A most interesting book that offers a radically new understanding of female sexuality, by proposing to break the stalemate in which feminism as well as gay, lesbian & queer studies are still locked, and to go beyond the old dichotomies informing them: essentialism versus social constructionism, nature versus culture, straight versus gay...In view of my w(e)ariness concerning certain (sch)isms, rigid categories & labels recently vented here, I couldn't agree more with Diamond's argument that, for some women - and for some men, I should add! - love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual [or perhaps not even bisexual] but fluid, changing as [they] move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships. She raises thus key questions about the role of gender in structuring our basic experiences of desire, by showing that very often our sexual attractions are person-based - linked to personality, emotional qualities, etc. - and not necessarily gender-related. This is to say that some people can respond erotically to anyone with a desirable personality or with whom they have a strong personal connection, regardless of that person's gender: they typically describe themselves as being attracted to "the person, not the gender". Hence this "gender-free" eroticism challenges, or even undermines, the very distinction between "same-sex" and "other-sex" attractions which is still at the basis of conventional models of sexuality.
Hum, promising indeed... An appetizer (more to follow soon, if/when time allows...):
Hum, promising indeed... An appetizer (more to follow soon, if/when time allows...):
[Prevailing] assumptions hold that an individual's sexual predisposition for the same sex or the other sex is an early-developing and stable trait that has a consistent effect on that person's attractions, fantasies, and romantic feelings over the lifespan. What few people realize, however, is that these assumptions are based primarily on men's experiences because most research on sexual orientation has been conducted on men. Although this model of sexual orientation describes men fairly accurately, it does not always apply so well to women.
Historically, women who deviate from this model by reporting shifts in their sexuality over time - heterosexual women falling in love with female friends, lesbian women periodically dating men - were presumed few in number and exceptional in nature. In other words, they were just inconvenient noise cluttering up the real data on sexual orientation. Yet as research on female sexuality has increased over the years, these "exceptional" cases now appear to be more common than previously thought. In short, the current conventional wisdom about the nature and development of sexual orientation provides an incomplete picture of women's experiences. Researchers now openly acknowledge that despite significant advances in the science of sexuality over the past twenty years, "female sexual orientation is, for the time being, poorly understood."
This situation is now changing. As scientists have begun investigating female and male sexual orientation as distinct phenomena instead of two sides of the same coin, consensus is gradually building on why women appear so different from men. Specifically, we have found that one of the fundamental, defining features of female sexual orientation is its fluidity. We are now on the brink of a revolutionary understanding of female sexuality that has profound scientific and social implications.
Sexual fluidity, quite simply, means situation-dependent flexibility in women's sexual responsiveness. This flexibility makes it possible for some women to experience desires for either men or women under certain circumstances, regardless of their overall sexual orientation. In other words, though women - like men - appear to be born with distinct sexual orientations, these orientations do not provide the last word on their sexual attractions and experiences.
Historically, women who deviate from this model by reporting shifts in their sexuality over time - heterosexual women falling in love with female friends, lesbian women periodically dating men - were presumed few in number and exceptional in nature. In other words, they were just inconvenient noise cluttering up the real data on sexual orientation. Yet as research on female sexuality has increased over the years, these "exceptional" cases now appear to be more common than previously thought. In short, the current conventional wisdom about the nature and development of sexual orientation provides an incomplete picture of women's experiences. Researchers now openly acknowledge that despite significant advances in the science of sexuality over the past twenty years, "female sexual orientation is, for the time being, poorly understood."
This situation is now changing. As scientists have begun investigating female and male sexual orientation as distinct phenomena instead of two sides of the same coin, consensus is gradually building on why women appear so different from men. Specifically, we have found that one of the fundamental, defining features of female sexual orientation is its fluidity. We are now on the brink of a revolutionary understanding of female sexuality that has profound scientific and social implications.
Sexual fluidity, quite simply, means situation-dependent flexibility in women's sexual responsiveness. This flexibility makes it possible for some women to experience desires for either men or women under certain circumstances, regardless of their overall sexual orientation. In other words, though women - like men - appear to be born with distinct sexual orientations, these orientations do not provide the last word on their sexual attractions and experiences.
Lisa M. Diamond, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2008), pp. 2-3.
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