Is the study of male homosexuality different from the study of female homosexuality?
In one sense, there is no difference in the study of male and female homosexuality. The goal of research in both cases is to describe how people come to have the sexual interests they have and why they behave the way they do. Historically, researchers have focused more on male homosexuality than on female homosexuality. This may have been because it was easier to identify and classify male homosexuality than female homosexuality or because researchers thought it was more important to explain male homosexuality than female homosexuality [26]. Contemporary researchers do not ignore female sexual orientation, however (e.g., see [2, 3]). They recognize that the development of sexual orientation in females is a valid scientific question. Some commentators have suggested that sexual orientation is more fluid in females than in males. A complete explanation of sexual orientation will have to show whether this is true and if there are, in fact, differences in the development of sexual orientat
