An odd piece, which has some discontinuities in thought and phrases which were jarring, some false dichotomies, and an entirely male-orientated view of sex in part and in the whole. For context, I'm a gay man who's been extremely active sexually for 5 decades worldwide (alive due to the quirk of being homozygous for the CCR5 Delta-32 gene rendering me immune to HIV), and been legally married to a man for a quarter century. I'm reasonably well-read in sex research from Kinsey to "The Mess Commission Report" and knowing a variety of personalities in the area going back to the days of Reimer and that problem, as well as Trans and an enormous variety of (gay) paraphiliacs. I also have a large collection of (written) pornography spanning seven decades, and made it somewhat of an amateur study.
Let me share my editorial view.
1) "gender-critical" As always, a working definition of gender is useful since it's utterly ambiguous.
2) "Unlike partnered sex, masturbation reflects only the masturbator’s motivation." - I'm afraid in the partnered sex I've had, motivation was critical too, and for most people I know. I'd rate this false.
3) "An important cause of this sex difference is the level of circulating testosterone, which is considerably higher in men than women, on average. Castration of sex offenders is highly, if imperfectly, effective in preventing recidivism." - I don't understand how these two sentences logically follow each other - from circulating testosterone to sex offender recidivism? Can you define circulating testosterone, why the word is important? Is it relevant to understand free/bound testosterone, or heavy-chain vs light-chain derivatives?
4) "However, for men with normal levels of testosterone, increasing these levels does not boost their sex drive; the picture is similar for women." - this is utterly false. It's famous (notorious) in bodybuilder communities that supraphysiologic levels of testosterone from steroids which raise testosterone markedly makes men, and women, almost maniacally aggressive sexually. "Super Horny".
5) "Men are more interested than women [...] men like and use pornography more often than women [...]" I find the statement misleading. There are at least two principal varieties of pornography - written, and visual. In my experience with people and pornography, men prefer visual, women prefer written. Men tend to be object-oriented, perhaps women are more verbal. Men are fairly uninterested in the written pornography women enjoy, and vice-versa. Women are as interested in written pornography as men are in visual, in my experience, though men do enjoy explicit written pornography.
The entire industry of Erotic Novels, with the sub-genre of Romance Novels with erotic content is slanted very heavily to exclusive consumption by women. Since "50 Shades of Gray" is a pornographic novel for women by a woman writer, which is in the top-10 books ever sold now. I'd rate the statement here false. The rest of discussion of pornography is entirely male-focused visual pornography, and little discussion of the difference of written pornography vis-a-vis women. It's a highly-constrained view which will automatically find "differences".
6) "When I was a teenager in the early 1970s, there was no Internet and the only visual pornography available was pictures in magazines." - for men. The entire pulp fiction industry existed to create written pornography for both men and women for decades; the Romance Novel industry exists almost exclusively for women.
7) "... much larger erections"... you mention later "photoplethysmograph" for women, but not the ordinary penile plethysmograph for men. I don't think it measures size of erections (larger) so much as it measures volume. However, there's an essential problem in that the plethysmograph on a penis can induce erections in and of itself due to the pleasurable tension it creates - indeed, a volumetric plethysmograph is identical to sleeves commonly available in sex shops, along with an astonishing variety of cuffs - cockrings - also available. There's an entire paraphiliac genre related to use of the equivalent of volumetric plethysmographs in sex in clinical and non-clinical situations. More on this later.
8) "... when viewing videos featuring only attractive women compared to videos featuring only attractive men. In these studies, videos that include both sexes are less informative because it’s unclear whether the arousal is triggered by the woman or the man." - I find the idea problematic, since the arousal need not be triggered by the woman or the man, but by both, in combination. It's a logic problem of false dichotomy. Then what follows - "men who say they’re homosexual show the opposite pattern–a tendency to get far larger erections in response to videos featuring attractive men rather than those featuring attractive women..." seems tautological.
9) "The second reason is that some men's arousal patterns do not align with their reported sexual identities." - perhaps trivial, but I'd say "reported sexual orientation", an identity is a permanent fact of existence. One observes the identity (male/female being permanent facts), one reports a subjective orientation.
10) "If a man identifies as heterosexual, has only had sex with his wife, yet gets much stronger erections to men than to women, he has a homosexual orientation." - Another false dichotomy, since bisexuality is a fact of existence. I could conjecture many plausible reasons besides homosexuality for the response.
11) "Measuring female genital arousal is considerably more indirect and complicated compared to that of males. An instrument called a vaginal photoplethysmograph, which is contained in an acrylic tube the size and shape of a tampon, is used for this purpose. Women insert it into their vaginas prior to watching our videos." - I don't know, but to me inserting a tube in a vagina isn't quite what I would call indirect, perhaps "invasive" is a better term. I'm curious why the tube is acrylic, and we get such a detail description, whereas we don't get the description at all in any way of the penile plethysmograph, which frankly is ar more complex. As opposed to colorimetry, it must have a strain gauge and volumetric sensing.
The problem here is comparing physiological responses between men and women - arousal patterns, where the physical measurement is utterly different - blood flow vs penile volume, penetrative vs compressive. I know these are the standards used, but when we measure blood pressure or body temperature, we perform measurements almost exactly the same way among all people to create a baseline from which we can use to interpret changes.
Comparing response to an invasive probe versus a pleasurable cuff seems to undermine any logical measurement comparisons between the sexes, and frankly could account for the entirely of the differences. I cannot be alone in this conjecture.
12) "Neither homosexual nor heterosexual women feel sexually aroused by watching male couples have sex—indeed, even heterosexual women tend to dislike this." - I find this statement problematic since I know a number of heterosexual women, and to my surprise lesbians, who enjoyed seeing gay men have sex, an identical correlative of heterosexual men enjoying visuals of lesbian sex. The market was so large for heterosexual women viewing men having sex (solo, or sometimes with a partner) that there were categories developed by male pornography film houses to cater to the market for women - "Colt Buckshot: Minute Men". But, women enjoy written pornography more than men, perhaps more than men enjoy visual pornography.
13) "Large recent shifts in LGBTQ identification have been more pronounced among girls and women than among boys and men, although these shifts have not been accompanied by equivalently large changes in sexual behavior." - I identify as Gay, not LGBTQ; claiming LGBTQ orientation, I've found in the last 20 years, is negatively correlated with gay or lesbian sex. Indeed, most men who claim TQ & nonbinary - are ordinary heterosexual men. Visible lesbianism has become so challenging for Lesbians, I cannot imagine them doing anything except running from LGBTQ, which I'm sure is part of the AGP you will speak about.
14) "Men generally have stronger sex drives compared to women and show more interest in casual sex and visual pornography." - the first time pornography was mentioned as visual.
15) "This difference likely contributes to greater sexual flexibility (or fluidity) in women than in men [...]men to develop paraphilias–intense sexual attractions to specific types of people, objects, or fantasies." - I'm not sure where sexual fluidity was outlined in prior paragraphs, this is someone new idea jumping out, like the men who were recidivistic sex criminals.
I don't find the case was strongly made for different sexual responses except for male-oriented visual pornography as measured by incommensurate scales and metrics between men and women.
You might consider that visual pornography itself is a paraphilia, and all you're measuring is the differential response to a paraphilia which is unusual to share between men and women, not some underlying sexual response. The same goes for written pornography, which is consumed at dramatically higher levels by women. As a friend of mine said, the difference between porn and erotica is time, porn is fast, erotica is slow, but they cover the same territory.
I'm happy to read this extensive critique, as I've felt isolated in my criticisms to Bailey's previous articles. My guess is he's trying to work up to defending the AGP/Trans diagnosis, which he and his colleagues, have been involved in for decades. As a trans widow, (ex wife of a man who claims to be a woman, also now claims to be 'mother' of our children) I appreciate your distinction between LGB and TQ. When I found my then husband's crossdressing diaries (in 1992, when our sons were 1 and 4) he wrote of desiring the male gaze. I believe he's actually either bi or gay, despite the fact that he married a woman a few years after having all the surgeries. I heard through the grapevine that he dated a couple of men, but they weren't interested in a long term thing with him. I'd say based on his penis size that his so-called "neo-vagina" would not have accommodated most men. He never seemed happy in these subsequent 3 decades, by the way. Keep on with these responses to the author of The Man Who Would be Queen.
I’ve read you often, and think you really have the bull by the horns, so to speak.
Personally, I had a very difficult time as a child believing heterosexuality existed, and over decades read extensively in porn to try to understand how it worked as a system of sex, what attractions were, the why of it. I understand how it works but not the feeling now, and while I can describe it, but it’s theoretical. Along the way I came across utterly amazing things which excited people sexually, which were as foreign to me as men’s attraction to women.
People are utterly unable to conceptualise what you have gone through, what must have been going on in your former husband’s consciousness, to realize you lived with someone who had a deep visceral hatred of women. After dozens of stories of men who hate women (and the hundreds I ignored) and in their hatred the sexualisation of annihilation of women by displacing and abusing them through being an ersatz female, and the extirpation of the concept of woman. I have few illusions about what’s in play right now.
