Biological Research on Women's Sexual Orientations: Evaluating the Scientific Evidence

Journal of Social Issues, Summer, 2000 by Rosemary C. Veniegas, Terri D. Conley

ROSEMARY C. VENIEGAS received her PhD in social psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1999. She has conducted research on perceived gender and ethnic discrimination, heterosexuals' responses to gay men and lesbians who disclose their sexual identities, and power and satisfaction in same-sex friendships. She held a chancellor's postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently conducting research on decision making and the communication of genetic risk in prenatal testing in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

TERRI D. CONLEY received her PhD in social psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1999. She studies stereotyping and intergroup relationships, focusing on the perspective of nondominant groups and interpersonal relationships between members of different groups. She holds a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Science Research Council.

(*.) The authors would like to thank Linda Garnets and Letitia Anne Peplau for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. Tern Conley was supported by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship and a UCLA dissertation year fellowship. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rosemary C. Veniegas, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, 3333 California St., Suite 335, San Francisco, CA 94143-0856 [e-mail: veniegasr@obgyn.ucsf.edu].

(1.) In a recent publication, Singh, Vidaurri, Zambarano, and Dabbs (1999) suggested that biological research should distinguish between lesbians who self-identify as "femme" versus "butch." In two studies with relatively small convenience samples, they reported that butch lesbians had waist-to-hip ratios that were larger than femme lesbians and heterosexual women. In the second study only, they found that butch lesbians had higher testosterone levels than did femme lesbians and heterosexual women (Singh et al., 1999). More research is needed to replicate these results and to include appropriate controls, such as samples of heterosexual women categorized as having stronger "masculine" versus "feminine" identification.

(2.) Hershberger (1997) examined data on female MZ and DZ twins from the Minnesota twin study. Each woman was classified as either "heterosexual" or "bisexual/lesbian." Correlations between twins' reported sexual orientations were calculated. Although the sexual orientations of MZ twins were more strongly correlated than were those of DZ female twins, the analyses were not restricted to lesbians. Additional analyses of these data calculating concordance rates separately for bisexual women and lesbians are needed to conform to the criteria employed by other female twin studies.

References

Bailey, J. M. (1995). Biological perspectives on sexual orientation. In A. R. D'Augelli & C. J. Patterson (Eds.), Lesbian, gay and bisexual identities over the lifespan (pp. 104-135). New York: Oxford University Press.