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Is love "blind" when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This unsettling and original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Lisa Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.
This perspective clashes with traditional views of sexual orientation as a stable and fixed trait. But that view is based on research conducted almost entirely on men. Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked one-hundred women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: "I fall in love with the person, not the gender," say some respondents.
Sexual Fluidity offers a new understanding of women's sexuality--and of the central importance of love.
Review:
"Many women experience a fluid sexual desire that is responsive to a person rather then a specific gender, argues Diamond n this fascinating and certain to be controversial study. Diamond, associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, is best when detailing, with vivid examples, how scientific studies of sexual desire and behavior have focused on the experience of men, for whom the heterosexual/homosexual divide seems mostly fixed. Diamond says traditional labels for sexual desire are inadequate; for some women even 'bisexual' does not truly express the protean nature of their sexuality. Diamond details in accessible and nuanced language her own study of 100 young women (by her own admission not 'fully representative') over a period of 10 years. She says that she is 'calling for an expanded understanding of same-sex sexuality' that could radically affect both LGBT activists who hold that sexual identity is fixed and antigay groups who believe sexuality is chosen. Sexual fluidity involves a mix of internal and external factors, but is not, Diamond emphasizes, a matter of conscious choice, and she speculates that a younger generation that views sexuality as personal rather than political might embrace this less rigid view." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"In a culture in which the pornographic has become predictable, it seems downright cheeky to write and publish a sex book — not because it's difficult, but because, to cop an exhausted term, eros has jumped the shark. Is there really anything new to say about sex? Lisa M. Diamond and Brian Alexander think there is. The title of the first chapter in Diamond's 'Sexual Fluidity' --... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) '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. Far more splashy is Brian Alexander's 'America Unzipped,' which covers the same even-kinky-sex-is-as-wholesome-as-apple-pie territory as HBO's long-running docu-series 'Real Sex,' with an emphasis on the challenges of self-discovery. The book feels at once forward-thinking and oddly dated, in a 1990s 'sex positive' kind of way. Ostensibly, we're to be comforted by the notion that nothing's shocking anymore, and that behind the Pottery Barn curtains of middle-class America, people are gettin' it on, bow-chicka-bow-wow. There are all-female sex toy parties being hosted by housewives in suburban Kansas, Connecticut prepsters running porn empires and fetishists flocking to conventions at the Tampa Hyatt. Throughout his travels in sexual America, Alexander, who is MSNBC's 'Sexploration' columnist, points out, with something akin to delight, that a fair number of kinksters are avowed conservatives — politically, anyway. According to him, the Internet is the great sexual democratizer (and educator) of our age. A likable, open-minded guide through the sexual underworld, Alexander salts his observations with casual wit (though most of his better asides aren't fit to print in a family newspaper). Toward the end, he finds the limits of his own tolerance when he comes upon the sight of a male submissive at a BDSM (bondage domination sado-masochism) club in Seattle: 'He is lying there in her arms curled like an infant against a mother's breast and all I can think of is wanting to slap him so hard he'll know what real pain is. ... This is the end of my journey and I get this guy, a white-haired, bearded, sixty-something 'computer guy' nuzzling into her lap as if he's trying to return to the womb? This is what we've all been looking for? Mommy?' A moment later, Alexander regains his perspective — and his composure. 'Maybe it's just my pants,' he writes. 'They are punishingly tight.' Often the most revealing — and entertaining — things in 'America Unzipped' are the thoughts of the author. Despite the barrage of girls going wild, prostitution scandals and paparazzi crotch shots, it appears we're still stumbling, no more knowledgeable about sex than we were when modesty carried the day, a fact that lies at the heart of these two books. Even in a permissive environment, we're seized with self-consciousness and looking for reassurance. A sex-toy party hostess in the heartland says it best: 'It's OK. Everyone else is doing it.' Lily Burana is the author of 'Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America' and the forthcoming memoir, 'I Love a Man in Uniform.'" Reviewed by Lily Burana, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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asmar, March 18, 2008 (view all comments by asmar)
Surely an interesting book, as we are more to embrace fluidity in every aspect of todays world. understanding women's love and desire as fluid is somehow to highlight the pent up feelings of femininities and masculinities but alwo to compromise t the repression that wraps those desires, so that they woulnt have a fully fledged shape.
no matter how fluid wo/men's desires they would remain subject to a delicate habdling.
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Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire
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352 pages
Harvard University Press -
English9780674026247
Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Many women experience a fluid sexual desire that is responsive to a person rather then a specific gender, argues Diamond n this fascinating and certain to be controversial study. Diamond, associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, is best when detailing, with vivid examples, how scientific studies of sexual desire and behavior have focused on the experience of men, for whom the heterosexual/homosexual divide seems mostly fixed. Diamond says traditional labels for sexual desire are inadequate; for some women even 'bisexual' does not truly express the protean nature of their sexuality. Diamond details in accessible and nuanced language her own study of 100 young women (by her own admission not 'fully representative') over a period of 10 years. She says that she is 'calling for an expanded understanding of same-sex sexuality' that could radically affect both LGBT activists who hold that sexual identity is fixed and antigay groups who believe sexuality is chosen. Sexual fluidity involves a mix of internal and external factors, but is not, Diamond emphasizes, a matter of conscious choice, and she speculates that a younger generation that views sexuality as personal rather than political might embrace this less rigid view." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
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