Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire in Ms. Reviews & Bookmarks

Apr 20, 2008 Ms. Online added it

Shelves: 2008-winter-reviews

EBB, FLOW - Review By Hanne Blank

WHAT TO MAKE OF COLLEGE women who are “lesbian until graduation”? Or straight married women who suddenly fall in love with other women? For that matter, what about queeridentified women— Anne Heche, anyone?— who wind up with men? Perhaps they’re really bisexual or “confused” or maybe they were simply repressed or closeted. Alarmists might imagine them victims of predatory dykes and Stockholm syndrome. Or, as University of Utah psychologist Lisa Diamond suggests EBB, FLOW - Review By Hanne Blank

WHAT TO MAKE OF COLLEGE women who are “lesbian until graduation”? Or straight married women who suddenly fall in love with other women? For that matter, what about queeridentified women— Anne Heche, anyone?— who wind up with men? Perhaps they’re really bisexual or “confused” or maybe they were simply repressed or closeted. Alarmists might imagine them victims of predatory dykes and Stockholm syndrome. Or, as University of Utah psychologist Lisa Diamond suggests in her captivating, nuanced and rigorous Sexual Fluidity, perhaps these experiences are simply normal.

Diamond’s study followed the sexual lives of nearly 100 young women over a 10-year period. As her subjects fell in and out of love and lust with men and women, often regardless of their own sexual orientations, Diamond came to understand female sexuality not as a state of being with eternally fixed parameters but as a continuous dynamic process. The picture that emerged was of female sexuality as a zone of probabilities rather than absolutes, a context-specific, intensely attachment- driven realm whose richness points up the poverty, misogyny and political agendas of static, categorybased models of sexuality.

Sexual fluidity, as distinct from bisexuality, is a person’s capacity to “experience variation in their erotic and affectional feelings as they encounter different situations, relationships and life stages,” Diamond writes. Statistically, this capacity exists more frequently in women than men. This is not to say that a woman’s sexual orientation doesn’t matter; in fact Diamond affirms that it is an accurate predictor of her attractions. But it is also common for women, at some point in their lives, to experience some level of attraction to both same-sex and othersex partners.

We do not yet know why women should be like this, though Diamond points to likely evolutionary, neurobiological and cultural factors. She found that when fluidity happens, it is typically highly situational and emotional— a matter of the right person at the right time—as well as utterly involuntary.

This is volatile, politically risky stuff, and Diamond knows it; her work has already been cited by advocates of “ex-gay” therapy. After all, if sexual attractions are changeable, then they can be intentionally changed, right? Wrong. As Diamond’s research demonstrates, fluidity is not a matter of choice. Indeed, her subjects describe frustration with their inability to control sexual attractions that contradict the identity labels they want to claim. Like puberty, fluidity is thrust upon us.

Diamond’s work is vital precisely because sexual fluidity is not a new concept—Freud called his version “polymorphous perversity”— but merely one that is typically dismissed. Nor is it news to women, particularly not to a generation for whom a nonspecific “queer” affiliation, or no affiliation at all, is increasingly common. What is so important is not that this fluidity exists, but that someone has finally paid it systematic attention and found that it is in fact not the exception, but may well be the rule.

HANNE BLANK is the author of six books, including Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury USA). ...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Katy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2012, school, wgss, womens-studies, nonfiction, own, feminism, college-freshman-year, sexuality-studies

Outstanding compilation of Diamond's research. I'd absolutely recommend it, especially as someone just starting out on the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies track...it's a good beginning piece for having a lot of data in one place. This book changed my way of thinking about a lot of things and also normalized things that can seem very deviant or immoral in our society. Definitely read it for a new outlook. ...more

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