You know from a gut level. I see it theoretically.
The illness pulls in a staggering range of fantasies involving mutilating and feminizing male children, (almost always boyd) through forced chemistry, castration, emasculation, clothing, language, association, prostitution, imprisonment, humiliation, and even further, and often to make the mother or a female (often Lesbian) center of the actuation of the fantasy.
I don’t know why it happens and can’t conjecture - it arises often so late in life, as testosterone wanes, and becomes quite malevolent, and recruits others to support it. That’s what delusions do, how they operate and how they bring the world down around them.
[It is telling that the entire management structure of WPATH are men, little remarked upon.]
Trans is just one of a range of fascinating and repellant sexual fantasies people write about when they are truly anonymous.
The title of Bailey’s book was quite unfortunate, trivializing and flippant.
I have personal insight to part of the delusion; when I was a child around 4 or 5, I knew I got excited by men (I now know my hypothalamus activated when I breathed in androstenedione). However, I understood that men only liked women and women only liked men, so I must be female. When I first heard of transsexualism, logically then I would simply have surgery and be female so I wouldn’t be alone and could get married. When puberty started, all those thoughts evaporated, and the first time I saw men affectionate with men, all my worries subsided.
The book I will write someday is “The Boy Who Wasn’t a Girl” - Bailey would have done better to have called the book simply “The Man Who Replaced Women”.
Well, thanks! This comment thread is much more informative than the article we're responding to. Upon reflection, I find the devices Bailey, et al, have designed and implemented to "learn" human sexual response are quite reductive, actually deceptive. But then, he's a "sexologist," who had a female student of his agree to a dildo contraption and a public display, for his Northwestern University students of a male student applying the device to the female. Buck Angel doing the same public display with an electric rocking horse device on the Howard Stern show was essentially the same. What Bailey misses entirely here is the fact that women respond to her partner's glances, double entendres and other suggestive, seemingly subtle behaviors of her male partner, all day long, leading to a satisfying romp in bed in the evening. I personally never read romance novels or sex literature designed for women, but rather, especially after my divorce, read scientific articles on the female response, to work on my next phase of life. A year before I found my then husband's 3 crossdressing diaries, I had almost-fatal pneumonia. Our sons were 6 months and 3 years old. He didn't take care of me well, and he probably got the fantasy that I might indeed die and then he could take my place. But then, why should we trust the psychologists? In the 1970s and 1980s, they were raising chimpanzees in their own homes and teaching them sign language, believing that the rare one who acquired seemingly complex language proved something or other. I do hope Bailey is reading all of this. He never responds, btw. I'd so much rather be telling about my butterfly gardening.
When the sole referent for “human” sexual response is male masturbatory orgasm, you have a problem. It’s stated so assertively - the term for it is scientistm - that it seems inarguable. I was trained as a scientist and enjoy language as art, and when the two intersect in such writing humorously lacking in self-awareness, I try to suppress snark.
You saw another thing I did. There was a “tell” in the “scientific” yet irrelevant detail, describing the photoplethysmograph so specifically, in such minutiae - an “acrylic” tube (as though that was logically significant - there are many, many transparent plastics: polycarbonate, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, PET, PMP, TPU, PEI … ). Were I to edit the piece, “vaginal optical sensor” would be sufficient. Indeed, there is something else going on in the article besides dispassion.
Good for us! Continue commenting! We will out-word Bailey! So, also, women have this "afterglow" period when loving amorousness has occurred. Do men have that? I imagine that there's a biological function. So that a female stays reclining and fertilization can happen. We all exist due to some version of this~
When he lies on his side, head sitting somewhere between my right shoulder and chest, my arm wrapped around his torso and my hand lightly touching everything in reach, and we talk about absolutely nothing for hours, that probably counts as glow?
Other factors that are often not taken into account when discussing and comparing male and female sexual arousal patterns and behaviour:
- Women and girls are much more likely to have been sexually abused/assaulted than men, and this experience can have a dramatic impact on sexual arousal/behaviour.
- Women are at a much higher risk of sexual assault of engaging in casual sex, which surely affects its appeal and/or practicality in engaging in it.
- Women are more likely than men to be concerned with an unplanned pregnancy, and are also more susceptible to STIs due to nearly always being the penetrated sex partner.
- The woman is nearly always the one who’s responsible for and carries the emotional load in pregnancy and STI protection, which again makes casual sex less appealing.
I absolutely agree that visual pornography itself could be considered a paraphilia itself, which would mean men are going to be more aroused than women in watching it. As the above poster points out, there’s an assumption that visual porn is equally effective as a source of sexual arousal for both men and women. I also agree that erotica has always been the preferred medium of choice for the majority of women- and it’s incredibly common/popular!! (As pointed out; ‘50 shades of grey’ for goodness sake- bloody obvious.) Plus I think there’s a case for arguing that erotica works better for women’s slower build of arousal pattern than visual porn does.
I must also point out that all visual porn is not equal!! The male gaze is hugely centred in traditional heterosexual porn- and remember Ron Jeremy?! (need I say more?!?) And with nearly always very obviously fake female arousal!! Yuck- I can’t think of anything more of a turn-off, personally 🤮
Not often remarked, but I have a bizarre visual memory, is that the actor John Vernon (Topaz, Animal House), Ron Jeremy, and J D Vance have the same eyes when at the same age, as though heavily mascarad or sporting eyeliner.
Excellent post! I see that I repeated some of your ideas prior to reading it. It's funny that you mentioned Fifty Shades! The movie was a disappointment for several reasons, but mostly because when reading a book we are free to imagine the details as we want them to be, whereas on video the details are defined by the creator.
I share your sentiment exactly. I fall between masculine and feminine interest - visual is interesting sometimes, words are interesting other times.
I’ve been experimenting with AI genre novel writing for a few years, and have had a lot of difficulty with Romance Novels, in believing that the output was genuinely interesting or erotic. Gay male fiction I have 65,000 novels - it’s easy. However, I had to read a lot of Romance novels to understand the construction and believe my AI toolkit produced acceptable output.
Women and men are very different in what they find erotic in writing, I’ve adjusted.
All interesting comments but does not really say much about the original article. The original article is a study. It does not imply that it is perfect. It was constructed in ways to minimize complexity of interpretation. Its one data point.
You can certainly point out issues in the study. Always easy to poke holes. Gay people tend to excel at that! That would be another good study.
Less easy to propose a study that would align with the "holes" you identify. Instead of being critical, start off with "Interesting piece, I have questions on many of the points. Would be great if we could design a follow-up study to get more information".
I praise writing I think is good, and critique writing which I find factually inaccurate, strangely written, or lacking in reason.
Using a sole perspective of male orgasm via masturbation as the referent for sexual response is naive - we should also advance beyond the crude instruments Kinsey used studying sexual response a century ago. The Hite Report is quite illuminating on the subject.
Not measuring sexual response the same way is a significant error of reason, a false analogy. It’s entirely possible men and women are incommensurable in the metric.
I do agree we get off-topic but that’s the tantalizing danger of a public forum.
Your views of the problems of the study are rationale. But you couldn't make those views without someone engaging in starting to do studies. You would prefer no data to some data.
Your write is not good because you tinge it with a tone of arrogance. Its caustic, not informative.
I’m not a sex researcher, and it’s not my profession to design experiments in this domain. I can read standard written English and my curiosity leads me to many quaint and curious volume of old and forgotten lore sometimes, as well as modern research.
It has been entirely possible to measure response to sex steroids in the hypothalamus of lesbians, straight women, bisexual women, straight men, bisexual men and gay men, and see grouped and differential signals in the six populations. Remarkably, signal strength was similar in magnitude for women, gay men, and to a degree bisexual men and women, as well as straight men, lesbians, and bisexual women and men. The studies were replicable. This is in direct contradiction to the evidence presented in the article with a significant difference. An error of omission, perhaps.
Likewise, the sex steroid response of self-claimed trans males and females was identical to those of same-sexed individuals with the same sex orientation, somewhat refuting the concept of “trans brain”. In the domain of trans - where this is leading - this is significant to any hypothesis which claims men and women - trans males and women - have differential sexual responses.
These are not new findings, a decade old, and are measurements of identical brain structures in men and women subject to identical tests. These are tests which are credible, and measure things in the body which work the same way between the two sexes.
These are the ones I come across. An ordinary survey will probably come up with dozens. Yet we read a description of a study method using a technique for measuring homosexuality and recidivist pedohebephilia, so inaccurate it’s a not admissible in court, variously a 100 of 80 years old, is the foundation for claims of differential sex response in men and women. Just look up the reasonably accurate Wikipedia page on penile plethysmography (god I hate typing that word on my iPhone) not mentioned in specifics in the article, for some strange reason.
