LAUSR

In this exhaustive review, Chivers (2017) provides the most comprehensive and authoritative synthesis to date on the phenomenon of nonspecific sexual response in heterosexual (androphilic)women—i.e.,thecapacityforwomenwithmale-centeredsexualattractionstoexperiencegenitalarousalinresponse to female sexual stimuli, sometimes indirectcontradictionwith theirownsubjectiveexperiencesofsexualdesire.Chivers’groundbreaking publication on the‘‘category specificity’’of men’s and women’sgenital arousal (Chivers,Rieger,Latty,&Bailey,2004) challenged long-held assumptions about female and male sexuality and sexual orientation and ushered in a tide of creative, multimethod research on this topic. Chivers’ present review of thisresearchusesprevailingtheoreticalmodelsofsexualarousal to synthesize extant empirical findings, evaluate the plausibility of competing explanatory hypotheses, and identify some of the most important unanswered questions for future study. Perhaps the greatest contribution of this review is that it allows us to stand back and reevaluate this entire phenomenon with new eyes. Along these lines, I must admit that Chivers’ exhaustivereviewhas joltedmeawayfrommyownpet theories regardingcategory specificity andhaspromptedme to consider an entirely different explanatory approach—separate from the 10 hypotheses she reviews—which honestly never occurred to me before (a point I admit with some chagrin, given that it may have occurred to many of my colleagues). I am not yet convincedmyself that this alternative approach is a‘‘better’’way to interpret the phenomenon, but I set it forth in the spirit of Chivers’ call for future rigorous research on this topic. Preferred/Nonpreferred or Female/Male?