Sexuality Tips For You.

July 27, 2008

Know Your Sexual Orientation

By Vinod Karan Singh

Sexual orientation is defined as a general feeling one may have towards a male, female or for both the sexes. The general feeling could be an enduring sexual, romantic, affection or emotional bonding towards the opposite sex or for the same sex. We usually witness three kind of sexual orientations i.e. heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality.

To understand the sexual behavior of a person, it is important to observe his/her psychological traits, such as individual's erotic desires, fantasy, arousal, sexual satisfaction level, comfort zone, preference of a partner and approach towards the opposite sex or same sex. To deal with sexual orientation is not an easy task; it may take years to find out what exactly is your preference in terms of sex. Gender and identity may or may not play a deciding role in the personal choice. Such feelings are usually directed through the mind.

According to a new study in UK, gay men and straight women share similar characteristics in the area of brain responsible for emotion upheaval, mood swings, anxiety and other such feelings. This report is confirmed by a group of researchers from National Academy of Sciences, working on the potential biological underpinning of sexuality and other possible source of sexual orientation. On similar observation, it is found that the same symmetry exists between lesbians and straight men. As stated earlier, such observation regarding the sexual orientation tends to differ irrespective of gender and identity.

It cannot be easily attributed to perception or behavior and the question is still open for debate. There had been a series of researches and studies on the role of genetic science, biological and environmental factors but it is strongly believed that nature and nurture directly affects the sexual orientation of a person.

Scientists are of view that brain shape and size or certain degree of increased exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb is responsible for deciding the sexual behavior or altered sex preferences. If we try to explain the phenomenon through other way, it could be said that the first sexual encounter of a person helps to decide his adult behavior. It's more like an addiction, we like certain thing and we wish to continue with it. Same goes in case of sexual orientation, if the body and mind is comfortable with same sex or opposite sex is just a matter of chance.

Quite interestingly, the changing perception about sex and urge to taste the forbidden fruit tempt Gen next to undergo the experience of altered sexual preferences at least once. Such sex adventures are quite in vogue now a day. Sigmund Freud, the Australian physician and thinker, propounded the theory of innate bisexuality, or predisposition to bisexuality. According to this theory, all humans are born bisexual but through psychological development, which includes both external and internal factors, become monosexual while the bisexuality remains in a latent state.

As mentioned earlier, sometimes our own sexual orientation remains disguised for years. It's not because we don't know what actually we want, but it's just that we don't accept the reality. In another clinical research, a method is introduced to measure the sexual orientation of the person; where genital enlargement with blood is measured in response to exposure to different erotic material, sexual fantasy and other sexual behavior. This method is quite successful in determining the same sex attraction as well as the opposite sex tendency.

But since it is not possible to select one's genes in a same way it is difficult to change the sexual orientation which we get by birth. There has been lot left for scientists to work extensively on the behavior of newborn babies before they predict anything on their sexual inclination. A keen observation is all required for the better understanding of neurobiology of sexuality and gender behavior of human species.

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