I am arrogant, in the sense that I often lack humility in writing, but I feel no need to undertake performative humility in matters around trans delusions. It is counterproductive in discussing a topic with boundless malevolence, particularly towards women and gay men.
I’m also - you left out - crass, salacious, often lewd, sometimes funny, lusty, and crude, self-aggrandizing, sarcastic and unapologetic, yet rational and amenable to changing my opinion when it makes sense. I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a quiet, meek, neutral observer. There are absolutely plenty of those. I embrace sex, drugs, rock and roll in the best, non-lethal and least malevolent sense.
The author suggests that women may be more GC than men because they lack insight into male sexuality. That may be true for some (an open empirical question). As a male heterosexual involved in a British GC group I have also noted though that like me many are scientific realists which is a key motivation for attacking trans activists claims. More important though for women whatever their sexuality are the consequences of TRA expectations ie the oppressive invasion of their intimate spaces. This is not about science but the impact of patriarchy. The trans movement by and large is a men’s movement and that is why second wave feminists are up in arms (I would be had I been born female).
This is fascinating in that it details in studies what is easily observable in general human behavior and trends.
I think the non-cisgender and non-heterosexual readers will not like this for some reasons. They will attempt to argue away the science for reasons that I cannot understand other than their silly expectation that their different sexual orientation or different gender orientation can be made the new normal... and those with standard biological gender and sex functions can be somehow made to be the abnormal.
As a lesbian woman the conclusions in this article were entirely consistent with my experiences of sexual fantasy (i.e. stimulus) and response and actually offered me some reasurance that the unsolicited presence of males in some of my self-gratifications were not so shameful.
And in that spirit (trigger warning!) I pondered the reactionary and politically unsettling concept that women's sexual "payout" may not actually be the orgasm but the baby!
Doesn't this idea align better with female mammalian reproductive strategy and explains the humongous difference in sex-drives between men and women, especially after a few childbirths?
What female actually needs a sex-drive when, as sexual selectors, we are built to be pursued... which explains the difficulty in finding dates at many lesbian socials. (Oh, I'm in for it now🤦♀️).
This may arouse the censure of uber-orthodox 'feminists' who resist anything that doesn't wave their flag properly, but considering their screaming silence in the face of erasure by Genderist Religion I no longer care.
fetishes arent a sexuality. they can come and go like the wind and have more in common with drugs or alcohol than whether or not someone is attracted to the same or opposite sex.
as the cocaine user obtains an endorphin high from their choice to engage in drug use, fetishists derive a endorphin high from engagement with their fetish. but no one would claim that doing cocaine isnt a choice. yet, this is what bailey wants you to believe about fetishes. instead of trying to quit unhealthy behaviors that ruin peoples lives, bailey wants us to lean into them, tell wives their husbands cant control themselves, tell the legal system to allow activities that relate to harmful hobbies, if that hobby happens to be a fetish.
bailey earns his living, apparently, from speaking to sex addicts. these addicts complain to him that its unfair theyre being singled out because of their hobby.
but theyre not being singled out because of their hobby/fetish.
they are being singled out because they failed to control their engagement with their fetish, and this led to some negative outcome.
Bailey agrees people shouldnt smoke in restaurants. but he doesnt agree that men should suffer any consequences for choosing to engage in fetishes, even if this engagement causes negative outcomes to the addict and also the community. to bailey, when men become aroused, its like a holy thing. and he doesnt think women or anyone else should be able to tell a man not to engage in this hobby. in an effort to further his strongly held view on this, bailey has spent more than a year creating research he claims proves men have no control over their hobbies, if those hobbies are also fetishes.
this research is likely based on the responses of people with fetishes, such as agp or map fetish.
but like the 1000s of phony studies used by gender activists we now know dont meet the medical definition of "evidence" (BMJ report Gender dysphoria in young people is rising), baileys "study" is likely to be heavily influenced by his own opinions and claims of heavily invested participants.
why would an agp or map person meet bailey in the first place? its most likely because their choice to engage in their fetish has caused them to experience dissatisfaction or negativity in their lives.
baileys participants likely experienced
- ruined or threatened marriage
- interaction with the legal system as a result of their choice to commit a sex crime
- psych issues such as depression or lack of control that result from an inability to refrain from porn based addiction.
this is what occurs when one is unable to control their sexual addiction.
most who engage in fetishes suffer no negative impact to their lives. to most, engagement with a fetish is harmless and entertaining. this is similar to when one drinks alcohol in moderation and doesnt engage in any unsafe or irresponsible behavior. but for those who are unable to control their engagement with their fetish, fetish engagement becomes more frequent, chasing greater highs via ever more exciting and extreme fetish material when the usual endorphin rush becomes unfulfilling. this is typical of the addiction cycle with highs and lows and engaging in activities that create ever increasing endorphins. most often this is just part of a normal sex addiction, a very common thing that very few like to talk about.
to prove compulsive fetishistic behavior is part of an addiction, simply look at the definition of an addiction. walks like a duck. looks like a duck. quacks like a duck. its a duck.
but bailey ignores the obvious. hes like the aliens in the Twilight zone episode Hocus-Pocus and Frisby. In it, rural gas station/store proprietor Somerset Frisby, who's given to telling tall tales about himself, is abducted by visiting aliens who mistakenly believe him to be one of Earth's leading intellectuals.
Bailey is the aliens.
The fetishists are Somerset Frisby.
Mr. Bailey, the fetishists are lying to you.
And why are they? to avoid responsibility for their addiction related choices that have
- threatened their marriage
- threatened their job
- incurred legal entanglement
- resulted in psych issues from an inability to retrain from their sexual addiction that also pertains to fetishes
Bailey will respond: but wait! i know their not lying. i can prove they become aroused when exposed to their fetish!
so what? guess what happens when their not exposed to their fetish? over time the desire to engage in their fetish lessens. its a choice to engage in alcohol, cigarettes or fetishes. when these actions are discontinued, the desire to engage them lessens.
the arousal people get when they experience their fetish isnt evidence that agp or map are immutable. they are evidence that the sexual response has a memory. they are evidence of compulsive thoughts. they are evidence that people with psych issues are prone to engage in thoughts that are self defeating, risk taking, or porn related.
thats different than gay or straight sexuality. gay or straight sexuality doesnt change. thats why they are protected characteristics. mens rights activists such as Bailey feel left out of the legal system that protects vulnerable groups with immutable characteristics, such as ethnic background, age, sex or sexuality.
dudes like Bailey are trying to get their favorite hobby into this club of vulnerable people who have been recognized in law as being vulnerable. Bailey wants men whose hobbies include are fetishes to also be protected in law, based on their hobby/fetish.
when ppl allow their fetishes to control their actions, its not evidence that fetishes are immutable. its evidence that ppl with fetishes have a sexual addiction or are choosing to engage in a fetishistic identity because it benefits them in some other way. ppl with agp fetish will tell you their fetish allows them to imagine they have no responsibilities. their imagined agp ID is someone who doesnt feel the stress of they feel in their real life. gee, who else does this? alcoholics and dope addicts.
bailey is an activist who is promoting the idea that anything a man can dream up is some sort of thing everyone should honor. sorry mr bailey. like the activists that came before you, the non reality of your claims will become apparent.
A parallel method of "understanding AGP" as the wife of such a man experiences the deterioration of their relationship, as well as abuse and gaslighting from him, is in the new documentary on trans widows, Behind the Looking Glass. (Lime Soda Films YouTube channel, released fall of 2024)
The influence of "sissy hypno" pornography on the now-ex husband is often reported by trans widows. Missing from this article is the actual physical danger women are in when they're groomed by the porn-obsessed husband to "try kink" with him. In my data on the experiences of 64 trans widows, fully 1/3 were sexually assaulted or raped by him before she made her escape. Just over 1/3 of us were physically assaulted by him. These assaults include battery strangulation, shoving and punching. I hope the readers here will note the good professors "clinical detachment." Women are not safe in spaces meant solely for women when AGP men intrude there. Link to Behind the Looking Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frffv2sB8zE
I enjoyed the article and look forward to the piece on AGP.
I am a psychologist and often need to refer male and female clients to literature on male sexuality. I used to send them to a book called "Male Sexuality" by Bernie Zilbergeld. If anyone on this thread knows of good books or other reading material on this subject, I would love to have the information.
There has been a small amount of evidence dating back to the Eighties suggesting that lesbian women are more bi in their sexual and romantic histories than are gay men. Many of the women in my social circle have been coupled with other women for decades, but were previously married to men and had children by them. I personally have no sexual preference, but have been mostly involved with women.
The data described by Dr. Bailey regarding the arousal levels of women is, as he said, consistent with the relevant literature. On the other hand, the similarity might be just a fluke. A test of women's arousal levels that consists of imagery is probably not up to the job, given that women are not as responsive to sexual imagery as are men. So, I don't know how to interpret the levels of arousal or trust the data enough to compare women's recorded responses to the male versus female images.
