When Is Same-Sex Activity “Not Gay”?

Consider the following scenario:

• Dylan has only dated women throughout his life. One day, he is at a dinner party with his friend Jack, and they go to the bathroom alone and have oral sex.

After reading this scenario, what do you think Dylan’s sexual orientation is? Choose the appropriate point on the scale where 1 indicates “Completely straight,” 4 indicates “Bisexual (equally attracted to both genders),” and 7 indicates “Completely gay.”

But what if instead the scenario read:

• Bella has only dated men throughout her life. One day, she is at a dinner party with her friend Leah, and they go to the bathroom alone and have oral sex.

How would you rate Bella’s true sexual orientation? If you’re like most people who participated in a recent study in which they read these and other scenarios depicting same-sex acts engaged in by otherwise straight individuals, you probably judged Dylan’s behavior as a sign that he’s actually gay. At the same time, you likely felt that Bella was probably still straight.

The Precarious Sexuality Effect

As the authors of this study, University of Florida psychologist Jennifer Bosson and her colleagues, point out, there’s a double-standard in our culture regarding one-time same-sex acts. Namely, if a man engages in a single same-sex act, people tend to assume he’s actually gay and only maintaining a straight identity to avoid stigma. However, if a woman engages in a single same-sex act, people generally don’t take this as a sign that she’s actually a “closet gay.” Rather, they’re likely to assume that she really is straight and that she’s just exploring her sexuality.

This double-standard regarding one-off same-sex acts is known as the precarious sexuality effect. The effect is “precarious” because a single same-sex act by an otherwise straight man will get him labeled as “actually gay.” Indeed, the man himself is likely to question his own sexual orientation after such an encounter.

There’s a commonly held notion among sex and relationship researchers that men’s sexual orientation is rigid, whereas women’s is fluid. According to this point of view, men tend to be either strictly straight or strictly gay. Women, in contrast, are more open to sex with either men or women, even if they have a preferred sexual orientation.

Double Standards

What’s unclear, though, is whether this purported difference between men and women is due to nature or nurture. That is, it could be the case that men’s brains are wired to be either straight or gay, while women’s brains are wired to be “bi.” There certainly is a lot of recent evidence suggesting that sexual orientation is determined—or at least affected by—brain development in utero.

At the same time, social norms strongly influence our behaviors. As Bosson and colleagues point out, men strictly monitor each other’s sexual behaviors. Dylan is going to get a lot of flak from his male friends if they ever find out what he did with Jack. Bella may get some negative remarks from her female friends as well, but the stigma is less severe for women.

Society as a whole tends to see same-sex acts between women as more acceptable than those between men. As just one example, lesbian porn is a popular category on porn sites. And it’s not just lesbians who are watching these videos. In fact, many men are turned on by the sight of two women having sex. I’m not sure why that’s the case, but my guess is that they interpret it as a prelude to a three-way.

Researchers have known about the precarious sexuality effect for some time now, but only in the context of explicit sexual acts. However, Bosson and colleagues wondered if the precarious sexuality effect would occur for flirting behaviors as well. In other words, they asked if behaviors such as dancing with a same-sex partner or blowing a kiss to someone of the same sex would be interpreted as a sign that the person was “really gay.”

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Less Is More

First, Bosson and colleagues created 11 scenarios of same-sex acts and asked a group of people to evaluate each according to its degree of explicitness. As expected, acts such as dancing or patting someone on the butt were rated as least explicit, various kissing activities ranged in the middle, while oral and penetrative sex were deemed most explicit.

Bosson and colleagues then created vignettes such as the ones that started this blog post and then asked nearly ten thousand people to judge the person’s sexual orientation using the same 7-point scale as above. The goal of the study was to test two hypotheses.

First, the researchers suspected that the strength of the precarious sexuality effect would depend on the explicitness of the same-sex act. For example, people should think dancing with a same-sex partner is less of an indication of that person being “actually gay” than kissing someone of the same sex. And even that should be rated lower than having oral or penetrative sex.

Second, the researchers hypothesized that even though the precarious sexuality effect would be diminished for less explicit acts for both men and women, the gap between men and women would become even greater. According to this reasoning, when a woman blows a kiss at another woman, people probably won’t see it as an indication that she’s “actually gay.” However, if a man were to blow a kiss at another man, people would be more likely to interpret this as “gay” behavior.

Both of these hypotheses were supported by the data. Because flirting behaviors are inherently ambiguous, the researchers argued, observers can judge them as “gay” or not depending on the stereotypes they have in mind. In that way, people can see two men dancing together as “gay,” but two women kissing as “not gay.”

A quarter century ago, one of my professors in grad school made a statement in class that has always stuck with me. “There is no such thing as heterosexual or homosexual people,” he said, “only heterosexual or homosexual acts.” We need to move beyond categorizing people by their behaviors and instead come to an acceptance of the full range of sexual activity as simply part of the “normal” human experience.