Scientist who denied bisexual men exist finally comes to his senses and discovers, yes, bi guys are telling the truth
The bisexual pride flag at Los Angeles Pride 2009. (David McNew/Getty Images)
In some breaking news, two scientists who once denied that bisexual men exist were stunned to discover that, as it turns out, attraction to more than one gender does, in fact, exist.
Shocking.
An American and a British researcher carried out a study in 2005 that, they said, showed that bisexuality in men doesn’t exist. American J Michael Bailey, at the Northwestern University, concluded that bisexual men simply are not valid based on the grand total of 33 bi men involved in his study.
But in the new collective study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences some 15 years on, Bailey has found his original research, at times wielded by biphobic groups and people like a club to erase bi+ people’s existence or re-enforce corrosive stereotypes, disproven, IFL Science! reported.
Again, shocking.
Researcher admits he was ‘sceptical’ about the existence of bisexual folk. Now he finds ‘robust evidence’ they exist, and boy, are we tired of this.
Indeed, Bailey, alongside lead author Jeremy Jabbour, combined the results of his own 2005 study, a 2011 study by English psycholgists alongside six similar studies – totalling 588 men – to shockingly discover that, you bet, he was wrong.
Bisexual people exist, who knew!
This shock was even felt across the pond. Investigators at the University of Essex in England, who carried out the 2011 study previously, also found “robust evidence” that bisexual men, er, exist, according to a press release sent to PinkNews.
In the release, titled “Bisexual men are neither gay nor straight and are telling the truth” (yes, really), head researcher Dr Gerulf Rieger admitted that his work with Bailey 15-years-ago vastly shaped his attitudes towards bisexuality.
The Department of Psychology faculty member said: “It has always been clear that bisexual men exist in terms of self-identity and behaviour, but many, including myself, were sceptical about their ability to be sexually aroused to both men and women.
“Now, with this exceptional number of participants, we have clear proof of their bisexual arousal. This reshapes our entire understanding of male sexual orientation.”
The studies themselves saw investigators measure genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. Seated alone in a laboratory, sensors gauged participant’s arousal as they watched erotic movies and researchers later compared the rate of arousal the men felt towards men and women.
Researchers admitted that the samples across all eight studies were hardly representational, globally speaking, being that they were all from the US and the UK.
Nevertheless, they stressed, the re-analysis demonstrates that bisexuality in men does exist.
Bisexual people face abrasive discrimination and erasure from straight and gay people alike, which could be partly why they earn less on average, feel less happy and suffer from higher levels of anxiety than other sexualities.
The community is mired by harmful myths – in part, seeded by the original research by Bailey – that bisexuality is a “phase”, that they are “promiscuous”, “lying”, or “in denial”.
This erasure is damaging to bi people who are very real, and who simply are attracted to more than one gender.
