Sexual orientation refers to people's sexual desires or attractions based on their sex relative to that of the target (Moser, 2015). Everyone seems to agree to the existence of two sexual orientations: heterosexuality and homosexuality. In recent years, however, several sexual orientations have been proposed including bisexuality, asexuality, polyamory, and pedophilia amongst others. There are suggestions that women may not have a sexual orientation due to the lack of consistency that most women exhibit. When it comes to bisexuality, it is often not clear whether it comprises a sexual orientation and an interest inconsistent with that orientation or the coexistence of both the homosexual and heterosexual orientations in a single individual. It has constantly been suggested that the heterosexual-homosexual continuum be divided into other discrete orientations. Male and female sexual orientations manifest in a variety of ways. While men's sexual orientations are linked to their sexual arousal patterns, women's orientations are less likely linked to their sexual arousal (Walton, Lykins & Bhullar, 2016). A section of professionals and activists dispute the suggestion that other sexual orientations besides heterosexual and homosexual can exist. Several factors contribute to the development of sexual orientations. These factors can either be biological or environmental. They affect the males and the females differently leading to more occurrences of diverse sexual orientations in males than ion females. Several scientific factors exist that can explain the diverse sexual orientation that has become a part of society today.
Several biological and environmental factors are brought to play in the development of sexual orientation. Prenatal hormones, though not the sole cause, contribute greatly to sexual orientations. Based on scientific evidence both biological and non-social environmental factors influence sexual orientation. Scientific pieces of evidence do not support the notion of environmental factors being responsible for the development of sexual orientations. This is however supported by sociologists who attribute a variety of environmental factors to the diverse sexual orientations that humans develop. According to LeVay (2010), sexual orientation is as a result of an interaction between sex hormones, genes, the brain and the cells of the developing baby. LeVay's scientific research has reported a different brain structure between straight and gay men. He goes ahead to report the manipulation of sexual hormones in animals by researchers to prompt same-sex mating.
An individual's sexual orientation, therefore, arises from biological processes that occur even before birth. Factors such as genetics, endocrinology, and manipulation of sexual hormones, family demographics, and evolutionary psychology play an important role in the formation of diverse sexual orientations (LeVay, 2010).