Malleable Female Sexual Attraction

The Washington Post had a more interesting than usual book review section this week, I thought. The theme Sunday was "women's worlds," and they reviewed books about issues having to do with sex and gender, especially focused on women.

One book that was reviewed has some relevance to issues we deal with here. Sexual Fluidity - Understanding Women's Love and Desire by Lisa Diamond reports on research that has been discussed on this blog previously. She has spent years following a group of women whose self-reported sexual orientation is changeable. Sometimes they're lesbians, sometimes they're straight, it seems that what attracts them to someone is something about the person, not necessarily the form of their plumbing. I saw her give a talk at an APA conference a couple of years ago and talked with her afterwards, it is a fascinating subject and a complicated one.

I will juxtapose this with the news that the Montgomery County Public Schools, at least some of the high schools, will be distributing literature this week put out by PFOX -- Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays. We don't know what kind of documents they will be giving the children, but can assume it will be something similar to the student brochure posted on their web site. It urges students not to adopt a "gay identity" just because they are attracted to members of their own sex, it says there is "no evidence showing the origins of same-sex attractions are genetic," insists "there is no gay gene." There is a photo of happy, smiling teenagers.

I need to make it clear that Dr. Diamond's research does not support PFOX's message of change. She's at the University of Utah and she told me that she gets office visits from Mormon men asking her for advice, saying they "just can't be" gay, but she has nothing to tell them. She has identified some women whose sexual orientation is not fixed, but there is no indication, for one thing, that any men are like that, and for another thing, that you can learn to change or loosen up your sexual orientation. These women are just like that, that's all.

I think this research is informative and relevant to the issues we discuss here. I quote from The Post book review because, well, because it's shorter than the book itself.

The title of the first chapter in Diamond's Sexual Fluidity-- "Will the Real Lesbians Please Stand Up?" -- is likely to intrigue even the most jaded sexpert. In the kick-off to her study of the malleability of female erotic longing, Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, writes:

"In 1997, the actress Anne Heche began a widely publicized romantic relationship with the openly lesbian comedian Ellen DeGeneres after having had no prior same-sex attractions. . . . The relationship with DeGeneres ended after two years, and Heche went on to marry a man. The actress Cynthia Nixon of the HBO series Sex and the City developed a serious relationship with a woman in 2004 after ending a fifteen-year relationship with a man. Julie Cypher left a heterosexual marriage for the musician Melissa Etheridge in 1988. After twelve years together, the pair separated and Cypher -- like Heche -- has returned to heterosexual relationships. In other cases, longtime lesbians have unexpectedly initiated relationships with men, sometimes after decades of exclusively same-sex ties. . . . What's going on? Are these women confused? Were they just going through a phase before, or are they in one now?"

Setting out to prove the theory that, for some women, love is truly blind where gender is concerned, Diamond presents her evidence in a fascinating, anecdotal fashion -- by tracking over the span of a decade the relationships of nearly 100 women who at one point or another had experienced "same-sex attractions." The women move from men to women and back again (or vice-versa), their sexual identity as changeable as their desires. Additionally, she delves into the brain science behind lust, love and infatuation, revealing that what draws women toward a particular partner is as much a function of biology as it is anything else. To her credit, Diamond avoids scripting her arguments in obtuse academese. With her compassionate, understated approach, she has stepped up the business of gender research. Carnal Confusion: As sexy as our culture is, we still don't understand sex

[Note that this review covers two books, the title may be more relevant for the other one.]

Dr. Diamond is talking about some women whose natural inclination is not rooted in the anatomical sex of a romantic partner. They don't select whether to be straight or lesbian and then search for someone who fits the template, they find themselves attracted to someone and, for these women, it turns out not to be important whether that person is a man or a woman. Maybe it is a sense of humor they like, or a handsome face, maybe a certain attitude about things, where it doesn't matter what sex you are. This is an interesting phenomenon in its own right, I don't know if she discusses the proportion of women who feel that way -- people may have private feelings that they don't acknowledge publicly, and there is certainly social pressure, norms of behavior that discourage this sort of ambiguity, so this might be a little hard to count.

PFOX, on the other hand, simply starts with the notion that it's bad to be gay. If you're gay you should stop. Where Diamond's subjects switch in both directions, PFOX is only interested in one, they are not at all interested in telling straight people that they can change and become homosexual! It is funny, though, and there have been some pretty good parodies on the Internet about that. No, PFOX promotes the lie that gay people can choose to be straight. It presupposes a negative view of homosexuality and tries, through clever sloganeering and pamphleteering, to convince gay people, especially young gay people, that they can learn to be straight. Then, you know, people will stop teasing them at school and stuff. Except that PFOX's other big message is that "ex-gays" are victimized more than anyone -- they say on their web site:

However, there are those who refuse to respect that decision. Consequently, formerly gay persons are reviled simply because they dare to exist!

Nobody has ever actually heard of that happening, it is something they like to claim when somebody sensible points out the fact that they are bigots and liars. In reality, if somebody stopped being gay nobody would really care, unless they went around telling other gay people they should do it, too. PFOX is, indeed, reviled, but a person who used to be gay and isn't now would just be another straight person.

It seems to me like a bad idea to let other people tell you who to like, who to love, who to get romantically involved with. Nature will move you, and I can't see why it would matter what anybody else thinks. Marriage has, through the history of mankind, been a matter of economics and reproduction, but our modern civilized society allows us the luxury of marrying for love -- and it's nobody's business who you love.