The development of sexual orientation in women.

Abstract

Throughout this century, most theorizing and empirical research about women's sexual orientation have been guided by a belief in the essential masculinity of lesbians and the femininity of heterosexual women. This view can be traced to the influential inversion theories of 19th-century sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis. Viewing heterosexuality as the biological norm, these scholars believed that homosexuality results from a biological abnormality that leads to gender-atypical ("inverted") sexual attractions and personality. Although there were differences among the various inversion theories, they shared three core elements. First and foremost, inversion theorists characterized heterosexual women as feminine and lesbians as masculine. In Psychopathia Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing (1908/1950, pp. 398-400) described the most extreme form of female homosexuality as a woman who "possesses of the feminine qualities only the genital organs; thought, sentiment, action, even external appearances are those of the man." A second core belief was that sexual orientation is primarily biological in origin. As Meyer-Bahlburg (1984, p. 375) noted, the inversion model has been "the concept guiding biological explanations of homosexuality" throughout this century. A third belief implicit in inversion theories was that social, cultural, and experiential factors have negligible influence on women's sexual orientation. The impact of this perspective has been widespread, especially in psychology, and continues to this day. The thesis of this review is that the cumulative body of empirical research on women's sexual orientation refutes each of the main inversion assumptions. In the following sections we review this research literature. Next we present an alternative perspective on women's sexual orientation, the intimate careers framework, which is compatible with available research findings, and we identify promising directions for future research. This review focuses exclusively on women. Empirical evidence