Questioning the methodology of the above research, I'm wondering if this "exposure to erotic stimuli and measure the penis growth" has some flaws. Aren't all men different in terms of the effect any erotic stimuli has on them?
Very probably, but why is this a research flaw? Unless you're suggesting the group of men who didn't score highly for homophobia were aroused but didn't show it by getting hard - in which case, you'd presumably be postulating that men who score highly for homophobia are more likely than other men to get aroused in a penile way? Which would still indicate a fundamental difference between the arousal patterns of homophobes and those of other men - and beg the question, why?
Don't people have different thresholds of arousal? Some men are really turned on by one thing while other men are only a little turned on by the same....
Again, why would this invalidate the plethysmograph studies? One group of men - who rated highly for homophobia - were considerably more likely than other men to get "really turned on", in terms of stonking great erections, than the control group, to specifically same-sex imagery compared with other sexual imagery.
The fact that others might theoretically get "a little turned on" wouldn't impinge upon the fact that this particular group apparently got much more turned on than average in this particular setting.
Another thing... I asked one of my friends who is in psychiatric nursing (just to give you her background; no agenda) and she said that this research would have too many factors to be credible.
That's rather a non-specific criticism. What does it actually mean? If she means there are likely to be more factors involved in homophobia than just heightened erotic attraction to one's own sex, then that's probably true (the University of Georgia study, IIRC, found that it was true for 80% of the 'homophobe' group). It doesn't invalidate this particular bit of research, though.
Also, she offered this theory (which for the record, I can see Ganesh utterly smashing apart): maybe the herterosexual/homophobic people are SO heterosexual, that they are highly sexed. And therefore, any erotic stimuli after seeing heterosexual pornography will sustain their arousal....
This makes a number of assumptions:
1) That 'heterosexual' maps onto 'homophobic', as evidenced by your treating the descriptors here as near-interchangeable. Within this study, I don't think there was any attempt to divine the sexuality of the subjects themselves, merely rate them for aversion to male-male imagery. Therefore one cannot simply say those who rated highly were heterosexual and those who didn't were homosexual. That's like saying, "if you're not disgusted by gays you probably are one".
2) It conflates "so heterosexual" with "highly sexed", suggesting that, conversely, non-heterosexuals have a low sex drive. This would tend to fly in the face of much research into the sexual habits of gay men.
3) The subjects were shown a variety of imagery. If they're the ravingly heterosexual shagfoals she suggests, then surely they'd tend to get hugely aroused by the male-female stuff and subsequent erections would diminish in intensity thereafter?
I don't have the full text of the experiment to hand, but I'm pretty certain the imagery wouldn't be presented in the same order with everybody, but would be randomised in terms of how it was shown. I suspect also that researchers allowed hardons to subside in-between.
I'm willing to give this specific experiment the benefit of the doubt because I respect Ganesh's opinion. But with the above, I'm just asking.
I think you overvalue my opinion and undervalue scientific method. |