There are some porn sites that enable subscribers to watch videos made by and for women, but I didn't have enough interest to sign up. LOL! On the other hand, the book "Fifty Shades of Gray" was incredibly popular with women for awhile. Women tend to be maximally turned on by a much slower and long lasting build up of sexual tension than most men prefer. The idea of a very fast buildup to a maximally intense orgasm is not an available experience for most women, just for physical reasons, and I don't recall any woman telling me that doing that is one of their top rated sexual fantasies or activities. I certainly don't begrudge men or women doing whatever turns them on the most, but in my experience most women expect a lot more than that.
Good note too, and you remind me of a 2nd key assumption I didn’t note. The assumption is that sex and sexual response is focused on orgasm. My experience is that a fair amount of highly enjoyable sex doesn’t involve orgasm, but my experience is perhaps not mainstream. I met a lot of very experienced people in LA when I was 18, and my sex education was not exactly what you’d watch in a video, to say the least.
Particularly in fetish contexts, orgasm is not the focus. Consider something like Shibari, Japanese rope bondage. The point is not orgasm, which would be counterproductive and somewhat difficult. Tantric sex, Chemsex, Wax, Shaving, Fisting, Foot Fetishism, Role Play, Different Worships, Muscle Worship, Toy Sex, Clothing Sex (Underwear, Leather, Gear, Uniforms). Sessions of a few hours to a long weekend are not about orgasm, and what is exciting is not exactly what was outlined in the study response. In highly complex sex, the excitement is not in achieving orgasm, but in pleasure. Showing pictures and measuring response would pick up only a fraction of what I or most of my male partners would enjoy.
This is also why AGP and other unusual activities - a
Fetish for transing boys comes to mind - are hard to conceptualise for many because they don’t involve what could be depicted in visual porn. Sex involving reducing oneself to robotic submission for instance, terribly exiting to some men (as I found at an event late in November) but doesn’t necessarily involve orgasm, or things which would be part a session.
A long time ago I read about a study that compared frequency of sex and duration of sex in established gay or lesbian couples. They found that the guys had sex much more often than the women, but the lesbian couples spent a lot more time on each sexual experience. I recall that the women spent an average of about an hour, but I don’t recall the average length of time for the gay couples—it was more like 10 minutes (?)
Kink sex involves a lot more preparation prior to the event, lasts a long time, and as you described, focuses on intensifying various sensual experiences rather than orgasm exclusively. This serves to build sexual tension to peak levels, and together with the dom/sub dynamic is probably part of what leads many women to be turned on by BDSM fantasy lit.
It is surprising in 2025 that many heterosexual women still do not have orgasms 100% of the time (or close to that) with their male partners. When I ask them why not, they tell me it isn’t really that important to them. I then ask them, “If it were possible to have an orgasm every time you have sex, would you want to? They generally haven’t considered that option, because they don’t think it is possible. This is because heterosexual guys do not know how to bring women to orgasm. In most cases they want to learn and they say so, but their female partners feel uncomfortable about providing explicit instructions and demonstrations.
I prefer sex that takes hours or even a weekend. What you cite is what I’d think of as “The Area of Sex”. If you remember high school or college calculus, think of it as intensity x duration (an integral) where the Area of Sex is the area under the curve of intensity plotted against time. Women beat men handily, an hour of moderate intensity always beats 10 minutes of high intensity. That’s why complex sex is so interesting, as you mention BDSM. The anticipation, the preparation, the execution, the finish. Sex between Lesbians must be unfathomable for men. I described sex once to a friend as the food, the music, perhaps a movie, touch, conversation, the clothing as all part of a theme for the entire sex event, consider a “blond” sex evening, or “heavy”, or “Mediterranean”, or “discovery”. I was incomprehensible.
About 30 years ago I found that MDA, MDMA, or LSD not alone but with 420 allowed me to have orgasms every 15 minutes to 45 minutes for several hours, full-body orgasms lasting minutes, the likes of which which I’ve only read described in primarily women’s pornography.
I suspect with the productive relaxations of drug laws for hallucinogens, we may see in the next 3-7 years some sort of therapy to enable women who are challenged to orgasm drugs which help overcome physical or other blocks. Then indeed, hours of pleasure with repeated peaks along the way.
If college calculus had included examples like the one you offered, I might not have dropped out of it. I must say, I have never regretted the decision.
I did a moderate number of acid trips, as well as other psychedelics that were used during the late Sixties and early Seventies. I mostly did them with friends or alone, so didn't have a chance to check out their sexual potential. My mind didn't turn in that direction, though, and I recall discussing that with my friends, whose trips were similarly nonsexual. Cannabis of course is a different story.
I suspect that the women who settle for coming only 60% of the time are suffering from anxieties about experiencing their own sexual feelings, exploring their desires, and perhaps most importantly, feeling unentitled to expect their partners to deliver what is wanted.
I appreciate Dr. Bailey’s work and it makes sense to me. As an old feminist, I’ve been enraged by AGP men ever since Bruce Jenner decided he was a woman, was photographed as a vamping cover “girl” by Annie Leibovitz, proclaimed that the hardest thing about being a woman was “deciding what to wear everyday”; and was elected Woman of the Year his first year “out.” As I clearly recall seeing Olympic Champion Bruce on the Wheaties box as I ate breakfast, all the while growing up as a girl who was not allowed to participate in any sports at all at school or anywhere else (see 1972 Boston Marathon) nor could I as a young adult access the rights and privileges he took for granted because women were not legally acknowledged as men were, I have zero compassion for AGPs or any men for that matter. Indeed, it’s men who are at the root of all violence in human society, against each other and especially against women. The Y chromosome is problematic and in the end anti evolutionary. That is, it will ultimately destroy humanity (see the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, etc, etc, etc). In the end, it makes sense that men seek to even obliterate what defines us as women.
I was so annoyed by this article that I went and read Bailey’s paper on female sexual orientation and whether it “actually exists.”
Several problems with the paper and Bailey’s conclusions here:
1. Bisexuality is discussed, but then mystifyingly the participants are divided into homo and hetero groups. Bailey also seems to understand intellectually that it’s fairly common for bisexuals to “pick a team” and publicly identify as either homo or hetero, when their true arousal pattern or history is actually bisexual. So I’m not sure why he’s surprised that people (especially women) often show a bisexual arousal pattern. It really calls into question any of the conclusions here when we don’t see self-reported bisexuals (or people with a bisexual sexual history) broken out separately in the data, and instead the bisexuals are presumably scattered between the hetero and homosexual groups with no reporting. (Or if there were actually female self-disclosed bisexual participants who were a separate group, mystifyingly Bailey did not find it relevant to discuss them at all, even though he appears to find evidence of widespread female bisexuality.)
2. Despite these problems (and that fact that the lesbian groups in the studies almost certainly included some bisexual women), Bailey and others still did find evidence of female exclusive homosexuality with the arousal measurements. But because the heterosexual women in these studies showed a “bisexual arousal pattern,” Bailey makes the leap that women may not have sexual orientations at all. I’m sorry, what? Let’s repeat that. Bailey clearly states that some women in the studies showed lesbian arousal patterns—in line with self-reported identity—but because heterosexual women appeared to be turned on by images of women as well as men, Bailey throws the baby out with the bathwater and questions the entire concept of sexual orientation in women. In other interviews I have seen Bailey cite this research to question whether female homosexuality is innate. That is a ridiculous and utterly nonsensical conclusion to draw when his own research suggests that there IS a group of women with an arousal pattern similar to straight men, who strongly and exclusively prefer women. What Bailey’s own research appears to show is that most women are in some way bisexual and a small few are lesbians. But he must have thought that conclusion was too explosive so instead of stating those findings he decided to question whether women have innate sexual orientations at all.
Honestly, it’s hard to take any of this research seriously at all when these sample sizes are so small, and when the methodology seems frankly like a bunch of quackery. (For some reason Bailey found it relevant to discuss post op male to female transsexual arousal patterns in the linked paper, and used the same technology to measure MTF arousal that was used measuring female arousal.)
But despite these problems I would not be surprised if better future research found that a majority of women had some capacity to be bisexual. But the fact that many women are bisexual (and that most bisexuals will gravitate toward either a hetero or homo public sexual orientation, and not publicly claim bisexuality) does not mean that female homosexuality and heterosexuality don’t exist, or that female sexual orientation isn’t real. And indeed that’s not what Bailey’s own research shows.
"If a man identifies as heterosexual, has only had sex with his wife, yet gets much stronger erections to men than to women, he has a homosexual orientation." Psychogenic erection is fluid. Bisexuals go through bi cycles in their fantasies, but their intimate relationship often withstands the cycles, although the attraction ebbs and flows with the bi cycle.
