout childhood, boys participate in sexual activity more frequently than girls, a sex difference that is preserved later in life. Childhood sexual activity is likely to consist of genital inspection and manual exploration, but not sexual intercourse unless there has been a history of sexual abuse. Among many diverse developmental pathways is one in which there is a linear increase in sexual interest and activity over time without evidence of a quiescent phase of latency (Yates, 1993). 3. The hypothesis (expressed by Freud as a discovery) that there is a universal childhood incestuous wish has not only failed to be validated, but there is considerable evidence indicating that it is erroneous (Erickson, 1993). 4. Although there is no evidence of universal parricidal wishes, it is possible to conceptualize boys’ aggressive/competitive feelings about their fathers (and vice versa) as falling on a developmental line separate from sexual


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development. This line reflects the influence of prenatal androgens on aggression, especially as expressed in childhood (Friedman and Downey, 1995). 5. The universality of castration fear during early childhood also requires additional empirical validation. Although fears of bodily injury, including genital injury, are common, their role in child development remains to be clarified (Schrut, 1993). 6. The development of conscience does not follow the pathway outlined by Freud. Moral development has been shown to be the result of complex interactions between many genetic, cognitive, and psychosocial influences that occur throughout childhood (Kohlberg, 1981). PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX AND SEXUAL FANTASY Freud’s ideas about the role of the Oedipus complex were quite specific and rooted in his ideas about the role of biology in psychological development. Subsequent psychoanalytic scholars, however, have frequently discussed the Oedipus complex in a much less precise fashion (Greenberg, 1988). A tendency emerged to blur distinctions between erotic and nonerotic, parents and their symbolic representations, and castration anxiety and its symbolic representations. In addition, psychoanalysts frequently viewed the timing of childhood events, retrospectively reported during psychoanalysis, as being accurate. For example, consider a 40year-old man who was being treated with psychoanalysis because of work inhibitions. Such a patient might have a dream that he was to deliver a speech before a committee of older men. Following it, he stubbed his toe and it bled and then fell off. Psychoanalysts throughout the world, during Freud’s life and even today, might interpret the patient’s bleeding toe as a symbolic representation of castration anxiety even though no history might ever have been uncovered of the man actually fearing damage to his genitals. It is also credible enough to assume that the older men represented father figures and that, having been frightened of his father as a child, he remained so unconsciously even though his actual father was long dead. Many psychoanalysts would assume that the anxiety symbolically expressed in his dream and causing his vocational inhibition was triggered by unconscious incestuous desire. This assumption might be made, regardless of the facts of the patients’ sexual history, in light of the Oedipus “complex” described by Freud as occurring during early childhood. Using this case as an example of more general phenomena, we speculate that this person may never have desired to possess (or even be stimulated by) his mother erotically. He may, however, have felt competitive towards his father for his mother’s attention. The fear of competition with his rival may have been experienced in imagery with symbolic connotations of genital damage. As an adult psychoanalytic patient, the man may have in addition


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expressed sexual conflicts that seemed to be connected in his mind to his fear of older men. It is likely that these sexual components of his wishes and fears were integrated into his life narrative, however, years after what classical psychoanalysts consider the Oedipal phase of development. We do not believe that it is valid to infer the existence of an “Oedipus complex” as a universal norm, as described by Freud, either from the narratives of adults or even children in the psychoanalytic situation. We do believe that subgroups of people experience such an “Oedipus complex” and that Oedipal fears influence the form of sexual psychopathology in many patients. PSYCHOANALYSIS, THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX, AND THE PATHOLOGICAL MODEL OF HOMOSEXUALITY There are many ways of categorizing the stimuli that elicit sexual excitement in men, and any method selected must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. We, therefore, find it helpful to think of three large categories—homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual—within which are many subgroups, depending on the specific characteristics of objects and situations that are sexually stimulating. Men of homosexual orientation are predominantly or exclusively sexually excited by males; those of heterosexual orientation by females; and those of bisexual orientation by both. Although Freud (1905) believed that the origins of heterosexual orientation were obscure, psychoanalysts in the next generation tended to regard heterosexuality in all of its manifestations as a biological norm and other forms of sexual orientation as derailments produced by psychosocial traumata (American Psychiatric Association, DSM-I, 1957; DSM-II, 1968; Socarides, 1978). Freud also believed in universal bisexuality. By this he meant that all people have members of both sex as sexual objects in fantasy. The attraction to one or the other sex may be more or less conscious. In Freud’s view (Freud, 1905), a man who consciously was exclusively heterosexual nonetheless had unconsciously made a homosexual object selection. Similarly a man who was exclusively homosexual harbored in his unconscious mind a heterosexual object. Freud’s theory of bisexuality has been extensively criticized (Friedman, 1988; Friedman and Downey, 1993a,b). There is virtually no evidence that this theory is valid, and we do not use the term “bisexuality” in the Freudian sense. Modern gender psychology indicates that all people make various types of bigender identifications. These have conscious and unconscious components but do not influence gender identity once it has differentiated. The psychoanalytic community viewed homosexual orientation to be pathological until quite recently, lagging behind the general psychiatric community. The reasons for this have been extensively discussed by Lewes (1988), Isay (1989), Friedman (1988), and Friedman and Downey (1998). Perhaps the most compelling reason that psychoanalysts adhered to the pathological model of homosexuality, however, was widespread conviction that Freud’s


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ideas about the Oedipus complex were accurate. Believing that boys were destined to be erotically attracted to their mothers, psychoanalysts could see no pathway except a pathological one for the development of homosexual orientation. Thus, a (simplified) idea about homosexual orientation was widely accepted. It was believed that homosexual orientation was defensively motivated as a response to unconscious anxieties about heterosexuality. Thus, each time a man experienced a sexual desire for a man, he enacted in his mind a pathological scenario. It was also widely believed that men of homosexual orientation had defective superego functioning because of inadequate identification with their fathers. It was generally held that psychoanalysis could and should convert sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual (Socarides, 1978). These ideas are formally viewed as being outdated and invalid by the American Psychoanalytic Association. Psychoanalysis is an international enterprise, however, attitudes towards homosexuality in some European and Latin American countries tend to be those that were in vogue in North America in the 1950s. PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES CONCERNING EROTIC IMAGERY Freud (1905) considered young children to be innately “polymorphously perverse” and that the capacity to be excited by so called “perverse” stimuli remained during adulthood as part of the normal sexual response. Freud was probably more interested in disorders that he termed neuroses than those which would now be called paraphilias (American Psychiatric Association, DSM-IV, 1994). He was also interested in sexual experience as it occurred in day-to-day living among people without psychiatric disabilities. The interests of subsequent psychoanalysts have been similar. Much more attention has been devoted to the so called “perverse” sexual fantasy and activity among normal and neurotic people than among those with paraphilias, although some psychoanalysts have made important contributions to understanding the psychology of the latter (Stoller, 1975a,b). This is probably because patients with paraphilias tend to have limitations in social skill and capacity for insight, and respond poorly to insight-oriented psychotherapy including psychoanalysis (Abel et al., 1992). Psychoanalysts as well as nonpsychoanalysts have speculated on the reason that paraphilias and paraphiliac-like erotic imagery should occur so much more commonly among males than among females. An extremely abbreviated summary of their views is that the experiences with abusive and neglectful caretakers, generally women during early childhood, beginning well prior to the Oedipal developmental phase, are of great etiological importance. The specific paraphiliac image selected by a given individual is often a function of actual experiences he has had during childhood. For example, Stoller discussed a case of a fetishist cross-dresser who was forcibly cross-dressed during childhood (Stoller, 1975a,b). Sometimes, however, the determinants of specific fantasy remain obscure. In many of these


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instances, psychoanalysts assume that the image was generated in fantasy. The sex difference in frequency of paraphilias is compatible with the sex difference in frequency of nonsexual violence and with the theory that hostility and sexual arousal are fused in these disorders. Stoller (1975a,b) stressed that paraphiliacs need to experience the sexual object in a dehumanized way, as a so-called part-object or a fetish. Themes of revenge (usually directed at the symbolic representation of the mother) lead to fantasies of torture, control, and domination. The need to soil and devalue the object is in keeping with anal influences persistent in unconscious mental life (Kernberg, 1995). Regardless of the particular fantasy, there is a general tendency to experience the sense of danger overcome by the powerful sense of self in the sexually arousing situation. A number of psychoanalytic writers have also conceptualized the diverse objects and situations that psychoanalysts have traditionally considered “perverse” as defensive efforts to master traumata (Stoller, 1975a,b). A generally accepted idea is that a range exists with regard to intensity and exclusivity with which paraphiliac-like imagery are experienced. Most men experience such imagery at least to some degree. The determinants of intensity, frequency, and exclusivity vary depending on constitutional and psychosocial developmental influences. We return to the topic of so-called “perverse” sexual fantasies in nonparaphiliac people later in this article. MALE SEXUAL FANTASY: FURTHER DEVELOPMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS The contents of erotic fantasy in males appear to be usually formed prior to puberty, more or less at the age of adrenarche (see Herdt and McClintock, 2000). Once experienced with the full erotic intensity that occurs with complete androgenization, they tend to define the limits of erotic arousal during the entire life span. Stimuli that fall outside a person’s pattern are experienced with indifference. For that reason, some authors have referred to individually specific sexual pattern as “sexprints” (Person, 1995) or “lovemaps” (Money, 1988). We find it helpful to think of male sexual fantasy in terms of two major dimensions. We call the first, orienting sexual fantasy by which we mean whether the person responds erotically to stimuli that are same gender, opposite gender, or both. The developmental differences between individuals who are homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual remain to be ascertained. From a psychoanalytic perspective, boys and men who have the capacity for bisexual arousal are of unusual interest. Theoretically, such people might repress or amplify either the homo- or the hetero-erotic component of their erotic imagery depending on life stress and psychodynamic influences. Such men might, for example, experience themselves as changing sexual orientation during various life phases and attribute such change to life circumstances (such as falling in love), or psychotherapeutic interventions of one type or another. However, it is important that the experiences of men in this group not be taken as valid for all men.


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The second dimension of sexual fantasy that we just alluded to concerns the situations and objects that characterize erotic imagery. We hypothesize that both dimensions of sexual experience become more or less fixed during later childhood, although the outer limits of such differentiation remain to be established by research. We qualify this, however, by leaving room for unusual men whose sexual fantasy life seems to follow idiosyncratic rules. FEMALE SEXUAL FANTASY Although male erotic fantasy functions as a limit defining the realm of that which is erotically possible, the situation with respect to sexual excitement in women is more variable. In men, sexual arousal is generally equated with an awareness of a specific affect (e.g., lust), erection, and intense desire to achieve orgasm. Although the female equivalent of this occurs in some women, it is not universal. There is far more variability in the multiple behavioral dimensions constituting sexual experience. In order to understand the significance of developmental aspects of female sexuality, it is helpful to first consider aspects of the sexual experience and activity of adult women. SOMATIC AND SUBJECTIVELY EXPERIENCED ASPECTS OF FEMALE SEXUAL RESPONSE In laboratory situations, there is a good correlation between a man’s awareness of sexual excitement/arousal and objective measurements of erection. This is not so for women. A number of investigators have confirmed that the relationship between what has been termed “genital arousal” (more or less the equivalent of male erection), and the subjective sense of feeling sexually aroused, is inconstant at best. In fact, at least in experimental situations, women may report little or no sexual arousal even when objective signs of “genital arousal” were unmistakable (Laan and Everaerd, 1995). Moreover, unlike men, only a minority of women consider orgasm the most important source of sexual satisfaction with a partner. In addition, whereas erection is necessary for men to achieve intromission, women can participate in heterosexual intercourse without sexual arousal. Common sense, clinical experience, and research data indicate that they frequently do so. Although most men who engage in intercourse experience sexual orgasm, a substantial number of women do not. These data indicate that women tend to participate in sexual activity, including intercourse, for many reasons, only some of which would be considered “erotic” by standards applied by men to their own behavior (Everaerd and Laan, 1994; Hatfield and Rapson, 1993). Thus, although men tend to experience sexual arousal in a simple unitary way, women experience it more contextually in terms of combinations of emotions.


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Nuances of feelings, meanings, and attitudes towards real and imagined experience are more characteristic of the consciously experienced female experience than the male experience. A woman presented with a stimulus that a man might find immediately erotic (a picture of a nude member of the opposite sex) may or may not experience it as sexually arousing. After all, what is traditionally considered “pornography” is largely consumed by men. On the other hand, men do not consume romance novels in any great numbers. From a male perspective, endless attention is devoted in these novels to a certain type of context and setting in which sexual arousal may ultimately be mobilized. The stories which pique the interest of so many women bore men (Stoller, 1975a,b). It seems evident that the characteristics and meanings of “erotic fantasy” differ between the sexes (although, of course, some overlap does exist). At the beginning of this article, we put forth a definition of sexual fantasy for men. The question naturally arises: Is it possible to put forth a definition for women as well? Perhaps the most important sex difference that bears on the question of definition concerns the onset of the feeling of sexual arousal. Should the sexual situation for women be defined very broadly in a way that includes experiences that have a high probability of leading erotic desire to be kindled? How does one deal with the problem that genital arousal is often present without concurrent subjective arousal? The second question is easier to deal with. Although it is true that genital arousal might occur without subjective arousal, there is no evidence that the converse commonly occurs (although this area has been sparsely investigated). In any case, we take the position that sexual arousal in women should be defined subjectively, that is, in our view, subjective reports of arousal are necessary for sexual fantasy to be so labeled. With regard to the question of kindling, we take the narrow view that the term erotic fantasy should be restricted to fantasy that is associated with the sense of being aroused. When circumstances that “kindle” are discussed—romantic fantasies, for example—they should be so labeled. The notion that female sexual fantasy depends more on relational context than male sexual fantasy is also compatible with evolutionary psychology. It is adaptive for women to seek partners who can provide resources and protect them and their offspring. Men, on the other hand, should (according to an evolutionary model) seek sexual encounters with as many different partners as possible (Buss and Schmitt, 1993). FURTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT SEX DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT A major theme that we have emphasized so far is the fact that males and females are on different psychosexual developmental lines throughout their life cycles. Their experiences of sexual fantasy, of boys and girls, men and women,


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must be conceptualized within this context. Different prenatal neuroendocrine environments lead to temperamental differences during early childhood. It may well be that the androgenization of the brain that occurs prenatally in males and not females radically inhibits or extinguishes the interest of males in infants and doll play during early childhood. Thus, even boys who are biologically normal but suffer from childhood Gender Identity Disorder and who enjoy playing with “Barbie Dolls” as a way of expressing their fascination with the female body outline, and its adornments, show little interest in maternal aspects of doll play (Zucker and Bradley, 1995). As small children, girls who experience some degree of prenatal androgenization as a result of genetically determined adrenal steroid metabolic disorders show diminished interest in maternal aspects of doll play. Interestingly, this phenomenon occurs independently of maternal rearing style, and among girls who ultimately menstruate, and usually grow into heterosexual women and become mothers (Collaer and Hines, 1995). The sex difference observed in all cultures during early childhood in rough-and-tumble play is also a result of prenatal androgen differences between the sexes (Maccoby, 1998; Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974). The themes of childhood play, different between the sexes, reflect the different organization of their self and object representations. From the perspective of cognitive and social development, the sexes create different narratives or myths within which sexual fantasy life develops. In virtually all cultures, very young children are cared for primarily by women. Similar exposure of boys and girls to mothers during early childhood has different consequences for each. As separation–individuation proceeds, boys must struggle against the tendency to identify with their mother’s femaleness, whereas girls experience an increased sense of security by doing so. As Gilligan has pointed out, this may be one reason for men to be threatened by intimacy, i.e., to feel less masculine, whereas women are more likely to be threatened by separation (Gilligan, 1982). This may also influence a need commonly experienced and expressed by certain men defensively to devalue women in sexual situations and to engage in exhibitionistic masculine display behaviors as a way of bolstering masculine selfesteem. Such behaviors begin during the latency-age phase when it is common for boys to experience feminine traits in themselves, and find their same-sex peers as negatively valued (Fine, 1987). Sex-segregated play is characteristic of older latency-age children. Boys commonly organize themselves during free play into hierarchical groups, similar to nonhuman primates. They are more apt than girls to be territorial and xenophobic and less tolerant of nonstereotypical gender role behavior than girls are (Friedman and Downey, 1993a). Oedipal narrative themes enter the life cycle as early as children can describe them and remain present throughout life. As we have discussed earlier with regard to men, when contemporary psychoanalysts refer to Oedipal themes, they tend not to mean the concrete wish to participate in sexual relationships with the


