Gender Differences and Sexual Orientation
Men tend to have higher SOI scores and be more unrestricted than women across a variety of cultures. However, there is more variability in scores within each gender than between men and women, indicating that although the average man is less restricted than the average woman, individuals may vary in sociosexual orientation regardless of gender.
Bisexual women are significantly less restricted in their sociosexual attitudes than both lesbian and heterosexual women. Bisexual women are also the most unrestricted in sociosexual behavior, followed by lesbians and then, heterosexual women. Gay and bisexual men are similar to heterosexual men in sociosexual attitudes, in that they express relatively unrestricted attitudes relative to women. However, gay men are the most unrestricted in sociosexual behavior, followed by bisexual men and then, heterosexual men. This may be because gay men have more potential mating partners who prefer short-term, casual sexual encounters.
Read more about this topic: Sociosexual Orientation
Famous quotes containing the words gender, differences and/or orientation:
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“I don’t know what immutable differences exist between men and women apart from differences in their genitals; perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both men and women, our answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices.”
—Naomi Weisstein (b. 1939)
“Every orientation presupposes a disorientation.”
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929)