EVALUATING PORNOGRAPHIC STIMULI TO INDUCE SEXUAL AROUSAL AND REDUCE DISGUST IN SEXUALITY STUDIES FOR BISEXUAL WOMEN

Sexual arousal, a complex, core process in one’s life, has garnered increased attention in recent decades; however studies have predominantly focused on heterosexual men, with fewer investigating women, and scarce research involving bisexual women. This discrepancy results in male-centric stimuli and paradigms, inadequately catering to women’s arousal. This study aims to address this research gap by evaluating pornographic stimuli designed to effectively induce sexual arousal with minimal disgust in bisexual women, gaining insight into elements contributing to this. It is the first study which specifically caters for this cohort.

28 self-identified bisexual women, aged 18-40, anonymously completed online questionnaires. They viewed 5 control and 5 pornographic stimuli, counterbalanced for order effects. Pornography was chosen from ethical sources reflecting a range of sexual acts and relationship types; all videos were edited to a duration of 6 minutes. Participants rated elicited sexual arousal, disgust, non-sexual excitement and happiness for each video using a Likert scale transformed to 0-4 for analysis in R.

The two most adequate pornographic stimuli primarily based on analysing disgust and sexual arousal levels included a lesbian video with two femme-presenting women and a foursome video with homosexual and heterosexual interactions amongst men and women. These stimuli elicited the highest levels of sexual arousal (M = 3.01, SD = 1.12)(M = 2.53, SD = 1.12), and the least disgust (M = 0.027, SD = 0.16), (M = 0.65, SD = 1.11), respectively. Close-ups on male genitalia elicited higher disgust whilst sexual noises and hardcore elements, like fisting, induced varying reactions. Findings suggest prioritizing stimuli displaying female agency and pleasure, evident interpersonal chemistry, and softcore sexual acts to increase sexual arousal.

Future studies on a larger scale, with women of diverse cultures and sexualities, are recommended to further validate these results and explore variations. Efforts should be made to create open licensed content based on aforementioned findings to facilitate future female sexuality research. Using adequate, validated stimuli can help standardise studies, thus reducing confounding factors and enhancing reliability of research outcomes.

The authors declare that they have no known conflicts of interest.