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opposite-sex parent and the fear and retaliation because of incestuous desires from the same-sex parent. We have earlier discussed Oedipal narrative themes with regard to male development and turn now to females. It is certainly common during childhood for girls to idealize their fathers in a romantic way and to resent attentiveness to their mothers. It is also common for girls to fear retaliation because of their jealous impulses, usually in the form of disapproval and loss of love from their mothers, although themes of bodily damage are also commonly experienced. These wishes and fears are usually kept secret. It is easy to trace their elaboration and displacement into fantasies in which the father figure is symbolically represented by a powerful older man who seduces the woman, overcoming her protestations, forcing her to succumb to his will, even raping her. This type of fantasy certainly is the bedrock of women’s romance novels, or so-called “bodice rippers.” It probably is experienced by many women under diverse conditions and provides one type of imagined setting in which erotic excitement can develop (Stoller, 1979). In almost all societies, the rules regulating male and female sexual experience differ, with male experience being valued much more positively. Abuse of women by men is common, and overt physical abuse—systematic rape, bodily mutilation, sexual slavery—is still prevalent in many nations. This difference in power and status interacts with the biological influences to lead to a final common pathway with respect to many behavioral sex differences including sexual fantasy. For example, the theme of being overwhelmed by a powerful male who stimulates but also protects, need not refer exclusively to the father, but understandably probably emerges commonly in response to the differential treatment of the sexes throughout entire societies. This observation is more or less in keeping with a psychoanalytic perspective first expressed by Horney (1924, 1926). She suggested that the Oedipus complex in boys and girls is strongly influenced by sociocultural factors and varies in intensity between children. She criticized Freud’s biological determinism and phallocentricism and pointed out that the Oedipal narratives of women are shaped by sociocultural prejudices that today would be termed heterosexist. In any case, the Oedipal fantasies of both sexes express themes of power and dependency. We note that in our abbreviated discussion of Oedipal themes, we did not review many of Freud’s ideas about the role of Oedipus complex in female development (“anatomy is destiny,” etc.) (Freud, 1925, 1933). These are considered outdated and have been abandoned by the psychoanalytic mainstream, at least in the United States. Freud also believed that penis envy was biologically determined and part of the constitutional endowment of all women. This hypothesis is also outdated (Downey and Friedman, 1998). Limitations of space do not allow us to review how modern ideas about the development of gender identity led to alteration of Freud’s developmental model for girls. This topic has been discussed extensively by others and interested readers are referred to the work of Zucker and Bradley (1995), Tyson (1982, 1994), and Downey and Friedman (1998).


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THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE AND SEXUAL FANTASY In the late 1930s, a psychoanalyst, Benedek, and a gynecologist, Rubenstein, began an astonishingly original research project on the relationship between the hormonal fluctuations of the menstrual cycle and verbalized sexual fantasy during the psychoanalytic process (Benedek, 1973). The investigators began their work with the prospective investigation of a single woman in analysis with Benedek. The patient was instructed to take daily vaginal swabs and rectal temperatures. These data were analyzed blind by Rubenstein who used them to date the physiological events of the cycle. After 10 cycle phases had been completed, Benedek reviewed detailed notes that she made of each analytic session (the references to actual menstruation having been edited out) and accurately predicted, on the basis of the patient’s verbalized sexual fantasies and associations, the precise date of ovulation during every cycle. The investigators went on to study 15 patients, for variable lengths of time, in whom Benedek accurately and blindly predicted cycle phase. Benedek and Rubenstein (1942) described phasic alteration in the fantasies of their patients. Early in the first part of the cycle, self-esteem was high and erotic interest was primarily motivated by the desire for sexual stimulation. As ovulation approached, the patients tended to experience increased sexual tension and conflicts associated with this. Immediately following ovulation there was a sense of relaxation following which during the luteal phase there was a pronounced change in the quality of sexual fantasies. The women now tended to focus on procreational aspects of sexuality: needs to be nurtured and protected were more pronounced. Imagery of babies and mothers was more plentiful. This was followed by a brief phase prior to menstruation when ego defenses appeared to weaken. Negative affects increased, as did the patients’ level of regression. Benedek and Rubenstein were aware that the phenomenon of estrus characteristic of lower animals did not regulate human sexual activity. They speculated, however, that despite the freedom from regulation of sexual activity by the hormones of the cycle, woman might experience an equivalent of estrus in fantasy. The investigation carried out by Benedek and Rubenstein, although achieving instant acclaim, has been mostly ignored in subsequent psychoanalytic thought about sexual fantasy. No attempt to replicate it has ever been carried out at a psychoanalytic institute. Components of Benedek’s observations and findings have been validated in many nonpsychoanalytic studies (Hedricks, 1994; Severino and Moline, 1989). Others still remain to be investigated. A compressed way of summarizing a large interdisciplinary body of work in this area would be as follows: There is substantial variability between women, regarding the timing of physiological events of the cycle and the experience and meaning of psychological events. Diverse subgroups exist and more extreme and repetitive fluctuations occur among some than among others. For example, premenstrual “regression” as described by Benedek may have been a function


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of the neuroticism of her patients, and not of women in general. The sequential progression of fantasies from stimulatory to procreational may characterize a subgroup of women rather than women as a whole. It is evident from extensive research that many subgroups exist with regard to virtually all psychobiological parameters of the menstrual cycle, and that substantial variability exists not only between women but also may exist within individual women (Hedricks, 1994). Across studies, and in many different societies, however, there is little question that the inner experience of women is cyclic in many ways and that this is true of the intensity and quality of sexual fantasies as well as other aspects of their mental life. The notion of cyclicity does not suggest that any dimension of experience or behavior is not influenced by psychosocial events or that any dimension of experience or behavior is somehow intrinsically more problematical (e.g., negatively valued) than among men, nor does it suggest that women are under “biological influence” to a greater degree than men are. The complexity of women’s sexual fantasy as discussed by Benedek is compatible with the earlier discussion of the psychophysiological area. Particularly ignored in the psychoanalytic literature is the fact that the quality of sexual fantasies in women and their many meanings may change phasically. Psychoanalysis as a whole treats sexual fantasy as if it is either trait-related or a result of reactions to specific life events and traumata. The notion of innately influenced cyclicity imposes a requirement on clinicians to utilize more complex behavioral paradigms. For example, cyclicity by no means implies the notion of biopsychological events occurring in a vacuum without social context. In fact, the meanings attributed to psychological events during the cycle, including sexual fantasies, may be greatly influenced by interpersonal experience, including sexual experience, and may also influence the way such experience is psychologically processed by the woman. It might well be that the transference relationship with the analyst, a crucial aspect of psychoanalytic treatment, is influenced by the menstrual cycle. Whether this is the case, however, remains to be explored with empirical research. The onset of menstrual cyclicity during the life cycle creates a discontinuity in female development which has no parallel among males. Benedek’s point that procreative fantasies are a crucial dimension of the sexual experience of women requires particular emphasis. We suspect that erotic fantasy is much more closely linked to procreative fantasies in women than in men. These may include the wish to become pregnant, to deliver, to raise children, or any component of this sequence. Although the experience of cyclicity, not only with regard to physiological events, but with feelings as well, is discontinuous with earlier female development as well as female experience after menopause, many psychological continuities are obviously retained. By this we mean that girls are not called upon to create an entirely different representation of the self as a result of puberty. Rather, their self-representations must adapt to new circumstances. One set of psychological traits that we believe to be continuous throughout the life cycle is the one involving maternal interest. Thus, the fantasies of girls and women, including their sexual


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fantasies, tend to be influenced by broad narrative maternalistic themes whose origins are in early childhood. From a psychoanalytic perspective, very little is actually known about the relationship between self- representation and sexual fantasy during adolescence. Although the research design used by Benedek and Rubenstein is impractical to carry out with modern teenagers, other ways of studying their fantasy life may be more practical. Longitudinal study of girls prior to and through puberty, adolescence, and adulthood is needed to shed light on the multiple aspects of the development of female sexual fantasies that even today remain a subject of conjecture. Also requiring study are the ways in which girls and women create unified narrative fantasy themes, some of whose components involve romance, power, and Oedipal themes, whereas others seem to be basically procreational. FEMALE HOMOSEXUAL ORIENTATION Separate developmental lines for males and females are also indicated by sexspecific differences in homosexual orientation. Although some lesbians describe a developmental pathway similar to that typical for gay men, many do not. Political homosexuality, for example, is a phenomenon that is for all intents and purposes confined to women. Political lesbians tend to be feminists who feel that heterosexual activity expresses unacceptable power differentials between women and men, whether or not they have strong attractions to women (DeFries, 1979). A different group of women experience homosexual desire for the first time during middle adulthood. These women, many of whom are heterosocialized or even homophobic, nonetheless experience the emergence of erotic desire for another women in the setting of an empathic, supportive relationship. The erotic component appears as if “kindled” by the other aspects of the relationship. If this phenomenon occurs among men, it is very rare and has never been seen by either of us. The psychoanalyst Kirkpatrick (1984, 1989) has pointed out that the need for intimacy seems to be greater among women than men in sexual relationships and that genital release may not be their primary organizing and motivating factor. She observed that even though woman might have more intense orgasms with a man, she might nonetheless prefer sexual activity with another woman because of the greater degree of intimacy in their relationship. In any case, the notion of sexual fantasy as a limit in place by late adolescence may be true of only some women. Others may well retain the capacity for plasticity at least with regard to sexual stimuli. We have speculated elsewhere that if this is true with regard to sexual fantasy it might also be true for other psychological characteristics (Friedman and Downey, 1998). REFLECTIONS ON SEXUAL FANTASY AND PASSIONATE DESIRE The data used by psychoanalytic theory have been provided by psychoanalytic treatment of patients predominately of Western European background. The


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majority of these individuals were fluent, at least moderately well educated, and from the middle and upper socioeconomic classes. Psychoanalytic theory has also been applied to art and literature from diverse societies and historical periods. However, inferences made from such scholarship should not be equated with cross-cultural research. This qualification having been made, we now speculate about sexual fantasy and passionate desire. One of Freud’s particularly important insights is that human relationships are inherently ambivalent. Crystals of antipathy are always contained within the pattern of our meaningful affections. Unambivalent friendliness, exuberance, expansive playfulness, and joy are certainly part of our repertoire, but these feelings are never unalloyed for long in ongoing meaningful interpersonal experience. Freud, as have virtually all major psychoanalytic theorists, recognized that feelings of fear–anxiety and rage–hostility are inevitably mobilized in ongoing relationships, although they may be experienced in ways that are repressed or denied. Thoughtful psychoanalytic scholars have realized that the concept of ambivalence is, in a condensed and often disguised way, an integral component of sexual passion. Thus, during sexual arousal human beings tend to experience more than a unitary sense of “lust.” Men as well as women experience feelings of anger and anxiety that are usually associated with a sense of danger. Mixtures of these feelings influence the attributions given to erotic fantasy. In less formal language it means that when we become sexually aroused we feel lustful but also fearful and often angry, and we process mixtures of these feelings with our characteristic defenses. As part of our mental processing activities, we create dramatic narratives which we (later) return to in the form of memories. As we become more sexually excited, the fantasy, with its different components, is experienced more and more vividly. These fantasies provide the stimuli for masturbatory activities and also endow specific, actually occurring sexual situations with meaning. During intense interpersonal sexual activity, the fantasy constructs of people appear to come to life and are shared. Both aspects of the actual activity—the enactment in external reality of subjective wishes and narratives and the sharing of such experience with its evoked mutual identifications—are experienced as thrilling. Sexual fantasy is rooted in bodily experience—one’s own body and that of others. The first relationship in which one’s body is more or less completely explored by another is with the mother or mothering person. Hence, psychoanalysts have noted that representations of the mother–child relationship and of the mother’s body are symbolically included in sexual fantasy experienced during adulthood by both sexes (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1986). Kernberg put it as follows (Kernberg, 1995, p. 26): The fantasied early polymorphous perverse relations to the parental objects are condensed with the admiring and invasive relation to the lover’s body parts. Erotic desire is rooted in the pleasure of unconsciously enacting polymorphous perverse fantasies and activities, including symbolic activation of the earliest object relations of the infant with mother and of the small child with both parents. All this is expressed in the perverse components of


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Sexual passion brings the self to the boundary in the experience of pleasure associated with emotional intensity. At the outer boundary of the self, there is always a feeling of danger of dissolution, and then a feeling of relief, relaxation, and of being soothed when the intensity passes, and the self inhabits its customary, familiar surroundings. When sexual passion is shared with another person, the loss of self-boundary is associated not only with what is usually termed “communication” in conventional usage, but rather with the sense that the inchoate matter of one’s interior and the other’s interior are mixed. This type of experience, whether actually occurring and encoded in memory, or only wished for but nonetheless psychologically represented in some form, endows sexual fantasy with the power of mysterious enchantment. The complex layers of meaning represented by the adult sexual experience are an important reason that childhood and adult sexuality, although similar in certain ways, are quite different in others. Children, even older ones, although capable of sexual activity do not experience their inner worlds as adults do. Their ideas about sex and love, virtue and vice, and rage and fear become modified with life experience and cognitive and social growth. Artists have intuitively grasped this. For example, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s play about adolescent lovers tells quite a different story than that of Anthony and Cleopatra, his drama about full-grown adults. CONCLUSIONS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SEX RESEARCH It is difficult to capture the subjective qualities of sexual fantasy in laboratory research settings or via questionnaire studies. On the other hand, research using psychoanalytic techniques is time-consuming and extremely difficult to implement. Moreover, many aspects of sexual fantasy and sexual arousal were unnoticed by psychoanalytic psychology and could never have been discovered via psychoanalytic exploration. It was only because of the physiological investigations of Masters and Johnson that psychoanalysis revised its erroneous models of female development and psychosexual functioning (Masters and Johnson, 1966). The pioneering work of Money and collaborators on gender identity led to similarly far-reaching revisions of psychoanalytic models of the mind (Money and Ehrhardt, 1972; Stoller, 1968). Psychoanalytic exploration alone could never have described the crucial distinction in women between genital and subjective arousal. Many questions about the somatic, psychological, and social determinants and consequences of sexual fantasy during development remain to be illuminated. These provide fertile ground for collaborative efforts between behavioral scientists and psychoanalysts.