An odd piece, which has some discontinuities in thought and phrases which were jarring, some false dichotomies, and an entirely male-orientated view of sex in part and in the whole. For context, I'm a gay man who's been extremely active sexually for 5 decades worldwide (alive due to the quirk of being homozygous for the CCR5 Delta-32 gene rendering me immune to HIV), and been legally married to a man for a quarter century. I'm reasonably well-read in sex research from Kinsey to "The Mess Commission Report" and knowing a variety of personalities in the area going back to the days of Reimer and that problem, as well as Trans and an enormous variety of (gay) paraphiliacs. I also have a large collection of (written) pornography spanning seven decades, and made it somewhat of an amateur study.
Let me share my editorial view.
1) "gender-critical" As always, a working definition of gender is useful since it's utterly ambiguous.
2) "Unlike partnered sex, masturbation reflects only the masturbator’s motivation." - I'm afraid in the partnered sex I've had, motivation was critical too, and for most people I know. I'd rate this false.
3) "An important cause of this sex difference is the level of circulating testosterone, which is considerably higher in men than women, on average. Castration of sex offenders is highly, if imperfectly, effective in preventing recidivism." - I don't understand how these two sentences logically follow each other - from circulating testosterone to sex offender recidivism? Can you define circulating testosterone, why the word is important? Is it relevant to understand free/bound testosterone, or heavy-chain vs light-chain derivatives?
4) "However, for men with normal levels of testosterone, increasing these levels does not boost their sex drive; the picture is similar for women." - this is utterly false. It's famous (notorious) in bodybuilder communities that supraphysiologic levels of testosterone from steroids which raise testosterone markedly makes men, and women, almost maniacally aggressive sexually. "Super Horny".
5) "Men are more interested than women [...] men like and use pornography more often than women [...]" I find the statement misleading. There are at least two principal varieties of pornography - written, and visual. In my experience with people and pornography, men prefer visual, women prefer written. Men tend to be object-oriented, perhaps women are more verbal. Men are fairly uninterested in the written pornography women enjoy, and vice-versa. Women are as interested in written pornography as men are in visual, in my experience, though men do enjoy explicit written pornography.
The entire industry of Erotic Novels, with the sub-genre of Romance Novels with erotic content is slanted very heavily to exclusive consumption by women. Since "50 Shades of Gray" is a pornographic novel for women by a woman writer, which is in the top-10 books ever sold now. I'd rate the statement here false. The rest of discussion of pornography is entirely male-focused visual pornography, and little discussion of the difference of written pornography vis-a-vis women. It's a highly-constrained view which will automatically find "differences".
6) "When I was a teenager in the early 1970s, there was no Internet and the only visual pornography available was pictures in magazines." - for men. The entire pulp fiction industry existed to create written pornography for both men and women for decades; the Romance Novel industry exists almost exclusively for women.
7) "... much larger erections"... you mention later "photoplethysmograph" for women, but not the ordinary penile plethysmograph for men. I don't think it measures size of erections (larger) so much as it measures volume. However, there's an essential problem in that the plethysmograph on a penis can induce erections in and of itself due to the pleasurable tension it creates - indeed, a volumetric plethysmograph is identical to sleeves commonly available in sex shops, along with an astonishing variety of cuffs - cockrings - also available. There's an entire paraphiliac genre related to use of the equivalent of volumetric plethysmographs in sex in clinical and non-clinical situations. More on this later.
8) "... when viewing videos featuring only attractive women compared to videos featuring only attractive men. In these studies, videos that include both sexes are less informative because it’s unclear whether the arousal is triggered by the woman or the man." - I find the idea problematic, since the arousal need not be triggered by the woman or the man, but by both, in combination. It's a logic problem of false dichotomy. Then what follows - "men who say they’re homosexual show the opposite pattern–a tendency to get far larger erections in response to videos featuring attractive men rather than those featuring attractive women..." seems tautological.
9) "The second reason is that some men's arousal patterns do not align with their reported sexual identities." - perhaps trivial, but I'd say "reported sexual orientation", an identity is a permanent fact of existence. One observes the identity (male/female being permanent facts), one reports a subjective orientation.
10) "If a man identifies as heterosexual, has only had sex with his wife, yet gets much stronger erections to men than to women, he has a homosexual orientation." - Another false dichotomy, since bisexuality is a fact of existence. I could conjecture many plausible reasons besides homosexuality for the response.
11) "Measuring female genital arousal is considerably more indirect and complicated compared to that of males. An instrument called a vaginal photoplethysmograph, which is contained in an acrylic tube the size and shape of a tampon, is used for this purpose. Women insert it into their vaginas prior to watching our videos." - I don't know, but to me inserting a tube in a vagina isn't quite what I would call indirect, perhaps "invasive" is a better term. I'm curious why the tube is acrylic, and we get such a detail description, whereas we don't get the description at all in any way of the penile plethysmograph, which frankly is ar more complex. As opposed to colorimetry, it must have a strain gauge and volumetric sensing.
The problem here is comparing physiological responses between men and women - arousal patterns, where the physical measurement is utterly different - blood flow vs penile volume, penetrative vs compressive. I know these are the standards used, but when we measure blood pressure or body temperature, we perform measurements almost exactly the same way among all people to create a baseline from which we can use to interpret changes.
Comparing response to an invasive probe versus a pleasurable cuff seems to undermine any logical measurement comparisons between the sexes, and frankly could account for the entirely of the differences. I cannot be alone in this conjecture.
12) "Neither homosexual nor heterosexual women feel sexually aroused by watching male couples have sex—indeed, even heterosexual women tend to dislike this." - I find this statement problematic since I know a number of heterosexual women, and to my surprise lesbians, who enjoyed seeing gay men have sex, an identical correlative of heterosexual men enjoying visuals of lesbian sex. The market was so large for heterosexual women viewing men having sex (solo, or sometimes with a partner) that there were categories developed by male pornography film houses to cater to the market for women - "Colt Buckshot: Minute Men". But, women enjoy written pornography more than men, perhaps more than men enjoy visual pornography.
13) "Large recent shifts in LGBTQ identification have been more pronounced among girls and women than among boys and men, although these shifts have not been accompanied by equivalently large changes in sexual behavior." - I identify as Gay, not LGBTQ; claiming LGBTQ orientation, I've found in the last 20 years, is negatively correlated with gay or lesbian sex. Indeed, most men who claim TQ & nonbinary - are ordinary heterosexual men. Visible lesbianism has become so challenging for Lesbians, I cannot imagine them doing anything except running from LGBTQ, which I'm sure is part of the AGP you will speak about.
14) "Men generally have stronger sex drives compared to women and show more interest in casual sex and visual pornography." - the first time pornography was mentioned as visual.
15) "This difference likely contributes to greater sexual flexibility (or fluidity) in women than in men [...]men to develop paraphilias–intense sexual attractions to specific types of people, objects, or fantasies." - I'm not sure where sexual fluidity was outlined in prior paragraphs, this is someone new idea jumping out, like the men who were recidivistic sex criminals.
I don't find the case was strongly made for different sexual responses except for male-oriented visual pornography as measured by incommensurate scales and metrics between men and women.
You might consider that visual pornography itself is a paraphilia, and all you're measuring is the differential response to a paraphilia which is unusual to share between men and women, not some underlying sexual response. The same goes for written pornography, which is consumed at dramatically higher levels by women. As a friend of mine said, the difference between porn and erotica is time, porn is fast, erotica is slow, but they cover the same territory.
I'm happy to read this extensive critique, as I've felt isolated in my criticisms to Bailey's previous articles. My guess is he's trying to work up to defending the AGP/Trans diagnosis, which he and his colleagues, have been involved in for decades. As a trans widow, (ex wife of a man who claims to be a woman, also now claims to be 'mother' of our children) I appreciate your distinction between LGB and TQ. When I found my then husband's crossdressing diaries (in 1992, when our sons were 1 and 4) he wrote of desiring the male gaze. I believe he's actually either bi or gay, despite the fact that he married a woman a few years after having all the surgeries. I heard through the grapevine that he dated a couple of men, but they weren't interested in a long term thing with him. I'd say based on his penis size that his so-called "neo-vagina" would not have accommodated most men. He never seemed happy in these subsequent 3 decades, by the way. Keep on with these responses to the author of The Man Who Would be Queen.
I’ve read you often, and think you really have the bull by the horns, so to speak.
Personally, I had a very difficult time as a child believing heterosexuality existed, and over decades read extensively in porn to try to understand how it worked as a system of sex, what attractions were, the why of it. I understand how it works but not the feeling now, and while I can describe it, but it’s theoretical. Along the way I came across utterly amazing things which excited people sexually, which were as foreign to me as men’s attraction to women.
People are utterly unable to conceptualise what you have gone through, what must have been going on in your former husband’s consciousness, to realize you lived with someone who had a deep visceral hatred of women. After dozens of stories of men who hate women (and the hundreds I ignored) and in their hatred the sexualisation of annihilation of women by displacing and abusing them through being an ersatz female, and the extirpation of the concept of woman. I have few illusions about what’s in play right now.
