Selected and reviewed by James Park.
The books are organized by quality, beginning with the best.
The text in black presents the basic information about the book.
The text in red presents the evaluations and opinions of this reviewer.

1. John Money 

Gay, Straight, and In-Between:
The Sexology of Sexual Orientation

(New York: Oxford UP, 1988)       267 pages

     This book brings a truly scientific approach to an area of belief
frequently dominated by partisan and dogmatic theories
held by people who are certain of the 'truth' before the research begins.
Money concludes that the research is still incomplete,
so the question of the origins of homosexuality,
heterosexuality, & bisexuality remains open.
His research concentrates mostly on people
with sexual ambiguity and/or sexual problems.
But understanding these unusual sexual responses
might cast some light on the more common forms of adult sexuality.

    This book also deals with the puzzling phenomenon of transsexuals
—people who believe they are the other sex.
Cross-dressing (as a costume for a sex-script
and for other reasons) is also discussed.
No hormonal differences have been discovered
to account for different sex-scripts or sexual fantasies.
More research is needed to uncover the possible relationships among:
sex-hormones; male/female self-designation ("I am a boy/girl");
gender-personality (one's pattern of 'masculinity' or 'femininity');
& sex-scripts (one's imprinted sexual fantasies).

2. Simon LeVay 

The Sexual Brain

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993)       168 pages

     Simon LeVay is the neuropsychologist who became famous
for a three-page article which the mass media took up
as indicating that the size of a certain part of the hypothalamus
causes sexual orientation.
This part is smaller in women and gay men.
Millions of people have heard this interpretation.
But only a few thousand have read this book,
which explains the full facts as known in the early 1990s.
Based on a small study of the brains of gay men who died of AIDS,
one section of their hypothalami was on average
as small as the same part of an average woman's brain.

     So we don't know which was the cause and which the effect:
Did homosexuality or AIDS cause this part of the brain to be smaller?
The science is much less impressive than the media reports.
And much more research is needed to see if there is any connection
between the hypothalamus and sexual orientation.

     This book is an excellent summary of what is known
about animal and human brains—especially the hypothalamus.
It explains how the various brain structures affect
sexual behavior in animals—and perhaps also in humans.
Scientists are agreed that animal sexual behavior
is 'hard wired' into their brains.
Each species has a stereotyped pattern of sexual behavior,
which, because it is the same in every member of the species,
must be transmitted from generation to generation by genes.
The author would like to find biological causes
for differences in human sexual behavior,
but so far no biological causes have appeared.

     Because LeVay is looking exclusively for physical differences,
he has no way of discovering differences of imprinting.
From the perspective of the sex-script hypothesis,
examining the human brain under a microscope
has no more chance of discovering the causes of human sexual behavior
than a microscopic examination of the brain
will discover the English language.
If both native language and sex-scripts are imprinted,
the physical brain must have the capacity to be imprinted in either way,
but no microscope will ever detect which mother tongue
has been imprinted into a specific human brain.
Presumably the imprinting is erased with the death of the brain,
just as a computer forgets whatever was on the screen
when the electric power goes off.
So the examination of dead human brains will never discover
either the English language or same-sex inprinted fantasies.

     LeVay shows how the body is deeply affected by hormones,
especially during gestation, producing dramatic
physical differences between female and male babies.
So perhaps the human brain is deeply affected
by its continual bath in sex-hormones, beginning before birth.
Since we cannot experiment with humans,
we must test this hypothesis on animals.
And it has been shown that changing the mix of sex-hormones
early in the fetal development of an animal
will dramatically affect the development of its sexual organs
and its later sexual behavior.

     Animal sexual behavior is controlled by their sex-hormones,
but nothing similar has been demonstrated in humans.
So far we know that the hypothalamus is an important nerve-center
for sexual behavior in humans as well as animals.
But animal sexuality is entirely instinctive;
human sexuality depends largely on experiences after birth.