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REFERENCES Abel, G. A. G., Osborn, C., Anthony, D., and Gardos, P. (1992). Current treatments of paraphiliacs. Annu. Rev. Sex Res. II: 255–291. American Psychiatric Association (1957). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 1st ed., American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC. American Psychiatric Association (1968). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2nd ed., American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC. American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC. Benedek, T. (1973). Psychoanalytic Investigations: Selected Papers. Quandrangel: The New York Times Book Co., New York, NY. Benedek, T., and Rubenstein, B. B. (1942). The Sexual Cycle in Women: Psychosomatic Medicine: Medicine Monographs III, Nos. 1 and 2. National Research Council, Washington, DC. Bradford, S. M. W. (1995). In Oldham, J. M., and Bams, R. (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychiatry, Vol. 14: Pharmacological Treatment of the Paraphilias, American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC, pp. 755–779. Buss, D. M., and Schmitt, D. R. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective in human mating. Psychol. Rev. 100: 204–232. Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1986). Sexuality and Mind: The Role of the Father and the Mother in the Psyche, New York University Press, New York, NY. Collaer, M. L., and Hines, M. (1995). Human behavioral sex differences: A role for gonadal hormones during early development? Psychol. Bull. 118: 55–107. DeFries, Z. (1979). A comparison of political and apolitical lesbians. J. Am. Acad. Psychoanal. 17(1): 57–66. Downey, J. I., and Friedman, R. C. (1998). Female homosexuality: Classical psychoanalytic theory reconsidered. J. Am. Psychoanal Assn. 46(2): 471–506. Erickson, M. T. (1993). Rethinking Oedipus: An evolutionary perspective of incest avoidance. Am. J. Psychiat. 150: 411–416. Everaerd, W., and Laan, E. (1994). Cognitive aspects of sexual functionoing and dysfunctioning. Sex. Marit. Ther. 9: 225–230. Fine, G. A. (1987). With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Freud, S. (1905/1953). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In Strachey, J. (Ed. and trans.), Standard Edition, (hereafter S.E.), Vol. 7, pp. 125–243. Reprinted by Hogarth, London, England. Freud, S. (1989). Some psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes. In Gay, P. (Ed.), The Freud Reader, 1925. W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., USA, pp. 670–678. Freud, S. (1933/1964). Femininity. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), SE, Vol. 22, pp. 112–135. Reprinted by Hogarth, London, England. Freud, S. (1940–1949). An Outline of Psychoanalysis, W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., USA. Freund, K., Langevin, R., Chamberlayne, R., Deosoran, A., and Zajac, Y. (1974). The phobic theory of male homosexuality. Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 31: 495–499. Friedman, R. C. (1988). Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT; London, England. Friedman, R. C., and Downey, J. (1993a). Neurobiology and sexual orientation: Current relationships. J. Neuropsychiat. & Clin. Neurosci. 5: 131–153. Friedman, R. C., and Downey, J. (1993b). Psychoanalysis, psychobiology and homosexuality. J. Am. Psychoanal. Assn. 41(5): 1159–1198. Friedman, R. C., and Downey, J. I. (1995). Biology and the Oedipus complex. Psychoanal. Q. LXIV, 234–264. Friedman, R. C., and Downey, J. I. (1998). Psychoanalysis and the model of homosexuality as psychopathology: An historical overview. Am. J. Psychoanal. 58(3): 249–270. Galenson, E., and Roiphe, E. (1981). Infantile Origins of Sexual Activity, International Universities Press, New York, NY. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Gorski, R. A. (1991). Sexual differentiation of the endocrine brain and its control. In Brain Endocrinology, 2nd ed., Raven Press, New York, NY, pp. 71–103.


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Greenberg, D. F. (1988). The Construction of Homosexuality, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Hatfield, E., and Rapson, R. L. (1993). Historical and cross-cultural perspectives on passionate love and sexual desire. Annu. Rev. Sex Res. IV: 67–99. Hedricks, C. A. (1994). Sexual behavior across the menstrual cycle: A biopsychosocial approach. Annu. Rev. Sex Res. V: 122–173. Herdt, G., and McClintock, M. (2000). The Magical Age of 10. Arch. Sex. Behav. 29: 587–606. Horney, K. (1924). On the genesis of the castration complex in women. Int. J. Psychoanal. 5: 50–65. Horney, K. (1926). The flight from womanhood: The masculinity-complex in women as viewed by men and women. Int. J. Psychoanal. 7: 324–339. Isay, R. (1989). Being Homosexual, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, NY. Kernberg, O. (1995). Love Relations: Normality and Pathology, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Kirkpatrick, M. (1984). Female homosexuality. Panel Report, Annual Meeting of American Psychoanalytic Association, San Diego, CA, 4 May. Kirkpatrick, M. (1989). Women in love in the 1980’s. J. Am. Acad. Psychoanal. 17(4): 535–542. Kohlberg, L. (1981). The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral States and the Idea of Justice. Essays on Moral Development, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Laan, E., and Everaerd, W. (1995). Determinants of female sexual arousal: Psychophysiological theory and data. Annu. Rev. Sex Res. VI: 32–77.37. Lewes, K. (1988). The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY. Maccoby, E. (1998). The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Maccoby, E. E., and Jacklin, C. N. (1974). The Psychology of Sex Differences, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA. Masters, W. H., and Johnson, V. E. (1966). Human Sexual Response, Little, Brown, Boston, MA. Money, J. (1988). Gay, Straight and In-Between, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England. Money, J., and Ehrhardt, A. (1972). Man and Woman: Boy and Girl, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Olds, D. D. (1994). Connectionism and psychoanalysis. JAPA 42(2): 581–613. Paredes, R. G., and Baum, M. J. (1997). Role of the medial preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus in the control of masculine sexual behavior. Annu. Rev. Sex Res. VIII: 68–102. Person, E. (1995). By Force of Fantasy, Basic Books, New York, NY. Schrut, A. (1993). Is castration anxiety and the Oedipus complex a viable concept? Presented at the meeting of The American Academy of Psychoanlaysis, San Francisco, CA, 22 May. Severino, S. K., and Moline, M. L. (1989). Premenstrual Syndrome: A Clinician’s Guide. The Guilford Press, New York, NY, London, England. Socarides, C. W. (1978). Homosexuality, J. Aronson, New York, NY. Stoller, R. (1975a). Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred, Karnac Books Ltd, London, England. Stoller, R. (1975b). Pornography and perversion. In Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred, Karnac Books Ltd., London, England. pp. 63–92. Stoller, R. (1979). Sexual Excitement: Dynamics of Erotic Life, Pantheon Books, New York, NY. Stoller, R. J. (1968). Sex and Gender, Science House, New York, NY. Sulloway, F. J. (1979). Freud: Biologist of the Mind, Basic Books, New York, NY. Tyson, P. (1982). A developmental line of gender identity, gender role and choice of love object. J Am. Psychoanal Assn. 40: 59–84. Tyson, P. (1994). Theories of female psychology. JAPA 42(2): 447–469. Yates, A. (Ed.) (1993). Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders: Child Adolesc. Psychiatr. Clin. North Am. 2(3). Zucker, K., and Bradley, S. J. B. (1995). Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents, Guilford Publications Inc, New York, NY.

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The Magical Age of 10 Gilbert Herdt, Ph.D.,1,3 and Martha McClintock, Ph.D.2

Developmental processes of “puberty” and their cultural contexts in understanding the emergence of sexual subjectivity, especially sexual attraction, prior to gonadarche are critically examined. In particular, we consider the hypothesis that “sexual attraction” follows the onset of adrenal puberty, termed adrenarche, precipitating the development of stable and memorable attraction toward others approximately by the age of 10. In a prior study, the authors suggested that adrenarche is a significant source of this developmental change in sexuality (McClintock, M., and Herdt, G., 1996). The inferential evidence from New Guinea is compared with recent studies from the United States, including clinical findings on “precocious puberty.” We conclude with the question of whether the age of 10 is a human universal in the development of attraction and sexuality. KEY WORDS: puberty; sexual attraction; adrenarche; gonadarche; culture.

INTRODUCTION This paper critically examines developmental processes of “puberty” and their cultural contexts in understanding the emergence of sexual subjectivity, especially sexual attraction, prior to gonadarche. In particular, we consider the hypothesis that “sexual attraction” follows the onset of adrenal puberty, termed adrenarche, precipitating the development of attraction toward others approximately by the age of 10. Inferential evidence from New Guinea cultures is compared with recent studies from the United States to reconsider how societies deal with the expression of sexual development before the age of 10. Finally, we conclude by asking whether the age of 10 is a human universal in the development of attraction, in cross-cultural and historical perspective. 1 Program in Human Sexuality Studies, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California 94132. 2 Committee

on Human Development, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ilinois 60637.

3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Program in Human Sexuality Studies, San Francisco

State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, California 94132. 587 C 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation 0004-0002/00/1200-0587$18.00/0 °

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A major stream of research now posits two sequential but distinct forms of “pubertal” processes: adrenal puberty and gonadal puberty. Adrenal puberty is the process that occurs in middle childhood, between 6 and 10 years of age. It is hypothesized to be a critical source of developmental subjectivity, including feelings of attraction and sexual awareness, becoming stable and memorable around the age of 10. By contrast, gonadal puberty begins later, normatively around the ages of 11 and 12 for girls and boys, respectively, and continues into the late teens. It is coincident with adolescent maturation and morphological developmental changes, which are commonly referred to as “secondary sex traits,” as well as fertility. The evidence reviewed later, though anecdotal and incomplete, nevertheless suggests that the creation of sexual subjectivity begins well before the onset of adolescence. It is intrinsically driven by hormonal forces but, nevertheless, is informed by cultural meanings and social roles. Furthermore, it is sufficiently marked by the age of 10 or so that even in cultures where age variation in developmental transitions is common, a variety of cultures in ancient and modern times have sensed the age of 10 to be of critical importance in defining this age as the sexual juncture between “childhood” and “adulthood.” Thus, the strong inference is that in society “sexual attraction” emerges as a significant developmental subjectivity during adrenarche, but before “gonadarche” and “adolescence.” Although a variety of researchers, since the time of Freud (1905), have suggested that “sexuality” emerges in childhood, the question whether this development is anchored in the unconscious, whether it involves subjectivities like those of the adult, as well as the intrinsic mechanisms of this developmental transformation, remains obscure (Bem, 2000; Green, 1987; Stoller, 1968). Moreover, many scholars working within this paradigm continue to ignore the evidence from recent biological developmental, historical, and cross-cultural studies. For example, a recent textbook, by Kimmel (2000, p. 37), a leading sociologist of gender, asserts: Sex differentiation faces its most critical events . . . [at] puberty, when the bodies of boys and girls are transformed by a flood of sex hormones that cause the development of facial hair for boys, and the development of all secondary sex characteristics.

Nonetheless, the literature on sexuality generally attests to a greater range and diversity of sexual development than textbooks and the popular culture allow, especially in cross-cultural child development and what we in the west refer to as “adolescence” (Elder, 1975; Herdt and Leavitt, 1998). Recent developmental, neurological, linguistic, and hormonal studies generally suggest that in western countries, a critical developmental change occurs by the age of 8 or so, establishing the context for major cognitive and behavioral transformations in human development, including preparation for a more adult-like understanding of sexuality (Gelman et al., 1986; Money, 1997; Piaget, 1971). Likewise, instead of viewing late childhood as a time of “latency” in sexual development, as did Freud, we conceptualize middle childhood as a time in which general psychophysiological arousal, including erotic feelings and events

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previously unknown or unrecognized, produces increasingly memorable and stable sexual attraction (see Friedman and Downey, 2000).4 The question of the chronological age of first sexual arousal and attraction have long intrigued researchers in sex and human development. In this century, Freud (1905), Ehrhardt and Meyer-Bahlburg (1981), Gagnon (1971), Kinsey and colleagues (1948, p. 299ff.), Maccoby (1979), Mead (1927), Money (1997), and Stoller (1968) are among the distinguished thinkers who have conceptualized the age and maturational conditions of the first experience of sexual attraction toward others. It has long been recognized that gonadal morphological changes in western populations vary widely and are distinct for males and females, and that chronological and maturational ages differ. It is also widely believed that historical change and modernization impact strongly upon maturation, as noted later. Today, in general, the mean age of onset of gonadal puberty is 11.5 years in boys, “but may begin as early as 9 years or as late as 15 years and still be considered within normal limits” (Money and Lewis 1990, p. 241). Likewise, the relationship between the achievement of gonadal puberty and sexual maturation is problematic, as Kinsey and colleagues (1948) noted long ago: first ejaculation in males, for example, is inadequate for understanding “sexual subjectivity.” Adrenarche, we surmise—with its accompanying rise in sex steroids—has not even been considered as a factor in the development of sexuality, much less sexual subjectivity. Certainly gender differences inflect the emergence of sexuality and sexual subjectivity, and male and female experiences must not be lumped together when it comes to the development of sexual attraction. As is well known, gender differences in a range of behavioral domains tend to increase during middle childhood (Moller et al., 1992); for example, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) demonstrated the preference of nursery school children for their same-gendered peers. By the age of 4.5 years, children spent three times as much social time with the same gender; by the age of 6.5 years the increase is at the huge ratio of 11 to 1. When gender differences of this magnitude are enhanced or even exaggerated, and where gender segregation exists throughout life, such as among the Sambia of Papua New Guinea (Herdt, 1981), the combination of intrinsic and extrinsic (social) influences may especially affect the development of sexual subjectivity and the conscious formation of objects of attraction before adolescence. A word about definitions and semantics. The notion of “attraction” is culturally and emotionally loaded and although very imprecise, nevertheless, the construct is well established in the literature (Gagnon, 1990; Herdt and Boxer, 1993; Laumann et al., 1994; Kinsey et al., 1948). By “sexual attraction” is meant the subjective state, within the adult person, of feelings of desire or fantasies about another person, known or imagined, that may or may not lead to sexual intimacy 4 This

article deals only with the normative developmental experience, which we are attempting to reconceptualize; we are aware of the importance of precocious and delayed puberty for the phenomena under review, but along with others, we chose to separate these from the discussion of normative sexual attraction development (see Money and Lewis, 1990, p. 245ff).

