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Women’s Sexual Responses to Heterosexual and Lesbian Erotica: The Role of Stimulus Intensity, Affective Reaction, and Sexual History

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Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that women do not show a “category-specific” genital response to erotic stimuli. That is, on average, heterosexual and lesbian women are indistinguishable in terms of their physiological genital responses to heterosexual versus lesbian erotica. In two studies with heterosexual women (n = 28 for Study 1; n = 30 for Study 2) and lesbians (n = 24 for Study 1; n = 25 for Study 2), results confirmed that, on average, women did not show category-specific genital responses or category-specific subjective sexual arousal. However, there was evidence of notable within-group variability; many women did respond to the stimuli in a category-specific manner. Heterosexual women were more likely than lesbian women to demonstrate category-specificity. Findings also revealed that category-specificity was associated with multiple factors, including affective responses to the erotic stimuli and sexual history. Results of this study highlight the complexity of women’s sexual identities and sexual responses.

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Notes

  1. In the Chivers et al. (2004) study, the majority of women demonstrated category specificity. Based on a simple binomial test, the proportion of women who did demonstrate category specificity was not significantly greater than proportion who did not demonstrate category specificity, although there was clearly a trend in that direction (p = .07).

  2. The erotic stimuli used in these studies are available upon request from the corresponding author.

  3. Further information about the standardization of VPA is available upon request from the corresponding author.

  4. Ratings of activity during adolescence were excluded from the analyses because this value was constant among the heterosexual women (i.e., all heterosexual women reported “exclusively heterosexual” activity during adolescence).

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Acknowledgments

The completion of this article was funded, in part, by a postdoctoral fellowship from The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction awarded to the first author. The authors wish to thank Juliette Sonderman for collecting the data for the first study, and Michèle Donders and Barbara Nanninga for collecting the data for the second study. Portions of the data from Study 1 were presented at the 1995 meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Provincetown, MA, and portions of the data from Study 2 were presented at the 1996 meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Institute for Women and Gender Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 325 Stadler Hall, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63121, USA

    Zoë D. Peterson

  2. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Erick Janssen

  3. Department of Sexology and Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Ellen Laan

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  1. Zoë D. Peterson
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  2. Erick Janssen
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  3. Ellen Laan
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Correspondence to Zoë D. Peterson.

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Peterson, Z.D., Janssen, E. & Laan, E. Women’s Sexual Responses to Heterosexual and Lesbian Erotica: The Role of Stimulus Intensity, Affective Reaction, and Sexual History. Arch Sex Behav 39, 880–897 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9546-y

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