Bisexual Group

On the day I attended the group’s board meeting in San Diego, Bailey was seeking funding for new research. But before he could outline it for the board, someone in the room joked, “You’re not going to do one of those demonstrations, are you?” It was a reference to a controversial session of Bailey’s 2011 Human Sexuality class at Northwestern, during which a female guest speaker was brought to orgasm by her male partner using a sex toy.

Bailey, who seemed like he didn’t hear the joke, went into an explanation of his proposed study, which I was surprised to hear wouldn’t include any actual bisexuals. Instead, he planned to test the arousal patterns of 60 gay-identified men.

“We’re interested in the role that sexual inhibition can play in people’s sexuality, in ways that might be relevant to sexual identity or capacity,” he began. “There’s evidence from prior studies that if you start with a stimulus that might turn on a gay guy — say, two guys [being sexual] — and then add a woman to the scene, some gay men are going to be inhibited by that and feel less aroused, while others won’t see their arousal decrease. A subset of bisexual-identified men might be explained by that.”