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Like so many things, the prevalence of bisexuality depends on how you define it. According to author and sex researcher Simon LeVay, if you define bisexuality as any attraction to both sexes, then it's more common than exclusive homosexuality in either men or women. If you define bisexuality as an equal attraction to both sexes, then it becomes much rarer, especially in men.

In fact, some researchers have said there is no such thing as true bisexuality in men at all. Some experiments, done in the 1970s by researcher Kurt Freund, measured penile swelling in men who were shown erotic pictures of both sexes. The researchers claimed to have never encountered a man who was excited both by images of men and women. In a more recent study, researchers at Northwestern University advertised for self-identified bisexuals and found that some men were indeed aroused by both sexes, but were more aroused by one sex than the other -- and usually men.

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r. LeVay also reports what most gay men already know: that many men use the label "bisexual" as an intermediate step in the coming-out process. He says that as many as 40 percent of gay men called themselves bi before fully coming to terms with the fact that they are homosexual and defining themselves as such.

Women on the other hand, are different. It is well established that women's sexuality is more fluid than men's. A woman may define herself as heterosexual at one point in her life and have a completely satisfactory relationship with men; then at another point, redefine herself as lesbian and be happy. She might then even switch back again at another time.

Women also show a different physiological response to erotic stimuli than men. Remarkably, research by psychologist Meredith Shivers at the Center for Mental Health and Addication in Toronto found that virtually all women will show genital arousal to erotic pictures of both men and women, regardless of their stated sexual orientation. This finding does not disprove exclusive hetero- or homosexuality, but rather simply blurs the line between arousal and attraction. According to one theory, women self-lubricate so readily in response to any sexual stimuli because it helps reduce risk of injury if sex is forced upon them -- presumably not a rare occurrence in the lawless prehistoric.

LeVay points out that there is another dimension of bisexuality to consider: when sexual and emotional attraction diverge. What he means is that a person may want to have sex with one gender, yet fall in love with another. In some places and times it was common place for heterosexual men to form intimate emotional bonds with other men that resembled love affairs, but without the sex. In our culture today, such a situation is much more common among women than men, but it does still happen with either.

Anyone who doubts the existence of bisexuality has never considered public sex -- which flourishes often in the borderlands of avowed sexual identity. Virtually every bathhouse, park, public washroom, or video store is full of men who are happily married to women but who are out seeking sex with other men. It has always been this way, and I suspect it always will be.

Author Profile:  Joseph Couture

Joseph Couture is a journalist based on London, Ontario.