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with another person. The definition marks the adult experience as mature and separates the subjective state from the actual sexual behavior that might result from it. This concept should not be confused with sexual orientation, which is a more global, and often assumed to be a core or “fixed” trait (Byne and Parsons, 1993; Gorman, 1994; Meyer-Bahlberg, 1997; Stoller and Herdt, 1985; Storms, 1981; Townsend and Wasserman, 1997). Attraction indicates psychophysiological arousal, but this is not a necessary precursor of sexual arousal, at least in all cases. People may at times be aroused but deny their feelings or have their culture deny them; the relationships between experience and self-conscious recognition of sexual attraction are especially problematic in sex-negative or repressive societies. It is important to mark the difference between childhood and adult subjectivities as well. For a child “attraction” is not the same as for an adult; a child’s diffuse, more emergent properties of liking, friendship, and emotional closeness or intimacy have meanings different from those of an adult that is sexually aroused. Moreover, the content of such experiences obviously varies by culture, as does the ability of the person to express their feelings, particularly in public. Such differences are especially critical to keep in mind when sexuality is approved in childhood play and carried into the teen years, as Mead (1927, 1935, 1961) repeatedly suggested in her ethnographies. The childhood experience—and the subsequent adult retrospection of this—is also distinct and should not be confused (Plummer, 1995). Indeed, sexual attraction is manifest throughout middle childhood and is not yet linked with sexual desire or fantasy. It is around the age of 10 that it becomes a robust, memorable experience (McClintock and Herdt, 1996). Both subjectivities are nevertheless dependent upon cultural meanings in interpreting the preadolescent experiences as “sexual,” a point long recognized in script theory (reviewed in Gagnon, 1990). In some societies, such meanings are restricted to reproductive genital sexuality, whereas in others, recreational and pleasurable sexuality are encouraged outside of and beyond marriage, such as among the Trobriand Islanders, the !Kung people of Southern Africa, and others (Herdt, 1997; Vance, 1991). Adolescence, as a time of increasing demands upon the person’s social and moral responsibility in many societies, often compresses sexual behavior, because parents, families, and communities may regulate intimacy and sexual relations, especially when relationships may lead to reproductive unions (Herdt and Leavitt, 1998). Coincidentally, of course, this change in moral attitudes occurs as the child’s body changes morphologically into an adult’s. Individuals may experience desire and attraction toward others without the cultural means either to recognize or to express their feelings in public. However, eventually, attraction typically becomes genitally arousing, and such arousal must be reconciled with customary arrangements for sexuality and marriage recognized in the local culture (Mead, 1961). Sexual maturity in many societies is, finally, dependent upon the achievement of gonadal puberty and menarche in males and females, respectively, though neither

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of these achievements should be reduced to the presence or absence of orgasm or menstrual flow (see the discussion of preadolescent orgasm in Kinsey et al., 1948, pp. 175–180).5 ADRENAL PUBERTY AND ATTRACTION The inference that sexual attraction—as denoted by intimate romantic and/or erotic attraction to another—becomes stable and memorable by the age of 10, was previously formulated by McClintock and Herdt (1996). In a study of self-identified gay and lesbian adolescents in Chicago, Herdt, and Boxer (1993) had observed that the mean age of first awareness of attraction was between 9.5 and 10 years for boys and girls, respectively. Subsequently, McClintock and Herdt reviewed the evidence to discover similar patterns in other studies. It was argued that American children typically become aware of a new way of sexual thinking about their bodies, body imagery, gender roles, and emotional and intimate relations with their playmates between the fourth and fifth grades (e.g., a normative chronological age range of 9–11, for most fourth and fifth graders). Studies on sex-typing in play relationships, and popularity among children, also support the importance of these sexual and gender changes around fourth grade (Moller et al., 1992). The concept of “puberty” is still widely seen in the minds of many researchers and the public as “adolescence” or as the morphologic changes (incorrectly labeled “secondary” sex changes; see Money and Ehrhardt, 1972) of adolescence. In prior models of developmental sexual psychology, gonadarche was typically seen as a kind of internal force that changed attraction into sexual action, culminating in the developmental sequelae of adult sexuality, especially reproduction. As was previously argued (McClintock and Herdt, 1996), however, biopsychosocial “puberty” should be expanded to encompass two distinct, sequential processes of puberty, adrenal puberty followed by gonadal puberty, each of which is independent but temporally processed by different mechanisms of development (McClintock et al., 1998; and see Hopper, 1975; Korth-Schutz, 1989). Rather than viewing sexual attraction as following gonadarche, this model conceptualizes the subjectivity of attraction as a longer sequence of developments that “begins endocrinologically at age 6 on average” (McClintock et al., 1998, p. 1). Traditionally, in the general population, the gonads were seen as the cause of gonadal puberty, anticipating reproduction, now around the age of 10.75 years, for females (McClintock et al., 1998, p. 1). Money and Lewis (1990, pp. 241, 242) find that for males, the visible evidence of gonadal puberty is in the enlargement of the testes, scrotum, and penis, with a mean age onset of these changes at 11.5 years. Ejaculation and nocturnal emissions of viable sperm complete the 5 As

Simon and Gagnon (1973, p. 34) once wisely stated: “An important source of guilt in children comes from the imputation to them by adults of sexual appetites or abilities that they may not have, but they learn, however imperfectly, to pretend they have.”

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process. However, these changes may begin as early as 9, and as late as 15, and still be considered within the normal range. The duration of the process is typically 2–4.5 years until completion, which culminates in attainment of adult height and pubic hair distribution. For females, the visible and invisible changes begin between the ages of 9 and 13, with growth accompanied by pubic hair and breast growth. The average age of the growth spurt is just after 12, with the average first ovulation and menstruation occurring between 13 and 13.5, with a range of 11.5–15.5 years. The female process may last only 1.5 years or as long as 6 years. Between the ages of 5 and 15, the child’s developing hormones change and influence both physical and psychological (interpersonal and intrapsychic) development. Both genders begin neonatal development with adult levels of testosterone and estrogen. However, the sex hormone levels begin to fall and remain low until the maturation of the adrenal glands, i.e., ages 6–8 (reviewed in McClintock and Herdt, 1996; McClintock et al., 1998). Increased adrenal activity and hormone production begins to increase exponentially until it reaches the low adult range around the age of 10, and then plateaus in both boys and girls. Androgens released during preadolescence continue to rise from adrenal gland secretion until ages 12 and 13, when the maturation of the gonads continue to augment androgen production. Children between the ages of 6 and 8 begin to experience increasing adrenal function, in both males and females. The adrenal glands (specifically the adrenal cortex) secrete low levels of androgens (typically identified as male sex hormones), primarily of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). The specific androgen released by the adrenal glands is in the same metabolic pathways as testosterone and estrogen. There is no sex difference in the rate or onset, though the conversion rate may vary between the genders, until the onset of gonadarche. The levels of these hormones begin to steadily climb upwards until adult levels of DHEA are reached by the age of 12 for girls and the age of 13 for boys, respectively. By the age of 10, they reach the low end of the adult range. Although these levels are low as compared to normal adult levels, they are many (10–20) times what typical young children exhibit. Moreover, although the hormone levels required for an organizational (long-term, permanent) effect are unknown, there are brain changes at this age, which are indicative of neural proliferation and sculpting; there is an overproduction of neurons followed by a selective loss, presumably of nonfunctional connections, which “sculpts” the neural networks of the cortex (Blumenthal et al., 1999). The levels experienced between ages 6 and 10 are within activational (short-term, temporary) range. Thus, it is highly probable that the levels of hormones secreted during these age ranges have a significant influence on preadolescent brains. Something prior to puberty is transforming the child’s body and psyche in the direction of sexual arousal. What might the precursor of this development be? Adrenarche is the best candidate for conceptualizing the development of attraction in this hypothetical model. In addition to the factors already outlined, four additional developmental influences stimulate the development of attraction. First,

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the adrenals release hormones that have already been identified as being relevant in adults for sexual attraction. Second, there does not appear to be a significant age difference in adrenal pubertal development for a girl and a boy. Third, the same hormones continue to rise in concentration during gonadarche. If the gonads constitute the structure for biological “priming” in sexual attraction development, then it intuitively follows that the same hormones at earlier ages have a similar effect. Finally, DHEA is the primary sex hormone released by the adrenals. It is only two metabolic steps away from testosterone, but another three steps away from estradiol—the major adult sex hormones. These hormonal changes, it is postulated, stimulate awareness of the body and sensations when interacting with others, heightening perceptions of sexual and/or romantic attraction and their cues before gonadal puberty (McClintock and Herdt, 1996). Eventually these developmental subjectivities are strong enough to become memorable in the child’s experience.

THE CASE OF NEW GUINEA Anthropology has stressed social, rather than the biological elements of “puberty,” since the time of the French scholar Van Gennep (1960), and it is commonly accepted today that “adolescence” is not a universal category. Moreover, for a variety of reasons, the social and biological dimensions were typically lumped together with a notion of gonadarche or “puberty at 13” (reviewed in Herdt and Leavitt, 1998), as one clearly sees in the early work of Mead (1927). Thus, distinctions between “adolescence,” “puberty,” and “sexuality” are controversial and require detailed study of the ethnographic data from a particular culture area to “make sense” of what is local and universal—or something in between. The island of New Guinea is home to more than 700 cultures and within the Melanesian area, 2000 languages. The area has also been known, since the classical studies of Malinowski (1929) and Mead (1935), for the immense range of variation in sexual behavior found across the life course (Herdt, 1984). As Herdt has worked among the Sambia of New Guinea since 1974 and contextualized sexuality, we have chosen to highlight this culture area in comparing findings from the United States on the emergence of sexual attraction before gonadarche. We shall emphasize the precolonial situation of these societies prior to western contact and globalization. What is remarkable about the anthropological record of this area is the attention to the age of 10 or so in many reports of ritual initiation for over more than half a century. These cultures in the precolonial period were characterized by unwritten languages, and the lack of attention to individual ages, typically used for recording birth and developmental events in the west. What stands out is the dramatic attention showered upon the tenth year, especially in male development, but also in female development. Ritual separation, especially from the natal households,

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gender segregation, ordeals and taboos, as well as the introduction into sexual life, either homoerotic or heteroerotic, characterized the late childhood years. The folk psychology of these peoples strongly connected the need for ritual initiation with an inferred internal development in the attractions, desires, and motivations of the child, especially boys. The societal response seems widely to have involved the need for change in the person’s social identity, living arrangements, and sexual regulation before gonadarche. When it is remembered that gonadarche was much later than in contemporary western cultures, the extreme attention to changing the child’s psychosexual status by the age of 10 is even more impressive. Contemporary study of these issues began in 1954, when the Australian anthropologist K. E. Read—then the leading authority on New Guinea—published the first ethnological survey of the New Guinea Highlands. Read had served in New Guinea during WW II and later returned to conduct the first long-term field study. He also initiated first contact with certain indigenous Highlands peoples, such as the Bena Bena, described as follows: Men and women did not sleep under the same roof. A man had a house for each of his wives, and he kept many of his personal possessions in them, but since constant association with women was thought to be weakening, he regularly slept in the club house with his male contemporaries and seniors and all boys over the age of about ten. (Read, 1954, p. 13)

Read claimed that this generalization applied to “all Highland groups.” Reports from other anthropologists since then have confirmed the insight of his original discovery. In these precolonial societies, the age of 10 seems to be a “baseline” for removal from the “childhood” category, followed by ritual advancement into a new social and sexual category. The following are but a few of the relevant cases known from the literature. The earliest report comes from British anthropologist Deacon, who described Malekula Island in the New Hebrides, specifically that boys are initiated at the age of 10 (Deacon, 1934, p. 41). American anthropologist Langness (1967, p. 164), writing on the same Bena Bena people observed by Read years earlier, independently confirmed that boys are taken to the men’s house around the age of 10 or 12. Further afield, the Dutch anthropologist Van Baal (1966, p. 52, 1984, p. 133), who described the Marind-anim peoples occupying the entire Southwest coast of New Guinea, noted that boys stayed with their mothers until the age of 5 or 6, and then went to live nearer their fathers; however, they were formally admitted to the men’s house when they had reached the approximate age of 10. Initiation was the introduction to sexual life, as the boys were inseminated by older males (Van Baal, 1984, p. 133). Again, among the Kaluli people in Northwest Papua New Guinea, the ethnographer states: “Homosexual intercourse for boys also took place in everyday life . . . whenever a boy reached the age of about ten or eleven” (Schieffelin, 1976, p. 152). It is remarkable that in spite of the diverse nationalities, generations, and cultural theories of these different anthropologists, all of them have drawn attention to the age of 10. Whatever projection might be involved in “guessing” the age of

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the child and his or her age-cohort, a good deal of objective understanding of the relevant age differences in these local communities was obviously available to these fieldworkers. In fact, our own work among the Sambia suggests that the age of 10 is probably a regional “critical period” for sexual development. But what is so critical about the age of 10 in New Guinea? As recently suggested elsewhere for the Sambia people, the accumulating evidence on sexual development supports the hypothesis that at least for males,6 adults recognized the age of 9 or 10 in the child as commencing the emergence of sexual attraction to others (Herdt, 2000). That is, parents and community leaders inferred—either directly from their own observations of children, or indirectly from retrospections of their own psychosexual development—that sexual attraction and desire were budding in late childhood. Following initiation, Sambia elders and fathers taught boys about the need to physically separate from their mothers in order to grow into strong warriors. This gender segregation was strongly sanctioned and prevented any possibility of sexual interaction between boys and girls. Concomitantly, older males introduced boys to ritual insemination, typically occurring between younger (ages 7–14) and older males (ages 15 and above) before marriage (Herdt, 1981), a pattern found in 10–20% of Melanesian societies (Herdt, 1984). Homoerotic initiation rites of these kinds are common throughout the area (Herdt, 1984). However, boys and girls are elsewhere introduced to heterosexual relations by the age of 10 or so, suggesting that the process applies both to males and females, as well as to homoerotic and heteroerotic customs (Knauft, 1993). The reason for this intense focus on sexuality by the age of 10 may have had to do with how these cultures regarded sexual and gender development before gonadarche as a “social problem” that required the dramatic solution of rites de passage. Sambia male initiation rites required treatment of the boy before the age of 10, otherwise it was thought that he would weaken and die. The Sambia believe that a boy must be initiated before he is “too old” or “too big” in order for the rite of passage to have its necessary and desired effect (Stoller and Herdt, 1982). By contrast, girls were not initiated until their betrothed husbands had attained the stage of being late adolescent warriors, which was about the age of 10–12 for girls. Further, female initiation waited upon menarche in girls, which was in the late teens throughout Highlands New Guinea. Initiation of the boy moved him away from women and mother directly and led into the men’s house, where he was inseminated, paving the way for a 10–15-year period of being exclusively homoerotic/ homosocial, during the preadolescent and adolescent development, until his late teens or early twenties, depending upon the exact age at which a particular boy would have married and fathered a child (Herdt, 1981, 1987). Sambia pinpoint this transition point at between the ages of 7 and 10 years, for an age-cohort of 6 We

would not want to claim that all traditional societies in Melanesia had initiation practices moving boys into the men’s house by the age of 10, because examples to the contrary can certainly be found (Herdt, 1991).

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boys from a group of villages, with individual boys’ ages averaging approximately 8.5 years. We do not know at what age adrenal puberty begins in these populations, but the onset of the independent process of gonadal puberty was slower than in contemporary western society. Child mortality was also high and in some areas created a definite challenge to the survival of the society (Herdt and Leavitt, 1998), resulting in prolonged breast-feeding of children, in some cases, upto the age of 4 or 5. Long-term field studies have attested to the resilience and robustness of surviving children in New Guinea, however, as well as to the seemingly slow rate of growth (Mead, 1956). We should note that the onset of gonadal puberty was very slow, perhaps slower than any comparable area of the world, in these precolonial societies of Papua New Guinea. These societies were protein deficient, parasitically challenged, and they lacked prenatal care or modern medicine in dealing with such diseases as yaws and malaria. Infant mortality was very high and reached more than 50% in some villages in some years (Herdt, 1987). Adrenal puberty may have been at the same or slightly older ages for Sambia children. Generally, gonadal puberty remained late in precolonial times and well into the 1970s, with boys achieving gonardarche between the ages of 13 and 14 years, and girls achieving menarche by the age of 18 among the Bundi people, and as late as 19.2 years among the Sambia and their neighbors (Malcolm, 1968; Worthman, 1999; see Danker-Hopfe, 1986, for European comparisons). Because of warfare, an extreme imperative was placed on the need to achieve gonadarche and adult masculinity in boys. Sambia parents felt very strongly that the rituals would only have their desired effect before the age of 10. In their minds, proper sexual development and reproduction were placed at a risk without insemination by older warriors. However, in other cultures, heterosexual relations were viewed as logical outcome of parallel ritual processes (Knauft, 1993). In sum, Sambia adults imagined that the boy’s awareness of his body and sexuality took a pivotal turn in late childhood, well before gonardarche. Sambia initiation, commencing after the age of 7, directly followed or was concurrent with the onset of adrenarche, we would hypothesize, in males. Furthermore, although the culture did not recognize the boys as being physically mature, their folk psychology recognized the age of 10 as the “critical period” for sexual subjectivity. Given that the boys begin their sexual role as fellators on average by the age of 8.5 years, it is not surprising that by the age of 10 or so they would be regarded as having developed sexual interest. Moreover, by the age of 11–12, the period of the second-stage initiation that advances the boys to the next level of the male hierarchy, the boys have become aggressive fellators who actively pursue semen to masculinize their bodies (Herdt and Stoller, 1990, p. 103). The ethnographic evidence suggests that Sambia boys, by the age of 9–10, had begun to experience awareness of their attractions toward others, including, in some cases, sexual attraction toward other boys or girls (Herdt, 2000). The culture feared the expression

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of these attractions, if left unchecked. By initiating boys by the age of 10, the men reduced the undesired effects of sexual attractions toward others, especially incest, premarital sex, moral and social challenges to male control, including the use of ritualized boy-inseminating to regulate male/male sexuality before marriage. Far from being rare or exotic, these cases in New Guinea may actually highlight a more general process in preliterate societies that has previously been ignored.