     Likewise the speech areas of the brain makes language possible.
But these easy-to-study brain structures 
do not determine which human language will be spoken.
Thus, we can certainly learn something about human language
by examining the speech areas of the human brain using a microscope.
Future research will learn more about human sexuality
by looking at the brain areas known to affect sexual behavior.
But we should not expect either Spanish or homosexuality
to appear on a slide of a brain section under a microscope.

     More research into the brain structures
that make these phenomena possible will always aid our understanding.
But to claim that brain science can explain
either language or human sexual behavior is hopelessly reductionistic.
Brain scientists can help understand the biological substrate
for the imprinting of sexual fantasies,
but they will not find any of these sex-scripts in the brain
—just as they will never find Japanese, Chinese, French, or German
in the biological structure of a human brain.

3. Simon LeVay

Queer Science:
The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)       364 pages
(ISBN: 0-262-12199-9; hardback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ76.25L497 1996)

     Queer Science is a good summary of research
into the 'causes' of homosexuality:
historic speculations beginning in the middle 1800s;
Freud and his followers; learning theory; brain structure;
hormones; pre-natal stress; genes.
LeVay is a careful scientist rather than an ideologue
determined to defend a preconceived belief.
He concludes that the research has still not found
the 'causes' or 'sources' of homosexuality.
Highly recommended for anyone interested
in the question of why some people are gay.
We hope for newer editions of this book as the research continues.

4. Marjorie B. Garber 

Vice Versa:
Bisexualities and the Eroticism of Everyday Life

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995)       606 pages
(Library of Congress call number: HQ74.G37 1995)

    An interesting review of the cultural phenomenon of bisexuality,
drawing especially on well-known bisexuals.

    The author merely collects the facts and accounts of these people's lives.
There is no attempt to explain why some people are bisexual.

5. Stephen O. Murray

Homosexualities

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000)       507 pages
(ISBN: 0-226-55194-6; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ76.25.M89 2000)

    A comprehensive survey of all forms of homosexuality
in every place on Earth and in all periods of history.
Homosexual relationships are organized into three categories:
1. Age-structured homosexualities
—in which the age-difference is an important element
in the sexual relationship, eg an older male with a younger male.
2. Gender-stratified homosexualities
—in which one sex-partner takes on some aspects of the other sex,
such as a man being somewhat like a female in dress,
behavior, hair, language, occupation.
This status as a quasi-woman is part of the sexual relationship.
3. Egalitarian homosexualities
—in which both sexual partners have the same sexual status.

    The author has done a wonderful job of collecting information
from obscure sub-cultures of the ancient and modern world
that most of us have never heard of.
This demonstrates that homosexual relationships
are found almost everywhere.
But because this is a work of anthropology and sociology,
rather than psychology or sexology,
the author does not attempt to explain homosexuality at all.
We get almost no account of the interior experience of being homosexual.

    This book will stand for many years as the most comprehensive collection
of facts about homosexuality in every culture on earth.
Many quotations and a few pictures illustrate
how homosexual relationships were conducted and understood
in the various places where same-sex relationships are found.

6. Evelyn Blackwood & Suskia E. Wieringa, editors

Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations
and Transgender Practices Across Cultures

(New York: Columbia UP, 1999)       348 pages
(ISBN: 0-231-11260-2; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0-231-11261-0; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ75.5.F43 1999)

     About a dozen articles reporting on lesbian sub-cultures
mostly in less-developed countries.
Careful anthropological work dealing mainly with the 1980s and 1990s.
All of the authors are lesbian themselves.
And they wish to show that lesbianism
(and more generally homosexuality)
occurs in all cultures, altho it takes quite different forms sometimes
—depending on how that particular culture understands
and explains same-sex behavior and relationships.

     The editors are aware of the danger
of imposing Western categories (such as butch and femme)
on the practices of women who had little or no contact
with Western lesbianism
before they developed their own patterns
of woman-woman relationships.

     Each culture or sub-culture has its own understanding
of variations of sex and gender.
And each particular mythology shapes the experience of that sub-culture.
For example, they might believe that a woman has a man's spirit,
which therefore leads 'him' to behave like a man.

