Sexual Fluidity in Females
May 23, 2008
I spent the better part of today recuperating from my packing yesterday, laying out in our backyard working on my tan. I tan easily, and the Florida sun was built for tanning as best I can tell. And, since I hate tan lines, I always tan nude. Fortunately, we have a back yard that permits that kind of activity without us having to worry about being gawked at by neighbors (not that I’d care). I got a couple of hours in before the clouds started building and the rains came. It never fails, on or about May 20th every year, you can count on those afternoon thunderstorms popping up and ruining what’s left of the afternoon. They usually only stick around for about an hour or so, but afterward, the humidity is usually so bad it is hard to do anything outside until the sun starts falling toward the horizon.
I always read and listen to my iPod when I’m enjoying the sun. My current book is called Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, by Dr. Lisa Diamond, a Psychology professor at the University of Utah. In it, she basically posits that the study of female sexuality has been lacking somewhat, and what has been undertaken is almost always based around concepts that define male sexuality. She asserts that, while male sexual orientation is largely dichotomous in nature, female sexual orientation is much more varied or, as she puts it, fluid. One review said:
From Publishers Weekly
Many women experience a fluid sexual desire that is responsive to a person rather then a specific gender, argues Diamond n this fascinating and certain to be controversial study. Diamond, associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, is best when detailing, with vivid examples, how scientific studies of sexual desire and behavior have focused on the experience of men, for whom the heterosexual/homosexual divide seems mostly fixed. Diamond says traditional labels for sexual desire are inadequate; for some women even bisexual does not truly express the protean nature of their sexuality. Diamond details in accessible and nuanced language her own study of 100 young women (by her own admission not fully representative) over a period of 10 years. She says that she is calling for an expanded understanding of same-sex sexuality that could radically affect both LGBT activists who hold that sexual identity is fixed and antigay groups who believe sexuality is chosen. Sexual fluidity involves a mix of internal and external factors, but is not, Diamond emphasizes, a matter of conscious choice, and she speculates that a younger generation that views sexuality as personal rather than political might embrace this less rigid view.
I’ll have much more to say on this in later posts. As you may know (or will come to know), I am an avid student of human sexuality. The whole construct of what defines us as sexual beings and how we interact with and among others sexually has just fascinated me since I was in my mid-teens. That’s why I have elected to make it my life’s work.
One point she’s made (and granted, I am only in Chapter 6 now) is that the vast majority of women tend to experience their sexual orientation based on situational constructs. Many, for example, identify as heterosexual, but experience attractions, both emotional and physical to other women. Most, of course, never act on them. But some, given the right set of circumstances, can or will.
This falls perfectly in line with an assertion I have made for several years now. I have said on many occasions (and in many different venues) that a good 80% of “straight” women could be convinced to play with the other team given the right set of circumstances. This assertion comes from my own personal experience seducing straight women. For a good portion of my high school and early college careers, I pursued other girls, flirted with them, and got most of them in bed for their first lesbian experiences. Some people called it sport fucking, and I guess in reality that is what it was. In my own mind I knew how incredible it felt to be sexually intimate with another woman, and I wanted others to have that experience as well. I didn’t do it just to be doing it, though. I enjoyed the thrill of the chase, yes, but I knew that, once they were in bed and found out what it was like, they’d see a whole new side of themselves sexually. And to a person they all saw it as a positive experience (at the time, anyway). To me, opening someone’s eyes to a previously unexplored aspect of their sexuality is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Anyway, if you get the chance, pick up a copy of the book, especially if you’re a female. I guarantee you it will increase your understanding of female sexuality.
I’ll have more to say on this as I progress through the book, probably.
Posted by Alexa | Filed Under Alexa, Miscellaneous, Sexuality
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This falls perfectly in line with an assertion I have made for several years now. I have said on many occasions (and in many different venues) that a good 80% of “straight” women could be convinced to play with the other team given the right set of circumstances.
It’s an incredibly true statement — and one which has proved itself in my own life time and time again.
This is a book which every woman should read I think — and one I plan to purchase this weekend.
Women need good guides to navigating their sexuality, because if we consider how we’re raised and the kinds of pressures society places upon us, in reality from the moment we grow breasts, it’s often incredibly difficult for a woman to deal with her feelings, especially those feelings of attraction towards other women.
Most women of a certain age group have never been given the right opportunity to explore these feelings — while I believe that these things are much more accepted and open to younger women. In some ways this is a generational thing in terms of experience — but I believe the feelings are universal.
I hope to read more of your thoughts on this in the future.
nina
[...] another perspective is all it takes to help us find our own way. My friend Alexa wrote a post here about a book called Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire by Lisa Diamond. [...]
This is based on research/work with US women. Women from other parts of the world i.e. China, India do not appear to have this kind of “fluidity”, and appear to be as rigid as men in the US. I think it is the culture of growing up in the US, which is surprisingly sexist that contributes to this phenomena. Hence you find a lot of girls while growing up in the US, having sleep-overs, bathing together etc., which does not usually seem to happen in middle class families outside the US. Hence this appears to be a US thing, but of course, for most Americans, there is some kind of implicit thinking that if it is in the US,then since the US is the world, it must be true for the whole world.
Path, I suspect you’d find this to be true in the UK, for example, as well as Scandanavia and perhaps some other of the more progressive western European cultures. Perhaps it might be fair to suggest that it isn’t the case in Asian and Far Eastern cultures? I don’t know for sure because I haven’t studied this to the extent the author has, obviously. I haven’t finished reading the book yet, but thus far, she has not indicated whether or not she believes this is a solely western phenomenon or not.
I’d also wonder if it is was more a function of the fact that any overt expressions of sexuality are more restrictive in those cultures to begin with than anything else, especially for women. Perhaps those women do experience the same feelings and whatnot, but aren’t as free to express them as they are in western cultures. We do know, for example, that there are lesbian, bisexual and polyamorous women in those cultures. I think it’d be unrealistic to assume that they don’t experience these same feelings on one level or another.
You do raise an interesting point, though, to be sure.