CONTEMPORARY STUDIES—UNITED STATES Accumulating studies from the United States over the past decade suggest that the development of sexual attraction may commence in middle childhood and achieve individual subjective recognition sometime around the age of 10 (Herdt and Boxer, 1993; Pattatuci and Hamer, 1995; Hamer et al., 1993, as previously reported in McClintock and Herdt, 1996, Fig. 1). As these studies have shown, first same-sex attraction for males and females typically occurs at the mean age of 9.6 for boys (Herdt and Boxer, 1993), and between the ages of 10 and 10.5 for girls (Hamer et al., 1993; Pattutuci and Hamer, 1995). It is significant to note that within the range of these samples, males and females, heterosexuals and homosexuals, all experienced sexual attraction at or near the age of 10, with male sexual subjectivity a bit ahead of female sexual subjectivity. In a prior study, it was speculated that adrenal puberty may be the source of this change in samples of American men and women (McClintock and Herdt, 1996). In two separate studies, conducted by different investigators from diverse academic fields in different parts of the country, the age of 10 was shown to be the developmental marker for first memorable attraction toward others, regardless of the gender of the object. Furthermore, these studies have a mean age of 37 years (Hamer et al., 1993) in one case, and a mean age of 17.9 years in the other (Herdt and Boxer, 1993). This difference—approximately one generation—is critical, for it suggests that first attraction is independent of social age or generational cohort differences. It also hints that cultural change (such as the mass media attention to intervening events of the AIDS epidemic) have not directly affected the age of onset of attraction in the youngest cohort. Furthermore, if the reports of first attraction were biased by retrospection to a significant degree, one would expect that the difference in social experience and the person’s proximity to the developmental marker would have resulted in different reported outcomes. Since the reported age is the same for both generations, a deeper biopsychosocial structure of influence is hypothesized to be at work in both cohorts. The study of Herdt and Boxer (1993) reported first attraction by an average age of 9.6 for boys and 10.1 for girls. Typically, the age of first homoerotic fantasy was 11.2 for males and 11.9 for females, with sexual conduct with the same gender delayed by 2 years for males, and about 4 years (to 15.2 years on average) for

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females (Herdt and Boxer, 1993, chapter 5). It was not until completing the study that the investigators went to the larger research literature for comparison, and discovered that the same age had previously been reported by Saghir and Robins (1973, p. 232) from their study a generation before. They assert: The natural history for the development of homosexual responses, overt behavior and finally recognition of identification of other homosexuals with their groups could be illustrated by the following chronological account: “As early as the age of 10 I would feel attracted to my teachers and would want to be with them and do things for them. Shortly later, I started having crushes on my classmates. I would think about them and desire to be with them.”

In a different study, focused on risk factors for suicide in gay and bisexual youth, Remafedi et al. (1991, Table 3) found that the mean age for first homosexual attraction in their sample of 137 males ranged from 9.27 to 10.66 years. The work of Savin-Williams (1998) shows a similar age of onset of sexual attraction in younger gays and lesbians (see also Savin-Williams and Diamond, 2000). An important early study by D’Augelli (1991, p. 141) of 77 college males also found an awareness of attraction toward other males on average by the age of 10.8 years. Given the difficulties of remembering and reporting common to survey studies, and given the strong cultural bias of the folk psychology to mark sexuality after gonadarche, it is remarkable that the age of attraction clusters around the age of 10 in all these studies. What role does sexual orientation play in the emergence of attraction before gonadarche? Clearly, more research is needed to answer this question with authority; however, one should be cautious in concluding that the development of sexual attraction differs significantly by sexual orientation. First, the development of sexual attraction in heterosexuals and homosexuals, (defined by fantasy and desire and their vicissitudes) does not seem to be dependent upon the biological or social concomitants of gonadarche. Second, differences in sexual precocity for heterosexuals versus homosexuals do not seem to be significant predeterminants of adolescent sexual outcomes (Bailey and Zucker, 1995; Money and Lewis, 1990).7 Indeed, a recent study has found the reverse: Bailey and Oberschneider (1997, pp. 438–439) in an intriguing retrospective survey of 136 professional dancers found that straight males experience their first heterosexual feelings at an average age of 8.9 years, whereas the gay males report their first attractions at the age of 10.4 years, a significant difference. What role do gender differences play in the development of attraction? The slightly younger age for males compared to females may be influenced by the social and historical conditions of gender role performance, as in so many other areas of gender development. Summarizing the Kinsey data on male sexual development, 7 Survey studies have found differences in adolescent attraction levels between homosexuals and hetero-

sexuals. Remafedi et al. (1992, pp. 716–717) report that the average experience of first sexual attraction is at a younger age for heterosexuals than for homosexuals in a large Minnesota school survey. On average, the straights reported an average age of 15 for first heterosexual attractions, whereas for gays it was 15.6 years for their first homosexual attraction.

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Gagnon (1971, p. 239) once noted: “For males early adolescence is commonly characterized by the onset of early sexual activity which is conducted in the context of secrecy experienced in tension with the public masculine striving associated with homosexuality. In contrast, among females overt sexual activity is infrequent; they, like males, live in a world dominated by their own gender, but it is a more public world designed to promote future heterosociality.” Hence, about 20% of boys, but only 10% of girls in Kinsey’s sample, had experienced orgasm to masturbation by the age of 12. A generation later, Baldwin and Baldwin (1997, p. 193) state, “Boys report noticing the pubertal changes in sexual excitability 2 or 3 years earlier (and much more often per week) than girls do, giving boys yet another several years head start over girls in learning about the physical pleasures of sex.” In a study by Knoth et al. (1988, p. 79, and Table 1), “The modal age of first arousal for boys across all our samples was between 11 and 12. The modal age for the first arousal for girls was 2–3 years later than for boys.” Perhaps even more important for the present discussion of adrenal puberty, Knoth et al. (1988, p. 79, and Table 1) found that 40% of males reported having their first sexual arousal by the age of 8, whereas the aggregate of 60% reported theirs by the age of 10. Cultural change is occurring all the time, and we should be surprised if its effects were not felt in the area of the development of sexuality. However, a comparison of the Kinsey recall data with those of the recent National Health and Social Life Survey suggest only modest age cohort differences related to the emergence of sexual attraction in young people (Laumann et al., 1994; Michaels, 1996). It is tempting to posit that whatever is changing in the context of desires and objects of attraction, the deep structure of the development of attraction as a subjective process is only crudely associated, if at all, with cultural change. EARLY MATURATION AND SEXUAL ATTRACTION It has long been theorized that the age of menarche varies with social and historical conditions, and indeed, that modernity has brought about increasingly earlier ages of maturation (Danker-Hopfe, 1986; Herdt and Leavitt, 1998; Khan et al., 1996). Thus, as modernity advances, with increments in diet, health care, education, and maternal care, gonadal puberty has a tendency to emerge earlier in development. Although a variety of studies have focused on this point, a startling new clinical study indicates that precocious gonadal puberty is increasingly apparent in the United States and this observation bears upon the conceptualization of sexual attraction. In a report based upon a study of 17,077 girls seen by a cross-section of 225 clinicians in the United States, Herman-Giddens and colleagues (1997) reported a substantially younger age of gonadal pubertal traits. At the age of 8, the clinicians found that 48.3% of African-American girls and 14.7% of white girls had begun pubertal development. Breast and pubic hair development in proportions increasing

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toward adult norms were registered for these girls, with nearly 17% of the AfricanAmerican revealing axillary hair. The authors note that “for each characteristic, African-American girls were more advanced than white girls at the same age” (Herman-Giddens et al., 1997, p. 507). By the age of 12, they report that 62% of the African-Americans and 35% of the white girls had begun menses. With respect to breast development—in terms of Tanner stages—the mean age of onset for breast development was 8.87 years for African-American girls and 9.96 years for white girls. These developmental characteristics are markedly younger than “suggested by standard pediatric textbooks” (Herman-Giddens et al., 1997, p. 509) on the subject. The authors conclude that “More appropriate standards for defining precocious and delayed puberty may need to be developed, taking into account racial differences” (Herman-Giddens et al., 1997, p. 511). The implications for the development of sexual attraction and sexual behavior before adolescence are obvious but bear scrutiny (McClintock et al., 1998). The author’s conclusion seems to be directly related to what typically would be called “gonadal puberty,” though, in fact, the early ages observed by the clinicians fall between adrenal and gonadal puberty. The standard thinking in pediatric practice previously did not differentiate between these two processes, and the statement just made seems to conflate them. The question arises: If gonadarche is demonstrably related to social and historical changes in maturation, might some of these changes also result from adrenal puberty? At the present we must rely again upon inferences drawn from studies of the social conditions of responses to early sexual attraction and sexual behavior prior to the onset of adolescence. Cultures may, as has long been known, either support or inhibit the expression of sexual expressions before adolescence (Ford and Beach, 1951; Herdt, 1997; Mead, 1961). Sexually approving cultures—those in which sexual play in childhood is tolerated or even encouraged, differ strikingly from sexually disapproving cultures—wherein family and community may frown upon or even punish sexual exploration or curiosity prior to the age at which the sexual culture thinks this is “natural and normal” (Carrier, 1980; Herdt, 1997). It might be predicted that early physical maturation, and/or sexual behavior, would be more readily approved in such “sex positive” cultures. In contemporary Norway, for example, Langfeldt (1981) describes sexual relations among normative 8–12-year-old males as a regular part of “boys’ subcultures.” He asserts that it is common for these male peer groups to sexually experiment in secret (Langfeldt, 1981, pp. 67–68). Langfeldt (1990) estimates that about 10% of all Norwegian children between the ages of 4 and 10 masturbate to orgasm. It is interesting to note that clinical reports reveal the age of 10 as typical for the beginning of sexual feelings. If early maturation and sexuality are positively regarded in Norway, we might then predict that the expression of early sexual attraction and the expression of sexual feelings will develop relatively unimpeded. Conversely, Musaph (1990) has reviewed the statistical evidence for first intercourse in western countries and finds the average age onset to be in the teens. Both

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parental control and religious affiliation strongly influenced the age of first sexual intercourse. It may be that sexual intercourse, especially in sexually disapproving cultures, may serve to inhibit knowledge of early sexual attraction. Ironically, however, the same conditions of sexual ignorance, when accompanied by a reign of silence or taboo on “sex talk” (Fine, 1988) in these sexual cultures, may allow for the emergence of pristine attractions and sexual fantasies, before adolescence. Diaz (1998, p. 108) has noted how Latino culture in the United States creates conditions of this kind in the early initiation of sexual intercourse and bisexual behavior among males. To illustrate this effect, recall the earlier cited study of the development of same-sex feelings among gay and lesbian self-identified youth in Chicago (Herdt and Boxer, 1993). Many of the 202 youth (age range of 14–20) in the Chicago study said that in growing up they always felt “different,” and their parents often described how their sons and daughters were perceived to be “different than the others.” Their parents, in turn, described their gay or lesbian child’s development as being more “creative,” “academic,” or “artistic” (for boys), or more “athletic,” “introspective,” or “competitive” (for girls), compared to the peers and sibs of these children; however, such stereotypes also reflect our society’s attitudes about normative gender development in childhood (Herdt and Koff, 2000). There is no reason to believe that gonadal puberty arrived earlier than normal in this population. However, by the age of nine and half on the average, the Chicago boys and girls had experienced their first erotic attraction to the same-sex. In short, they were aware and in some cases excited or aroused by another person, typically a peer or friend, suggesting that these children had already recognized sexual attraction in themselves and were on the path to sexual maturity. Thus, sexual subjectivity (probably including sexual orientation) had achieved an adult-like state well before gonadarche. Granted, this does not mean that the sexuality of these boys and girls was “complete” or finished, nor that subsequent psychosexual transformations would ensue. Instead, it seems plausible to infer that whatever form their sexual and social careers take, sexual attraction following adrenarche creates the conditions for sexual subjectivity and behavior in children well before the society expects this to happen. In this respect, the precolonial New Guinea societies may have anticipated outcomes ahead of those in contemporary American society.

CONCLUSION This article has examined the hypothesis that sexual attraction emerges after the advent of adrenal puberty, typically precipitating the development of stable and memorable sexual attraction by the age of 10 across cultures. Two pubertal processes—adrenarche and later gonadarche—are suggested as doing the work of maturation, including the development of phenotypic gonadarche, with important

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implications for the emergence of sexual awareness and behavior. This argument effectively expands the period of “puberty” to encompass a wider span of human development after the age of 6. It also suggests that the emergence of attraction, as found in the New Guinea cultures—both in homoerotic and heteroerotic forms, and in the contemporary United States among males and females in both homosexuals and heterosexuals—may constitute a good candidate for being a human universal of sexuality. Middle childhood should no longer be viewed as a period of hormonal quiescence. Nor should we believe that for all children, there is an absence of sexual subjectivity before gonadarche. Rather, the accumulating evidence suggests that there is more sexual subjectivity occurring during childhood than previously believed, especially from the age of 6 onward, with the onset of adrenarche. The key in the United States is that between the fourth and fifth grades, the child’s sexual attractions have already begun to stabilize or consolidate, becoming robust and memorable, suggesting the results of an earlier developmental process. The stability of the attraction is manifest by its memorability, accessible even in late adulthood. When thinking of how sexual risk-taking is regarded in development, and is sensitive to the context of relationships, it is critical to reconsider the early onset of sexual attraction before adolescence and its implications for social policy (Ehrhardt, 1996). Although cross-cultural differences in the meanings of sexual arousal and attraction are impressive, the evidence for a deeper structure of adrenal hormonal development that influences the sequence and timing of sexual attraction before adolescence is profound. This is not to say that cultures may of course thwart the emergence of developmental subjectivities of sexual attraction in late childhood, through the use of beliefs, taboos, rituals, and social gender roles. Are the internal processes associated with adrenal puberty robust enough to overcome these social barriers in the development of individual development of the body and fantasy before gonadal puberty? We do not know the answer to this question; however, as Freud (1905) speculated long ago, cultures may exercise an enormous constraint upon the emergence of sexuality and hence, the subjective memory of, as well as the expression of, sexual aim and object attractions. When a culture completely denies or “forgets” the earlier experience of childhood upon adult development, we have what Benedict (1938) once referred to as “cultural discontinuity.” It is tempting to argue that if attraction typically develops during adrenarche but is ignored or repressed by adults’ retrospection about sexual development, particularly before it becomes stabilized around the age of 10, the contemporary United States may be a good example of a society in which discontinuity in sexuality is a common developmental experience, and may affect the memory of earliest sexual attraction (Herdt, 1990). Because male and female, as well as homosexual and heterosexual experiences of attraction were found before the age of 10, the internal representation of sexual attraction is robust and memorable enough to overcome these societal constraints (McClintock and Herdt, 1996).