     The authors represented in this book seem interested in finding
parallels in other cultures to their own sexual feelings and experiences.
But the sex-script hypothesis (not reflected in this book)
does not assume uniformity of sexual imprinting world-wide.
The imprinting of sexual fantasies in one time and place
may be completely independent
from the sexual imprinting in another time and place.

     Almost universally women are expected to marry men,
even if they are no so inclined sexually.
Most women do in fact marry men,
even if they have additional sexual relationships
(sometimes with other women).
Some feminists call this "compulsory heterosexuality".
This reviewer calls it simply the heterosexual marriage assumption.

     This book may be useful for the raw data it provides
about the sub-cultures
these authors were able to penetrate and describe.

7. Janis Bohan 

The Psychology of Sexual Orientation:
Coming to Terms

(New York: Routledge, 1996)       265 pages
(ISBN: 0-415-91513-9; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ76.3.U5B64 1996)

     This book is written from within the gay and lesbian sub-culture.
It attempts to defend being gay or lesbian
against the oppression of the straight culture.

     Janis Bohan reviews several theories of sexual orientation,
not finding any of them adequate to explain the differences.
No consensus has yet emerged among scientists
who explore sexual orientation.
And some of the problems probably arise from the fact
that we have no clear concept
of the phenomena we are trying to explain.
Being gay or straight does not seem to be
a rigid, unchangeable state of being.

8. Martin S. Weinberg, Colin J. Williams, & Douglas W. Pryor

Dual Attractions: Understanding Bisexuality

(New York: Oxford UP, 1994)

    Three sociologists spent several months
investigating bisexuals in San Francisco.  
They had no theory of bisexuality to confirm or refute.
They just wanted to find out how bisexuals behaved
and how they understood themselves.  

    Most bisexuals experienced themselves attracted to both sexes
before they learned the term "bisexual".  
And they do not see themselves as in transition
from heterosexual to homosexual
or from homosexual to heterosexual.  
But they all acknowledge that society favors
the heterosexual element of their sexual orientation.

    In all relationships, men were more sexual
and women were more emotional.  

    In this reviewer's opinion,
bisexuality may not be basically different
from all people who have more than one imprinted sexual fantasy.  
It just happens that bisexual persons have sex-scripts
from both of the major categories:
homosexual and heterosexual.

9. Erwin J. Haeberle & Rolf Gindorf, editors

Bisexualities: The Ideology and Practice
of Sexual Contact with Both Men and Women

(German edition, 1994)
(New York: Continuum, 1998)     266 pages
(ISBN: 0-8264-0923-7; hardback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ74.B575 1998)

     Collected papers from a conference in Berlin in July 1990.
Some are better than others,
as would be expected from such a conference.
But this collection can be read selectively,
depending on the reader's particular interests.

     Bisexualities contains no break-thrus of thought or science.
All of the contributors have well-established credentials as sexologists.
A more creative conference could have invited people
who identify themselves as bisexual,
who would attempt to explain their condition, responses,
or constitution (however bisexuality should be described)
—and what they understand to be the origins or sources
of being sexually interested in both men and woman.

     Milton Diamond argues that sexual orientation is genetic:
What causes an individual to be aroused by a male or a female (or both)
will be found in the neurology of the brain.
He allows, however, that such genetically-given orientations
are subject to social modification.

     John Gagnon takes a sociological point of view:
The concepts, labels, & paradigms of any culture or sub-culture
will shape how sexuality is experienced and discussed therein.
When more celebrities 'come out' as bisexual, it becomes chic.
Some women become involved with other women sexually
because it is 'politically correct' in some feminist sub-cultures.
If men are the oppressors,
women should not cooperate with them in any way
—especially not 'sleeping with the enemy'.
And sometimes the emotional closeness of a feminist group
leads to sexual intimacy.

     All persons interested in the phenomenon of bisexuality
should at least have a look at this book.

