I see media interest in Rieger G, Savin-Williams RC (2012) The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns. PLoS ONE 7(8): e40256. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040256 which looks like an interesting paper.
However some of the more obvious to me bits of the media have been focussing on using this eye technique as some true measure of sexuality:
Scientists can tell whether someone is straight or gay by studying optical reflexes Mail Online 6 August 2012. Warning, mentions female arousal patterns as adaptive to harm reduction for women being raped,
Gay Or Straight? How Eyes Betray Sexual Orientation By Sarah O’Meara at The Huffington Post 6 August 2012.
Eyes reveal if you are gay or straight, says new study Harriet P Evans at PinkPaper.com 8 August 2012.
(they also seem to often miss the major bits of the story about the Kinsey scale style range of sexuality and bisexuality – nothing new there sigh)
I have a problem with the lack of thinking and writing about the science and basic philosophical assumptions.
There seems to be a hidden assumption that sexual orientation has some absolute real value that we can measure and agree on. We don’t have access to that sort of absolute book of truth and we’re not all talking about exactly the same things and human sexual orientation does not lend itself to simple models of measuring a single thing and putting us in boxes or on one line. Oh, and isolating and repeating observations is a bit hard with humans.
What we actually have I’d say is a bunch of observations, about somewhat different things, and some theories – models or maps of “reality” say. People’s attractions and identifications and body responses don’t all line up all of the time. That’s useful to know I’d say. We need theories that include that observation.
What are we trying to observe and model and predict about sexuality?
What do you, personally, want to know? What do you think would be most interesting or useful to research about human sexuality?
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