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Unrestricted Sociosexuality Decreases Women’s (but not Men’s) Homophobia

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Abstract

A recent evolutionary theory of female sexual fluidity suggests that women do not have sexual orientations in the same sense that men do, and instead women’s apparent sexual orientation is a function of their sociosexual orientation. Among other things, the theory predicts that women’s unrestricted sociosexual orientation decreases their negative attitude toward same-sex behavior, whereas men’s unrestricted sociosexual orientation increases it. An analysis of the General Social Surveys data shows that, net of age, education, race, religion, religiosity, political attitude, intelligence, urbanicity and region of residence, and survey year, sociosexually unrestricted women are less likely to believe homosexual relationships are always morally wrong, while sociosexuality was not associated with homophobia among men. The study provides further evidence for the evolutionary theory of female sexual fluidity.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Marissa A. Harrison and Glenn D. Wilson for their comments on earlier drafts.

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Correspondence to Satoshi Kanazawa.

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Kanazawa, S. Unrestricted Sociosexuality Decreases Women’s (but not Men’s) Homophobia. Sexuality & Culture 26, 1422–1431 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-022-09951-z

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