Developing a sense of sexual orientation

• What is sexual orientation?

  The definition of sexual orientation is highly debated!

  • ‘Original’ definition: the relative attraction to males or females (based on sex assigned at birth)
  • Changes to this definition:
  • Attraction based on gender (not sex)?
  • Attraction based on gender and sex?
• Categorising sexual orientation

  Originally thought to be 3 distinct categories:

  • Heterosexual
  • Homosexual
  • Bisexual Now there are many other labels/categories, including:
  • Pansexual
  • Asexual
  • Queer
  • Is it better represented as a continuum?
  • Evidence is mixed
  • Like gender, there is a social component related to personal identity
• What makes something a sexual orientation?

  Early onset/development

  • Pre-puberty

  Negative consequences from repression

  Inability to be changed by others

  • This is why ‘conversion therapy’ is dangerous and does not work

  Relative stability over time

  • May be some small fluctuations but the amount of fluidity is debated
• Subjective vs objective sexual orientation

  Subjective sexual orientation identity label = This is the label you assign to yourself and is thought to be the ‘social construct’ part of sexual orientation

  Objective sexual attraction patterns = Measured by physiological response and genital arousal patterns to certain stimuli

  • Is this actually measuring sexual orientation?
• Prevalence of Non-heterosexuality

  Usually thought to be around 5-10%

  • This rate is not thought to differ across time and place
  • Difficult to determine rates of individual groups (e.g., bisexual vs gay/lesbian vs asexual) or to separate subjective vs objective components
  • Office of national statistics in 2018 found: 94.6% of UK adults were heterosexual, 1.4% were gay or lesbian, and 0.9% were bisexual
• Sex differences in sexual orientation

  • Women more likely to report bisexual attraction patterns
  • Men more likely to report homosexual attractions
  • Gender-queer individuals are more likely to report non-heterosexual attraction patterns
  • Physiological sexual arousal follows sexual orientation patterns for men but not for women
• Development of sexual orientation

  Bio-psycho-social?

  • Little evidence for influence of social factors on sexual orientation
  • Original theories associated non-heterosexuality with poor learning, parenting, or socialisation
• Development of sexual orientation

  • Considerable sex differences in development of sexual orientation
  • Most of what we know points to common causal factors for males, but not females
  • Like with gender, most of our understanding comes from studying the (ab)normal
  • Our ‘best guess’ is that sexual orientation is defined by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental (usually in-utero) factors
• Psychological and neuro-developmental factors

  • Childhood gender nonconformity is linked with nonheterosexuality in adulthood
  • Links with autism spectrum disorder and possibly other neurodivergence
  • Non-heterosexual people also tend to show more diverse sexual interests
  • Little to no relationship with trauma or parenting
  • Conversely, some studies have found that abuse and neglect is due to parents perceiving their child as being LGBT+ or gender nonconforming (i.e., the causal relationship is the other way around)
• Biological and genetic factors (1)

  • Moderate heritability rate for homosexuality, weaker evidence for bisexuality
  • Androgen (hormone) exposure to fetus in utero is results in sex differentiation (e.g., telling the body to produce sex organs) – disruption to this can cause differences in gender expression and sexual orientation
  • Can be related to disorders of sex development
• Biological and genetic factors (2)

  • Greater incidence of left-handedness seen in non-heterosexual males
  • Fraternal birth order effect also predicts non-heterosexuality in males
  • The more older brothers a male has, the more likely he is to be gay
  • It is unclear why these cannot be replicated for females
  • The lack of consistent findings for females about biological/genetic factors and the non-specificity of genital arousal has led some researchers to conclude that women do not have a sexual orientation
• How are sexual orientation and gender identity related?

  Most proposed causal links are the same:

  • Fraternal birth order
  • Androgen exposure in utero (see: androgen insensitivity syndrome)
  • Heritability
  • Gender nonconformity
  • ASD (?)
  • These links are stronger in males than females
• How are sexual orientation and gender identity related?

  • Both non-heterosexuality and gender nonconformity/transgender identity are related to increased paraphilic interests and non-monogamous relationship orientations
  • Many more children who show gender nonconformity pre-puberty will go one to identify as nonheterosexual, but cisgender
  • Usually, puberty is a marker for whether gender dysphoria will continue on into adulthood
• What about other genders and sexual orientations? (1)

  • Generally research is divided into three categories:
  • Sexual orientation: Heterosexual, Gay/lesbian, ‘everything else’
  • Asexuality is more recently being investigated separately
  • Gender: Cisgender, transgender binary, transgender nonbinary
  • Are categories or continuums better?
• What about other genders and sexual orientations? (2)

  • Differences in gender ‘milestones’ between trans men, women, and nonbinary people (Tatum et al., 2020)
  • Nonbinary people report lower levels of ‘gender determinism’ (Nova et al., 2019)
  • Transgender binary people have reported increased discrimination compared to transgender nonbinary people (Poquiz et al., 2022)
  • Need more nuanced analysis of outcomes and developmental factors