Back in the 1990s, while studying at York University, I tentatively and fleetingly came out as bisexual. However, in such homophobic times, many activists felt it was important to ‘stand up and be counted’ and this seemed to encourage more of a gay or straight binary than the fuzzier spectrum of queerness that we embrace now. In fact, many fluid, bi and curious women came out as ‘political lesbians’, rejecting men in order to make a feminist statement. I wanted to be a good feminist too. And all my deep romantic attachments were with women. So I switched my label to ‘lesbian’ and started to exclusively date women.

So, nearly 30 years later, when an opportunity to participate in a ‘sex lab’ pops up on my Twitter timeline, I feel intrigued. Perhaps I might finally discover whether, in making that decision, I erased something of my own identity.

I’ve read about these sex studies before, many of them taking place in the US with heterosexual participants being wired up to computers to measure their genital arousal and pupil dilation (also an involuntary response to arousal and attraction) while they look a range of ‘erotic’ images. The findings often point to straight women seeming to display a much broader pattern of arousal than straight men. Straight women seem to be equally turned on by watching clips of either men or women. Whereas straight men, apparently, display a strong preference for women.

This particular experiment, at the University of Essex, is exclusively for women who identify as ‘lesbian’. Well, that’s me… isn’t it?