23 4 / 2009
Gender Attraction Fluidity
There’s an article on CNN today that’s from Oprah.com, titled - “Why women are leaving men for other women”, and while I disagreed with a lot of it, there were very interesting facts.
To start with, the article talks about how it’s almost becoming “trendy” for women to be dating women in the media now. I think this is a bit offensive, and think it has nothing to do with being ‘trendy’ but instead with mainstream media and American culture starting to accept gay/lesbian relationships as less taboo.
Moving on to the parts I agree with and think are important to educate about is the fluidity of attraction.
“I have been with men all my life and had never met a woman I had fallen in love with before,” she told the Daily Mirror. “But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange. It didn’t change who I am. I’m just a woman who fell in love with a woman.”
This is the key part about sexuality, and how both gender and attraction are not binary. I know so many people who’ve considered themselves straight, or dated the opposite sex for so long who are now in gay relationships. That’s generally the concensus - it just happens. You just develop an attraction to a PERSON, and it doesn’t matter what gender they are. They might not identify as gay, but simply see themselves in a gay relationship - or just a relationship in general. I am a firm believer that you don’t control who you fall in love with, and that is something so beautiful about love. Gender really doesn’t play a part in having a happy partnership with a significant other - it just plain doesn’t. With sex being really a small part in a big relationship picture…it’s more important that you connect with your partner on every other level in life. See eye to eye about things like raising children, education, life goals, motivations, career, etc. And that completely ignores gender altogether.
“Fluidity represents a capacity to respond erotically in unexpected ways due to particular situations or relationships. It doesn’t appear to be something a woman can control.”
Oh boys, this is why women can be so hard to for you to figure out in bed! Women respond erotically to the unexpected - so give her the unexpected. Nah, interestingly - this is quite true. There is something fascinating about falling in love for someone out of your “comfort zone” even when it’s extremely comfortable. It’s pretty amazing what physical and emotional attraction can do to you.
“We found that women’s sexual desire is less rigidly directed toward a particular sex, as compared with men’s, and it’s more changeable over time,” says the study’s senior researcher, J. Michael Bailey, Ph.D. “These findings likely represent a fundamental difference between men’s and women’s brains.”
This idea, that the libido can wander back and forth between genders, Diamond admits, may be threatening and confusing to those with conventional beliefs about sexual orientation.
But when the women she’s interviewed explain their feelings, it doesn’t sound so wild. Many of them say, for example, they are attracted to the person, and not the gender — moved by traits like kindness, intelligence, and humor, which could apply to a man or a woman.
The key here is “threatening and confusing”, and it is. But wait until it happens to them, it won’t be nearly as threatening. ;) I’ll never understand why people cling so dearly to traditional one man/one woman relationship beliefs - when we’re all in it for the same thing. Support, love, comfort, sexual satisfaction, partnership, families, and future. Why would anyone want to deny fundamental emotional needs to a huge segment of our population in order to ‘stay traditional’ (read: antiquated) is beyond me.
