Why women are 27 times more likely to be attracted to own sex than men-to-men

Toronto, July 17 (ANI): While women won't mind kissing other ladies for the sake of curiosity or fun, men would think a thousand number of times before even considering the offer to smooch another guy. Now, a researcher has tried to find the reason behind it.

"There's no question female sexuality is much more malleable. The evidence for why is not nearly as clear cut," The Globe and Mail quoted Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, as saying.

"Men are more either/or when it comes to their attractions to men or women. Women seem to have more shades of grey in their attractions," said Richard Lippa, a professor of psychology at California State University.

A survey of 3,600 people conducted by Lippa in 2006, found that heterosexual women are 27 times more likely than heterosexual men to express attraction to their own sex.

And some researchers have said that such a difference is more of a cultural influence than anything else.

"We sort of set it up that the definition of masculinity is to not be gay. That is not true of femininity at all," said Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah.

Thus, in her opinion, "there's a lot more cultural permission for women to experiment with other women, to talk about it, to joke about having a girl crush and stuff like that."

Sex researchers agree that some men do experiment, although much less frequently than women.

However, Baumeister said: "This is not because of culture, it's biology. It looks pretty hard-wired."

In a survey of sexuality studies in 2000, Baumeister had found that social and cultural factors such as education and religion play a much stronger role in influencing a woman's sexuality compared with a man's.

The relatively lower role of cultural influence on men's sexuality is reason to believe their sexual behaviour is rooted in biology, he said.

Living in a homophobic society may prevent boys from experimenting or, at the very least, talking publicly about experimenting.

Still, some researchers have said that differences between men and women can't all be culture.

In a secondary study conducted in 2007, Lippa found that results of his 2006 study were replicated in many countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

He said that the consistency of the study's findings argues for a biological difference, not a cultural one.

"Maybe in some sense women are more intrinsically bisexual. People are beginning to more and more acknowledge - and by people I mean researchers and people who study these things - that there are some real gender differences," he said. (ANI)