You know from a gut level. I see it theoretically.
The illness pulls in a staggering range of fantasies involving mutilating and feminizing male children, (almost always boyd) through forced chemistry, castration, emasculation, clothing, language, association, prostitution, imprisonment, humiliation, and even further, and often to make the mother or a female (often Lesbian) center of the actuation of the fantasy.
I don’t know why it happens and can’t conjecture - it arises often so late in life, as testosterone wanes, and becomes quite malevolent, and recruits others to support it. That’s what delusions do, how they operate and how they bring the world down around them.
[It is telling that the entire management structure of WPATH are men, little remarked upon.]
Trans is just one of a range of fascinating and repellant sexual fantasies people write about when they are truly anonymous.
The title of Bailey’s book was quite unfortunate, trivializing and flippant.
I have personal insight to part of the delusion; when I was a child around 4 or 5, I knew I got excited by men (I now know my hypothalamus activated when I breathed in androstenedione). However, I understood that men only liked women and women only liked men, so I must be female. When I first heard of transsexualism, logically then I would simply have surgery and be female so I wouldn’t be alone and could get married. When puberty started, all those thoughts evaporated, and the first time I saw men affectionate with men, all my worries subsided.
The book I will write someday is “The Boy Who Wasn’t a Girl” - Bailey would have done better to have called the book simply “The Man Who Replaced Women”.
Well, thanks! This comment thread is much more informative than the article we're responding to. Upon reflection, I find the devices Bailey, et al, have designed and implemented to "learn" human sexual response are quite reductive, actually deceptive. But then, he's a "sexologist," who had a female student of his agree to a dildo contraption and a public display, for his Northwestern University students of a male student applying the device to the female. Buck Angel doing the same public display with an electric rocking horse device on the Howard Stern show was essentially the same. What Bailey misses entirely here is the fact that women respond to her partner's glances, double entendres and other suggestive, seemingly subtle behaviors of her male partner, all day long, leading to a satisfying romp in bed in the evening. I personally never read romance novels or sex literature designed for women, but rather, especially after my divorce, read scientific articles on the female response, to work on my next phase of life. A year before I found my then husband's 3 crossdressing diaries, I had almost-fatal pneumonia. Our sons were 6 months and 3 years old. He didn't take care of me well, and he probably got the fantasy that I might indeed die and then he could take my place. But then, why should we trust the psychologists? In the 1970s and 1980s, they were raising chimpanzees in their own homes and teaching them sign language, believing that the rare one who acquired seemingly complex language proved something or other. I do hope Bailey is reading all of this. He never responds, btw. I'd so much rather be telling about my butterfly gardening.
When the sole referent for “human” sexual response is male masturbatory orgasm, you have a problem. It’s stated so assertively - the term for it is scientistm - that it seems inarguable. I was trained as a scientist and enjoy language as art, and when the two intersect in such writing humorously lacking in self-awareness, I try to suppress snark.
You saw another thing I did. There was a “tell” in the “scientific” yet irrelevant detail, describing the photoplethysmograph so specifically, in such minutiae - an “acrylic” tube (as though that was logically significant - there are many, many transparent plastics: polycarbonate, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, PET, PMP, TPU, PEI … ). Were I to edit the piece, “vaginal optical sensor” would be sufficient. Indeed, there is something else going on in the article besides dispassion.
Good for us! Continue commenting! We will out-word Bailey! So, also, women have this "afterglow" period when loving amorousness has occurred. Do men have that? I imagine that there's a biological function. So that a female stays reclining and fertilization can happen. We all exist due to some version of this~
When he lies on his side, head sitting somewhere between my right shoulder and chest, my arm wrapped around his torso and my hand lightly touching everything in reach, and we talk about absolutely nothing for hours, that probably counts as glow?
Great critique!
Other factors that are often not taken into account when discussing and comparing male and female sexual arousal patterns and behaviour:
- Women and girls are much more likely to have been sexually abused/assaulted than men, and this experience can have a dramatic impact on sexual arousal/behaviour.
- Women are at a much higher risk of sexual assault of engaging in casual sex, which surely affects its appeal and/or practicality in engaging in it.
- Women are more likely than men to be concerned with an unplanned pregnancy, and are also more susceptible to STIs due to nearly always being the penetrated sex partner.
- The woman is nearly always the one who’s responsible for and carries the emotional load in pregnancy and STI protection, which again makes casual sex less appealing.
I absolutely agree that visual pornography itself could be considered a paraphilia itself, which would mean men are going to be more aroused than women in watching it. As the above poster points out, there’s an assumption that visual porn is equally effective as a source of sexual arousal for both men and women. I also agree that erotica has always been the preferred medium of choice for the majority of women- and it’s incredibly common/popular!! (As pointed out; ‘50 shades of grey’ for goodness sake- bloody obvious.) Plus I think there’s a case for arguing that erotica works better for women’s slower build of arousal pattern than visual porn does.
I must also point out that all visual porn is not equal!! The male gaze is hugely centred in traditional heterosexual porn- and remember Ron Jeremy?! (need I say more?!?) And with nearly always very obviously fake female arousal!! Yuck- I can’t think of anything more of a turn-off, personally 🤮
Not often remarked, but I have a bizarre visual memory, is that the actor John Vernon (Topaz, Animal House), Ron Jeremy, and J D Vance have the same eyes when at the same age, as though heavily mascarad or sporting eyeliner.
Excellent post! I see that I repeated some of your ideas prior to reading it. It's funny that you mentioned Fifty Shades! The movie was a disappointment for several reasons, but mostly because when reading a book we are free to imagine the details as we want them to be, whereas on video the details are defined by the creator.
I share your sentiment exactly. I fall between masculine and feminine interest - visual is interesting sometimes, words are interesting other times.
I’ve been experimenting with AI genre novel writing for a few years, and have had a lot of difficulty with Romance Novels, in believing that the output was genuinely interesting or erotic. Gay male fiction I have 65,000 novels - it’s easy. However, I had to read a lot of Romance novels to understand the construction and believe my AI toolkit produced acceptable output.
Women and men are very different in what they find erotic in writing, I’ve adjusted.
I’ll look at your responses. Thanks for writing.
All interesting comments but does not really say much about the original article. The original article is a study. It does not imply that it is perfect. It was constructed in ways to minimize complexity of interpretation. Its one data point.
You can certainly point out issues in the study. Always easy to poke holes. Gay people tend to excel at that! That would be another good study.
Less easy to propose a study that would align with the "holes" you identify. Instead of being critical, start off with "Interesting piece, I have questions on many of the points. Would be great if we could design a follow-up study to get more information".
I praise writing I think is good, and critique writing which I find factually inaccurate, strangely written, or lacking in reason.
Using a sole perspective of male orgasm via masturbation as the referent for sexual response is naive - we should also advance beyond the crude instruments Kinsey used studying sexual response a century ago. The Hite Report is quite illuminating on the subject.
Not measuring sexual response the same way is a significant error of reason, a false analogy. It’s entirely possible men and women are incommensurable in the metric.
I do agree we get off-topic but that’s the tantalizing danger of a public forum.
Your views of the problems of the study are rationale. But you couldn't make those views without someone engaging in starting to do studies. You would prefer no data to some data.
Your write is not good because you tinge it with a tone of arrogance. Its caustic, not informative.
I’m not a sex researcher, and it’s not my profession to design experiments in this domain. I can read standard written English and my curiosity leads me to many quaint and curious volume of old and forgotten lore sometimes, as well as modern research.
It has been entirely possible to measure response to sex steroids in the hypothalamus of lesbians, straight women, bisexual women, straight men, bisexual men and gay men, and see grouped and differential signals in the six populations. Remarkably, signal strength was similar in magnitude for women, gay men, and to a degree bisexual men and women, as well as straight men, lesbians, and bisexual women and men. The studies were replicable. This is in direct contradiction to the evidence presented in the article with a significant difference. An error of omission, perhaps.
Likewise, the sex steroid response of self-claimed trans males and females was identical to those of same-sexed individuals with the same sex orientation, somewhat refuting the concept of “trans brain”. In the domain of trans - where this is leading - this is significant to any hypothesis which claims men and women - trans males and women - have differential sexual responses.
These are not new findings, a decade old, and are measurements of identical brain structures in men and women subject to identical tests. These are tests which are credible, and measure things in the body which work the same way between the two sexes.
These are the ones I come across. An ordinary survey will probably come up with dozens. Yet we read a description of a study method using a technique for measuring homosexuality and recidivist pedohebephilia, so inaccurate it’s a not admissible in court, variously a 100 of 80 years old, is the foundation for claims of differential sex response in men and women. Just look up the reasonably accurate Wikipedia page on penile plethysmography (god I hate typing that word on my iPhone) not mentioned in specifics in the article, for some strange reason.
I am arrogant, in the sense that I often lack humility in writing, but I feel no need to undertake performative humility in matters around trans delusions. It is counterproductive in discussing a topic with boundless malevolence, particularly towards women and gay men.
