Female Sexual Fluidity in the News

by Jason Stotts

NPR just ran a story about female sexual fluidity, a fairly new idea and one that is rather controversial.  The idea is that female sexual orientation is “fluid” in the sense that a woman can change her sexual orientation over time and this is just the way female sexuality is, it is not a function of women being “fickle” or suppressing their homosexuality.

For many years, researchers assumed so-called “late-life lesbians” were simply repressed by society until they felt comfortable coming out. But that’s not entirely the case, says Lisa Diamond, a researcher at the University of Utah who is studying whether sexuality is fluid or fixed. Diamond has been studying a group of 79 women for 15 years to track changes in their sexuality.

“It does appear to be that women’s erotic desires are pretty tightly linked to their emotional feelings,” she tells NPR’s Guy Raz. “So for some of these women, they authentically did not feel attracted to women before they met one particular woman that they completely fell in love with.”

The theory of female sexual fluidity is very interesting and I recommend anyone wanting to learn more about it pick up Lisa Diamond’s book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire.

Personally, I think that conceptualizing sexual orientation into rigid categories is the wrong way to think about it and that a more dynamic approach, like the Kinsey Scale, makes much more sense.

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Note: If you click on the link above and purchase the book, I will receive some small remuneration.