Women Have it Both Ways: Study

NEW DELHI: Luckless in love or just curious, any man who has ever tried making a woman happy has wondered what they really want, what really makes them happy. The question has baffled men since time immemorial; in the meantime they tried every trick up their sleeves to net them without ever coming up with any standard results.

A new study further confirms the elusive nature of women’s sexuality, which shows that women are just as aroused by looking at naked women’s bodies as they are by looking at naked men, including the straight ones.

The study done by Dr Gerulf Reiger, lead researcher at psychology department of University of Essex, used eye-tracking devices to notices the dilation of the pupils—a marked indicator of sexual arousal-- of the 345 women as they were shown images of attractive males and females. The experiment found arousal among heterosexual women was almost indiscriminate to either of the gender’s images, confirming more gender fluidity among women.

"Even though the majority of women identify as straight, our research clearly demonstrates that when it comes to what turns them on, they are either bisexual or gay, but never straight," says Dr Reiger in the study.

On the other hand, lesbians, who were shown the same set of images, stuck to being aroused by women’s images mostly. The researchers theorized it as them being more ‘male-typical’ in their sexual persuasion than straight women. Male-typicality meant here men’s tendency to be more rigid in their approach to the gender of their partners.

According to the University’s website, the researchers also tested the hypothesis whether, “lesbians can be more masculine in many of their non-sexual behaviors, that they are also more masculine in their sexual responses. However, the research… did not find any evidence that the most masculine-behaving lesbians showed the most male-typical sexual arousal patterns.”

“This shows us that how women appear in public does not mean that we know anything about their sexual role preferences. Men are simple, but women’s sexual responses remain a mystery.” Dr Reiger further added.

Lesbianism among straight women has also been hypothesized as a result of increasing porn watching habit among women. According to a research done by pornhub and Daily Beast, it was found that women outnumber men by five percentage points in the age group of 18-26. Their favorite searched for keywords being, ‘girl-on-girl’, ‘lesbian’, and ‘threesome’.

But the researchers of that study also, held their reservations against generalizing the finding and acceded that the complexity of women’s sexual behavior is far from being explained with their porn-watching habits.