Erotic plasticity
How fluid is our sense of the erotic? Like neurological plasticity, probably a lot more fluid than we think. Per Jesse Bering, in Perv:
Whether it involves livestock or people, this sexual-imprinting process (in which a highly circumscribed set of erotic targets is stamped early into the individual’s brain) appears to be a decidedly male characteristic. By contrast, the female sheep and goats that were able to “go both ways” after their intensive cross-rearing experiences, equally aroused by both their own biological kind and members of their adoptive species, were exhibiting “erotic plasticity” (in which one can be sexually excited by a wide range of stimuli). Interestingly enough, erotic plasticity is also strikingly more apparent in human females than it is in human males. Another way to say this is that a girl’s developing sexuality is more fluid or labile (and for once that’s not a pun) than a boy’s; it’s less prone to getting locked onto a specific category of erotic target during childhood.
In fact, women in general are far more likely than men to report being bisexual. Tellingly, they’re also more likely to change their self-identification as straight or gay during their adult lives. Furthermore, lesbians are more likely than gay men to say that their sexual orientation is a “choice,” a term that really only makes sense, of course, if the individual is in fact bisexual and decides to commit to one label or another. (Incidentally, if an antigay bigot genuinely believes homosexuality is an intentional choice or a “lifestyle,” then it stands to reason that person’s frequent use of such words could very well be a linguistic reflection of his or her own bisexual desires.)
It’s so impossible to get real stats due to the decades/centuries of repression, plus the abysmal state of legit neurological studies on the phenomenon, gendered or no. But it makes me curious how much is biological or cultural, and if we can ever separate the two.