A new study suggests that all women are either bisexual or gay regardless of whether they say they are only attracted to men.
Lead researcher and psychology professor at the University of Essex, Gerulf Rieger, surveyed 345 female subjects for the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and recorded their sexual arousal responses to stimulating images of males and females. The women who participated in the study considered themselves to be either heterosexual or lesbian.
The team of researchers found that women who self-identified as heterosexual were aroused by images of both men and women. However, their reactions to women were not as strong as those of women who said they were lesbians. Their results indicate that heterosexual women have some sort of physiological attraction to other women even if they say they are straight.
Rieger explained the findings of their experiment to Mic:
“Most women responded to both videos of attractive men and women with substantial [genital] arousal as well as pupil dilation. Hence, in their responses many were bisexual.”
As for women who self-identified as lesbians, Rieger said they, “responded more to their preferred sex [women] over the other sex. However, none of the women, not even straight women, responded more strongly to males than to females.”
Rieger concludes:
“Even though the majority of women identify as straight, our research clearly demonstrates that when it comes to their physiological sexual arousal, they are either bisexual or gay, but never straight.”
Even more surprising, Rieger says there may be an evolutionary explanation for the fluidity in female sexuality. Women may be biologically programmed to respond to a variety of sexual stimuli in order to prevent genital trauma in the case of forced penetration. He continued:
“In the evolution of humans, if not mammals, females have been in many situations where sex was forced on them. To become aroused quickly to any sexual situation could mean lubrication, and.. it might have been beneficial for women to respond to any sexual situation with some level of arousal.”