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We should not ignore the context of political power in the social regulation of childhood and adolescent sexuality. In precolonial New Guinea, it may well have been the case that adrenal puberty led to sexual attraction in ways that directly or indirectly challenged male power and gender hierarchy. Clearly, the implementation of strict avoidance taboos and gender segregation constitute powerful indicators of adult male authority and the attempt to control adolescent sexual attraction and behavior. The need for strict identification with the same-gender parent, and political solidarity in times of warfare, may have produced a general structural effort to exaggerate gender differences and assert sexual control. These points lead to a generalization about the New Guinea societies: When a society worries over the effects of early gender development, and the expression of sexual attraction before adulthood, its folk psychology and institutions will implement controls on the child’s sexuality well before gonadarche. It is remarkable that our own postindustrial society continues to exert similar powerful controls over childhood sexuality in the face of enormous change and access to sexual knowledge and the media. Sexuality in the western liberal democracies, it would seem, is still a challenge to forces of social regulation and authority. That western and nonwestern societies have focused upon the age of 10 as a memory marker for development is thus no coincidence, but neither should it be regarded as a great mystery. The age of 10 is not magical—only a convenience marker in the cultural reasoning of societies about powerful hormonal processes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Todd Rawls, and Niels F. Teunis, for their helpful comments on this paper.

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Sexual Identity Trajectories Among Sexual-Minority Youths: Gender Comparisons Ritch C. Savin-Williams, Ph.D.1,3 and Lisa M. Diamond, Ph.D.2

The present investigation explored gender differences in sexual identity development—first same-sex attractions, self-labeling, same-sex sexual contact, and disclosure—among 164 sexual-minority young adults. Based on interviews, results indicated the value of assessing gender differences in the context, timing, spacing, and sequencing of sexual identity milestones. Adolescent males had an earlier onset of all milestones except disclosure. The context for sexual identity milestones were likely to be emotionally oriented for young women and sexually oriented for young men. The gap from first same-sex attractions (8–9 years of age) to first disclosure (around 18 years) averaged 10 years for both sexes. Young women followed label-first developmental trajectories; men were more likely to pursue sex before identifying themselves as gay. In terms of achieving sexual identity milestones, gender mattered, but it was not everything. KEY WORDS: sexual-minority youth; sex differences; sexual identity; coming out; developmental milestones.

INTRODUCTION Theoretical models describing the advent of a same-sex erotic identity were first proposed by clinical and developmental psychologists over two decades ago. These “coming out” or sexual identity models remain the most prevalent conceptualization of sexual-minority development, characterizing the process by which individuals recognize, define, and accept their status as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Although diverse in conceptual underpinnings, sexual identity models are 1 Department

of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853; RCS15@cornell. edu. 2 Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed.



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nearly universal in their linear stage sequences (Cohen and Savin-Williams, 1996; McConnell, 1994). For example, most models mark the onset of sexual identity development as the individual’s first awareness of same-sex attractions, presumed to occur in late childhood or early adolescence. This is followed some years later by a period of testing and exploration, during which youths seek information about gay, lesbian, and bisexual lifestyles and communities and/or engage in experimentation with same-sex sexual contact. Succeeding stages of identity development entail adopting a sexual-minority label, disclosing this sexual identity to others, becoming involved in a same-sex romantic relationship, and celebrating one’s sexual identity within a larger social context (e.g., the political arena). Although this linear progression is intuitively appealing, extant research suggests that it is far from universal. Rather, considerable diversity exists among sexual-minority youth of different backgrounds, cohorts, and ethnicities regarding the paths taken to sexual-minority identification, particularly regarding the relative ordering of first same-sex sexual contact and self-labeling among young gay and bisexual males (Dubé, 2000; Dubé and Savin-Williams, 1999; SavinWilliams, 1998). However, the most notable deviations from the standard model have been documented among lesbians and bisexual women (Diamond, 1998, 2000; Golden, 1996; Rust, 1995). This is perhaps to be expected, given that most coming-out models were originally derived from exclusively male samples. Not only do women typically initiate sexual identity development at later ages than men, but they also appear to do so for different reasons, often referencing emotional rather than sexual feelings for women. In some cases, the order in which they complete stages of sexual identity development is reversed (Diamond, 1998). In critiquing such models, numerous researchers (Eliason, 1996a,b; Morris, 1997; Peplau et al., 1998) have called for a multidimensional approach to sexual identity development that seriously considers the unique ways in which females and males experience their erotic desires. The research presented here accepts this challenge by investigating diversity in the timing, spacing, and context of traditional sexual identity milestones both within and across male and female sexual-minority youth.

RECENT EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON SEXUAL IDENTITY MILESTONES The recent increase in the availability of diverse populations of sexual-minority youths for research purposes has spawned several investigations that document various developmental aspects of growing up as a lesbian, gay, or bisexual person. As a matter of recent protocol, researchers generally test for gender differences in the timing of sexual identity milestones, with or without a conceptualization of how or why the sexes might differ on these domains. Furthermore, these analyses often


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overlook factors such as the sequence of milestones, the duration between them, and the context in which they are experienced. Examined first are four recent studies of child and adolescent sexual identity development that contain samples large enough for gender comparisons. The data are summarized in Table I. All four studies recruited participants from communitybased support groups for youths; one (Rosario et al., 1996) supplemented its sample with youths from college-based organizations. Youths of color were well represented, with whites accounting for 22–78% of the samples. Herdt and Boxer (1993) interviewed youths from the Chicago Horizons support group. Although sexual identity labels were not reported for the sample, age of first label (16 years) was the oldest of the four studies. Reported gender differences included an earlier onset of same-sex behavior among males, over 2 years before female youths; the greater likelihood of girls having opposite-sex experiences before same-sex experiences; and the larger proportion of boys who had exclusive same-sex experiences. Perhaps most significantly, Herdt and Boxer proposed gender variation in “developmental sequencing”—a term unfortunately limited to whether opposite-sex or same-sex behavior occurred first. With a sample of youths from 14 community centers, D’Augelli and Hershberger (1993) reported that female adolescents became aware at a later age than did males that they were attracted to same-sex members—the only one of the four studies to report this finding. The investigators uniquely assessed the length of time between milestones. Males had a significantly longer period of time between first awareness and self-labeling (5 vs. 4 years) and between first awareness and first disclosure (7 vs. 5 years). No gender differences emerged between selflabeling and first disclosure (just under 2 years) or between first awareness and first same-sex encounter (between 4 and 5 years). Nearly 90% of youths had engaged in same-sex activity, but males had many more such encounters. Rosario et al. (1996) recruited youths from community-based and college organizations in New York City. It is noteworthy that female youths composed one half of the sample. They were significantly older than male youths when they first considered (13.9 versus 12.5 years) or were certain of their sexual identity. Similar to D’Augelli and Hershberger (1993) but distinct from Herdt and Boxer (1993) and D’Augelli (1998), no gender differences were reported for age of first same-sex sexual behavior. In a follow-up anonymous questionnaire study, D’Augelli (1998) solicited a large sample of youths from 37 community-based youth groups. Significantly more female than male youths identified themselves as bisexual during initial selflabeling and presently. Similar to his previous findings, no gender differences were reported in the gap between first awareness and first same-sex sexual behavior; male youths reporting a greater number of same-sex partners was also confirmed. However, inconsistent with his previous findings, the sexes differed in age of first self-labeling, age of first same-sex encounter, and the length of time between

16.0 — 16.8 89

16.0 — 16.8 92

14.6 — 16.0 86

74 26 11.1e 14.6

Female

14.6 14.7 — 95

65 31 10.8 13.3

Male

83 17 9.8 14.3 15.0 — 16.4 94

15.9e 15.3 — 88

Male

67 32 10.5 14.0

Female

15.7e — 16.6 86

64 36 10.4 15.9e

Female

D’Augelli (1998)d

610

b N = 194; percent females 27%; mean age 18.9. c N = 156; percent females 49%; mean age 18.3. d N = 260; percent females 44%; mean age 18.9. e Significant gender differences.

14.8 — 16.7 91

75 25 9.8 14.9

Male

Rosario et al. (1996)c

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= 202; percent females 27%; mean age 18.3.

— — 10.1 15.2e

— — 9.6 13.1

Female

D’Augelli and Hershberger (1993)b

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Sex label (%) Gay/lesbian Bisexual Age of first awareness Age of first same-sex activity Age of first label Gay/lesbian Bisexual Age of first disclosure Percent with same-sex activity (%)

Male

Herdt and Boxer (1993)a


Table I. Summary of Four Studies Documenting Gender Differences in Child and Adolescent Developmental Milestones

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self-labeling and first disclosure; compared to his earlier findings, the sexes no longer differed in the time gap between first awareness and self-labeling and between first awareness and first disclosure. Over 80% of both male and female youths reported that an awareness of same-sex attractions preceded same-sex sexual behavior. For both sexes, early age of awareness was significantly associated with earlier self-labeling; for males, also with earlier onset of same-sex behavior. It is difficult to discern generalized patterns from these studies. Investigations agreed regarding the percent of youths who have had same-sex sexual behavior, age of first awareness (during the 10th year), and age of first disclosure (during the 16th year). However, less agreement was evident for ages of first same-sex activity and first self-labeling, both within and across the sexes. None of the studies found gender differences regarding age of disclosure, but conflicting results emerged regarding ages of first awareness, same-sex activity, and self-labeling. Most importantly, the sequence of these events was not uniform from study to study. Although both male and female sequence data from the study of Herdt and Boxer (1993) appeared to agree with the proposed sexual identity models, the other three studies did not support them. For example, most youths in D’Augelli and Hershberger’s study (D’Augelli and Hershberger, 1993) self-labeled before engaging in same-sex sexual contact. Rosario et al.’s lesbian but not bisexual female youths conformed to sexual identity models (Rosario et al., 1996). Overall, the sexual identity model sequence of stages fits male data slightly better than it does female data. These conflicting findings constitute important evidence for the existence of diverse trajectories of sexual-minority development among female and male youths. Yet in order to interpret this diversity, and the extent to which it is attributable to gender, research must move beyond the conventional approach of comparing mean ages at which female and male sexual minorities reach various milestones. For example, as demonstrated by D’Augelli (1998), there is value in investigating the time gap between various milestones. The experience of sexual identity development might be quite different for those who initiate and complete this process within a single year versus those who remain within its grip for a decade. The sequencing of events is also critically understudied. Herdt and Boxer (1993) have examined whether female and male youths pursue same-sex sexual contact before or after their first other-sex sexual contact, but clearly other possible sequences might be investigated. Most importantly, research should aim for coordinated assessment of the timing, context, spacing, and sequencing of sexual identity milestones, and these investigations should be grounded in current understanding of gender differences in sexual and social behavior in order to produce meaningfully interpretable findings. WHY SHOULD GENDER MATTER? Some 20 years ago, Kirkpatrick and Morgan (1980) raised the question of whether female homosexuality is a mirror image of male homosexuality or a


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specifically female phenomenon. That is, are female and male sexual minorities more alike on the basis of sexual orientation than they are different on the basis of gender? The balance of research over the past two decades supports the overwhelming importance of gender. For example, Saghir and Robins (1980) found that in matters of sexual behavior, number of partners, and age of onset, gender differences were greater than sexual orientation differences. Similar findings were reported by Bailey et al. (1994), who examined gender and sexual orientation differences in preferences for uncommitted sex; interest in visual sexual stimuli; perceived importance of emotional and sexual fidelity; and perceived value of partner characteristics such as age, physical attractiveness, and social status. In all domains, gender effects prevailed. Independent of sexual orientation, women showed less interest than men did in uncommitted sex and visual sexual stimuli, ascribed less importance to a partner’s age and attractiveness, and attributed more importance to emotional fidelity. Bailey and colleagues concluded that gender had a considerably greater impact on these sexual and romantic domains than did sexual orientation. It is on the basis of findings such as these that Peplau et al. (1998, p. 393) asserted, “A sensible research strategy will be to develop separate causal analyses of women’s and men’s sexual orientation, each grounded in generalizations that are accurate descriptions of the phenomena associated with sexual orientation for that gender.” On the basis of extant research, we believe that the most important differences between males and females concern the subjective experience and perceived importance of explicit sexual desire and activity. Thus, attempts to systematically probe for multiple trajectories of female and male sexual-minority development should focus on the precise role that sexual feelings and behaviors play in this process. The current research adopts this focus.

CURRENT STUDY We investigate four milestones that occupy a significant role in sexual identity development: first same-sex attractions, first same-sex sexual contact, first selflabeling as nonheterosexual, and first disclosure of a nonheterosexual identity to others. We broaden past investigations that report mean ages of these events in three ways: by examining the contexts of these transitional events, the duration of time between events, and variation in the ordering of two key transitions—first same-sex contact and first self-labeling. Our aim is to probe for multiple trajectories of sexual identity development and to determine the extent to which certain trajectories are gender-specific. In light of well-documented gender differences regarding sexual and social behavior, explicit sexual desire and activity should play a more substantive role in the sexual questioning of sexual-minority males than of females. Accordingly, we


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make the following predictions: 1. The context for first memories of same-sex attractions and self-labeling will be sexually oriented for boys and emotionally oriented for girls. 2. Female sexual-minority youths will be more likely than would males to pursue their first same-sex sexual contact within a romantic relationship. 3. Gender differences in age of first same-sex sexual contact will be mediated by the context in which this contact occurs; specifically, youths who have their first same-sex sexual contact with a romantic partner will have this contact at a later age, independent of gender. 4. Male sexual-minority youths will be more likely to pursue same-sex sexual contact at least 1 year before self-labeling, whereas females will be more likely to pursue same-sex sexual contact at least 1 year after self-labeling. In addition to conducting conventional tests of gender differences in milestone ages and time spans between events, we examine whether such differences are significant after controlling for variation in the relative sequencing of first samesex contact and first self-labeling (outlined in Hypothesis 4). Given the lack of data of this nature, we do not make predictions regarding the results of these analyses. Finally, additional exploratory analyses are also planned to address associations between the context of first same-sex attractions and first self-labeling and the ages at which these milestones occur.

