Patterns of Genital Sexual Arousal in Transgender Men

Patterns of Genital Sexual Arousal in Transgender Men. Jamie Raines et al. Psychological Science, February 26, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620971654

Abstract: Most men show genital sexual arousal to one preferred gender. Most women show genital arousal to both genders, regardless of their sexual preferences. There is limited knowledge of whether this difference is driven by biological sex or gender identity. Transgender individuals, whose birth sex and gender identity are incongruent, provide a unique opportunity to address this question. We tested whether the genital responses of 25 (female-to-male) transgender men followed their female birth sex or male gender identity. Depending on their surgical status, arousal was assessed with penile gauges or vaginal plethysmographs. Transgender men’s sexual arousal showed both male-typical and female-typical patterns. Across measures, they responded more strongly to their preferred gender than to the other gender, similar to (but not entirely like) 145 cisgender (nontransgender) men. However, they still responded to both genders, similar to 178 cisgender women. In birth-assigned women, both gender identity and biological sex may influence sexual-arousal patterns.

Keywords sexual arousal, gender identity, transgender, sexual orientation

Check also Sexual Arousal Patterns of Identical Twins with Discordant Sexual Orientations. Tuesday M. Watts, Luke Holmes, Jamie Raines, Sheina Orbell & Gerulf Rieger. Scientific Reportsvolume 8, Article number: 14970 (2018). https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/10/sexual-arousal-patterns-of-identical.html

And Transgenders’ sociosexuality is largely influenced by their sexual genotype despite their incongruent gender self-perception; the relationships between behavior, attitude, & sociosexual desire are different from those of cisgenders:

Influence of Sexual Genotype and Gender Self-Perception on Sociosexuality and Self-Esteem among Transgender People. Rodrigo de Menezes Gomes, Fívia de Araújo Lopes & Felipe Nalon Castro. Human Nature, volume 31, pages483–496. Jan 21 2021. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2021/03/transgenders-sociosexuality-is-largely.html

Discussion

The present findings suggest the existence of both male-typical and female-typical sexual-arousal patterns in transgender men because they showed some gender-specific sexual arousal, similar to cisgender men, but also showed bisexual arousal, similar to cisgender women.

Because of the small population of transgender men (Zucker, 2017), our sample of transgender men was small and was reduced further by the intrusive nature of the experiment. Thus, we consider it notable that we were able to recruit 25 transgender men. However, this small sample is a limitation of this work, and our following interpretations are tentative.

The present findings differed from the results of a previous study that focused on genital sexual arousal in transgender women and who showed patterns typical for their male birth sex and atypical for their female gender identity (Chivers et al., 2004). In our sample of transgender men, arousal patterns were at least partially in line with their male gender identity. This included the finding that transgender men who reported attraction to women were indeed sexually aroused by women, and those attracted to men were indeed aroused by men. This makes these two groups of transgender men distinct from each other, in addition to each group being distinct from cisgender women of different sexual attractions. Hence, transgender men should not be dismissed as being “lesbians in denial” (Kiss, 2018), nor should those who report attraction to men be dismissed as not having a male gender.

Another component of the present study was the use of different arousal measures for transgender men. Penile gauges appeared to capture arousal in postoperative transgender men and did not lead to different patterns of sexual responses compared with transgender men who used the vaginal probe. We stress that the number of transgender men who used a penile gauge was small, and no firm conclusions can be made. Still, some speculation is useful. If one assumes that these findings were valid, it would suggest that the arousal functions of a penis created through metoidioplasty are similar to those of cisgender penises. This interpretation, too, would verify the male typicality of transgender men. Furthermore, because transgender men who used the vaginal probe and those who used the penile gauge had similar arousal patterns, it suggests that different measurement devices do not inherently result in different responses. Different measurement devices are often used for cisgender men and women, and they repeatedly show different arousal patterns (Chivers, 2017). The present findings indicate that the vaginal probe can pick up gender-specific arousal patterns in birth-sex women, which suggests that it is not a matter of the device that leads to gender-nonspecific arousal patterns in cisgender women. This conclusion is in line with emerging work using alternative measures of sexual arousal that confirm that sexes differ in the gender specificity of their sexual responses, such as genital thermography (Huberman & Chivers, 2015) or clitoral responses (Suschinsky et al., 2020).

Future research should test a larger sample of transgender men with a more equal distribution of sexual attraction, measurement type, and transition stage. In the present sample, 20 participants used testosterone supplements, whereas five did not. We could not detect reliable differences in effect depending on the use of testosterone (results not discussed above), but because the latter group was so small, this null finding may not be reliable. In future work, researchers should also consider other factors that could affect transgender men’s sexual-arousal patterns, including the types of sexual stimuli used or their history of male and female romantic and sexual partners.

In conclusion, transgender men appear to show a combination of male-typical and female-typical patterns of genital sexual arousal. These results indicate that for birth-assigned women, differences in sexual arousal may not be solely based on their natal sex but may also be influenced by their gender identity. In other words, for transgender men, their physiological sexual arousal is at least in part reflective of their gender identity.