Is a straight woman fantasizing about a colleague commonplace or marginal? An international study led by Sapir Keinan-Bar and Daphna Joel, published in the Journal of Sex Researchsurveyed 56,892 people about their attractions and fantasies. It reveals a striking contrast between men and women.
Less exclusive excitement for women
For two decades, research has already shown that female sexual responses are less targeted than those of men (based on the measurement of physical signs measured in the laboratory: genital arousal or dilation of the pupils for example).
In other words, men typically show physical arousal only when observing individuals of the gender they are attracted to. On the other hand, this same research has often demonstrated that heterosexual women react physically to seeing images of people of both sexes. This has led to the predominant theory that female sexuality is fundamentally less focused than that of men.
However, it remained unclear whether this model also applied to feelings of attraction or fantasies. This is precisely what this work tests, with surprising results especially for straight men.
A more “fluid” sexuality for women
The study is based on the analysis of nearly 57,000 participants from three large online databases, recruited via research sites and survey platforms. The researchers crossed explicit measures of sexual identity and desire — declared attraction and frequency of fantasies — with implicit measures, intended to capture automatic mental associations (notably via implicit association tests). This combined approach makes it possible to confront conscious desire and implicit attraction on a new scale.
In the end, the male profile appears very clear-cut: strong attraction for the preferred gender, almost zero for the other. Among women, the picture is more nuanced.
- Men report more attraction and fantasies for their preferred gender;
- They report very little attraction to the non-preferred gender;
- Women report more attraction and fantasies towards this non-preferred gender.
Among heterosexual participants, everyone maintains a clear preference for preferred gender. But the gap between preferred and non-preferred is much larger for straight men than for straight women.
In gay and lesbian groups, the difference is reduced, or even reversed, with some lesbian women showing themselves to be as exclusive as gay men, or even more so.
Attractions, fantasies and identities: less exclusive women
The study also examined orientation labels. Men choose an orientation much more often exclusively heterosexual Or exclusively gaywhile women recognize themselves more in nuanced categories like mostly straight or bisexual. However, these mainly straight or gay profiles declare more attraction and fantasies towards the non-preferred gender than those who say they are exclusive.
The Inserm 2023 survey shows that 13.4% of women, compared to 7.6% of men, have already felt an attraction to a person of the same sex. Among 18-29 year olds, 37.6% of French women do not define themselves as strictly heterosexual, compared to 18.3% of men of the same age. In North American surveys, nearly 59% of women also say they have already fantasized about a relationship with another woman.
Gender norms, objectification and erotic plasticity
To explain this discrepancy, the authors rule out the idea of a simple overall higher sexual desire among men: if this were the case, they would also report more attraction to the non-preferred gender, which does not appear. Instead, they emphasize gender norms. Attraction between men remains highly stigmatized, while women suffer massive sexualization in the media. In this context, female erotic plasticity makes their attractions more open, where masculinity is still built on exclusivity.