METHOD Participants Participating youths included 78 women and 86 men between the ages of 17 and 25 years. The young women were engaged in a research project on the developmental trajectories of sexual-minority young adults; the young men composed Sample Two in an earlier study on sexual-minority male youths (Savin-Williams, 1998). All youths met the inclusion criterion of claiming some degree of physical or romantic interest in same-sex others and were diverse in social class, religious affiliation, and size of hometown community, but less so in educational level and ethnic/racial identification. Youths were recruited through announcements in college classes on gender and sexuality; flyers to campus social and political organizations; advertisements in a community newsletter and public places (bar, bookstore, café) for sexual minorities; postings on Internet list-serves for sexual-minority students on several college campuses; and referrals from other participants. This multiple recruitment strategy was undertaken to draw participants along the spectrum of same-sex attractions. For example, campus political organizations tend to include very “out” individuals


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who openly identify their sexuality; college Women Studies courses often draw students who are just beginning to acknowledge their same-sex attractions. The research project was advertised as an interview focusing on growing up in the 1990s with physical or romantic attractions for the same sex. To volunteer, youths contacted the principal investigator (RSW) either in person or by telephone or electronic mail. Special efforts were made to include individuals who were not comfortable openly identifying themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual by assuring them that such identifications were not necessary for participation and that the interviews were confidential and would not be audio- or video-taped. Due to the nature of the recruitment strategy, response rate cannot be calculated because it is unknown how many potential participants who met selection criteria did not volunteer for the study. However, 9% of women and 4% of men who originally contacted the investigator either did not return efforts to contact them or did not show up for the face-to-face or phone interviews. Due to human subject considerations, no attempt was made to discover reasons for refusal to participate. Procedures and Measures Participants were interviewed in-person or by telephone. A male research assistant interviewed one-third of the male participants; the principal investigator interviewed all other youths. Interviews were conducted in the principal investigator’s office or a place chosen by youths that afforded privacy and confidentiality. The nature and aims of the research project were explained, questions were answered, and consent was secured in accordance with human subjects’ stipulations. Over 90% of interviews with male participants lasted from 45 to 90 min, with a median of 60 min. The same format and content were followed for interviews with young women (median = 45 min), but several domains were omitted (community activities, current harassment, attitudes toward AIDS). To increase diversity of the female sample, the announcement was posted on several southern and eastern college campus list-serves. Forty-one percent of women participants took advantage of this opportunity, completing the interview by telephone (median time = 45 min). There were no demographic differences between women recruited in this manner and the other female participants, but women interviewed by phone were more likely to identify as lesbian rather than bisexual or unlabeled, χ 2 (2, N = 71) = 6.67, p < 0.04. Initial questions ascertained participants’ age, ethnicity, hometown community size, and family social class (based on occupational status of parents). The remainder of the interview focused on milestones of sexual identity development, from earliest memories of same-sex attractions to current feelings about one’s sexual identity (for review see Savin-Williams, 1998). For purposes of this project,


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only data concerning the transitions of first same-sex attractions, first same-sex sexual contact, first self-labeling, and first disclosure were analyzed. First Same-Sex Attractions Participants were asked, “Describe your first memories of being attracted to girls/boys. How old were you and what specifically do you remember? You need not have interpreted the attractions as sexual in nature at that time. How far back can you recall such an experience?” The specific context of first same-sex attractions and the age at which they occurred were recorded. First Same-Sex Sexual Activity Sex was defined as an act in which there was “genital contact on the part of either you, your partner, or both.” If participants acknowledged that this had occurred with someone of the same sex, they were asked to describe the encounter, including their age, participants’ age, and the nature of their relationship. Labeling Sexual Identity Participants were asked, “When did you first realize that you were not heterosexual? What memories do you have of how you came to the conclusion that you were not heterosexual?” The specific context of first self-labeling and the age at which this event took place were recorded. First Disclosure Participants reported the age at which they first disclosed their nonheterosexual identity to another person and described their relationship to this individual.

RESULTS General Characteristics of the Sample An alpha of 0.05 was used for all significance tests. Table II presents sample characteristics separate by sex. Young women were significantly more likely than young men to claim bisexual-based identities, χ 2 (4, N = 164) = 40.8, p < 0.0001. An analysis of variance detected no sex or sexual identity differences regarding age of respondent.


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Savin-Williams and Diamond Table II. Sample Characteristics Separate by Sex

Age (years) Mean (SD) Sexual identification [N (%)] Lesbian/gay Bisexual Unlabeled Bi-Lesbian/gay Questioning Ethnic/racial identification [N (%)] White African American Asian/Pacific Islanders Latina/o Mixed race & other Social class [N (%)] Upper middle Middle Lower middle Community size [N (%)] Farm/rural Small town Small city/suburbs Urban

Males

Females

21.6 (2.2)

20.8 (1.7)

71 (83) 6 (7) 4 (5) 1 (1) 4 (5)

27 (35) 26 (33) 7 (9) 8 (10) 10 (13)

62 (72) 5 (6) 6 (7) 10 (12) 3 (3)

61 (78) 2 (3) 10 (13) 2 (3) 3 (4)

39 (45) 27 (31) 20 (23)

30 (38) 31 (40) 17 (22)

13 (15) 17 (20) 31 (36) 25 (29)

8 (10) 7 (9) 48 (62) 15 (19)

A significant association was found between sex and community size, with males more likely to have come from suburban environments, χ 2 (3, N = 164) = 11.2, p = 0.01. There were no other differences between male and female respondents, between sexual identity groups, and in 3-way interactions with sex and sexual identity.

Context of First Attractions, Labeling, and Sexual Contact Respondents were categorized into two groups according to the context in which they experienced their first same-sex attractions (Table III). The sexual group included individuals who described this experience as involving explicit same-sex sexual thoughts or sexual activity. The emotional group included individuals who described their first same-sex attractions as involving only emotional feelings for the same sex. Not included were individuals who described this experience in terms that were neither explicitly sexual nor emotional, such as “fascinated with a woman/man” or “admired the beauty of a woman/man” (denoted “ambiguous” in Table III). A chi-square test established that males were significantly more likely than females to list a sexual context and females were more likely to list an emotional context, supporting Hypothesis 1, χ 2 (1, N = 130) = 23, 6, p < 0.00001.


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Table III. Contexts of First Same-Sex Attractions, Same-Sex Sexual Contact, and Self-Labeling

First same-sex attractions Sexual Emotional Ambiguous First same-sex sexual contact Stranger Relative (usually a cousin) Friend Romantic partner First self-labeling as nonheterosexual Sexual Emotional Facilitative environment

Males [N (%)]

Females [N (%)]

59 (69) 6 (7) 21 (24)

34 (44) 31 (40) 13 (17)

16 (20) 9 (12) 50 (64) 4 (5)

0 (0) 3 (5) 20 (33) 38 (62)

52 (63) 12 (15) 18 (22)

31 (40) 22 (28) 25 (32)

Respondents were categorized into three groups according to the context in which they first labeled themselves nonheterosexual (Table III). In addition to the sexual and emotional groups just described, the facilitative environment group included individuals who described this experience as involving exposure to the concept of same-sex sexuality through television, books, or other sexual-minority individuals. A chi-square test detected a significant association between sex and distribution into these categories, χ 2 (2, N = 160) = 9.3, p = 0.01. Examination of standardized cell deviates again confirmed Hypothesis 1: Males were significantly more likely than females to list a sexual context and females were more likely to list an emotional context. To determine whether the context of a youth’s first same-sex attractions was related to the age at which he or she experienced those attractions or pursued same-sex contact, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was carried out with sex and attraction context as independent variables (excluding those in the “ambiguous” category) and age of first same-sex attractions and first same-sex sexual contact as dependent variables. This analysis did not include individuals who had not yet experienced same-sex sexual contact (8 males and 17 females). There was a significant effect of sex, Wilks’ lambda = 0.93 (2, 110), p = 0.014. Bonferroni-corrected univariate tests demonstrated that males had earlier same-sex sexual attractions than females had, controlling for attraction context, F(1, 111) = 7.0, MSE = 12.7, p < 0.02. Predicting age of sexual identity labeling, a MANOVA revealed no significant effects for sex of the individual, F(1, 154), MSE = 11.2, p > 0.05, or context of labeling, F(2, 154), MSE = 18.8, p > 0.05. However, the interaction effect was significant, F(2, 154), MSE = 24.2, p = 0.024. Males who first labeled within a sexual context were significantly younger (15.6 years) than all other groups (17.6 years).


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Table III also presents the proportion of male and female youth who had their first same-sex sexual contact with relatives (usually cousins), strangers, friends, or romantic partners. A chi-square test detected a significant association between sex and distribution into these categories, χ 2 (3, N = 139) = 57.5, p < 0.00001. Examination of standardized cell deviates revealed that males were significantly more likely than females to have their first same-sex sexual contact with a stranger and females were more likely than males to have their first same-sex sexual contact with a romantic partner, consistent with Hypothesis 2. To investigate associations between the age of first same-sex sexual contact and the context in which that contact occurred, two Bonferroni-corrected t-tests were performed. Females who experienced their first same-sex contact with someone other than a romantic partner experienced this contact at significantly earlier ages, (Mrelationship = 18.5, Mno relationship = 13.8) t = −3.5, p = 0.002. These women were then compared to male youths who experienced their first same-sex contact with someone other than a romantic partner (only four had their first samesex contact within a romantic relationship). There was no difference between these groups in age of first same-sex sexual contact (Mfemale = 13.8, Mmale = 13.8), t = −0.5, p = ns, demonstrating that the context in which first same-sex sexual contact occurs is significantly associated with its timing, independent of gender. Age and Time Spans of Sexual Identity Milestones The mean ages at which respondents reported their first same-sex attractions, first same-sex sexual contact, first self-labeling, and first disclosure of nonheterosexuality are presented in Table IV. A MANOVA with sex as the independent Table IV. Gender and Trajectory Differences in Sexual Identity Milestonesa

First same-sex attractions First same-sex sexual contact First self-labeling First disclosure Gap (in years) between first attractions and first sexual contact Gap (in years) between first sexual contact and self-labeling Gap (in years) between self-labeling and disclosure Gap (in years) between first attractions and self-labeling/disclosure (whichever came last) a Values are represented as ∗ p < 0.10; ∗∗ p < 0.05.

Mean (SD).

Males

Females

Sex-first

Label-first

7.7 (3.0) 14.1 (4.7) 16.4 (2.9) 17.9 (2.4) 7.0 (5.2)

9.0 (4.1)∗ 16.4 (4.4)∗∗ 17.6 (2.1)∗∗ 17.9 (1.9) 8.7 (4.7)

7.5 (2.8) 11.5 (4.0) 17.0 (2.8) 17.9 (2.6) 4.0 (4.3)∗∗

8.9 (4.0) 18.4 (2.0) 17.0 (2.5) 17.9 (1.9) 10.1 (4.4)

2.4 (4.7)

0.9 (3.9)

5.4 (4.1)∗∗

−2.0 (1.9)

1.5 (2.4)

0.3 (1.1)

1.0 (2.0)

0.9 (1.9)

10.4 (3.7)

9.3 (4.3)

10.6 (3.6)

9.1 (4.3)


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variable and the aforementioned milestone ages as dependent variables detected a significant effect of sex, Wilks’ lambda = 0.83 (4, 134), p = 0.0002. This analysis excluded individuals who had not engaged in same-sex sexual contact. Bonferronicorrected univariate tests established that females experienced their first samesex contact at significantly later ages than did males, F(1, 137) = 17.1, MSE = 20.5, corrected p = 0.012, and self-labeled at significantly later ages, F(1, 162) = 10.2, MSE = 6.6, corrected p < 0.008. There was a trend-level gender difference in age of first same-sex attractions, F(1, 162) = 6.1, MSE = 12.5, corrected p = 0.06. There was no gender difference in age of first disclosure, F(1, 162) = 0.01, MSE = 4.8, p = ns. Table IV also presents means and standard deviations for time spans (in years) between milestone events, stratified by gender. To test the significance of gender differences regarding these variables, a MANOVA was carried out with gender as the independent variable and the following dependent variables: Years difference between first same-sex attractions and first same-sex sexual contact, first same-sex sexual contact and self-labeling, self-labeling and disclosure, and first same-sex attractions and labeling/disclosure (whichever was most recent). For this analysis, current age was used as the substitute for “age of first same-sex contact” to calculate spacing scores among individuals who had no same-sex contact. The overall analysis detected a significant effect of gender, Wilks’ lambda = 0.82 (4, 158), p = 0.000002. Bonferroni-corrected univariate tests established that females reported a smaller gap than males between labeling and disclosure, F(1, 161) = 21.4, MSE = 3.3, corrected p < 0.00001. The sexes did not differ in the gap between first same-sex attractions and first same-sex sexual contact, F(1, 161) = 2.5, MSE = 27.6, uncorrected p = ns, between first same-sex contact and first self-labeling, F(1, 161) = 3.2, MSE = 22.1, uncorrected p = ns, or between first same-sex attractions and eventual labeling/disclosure (whichever came last), F(1, 161) = 3.2, MSE = 16.4, corrected p = ns. SEXUAL IDENTITY TRAJECTORIES Respondents were divided into two groups according to the relative sequencing of same-sex sexual contact and self-labeling in their developmental trajectory. The sex-first group (20% of females; 51% of males) engaged in same-sex sexual contact prior to labeling their nonheterosexual identity or disclosing it to others; label-first (80% of females; 49% of males), the reverse (this group included individuals who had not engaged in same-sex sexual contact). Females were significantly more likely to follow the label-first than the sex-first trajectory, χ 2 (1, N = 164) = 21.1, p < 0.00001. There were no associations between sexual identity trajectory and any background characteristic presented in Table II; nor were there any associations between sexual identity trajectory and current sexual identity.


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The next series of analyses addressed the relative importance of sex of respondent versus identity trajectory in explaining variation in the timing of identity milestones. First, a MANOVA was carried out with sex of respondent and identity trajectory as independent variables and age of first same-sex attractions, same-sex sexual contact, self-labeling, and disclosure as dependent variables. This overall test did not include individuals who had not engaged in same-sex sexual contact. There were significant independent effects of both sex of respondent, Wilks’ lambda = 0.86 (4, 133), p = 0.0004, and trajectory, Wilks’ lambda = 0.39 (4, 133), p < 0.00001, but no interaction effect. Bonferroni-corrected univariate tests established that the only significant sex difference after controlling for trajectory was the earlier age of first labeling among males, F(1, 161) = 11.3, MSE = 6.6, p < 0.004. The aforementioned gender difference in age of first same-sex sexual contact was not significant after controlling for trajectory. The only trajectory effect, independent of gender, was the earlier age of first same-sex sexual contact among those in the sex-first group, F(1, 136) = 146, MSE = 10, corrected p < 0.00001. Analyses next addressed the relative importance of sex of respondent versus identity trajectory in explaining the spacing between identity milestones. First, a MANOVA was carried out with sex of respondent and identity trajectory as independent variables and the following dependent variables: Years difference between first same-sex attractions and first same-sex sexual contact, self-labeling and disclosure, and first same-sex attractions and labeling/disclosure (whichever was most recent). The gap between first sexual contact and first labeling was not tested because the sex-first and label-first groups are defined on the basis of this gap. Current age was used as the substitute for “age of first same-sex contact” to calculate spacing scores among individuals with no same-sex contact. This analysis detected a significant effect of trajectory, controlling for sex of respondent, Wilks’ lambda = 0.39 (3, 158), p < 0.00001, and a significant effect of sex of respondent, controlling for trajectory, Wilks’ lambda = 0.85 (3, 158), p = 0.00002. There was no interaction effect. Bonferroni-corrected univariate tests established that controlling for trajectory, the only significant gender difference was the shorter female gap between first labeling and disclosure, F(1, 160) = 23.11, MSE = 3.3, corrected p = 0.0001. Individuals in the sex-first trajectory had a shorter gap between first same-sex attractions and first same-sex contact, F(1, 160) = 74, MSE = 18.9, corrected p = 0.00001. These findings are presented in Table IV, and graphically depicted in Fig. 1, which displays means and standard deviations for the ages at which female and male respondents in each identity trajectory experienced first same-sex attractions, same-sex sexual contact, self-labeling, and disclosure. DISCUSSION Results from this study demonstrate the value of assessing the context, timing, spacing, and sequencing of sexual identity milestones when investigating gender


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Fig. 1. Means and standard deviations for milestones of sexual identity development, stratified by gender and trajectory.

differences in sexual-minority development. When this full range of variables is taken into account, a pattern emerges that is consistent with extant social psychological research on gender differences in sexual and social behavior. Specifically, the most robust differences between sexual-minority males and females concern the relative role of explicit sexual feelings and behaviors in the process of sexual identity development. Thus, sexual identity models derived from the experiences of sexual-minority males are likely to overemphasize the importance of explicitly sexual feelings and same-sex sexual contact. By documenting variation both within and across males and females regarding the relative sequencing of same-sex sexual contact and self-labeling, the current research suggests important new directions for research on pathways of sexual identity development.

