Hmm …?

Women are turned on by a lot of things, but according to a new study by the University of Essex, 100 percent of those things are other women.

Yes, labias and their lovers, there is apparently no such thing as a straight woman. The study found, that when it comes to what makes ladies horny, women behave in either a bisexual or lesbian fashion — but rarely respond to erotic stimuli in a way that reads as purely heterosexual.

This research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, attempts to clearly deliniate the differences between straight and gay women (other than that one is straight and one is gay). To do this, researchers showed 345 women images of attractive men and women and recorded their responses using eye-tracking devices and direct measures of physiological sexual response (pupil dilation and sexual arousal are 100 percent linked, so eye-tracking devices are an easy way to measure whether someone is feelin' horny in their bone-zone).

They found that straight women were strongly sexually aroused by videos of both attractive men and  women, even though they reported that they are only interested in men. However, lesbians only showed strong sexual responses to women.

Long story short: straight women are aroused by other women, but lesbians aren't really aroused by men.

Where the straight ladies at? Nowhere? Cool …

“This shows us that how women appear in public does not mean that we know anything about their sexual role preferences. Men are simple, but women’s sexual responses remain a mystery," explained Dr. Rieger, from Essex's Department of Psychology in a press release.

… Okay. All this research is fine and dandy, and yes women are mysterious creatures, but … we have to call bullshit on this.

Sexuality is a spectrum. A big, fat spectrum. And just because you have a physiological reaction to people of the same sex, it doesn't mean you're gay or lesbian … unless you want it to! That's the whole thing: sexuality is a personal, subjective definition, and who are we to say whether or not someone is a lesbian just because she gets a jolt in the clit when she sees a beautiful lady? It's up to her if she wants to qualify that as homo or bisexual. There are tons of women that love lesbian porn and get off to it, have had crushes on their female friends, or had a really positive same-sex experiences and still identify as straight because they have no relational interest in other women.

Being willing to experiment with women doesn't make you bisexual or lesbian, it just makes you willing to experiment with women. But if you want to label that as a sexuality category for yourself, then shit, go right ahead and see if we care. If you feel like you wanting to fuck your best friend Brittney because she's hot and has a nice rack makes you bi or lesbian, then … more power to you. Whatever! We're too busy trying to microwave Top Ramen to get all up in your shit and call you lesbian or straight based on how much your pupils dilate when you see a hot chick.

Science knows a lot, but it doesn't know you like you do, which is why we think sexuality labels and studies that perpetuate them are dumb. This study revealed nothing about women that we don't already know, and doesn't work to advance our tolerance of homosexuality. Instead, it just sensationalizes the finding that women think other women are hot and feel safe expressing that to a team of clinical white-coats.

So, instead of figuring out whether women are gay, straight or bi, maybe we could spend time figuring out something that really matters, like how to populate Mars or, more importantly, poop quietly at work.