I’m also - you left out - crass, salacious, often lewd, sometimes funny, lusty, and crude, self-aggrandizing, sarcastic and unapologetic, yet rational and amenable to changing my opinion when it makes sense. I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a quiet, meek, neutral observer. There are absolutely plenty of those. I embrace sex, drugs, rock and roll in the best, non-lethal and least malevolent sense.
The author suggests that women may be more GC than men because they lack insight into male sexuality. That may be true for some (an open empirical question). As a male heterosexual involved in a British GC group I have also noted though that like me many are scientific realists which is a key motivation for attacking trans activists claims. More important though for women whatever their sexuality are the consequences of TRA expectations ie the oppressive invasion of their intimate spaces. This is not about science but the impact of patriarchy. The trans movement by and large is a men’s movement and that is why second wave feminists are up in arms (I would be had I been born female).
Thanks. Very clear & concise. I knew some of this from long-time reading in the field, but this was the best summary I've come across.
This is fascinating in that it details in studies what is easily observable in general human behavior and trends.
I think the non-cisgender and non-heterosexual readers will not like this for some reasons. They will attempt to argue away the science for reasons that I cannot understand other than their silly expectation that their different sexual orientation or different gender orientation can be made the new normal... and those with standard biological gender and sex functions can be somehow made to be the abnormal.
This non-heterosexual reader has no problem with what Bailey wrote here. I'm gay, not irrational.
As a lesbian woman the conclusions in this article were entirely consistent with my experiences of sexual fantasy (i.e. stimulus) and response and actually offered me some reasurance that the unsolicited presence of males in some of my self-gratifications were not so shameful.
And in that spirit (trigger warning!) I pondered the reactionary and politically unsettling concept that women's sexual "payout" may not actually be the orgasm but the baby!
Doesn't this idea align better with female mammalian reproductive strategy and explains the humongous difference in sex-drives between men and women, especially after a few childbirths?
What female actually needs a sex-drive when, as sexual selectors, we are built to be pursued... which explains the difficulty in finding dates at many lesbian socials. (Oh, I'm in for it now🤦♀️).
This may arouse the censure of uber-orthodox 'feminists' who resist anything that doesn't wave their flag properly, but considering their screaming silence in the face of erasure by Genderist Religion I no longer care.
fetishes arent a sexuality. they can come and go like the wind and have more in common with drugs or alcohol than whether or not someone is attracted to the same or opposite sex.
as the cocaine user obtains an endorphin high from their choice to engage in drug use, fetishists derive a endorphin high from engagement with their fetish. but no one would claim that doing cocaine isnt a choice. yet, this is what bailey wants you to believe about fetishes. instead of trying to quit unhealthy behaviors that ruin peoples lives, bailey wants us to lean into them, tell wives their husbands cant control themselves, tell the legal system to allow activities that relate to harmful hobbies, if that hobby happens to be a fetish.
bailey earns his living, apparently, from speaking to sex addicts. these addicts complain to him that its unfair theyre being singled out because of their hobby.
but theyre not being singled out because of their hobby/fetish.
they are being singled out because they failed to control their engagement with their fetish, and this led to some negative outcome.
Bailey agrees people shouldnt smoke in restaurants. but he doesnt agree that men should suffer any consequences for choosing to engage in fetishes, even if this engagement causes negative outcomes to the addict and also the community. to bailey, when men become aroused, its like a holy thing. and he doesnt think women or anyone else should be able to tell a man not to engage in this hobby. in an effort to further his strongly held view on this, bailey has spent more than a year creating research he claims proves men have no control over their hobbies, if those hobbies are also fetishes.
this research is likely based on the responses of people with fetishes, such as agp or map fetish.
but like the 1000s of phony studies used by gender activists we now know dont meet the medical definition of "evidence" (BMJ report Gender dysphoria in young people is rising), baileys "study" is likely to be heavily influenced by his own opinions and claims of heavily invested participants.
why would an agp or map person meet bailey in the first place? its most likely because their choice to engage in their fetish has caused them to experience dissatisfaction or negativity in their lives.
baileys participants likely experienced
- ruined or threatened marriage
- interaction with the legal system as a result of their choice to commit a sex crime
- psych issues such as depression or lack of control that result from an inability to refrain from porn based addiction.
this is what occurs when one is unable to control their sexual addiction.
most who engage in fetishes suffer no negative impact to their lives. to most, engagement with a fetish is harmless and entertaining. this is similar to when one drinks alcohol in moderation and doesnt engage in any unsafe or irresponsible behavior. but for those who are unable to control their engagement with their fetish, fetish engagement becomes more frequent, chasing greater highs via ever more exciting and extreme fetish material when the usual endorphin rush becomes unfulfilling. this is typical of the addiction cycle with highs and lows and engaging in activities that create ever increasing endorphins. most often this is just part of a normal sex addiction, a very common thing that very few like to talk about.
to prove compulsive fetishistic behavior is part of an addiction, simply look at the definition of an addiction. walks like a duck. looks like a duck. quacks like a duck. its a duck.
but bailey ignores the obvious. hes like the aliens in the Twilight zone episode Hocus-Pocus and Frisby. In it, rural gas station/store proprietor Somerset Frisby, who's given to telling tall tales about himself, is abducted by visiting aliens who mistakenly believe him to be one of Earth's leading intellectuals.
Bailey is the aliens.
The fetishists are Somerset Frisby.
Mr. Bailey, the fetishists are lying to you.
And why are they? to avoid responsibility for their addiction related choices that have
- threatened their marriage
- threatened their job
- incurred legal entanglement
- resulted in psych issues from an inability to retrain from their sexual addiction that also pertains to fetishes
Bailey will respond: but wait! i know their not lying. i can prove they become aroused when exposed to their fetish!
so what? guess what happens when their not exposed to their fetish? over time the desire to engage in their fetish lessens. its a choice to engage in alcohol, cigarettes or fetishes. when these actions are discontinued, the desire to engage them lessens.
the arousal people get when they experience their fetish isnt evidence that agp or map are immutable. they are evidence that the sexual response has a memory. they are evidence of compulsive thoughts. they are evidence that people with psych issues are prone to engage in thoughts that are self defeating, risk taking, or porn related.
thats different than gay or straight sexuality. gay or straight sexuality doesnt change. thats why they are protected characteristics. mens rights activists such as Bailey feel left out of the legal system that protects vulnerable groups with immutable characteristics, such as ethnic background, age, sex or sexuality.
dudes like Bailey are trying to get their favorite hobby into this club of vulnerable people who have been recognized in law as being vulnerable. Bailey wants men whose hobbies include are fetishes to also be protected in law, based on their hobby/fetish.
when ppl allow their fetishes to control their actions, its not evidence that fetishes are immutable. its evidence that ppl with fetishes have a sexual addiction or are choosing to engage in a fetishistic identity because it benefits them in some other way. ppl with agp fetish will tell you their fetish allows them to imagine they have no responsibilities. their imagined agp ID is someone who doesnt feel the stress of they feel in their real life. gee, who else does this? alcoholics and dope addicts.
bailey is an activist who is promoting the idea that anything a man can dream up is some sort of thing everyone should honor. sorry mr bailey. like the activists that came before you, the non reality of your claims will become apparent.
A parallel method of "understanding AGP" as the wife of such a man experiences the deterioration of their relationship, as well as abuse and gaslighting from him, is in the new documentary on trans widows, Behind the Looking Glass. (Lime Soda Films YouTube channel, released fall of 2024)
The influence of "sissy hypno" pornography on the now-ex husband is often reported by trans widows. Missing from this article is the actual physical danger women are in when they're groomed by the porn-obsessed husband to "try kink" with him. In my data on the experiences of 64 trans widows, fully 1/3 were sexually assaulted or raped by him before she made her escape. Just over 1/3 of us were physically assaulted by him. These assaults include battery strangulation, shoving and punching. I hope the readers here will note the good professors "clinical detachment." Women are not safe in spaces meant solely for women when AGP men intrude there. Link to Behind the Looking Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frffv2sB8zE
Link to data on my channel when we reached 60 surveys completed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owyUun77TKo&t=120s
I enjoyed the article and look forward to the piece on AGP.
I am a psychologist and often need to refer male and female clients to literature on male sexuality. I used to send them to a book called "Male Sexuality" by Bernie Zilbergeld. If anyone on this thread knows of good books or other reading material on this subject, I would love to have the information.
There has been a small amount of evidence dating back to the Eighties suggesting that lesbian women are more bi in their sexual and romantic histories than are gay men. Many of the women in my social circle have been coupled with other women for decades, but were previously married to men and had children by them. I personally have no sexual preference, but have been mostly involved with women.
The data described by Dr. Bailey regarding the arousal levels of women is, as he said, consistent with the relevant literature. On the other hand, the similarity might be just a fluke. A test of women's arousal levels that consists of imagery is probably not up to the job, given that women are not as responsive to sexual imagery as are men. So, I don't know how to interpret the levels of arousal or trust the data enough to compare women's recorded responses to the male versus female images.