10. Karol L. Jensen, MPH, PhD 

Lesbian Epiphanies:
Women Coming Out in Later Life

(Binghamton, NY: Haworth, 1999)       228 pages
(ISBN: 1-56023-963-8; hardcover)
(ISBN: 1-56023-964-6; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ75.6.U52M555 1999)

     Based on interviews with 24 women from the American midwest
who discovered that they were lesbian or bisexual
after living several years as heterosexuals,
getting married (some twice), and having children.
The author's personal history is the same.
This book will mainly be helpful to other women
who 'discover' lesbian responses later in life.

     It is not a book of sexological theory;
it makes almost no attempt to explain
why some women are lesbian or bisexual and others are not.

     Generally the subjects grew up assuming they would marry.
Most knew little or nothing about lesbianism before they married.
Some report (in retrospect) adolescent experiences with other girls,
but all turned away from such inclinations
because they believed such feelings were 'wrong'.

     Almost all report typical problems with being married:
being dependent on their husbands;
lack of communication in their marriages;
their husbands being mainly interested in sex;
being overburdened with taking care of the children;
feeling cut off from other relationships.
Many divorced their husbands
before they started relationship with other women.
Almost all report leaving their marriages was a liberating experience,
a step toward truly becoming themselves.

     The subjects grew up with almost no information about lesbianism.
Now that homosexuality is a subject discussed in public school,
fewer females who have lesbian sexual fantasies imprinted in their brains
will find themselves automatically entering marriage
just because all women must get married
as a part of growing up.

     All of the subjects report coming out as lesbians or bisexuals
as a discovery of something deep within themselves
rather than as a change in their imprinted sexual fantasies.
In retrospect (from the perspective of their new lives as lesbians),
all report that they were lesbian or bisexual thru-out their adult lives.
But it often took them several years to acknowledge this truth
to themselves and to their families.

     One obstacle to coming out, according to the author,
was the lack of positive role-models of lesbian women.
Without the concept of lesbianism,
they automatically dated boys, got married, & had children.
Then, thru a variety of pathways, each had an epiphany,
in which she discovered that marriage to a man was all wrong for her
and that her deepest passion was for other women.

     Women who are thinking they might be going thru a similar story
will find much support from the stories of these 24 other women.
But readers looking for an explanation of lesbianism
will have to look elsewhere.

11. Edward Stein, editor

Forms of Desire:
Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructivist Controversy

(New York: Garland, 1990)      365 pages

     Eleven authors attempt to understand the origins of homosexuality,
some tending toward nature, others toward nurture.
These articles have all appeared elsewhere earlier.
The authors tend to depend on library research
rather than original thinking or new scientific research.
The book is disappointing, but it is part of the on-going discussion
among advocates of various positions.
The sex-script hypothesis would have been helpful,
but it is not represented.

12. Alan P. Bell, Martin S. Weinberg, & Sue Kiefer Hammersmith

Sexual Preference: It's Development in Men and Woman

(Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1981)      242 pages

     This was an official publication of the Kinsey Institute,
which did much of the earliest research into sexual behavior.
However, this book is now mainly of historical interest.
It is based on the faulty assumption
that family and peers cause sexual orientation.

(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 2008)       176 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-98231-561-3)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ21.P37 2008)

    This book offers a new hypothesis for explaining human sexuality:
Each human person is imprinted with specific sex-scripts
or sexual fantasies during our first 20 years of life.
Our first sexual responses are created
not by nature, not by nurture, but by mental imprinting.
If this hypothesis proves substantially correct,
it will revolutionize modern sexology.

    Perhaps sexual orientation will be explained by the hypothesis
of the imprinting of sexual fantasies before age 20.

revised 4-23-2009; 9-25-2010; 6-3-2011; 4-17-2018;

    This bibliography is related to several others in sexology.
Here is the complete list.
You can go to any of these bibliographies by clicking the name:

Sexology                                      B-SEXOLO

Sex-Script Hypothesis                 B-SEX-SC

Variations of Sex and Gender      B-V-SG

I. Intersex                                     B-CRIT

II. Transsexualism                        B-TS

Transsexual Autobiographies      B-TS-AB

III. Sex-Roles                                B-ROLE

IV. Gender-Personality                 B-GEND

V. Sexual Orientation                   B-ORNT

VI. Cross-Dressing                       B-TV