Contexts of Sexual Identity Transitions As predicted in Hypotheses 1 and 2, the context for first same-sex attractions, first same-sex sexual contact, and self-labeling were more likely to be emotionally or relationship oriented for young women and sexually oriented for young men. When reflecting on their early memories of same-sex attractions, female youths typically recalled crushes on friends; intense best friendships; and emotional infatuations with camp counselors, coaches, and teachers. Young men, to the contrary, more frequently recalled explicitly sexual memories—feeling aroused by the sight


622

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of another boy in the locker room or experiencing a furtive sexual encounter with a male friend or cousin. Just as female sexual-minority youths often experienced their first same-sex attractions for close friends, they frequently had their first same-sex sexual contact within full-fledged romantic relationships. One-fifth of male youths had their first same-sex contact with total strangers, a scenario reported by none of the female youths. This gender difference in context is directly related to the gender difference in the timing of first same-sex contact. Females who did not have their first same-sex sexual contact within a romantic relationship experienced this contact significantly earlier than those who did, at ages comparable to male youths. This demonstrates the importance of assessing the context of various sexual identity milestones before interpreting gender differences in their timing. Age and Time Spans of Sexual Identity Milestones Youths in the current sample on average reached sexual identity milestones 1–2 years later than youths sampled in previous studies, except age of first samesex attractions and (males’) first same-sex sexual contact. Age of first same-sex attractions was 1–2 years earlier than data reported by youths in the four studies reviewed earlier, ages which are consistent with McClintock and Herdt’s assertion (McClintock and Herdt, 1996) that sexual attractions emerge during adrenarche for both sexes around the age of 10 years. The earlier ages in the current sample are within the age span of adrenarche; or the earlier ages can be attributed either to the characteristics of the population of youths sampled or to the research protocol. College students may be more reflective or have better memories of early experiences and feelings than do support group youths. Research protocol could also be a factor. In the current study, youths were asked to describe a concrete memory of their earliest same-sex attractions, with the caveat that they need not have interpreted their feelings as sexual at that time. They were also encouraged to think as far back in their memory as possible. This protocol differs markedly from surveys that ask participants to state their “age of first awareness.” In terms of first same-sex sexual contact among the current sample of sexualminority youths, it is notable that in all previous studies, gay and bisexual male adolescents and adults report first sex at around the same time, during their thirteenth or fourteenth year (Savin-Williams, 1998). Apparently, regardless of historical context, research protocol, or population sampled, males with same-sex attractions begin their sexual careers shortly after pubertal onset. This is consistent with longitudinal research on heterosexual adolescents demonstrating that pubertal increases in androgen levels are strongly associated with increases in sexual motivation and with sexual “debut” among males (Udry et al., 1985). Udry (1990) found that the ability of androgen levels to predict sexual debut among white males was independent of potential social influences on sexual behavior,


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none of which were significant. Sexual debut among white females, however, was entirely unrelated to androgen levels and was exclusively predicted by social factors (Udry et al., 1986; Udry and Billy, 1987), in spite of the fact that increased androgens produced the same increases in sexual motivation among females as among males. Our research converges with these findings to suggest that the basic pathways leading from sexual desire to sexual activity are not equivalent among males and females, independent of sexual orientation. For males, desire for a certain sexual activity appears to be sufficient motivation to pursue this activity, whether it is same-sex sexual contact (among sexual-minority youths) or other-sex sexual contact (among heterosexual youths). For females, social context is critical. Few sexual-minority or heterosexual females pursue sexual contact on the basis of sexual motivation alone. Overall, these results are consistent with theoretical and empirical research cited earlier (Bailey et al., 1994; Peplau et al., 1998), which suggests that gender is a more powerful predictor of sexual behavior than is sexual orientation. The later ages of reaching sexual identity milestones in our sample of youths is likely the result of our recruitment of sexual-minority populations who differ in a number of ways from youths who enter research projects through participation in urban youth support groups. For example, many had not publicly adopted a sexualminority identity, had consciously adopted unconventional sexual identities, and were heterogeneous regarding social class and community size. In contrast, samples in previous studies have typically contained more youths of lower socioeconomic status. Other differences, not generally assessed, could also account for variability within and across samples in the timing of sexual identity milestones, including personality characteristics such as narcissism, comfort level with sexuality, sexual experience, history of peer and family rejection, and gender atypicality. These possibilities should be pursued in future research on sexual-minority development. In terms of time spans, the gap from first same-sex attractions to first disclosure averaged around 10 years for both sexes. This is several years longer than that reported in other studies of sexual-minority youths, primarily because our youths had an earlier age of first awareness and a later age of disclosure. As noted earlier, this discrepancy could be the result of sample characteristics. The delay in disclosing sexual identity until the 18th birthday, 2 years later than youths recruited from urban support groups, could be due to the ease with which youths in our sample could disguise their sexual identity from others; it is our impression that youths who attend urban support groups are more likely to be gender atypical and thus conceivably were “pushed” out of the closet by others. Alternatively, the disclosure lag among the current sample of youths could simply be a consequence of their later age of self-knowledge, higher social class, or greater fears that their careers/educational status would be threatened if they came out.


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Finally, analyses of gender differences in time spans between sexual identity milestones revealed that the only significant difference concerned the shorter gap among females between self-labeling and disclosure, consistent with previous research (D’Augelli and Hershberger, 1993; D’Augelli, 1998). That is, once young sexual-minority women knew that they are not heterosexual they immediately disclosed this information to someone, usually a best female friend. Some young women labeled themselves after or during the act of disclosure—while talking to friends about their attractions to women they concluded that these attractions had meaning for their sexual identity. Again, this reflects the importance of interpersonal relationships in the understanding and acknowledgment of sexuality among sexual-minority women. Sexual Identity Trajectories Consistent with Hypothesis 4, young men were disproportionately likely to pursue same-sex sexual contact well in advance of labeling themselves nonheterosexual. Young women were disproportionately likely to label themselves nonheterosexual before pursuing same-sex sexual contact. These results strongly suggest that no singular sexual identity model is capable of representing the diverse trajectories of male and female sexual identity development. They further imply that differences among youths cannot be explained by gender alone. Whatever gender differences exist in sequencing of sexual identity milestones, they are neither absolute nor interpretable without reference to complex modeling of behavior. As Fig. 1 indicates, female youths in the sex-first trajectory look like male youths with regard to timing and spacing between their sexual identity milestones, and male youths in the label-first trajectory look remarkably like female youths. After controlling for trajectory, the only gender differences that remained were located solely within the label-first group. How might these trajectories be characterized and of what significance are they? The distinguishing characteristic of the sex-first trajectory is early same-sex sexual contact, with the resultant consequence of a significantly smaller gap between first same-sex attractions and first same-sex contact. The factors that might motivate men and women in this group to pursue early same-sex sexual contact are as yet unknown, but might include chance opportunities for same-sex sexual contact, personality characteristics related to novelty-seeking and inhibition, and parental supervision. These same factors might influence heterosexual sexual activity as well, among both heterosexual and sexual-minority youths. These are important areas for future research, particularly for discerning variables that mediate gender differences in early sexual behavior. For example, what are the distinguishing characteristics of females in the sex-first trajectory? What factors launched them onto a developmental trajectory so much more common among males?


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The same might be asked of males in the label-first trajectory. The picture presented by the predominantly female label-first group is one of consolidating milestones during a relatively brief 2-year period beginning just prior to their 17th birthday. Individuals in the predominantly male sex-first group on the other hand, tended to space these events over a longer time period. In fact, it was our impression that many of the young women in the label-first group experienced these transitions as if they were not three separate events but one interconnected transformation, sometimes even beginning and ending within a single 24-h period. Why might this occur? Again, little is known about factors that account for such a pathway, and the ways in which these factors interact with gender to propel more women than men into the label-first trajectory. Perhaps the most fruitful area for future research concerns identification of individual differences that influence youths’ placement into one of these trajectories. All too often, research on sexual orientation has overemphasized differences between sexual minorities and heterosexuals and underemphasized differences within sexual-minority populations. So far, gender and ethnicity have been the only within-group differences to receive systematic study. The current research indicates that such efforts should be expanded if robust models of sexual identity development capable of describing and explaining diversity within and across males and females are to be built.

Limitation of Findings The potential significance of the findings is limited by several characteristics of the methods used. First, the youth participants cannot be assumed to be representative of the general population of sexual-minority adolescents and young adults. They were recruited primarily from university settings and were disproportionately white and highly educated. Previous research has shown that college students differ from youths enlisted from urban and community support groups in age at which they reached a number of developmental milestones (Savin-Williams, 1998). It should be noted, however, that most North American youths are college students and thus the study’s participants might be more representative of sexualminority youths than the noncollege youths who attend community support groups. Second, only one methodology was used—interviews—and the findings must be considered in light of limitations inherent in this approach (e.g., interviewer bias, reduction of anonymity, inhibition of shy participants, gender bias in autobiographical memory recall). Third, even though most data on developmental milestones were collected within a few years of their occurrence, the possibility of retrospective memory bias on recalled developmental milestones cannot be ruled out. Furthermore, youths’ memories might be affected by the highly emotional nature of the issues being assessed. Every attempt was made to counter these biases by rooting all memories in concrete events.


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Conclusion Prior studies of sexual identity development have been essential in furthering an understanding of the processes by which sexual-minority children and adolescents come to an understanding of their sexuality. Yet it is now glaringly apparent that research focusing on group averages of developmental milestones is limited. Such research conveys little about the inherent diversity within populations of sexual-minority youths or how female and male adolescents experience their sexuality in similar and dissimilar ways. The current study represents a first step toward differentiating patterns in the timing, spacing, and sequencing of sexual identity milestones that might reveal critical factors shaping female and male sexual identity development. Results from the present study suggest two general conclusions. First, gender matters. The development of young sexual-minority women cannot be extrapolated from findings of gay male youths. To make sense of these differences, researchers should reference well-documented gender distinctions among heterosexuals. Sexual-minority youths are more similar to heterosexual peers of the same sex than to sexual-minority peers of the other sex. Second, gender is not everything. Just as some male youths follow “female-typical” trajectories (self-labeling far in advance of same-sex sexual contact), some female youths follow “male-typical” trajectories (the reverse pattern). The most productive way to proceed is to systematically explore factors influencing the onset, context, spacing, and sequencing of developmental milestones within and across males and females. In addition to ethnicity, class, and cohort, research should consider individual differences at the level of personality, early experience, and family relations. To explore these possibilities, researchers must pursue recruitment strategies that include as diverse a range of sexual-minority youths as possible. REFERENCES Bailey, J. M., Gaulin, S., Agyei, Y., and Gladue, B. A. (1994). Effects of gender and sexual orientation on evolutionarily relevant aspects of human mating psychology. J. Pers. Soc. Psych. 66: 1081–1093. Cohen, K. M., and Savin-Williams, R. C. (1996). Developmental perspectives on coming out to self and others. In Savin-Williams, R. C., and Cohen, K. M. (Eds.), The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals: Children to Adults, Harcourt Brace College Publishing, Fort Worth, TX, pp. 113–151. D’Augelli, A. R. (1998). Victimization history and mental health among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths. Paper presented at the meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, San Diego, CA. D’Augelli, A. R., and Hershberger, S. L. (1993). Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth in community settings: Personal challenges and mental health problems. Am. J. Comm. Psych. 21: 421–448. Diamond, L. M. (1998). Development of sexual orientation among adolescent and young adult women. Dev. Psych. 34: 1085–1095. Diamond, L. M. (2000). Sexual identity, attractions, and behavior among young sexual-minority women over a two-year period. Dev. Psych. 36: 241–250.


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Dubé, E. M. (2000). Sexual identity and intimacy development among two cohorts of sexual minority men. J. Sex Res. Dubé, E. M., and Savin-Williams, R. C. (1999). Sexual identity development among ethnic sexualminority male youths. Dev. Psych. 35: 1389–1399. Eliason, M. J. (1996a). An inclusive model of lesbian identity assumption. J. Gay, Lesbian, and Bisex. Identity 1: 3–19. Eliason, M. J. (1996b). Identity formation for lesbian, bisexual, and gay persons: Beyond a “minoritizing” view. J. Homosexual. 30: 31–58. Golden, C. (1996). What’s in a name? Sexual self-identification among women. In Savin-Williams, R. C., and Cohen, K. M. (Eds.), The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals: Children to Adults, Harcourt Brace College Publishing, Fort Worth, TX, pp. 229–249. Herdt, G., and Boxer, A. M. (1993). Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet, Beacon Press, Boston. Kirkpatrick, M., and Morgan, C. (1980). Psychodynamic psychotherapy of female homosexuality. In Marmor, J. (Ed.), Homosexual Behavior: A Modern Reappraisal, Basic Books, New York, pp. 357–375. McClintock, M. K., and Herdt, G. (1996). Rethinking puberty: The development of sexual attraction. Curr. Direc. Psychol. Sci. 5: 178–183. McConnell, J. H. (1994). Lesbian and gay male identities as paradigms. In Archer, S. L. (Ed.), Interventions for Adolescent Identity Development, Sage, Thousand Oaks, pp. 103–118. Morris, J. F. (1997). Lesbian coming out as a multidimensional process. J. Homosexual. 33: 1–22. Peplau, L. A., Garnets, L. D., Spalding, L. R., Conley, T. D., and Veniegas, R. C. (1998). A critique of Bem’s “Exotic Becomes Erotic” theory of sexual orientation. Psychol. Rev., 105: 387–394. Rosario, M., Rotheram-Borus, M. J., and Reid, H. (1996). Gay-related stress and its correlates among gay and bisexual male adolescents of predominantly Black and Hispanic background. J. Community Psych. 24: 136–159. Rust, P. C. (1995). Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution, New York University Press, New York. Saghir, M. T., and Robins, E. (1980). Clinical aspects of female homosexuality. In Marmor, J. (Ed.), Homosexual Behavior: A Modern Reappraisal, Basic Books, New York, pp. 280–295. Savin-Williams, R. C. (1998). “. . . And Then I Became Gay”: Young Men’s Stories, Routledge, New York. Udry, J. R. (1990). Hormonal and social determinants of adolescent sexual initiation. In Bancroft, J., and Reinisch, J. M. (Eds.), Adolescence and Puberty, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 70–87. Udry, J. R., and Billy, J. O. G. (1987). Initiation of coitus in early adolescence. Am. Sociol. Rev. 52: 841–855. Udry, J. R., Billy, J. O. G., Morris, N. M., Groff, T. R., and Raj, M. H. (1985). Serum androgenic hormones motivate sexual behavior in adolescent boys. Fertility and Sterility, 43: 90–94. Udry, J. R., Talbert, L. M., and Morris, N. M. (1986). Biosocial foundations for adolescent female sexuality. Demography, 23: 217–230.

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