There are some porn sites that enable subscribers to watch videos made by and for women, but I didn't have enough interest to sign up. LOL! On the other hand, the book "Fifty Shades of Gray" was incredibly popular with women for awhile. Women tend to be maximally turned on by a much slower and long lasting build up of sexual tension than most men prefer. The idea of a very fast buildup to a maximally intense orgasm is not an available experience for most women, just for physical reasons, and I don't recall any woman telling me that doing that is one of their top rated sexual fantasies or activities. I certainly don't begrudge men or women doing whatever turns them on the most, but in my experience most women expect a lot more than that.
Good note too, and you remind me of a 2nd key assumption I didn’t note. The assumption is that sex and sexual response is focused on orgasm. My experience is that a fair amount of highly enjoyable sex doesn’t involve orgasm, but my experience is perhaps not mainstream. I met a lot of very experienced people in LA when I was 18, and my sex education was not exactly what you’d watch in a video, to say the least.
Particularly in fetish contexts, orgasm is not the focus. Consider something like Shibari, Japanese rope bondage. The point is not orgasm, which would be counterproductive and somewhat difficult. Tantric sex, Chemsex, Wax, Shaving, Fisting, Foot Fetishism, Role Play, Different Worships, Muscle Worship, Toy Sex, Clothing Sex (Underwear, Leather, Gear, Uniforms). Sessions of a few hours to a long weekend are not about orgasm, and what is exciting is not exactly what was outlined in the study response. In highly complex sex, the excitement is not in achieving orgasm, but in pleasure. Showing pictures and measuring response would pick up only a fraction of what I or most of my male partners would enjoy.
This is also why AGP and other unusual activities - a
Fetish for transing boys comes to mind - are hard to conceptualise for many because they don’t involve what could be depicted in visual porn. Sex involving reducing oneself to robotic submission for instance, terribly exiting to some men (as I found at an event late in November) but doesn’t necessarily involve orgasm, or things which would be part a session.
A long time ago I read about a study that compared frequency of sex and duration of sex in established gay or lesbian couples. They found that the guys had sex much more often than the women, but the lesbian couples spent a lot more time on each sexual experience. I recall that the women spent an average of about an hour, but I don’t recall the average length of time for the gay couples—it was more like 10 minutes (?)
Kink sex involves a lot more preparation prior to the event, lasts a long time, and as you described, focuses on intensifying various sensual experiences rather than orgasm exclusively. This serves to build sexual tension to peak levels, and together with the dom/sub dynamic is probably part of what leads many women to be turned on by BDSM fantasy lit.
It is surprising in 2025 that many heterosexual women still do not have orgasms 100% of the time (or close to that) with their male partners. When I ask them why not, they tell me it isn’t really that important to them. I then ask them, “If it were possible to have an orgasm every time you have sex, would you want to? They generally haven’t considered that option, because they don’t think it is possible. This is because heterosexual guys do not know how to bring women to orgasm. In most cases they want to learn and they say so, but their female partners feel uncomfortable about providing explicit instructions and demonstrations.
Oh gosh! I think of that as fast food sex.
I prefer sex that takes hours or even a weekend. What you cite is what I’d think of as “The Area of Sex”. If you remember high school or college calculus, think of it as intensity x duration (an integral) where the Area of Sex is the area under the curve of intensity plotted against time. Women beat men handily, an hour of moderate intensity always beats 10 minutes of high intensity. That’s why complex sex is so interesting, as you mention BDSM. The anticipation, the preparation, the execution, the finish. Sex between Lesbians must be unfathomable for men. I described sex once to a friend as the food, the music, perhaps a movie, touch, conversation, the clothing as all part of a theme for the entire sex event, consider a “blond” sex evening, or “heavy”, or “Mediterranean”, or “discovery”. I was incomprehensible.
About 30 years ago I found that MDA, MDMA, or LSD not alone but with 420 allowed me to have orgasms every 15 minutes to 45 minutes for several hours, full-body orgasms lasting minutes, the likes of which which I’ve only read described in primarily women’s pornography.
I suspect with the productive relaxations of drug laws for hallucinogens, we may see in the next 3-7 years some sort of therapy to enable women who are challenged to orgasm drugs which help overcome physical or other blocks. Then indeed, hours of pleasure with repeated peaks along the way.
If college calculus had included examples like the one you offered, I might not have dropped out of it. I must say, I have never regretted the decision.
I did a moderate number of acid trips, as well as other psychedelics that were used during the late Sixties and early Seventies. I mostly did them with friends or alone, so didn't have a chance to check out their sexual potential. My mind didn't turn in that direction, though, and I recall discussing that with my friends, whose trips were similarly nonsexual. Cannabis of course is a different story.
I suspect that the women who settle for coming only 60% of the time are suffering from anxieties about experiencing their own sexual feelings, exploring their desires, and perhaps most importantly, feeling unentitled to expect their partners to deliver what is wanted.
I appreciate Dr. Bailey’s work and it makes sense to me. As an old feminist, I’ve been enraged by AGP men ever since Bruce Jenner decided he was a woman, was photographed as a vamping cover “girl” by Annie Leibovitz, proclaimed that the hardest thing about being a woman was “deciding what to wear everyday”; and was elected Woman of the Year his first year “out.” As I clearly recall seeing Olympic Champion Bruce on the Wheaties box as I ate breakfast, all the while growing up as a girl who was not allowed to participate in any sports at all at school or anywhere else (see 1972 Boston Marathon) nor could I as a young adult access the rights and privileges he took for granted because women were not legally acknowledged as men were, I have zero compassion for AGPs or any men for that matter. Indeed, it’s men who are at the root of all violence in human society, against each other and especially against women. The Y chromosome is problematic and in the end anti evolutionary. That is, it will ultimately destroy humanity (see the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, etc, etc, etc). In the end, it makes sense that men seek to even obliterate what defines us as women.
I was so annoyed by this article that I went and read Bailey’s paper on female sexual orientation and whether it “actually exists.”
Several problems with the paper and Bailey’s conclusions here:
1. Bisexuality is discussed, but then mystifyingly the participants are divided into homo and hetero groups. Bailey also seems to understand intellectually that it’s fairly common for bisexuals to “pick a team” and publicly identify as either homo or hetero, when their true arousal pattern or history is actually bisexual. So I’m not sure why he’s surprised that people (especially women) often show a bisexual arousal pattern. It really calls into question any of the conclusions here when we don’t see self-reported bisexuals (or people with a bisexual sexual history) broken out separately in the data, and instead the bisexuals are presumably scattered between the hetero and homosexual groups with no reporting. (Or if there were actually female self-disclosed bisexual participants who were a separate group, mystifyingly Bailey did not find it relevant to discuss them at all, even though he appears to find evidence of widespread female bisexuality.)
2. Despite these problems (and that fact that the lesbian groups in the studies almost certainly included some bisexual women), Bailey and others still did find evidence of female exclusive homosexuality with the arousal measurements. But because the heterosexual women in these studies showed a “bisexual arousal pattern,” Bailey makes the leap that women may not have sexual orientations at all. I’m sorry, what? Let’s repeat that. Bailey clearly states that some women in the studies showed lesbian arousal patterns—in line with self-reported identity—but because heterosexual women appeared to be turned on by images of women as well as men, Bailey throws the baby out with the bathwater and questions the entire concept of sexual orientation in women. In other interviews I have seen Bailey cite this research to question whether female homosexuality is innate. That is a ridiculous and utterly nonsensical conclusion to draw when his own research suggests that there IS a group of women with an arousal pattern similar to straight men, who strongly and exclusively prefer women. What Bailey’s own research appears to show is that most women are in some way bisexual and a small few are lesbians. But he must have thought that conclusion was too explosive so instead of stating those findings he decided to question whether women have innate sexual orientations at all.
Honestly, it’s hard to take any of this research seriously at all when these sample sizes are so small, and when the methodology seems frankly like a bunch of quackery. (For some reason Bailey found it relevant to discuss post op male to female transsexual arousal patterns in the linked paper, and used the same technology to measure MTF arousal that was used measuring female arousal.)
But despite these problems I would not be surprised if better future research found that a majority of women had some capacity to be bisexual. But the fact that many women are bisexual (and that most bisexuals will gravitate toward either a hetero or homo public sexual orientation, and not publicly claim bisexuality) does not mean that female homosexuality and heterosexuality don’t exist, or that female sexual orientation isn’t real. And indeed that’s not what Bailey’s own research shows.
"If a man identifies as heterosexual, has only had sex with his wife, yet gets much stronger erections to men than to women, he has a homosexual orientation." Psychogenic erection is fluid. Bisexuals go through bi cycles in their fantasies, but their intimate relationship often withstands the cycles, although the attraction ebbs and flows with the bi cycle.