Similar to many of those in the millennial generation, I am a supporter of marriage equality. I celebrate via social media when another state grants marriage equality, and I have shared many articles on my personal Facebook page concerning gay rights internationally, including one in which Pope Francis chastised the Catholic Church for focusing on shaming homosexually instead of dealing with subjects that are such as, the overwhelming number of people (3 billion) that live on $2.50 dollars a day.
Scrolling through my Twitter timeline, I saw an article about a record number of thirty-to-forty something women engaging in homosexual relationships post heterosexual marriages. I read one done by Elle magazine on November 18, 2013 provocatively titled, Girl on Girl Power and weeks later, saw the subject pop up again and again from other publications. So what exactly is this phenomenon that even has Oprah commenting?
Although this sudden surge of women starting relationships with each other appears trendy, it is rooted what scientists call sexual fluidity. Sexual fluidity is the ability to be attracted to both men and women, but is not labeled as bisexual, nor does it mean someone who feels sexual fluidity is bisexual. The attraction is born out for appreciating personal characteristics of another individual and thus, allowing personality to trump gender in sexual desires.
Sexual fluidity is more apparent in women than men perhaps because of the values women seek in a companion. Researchers at Northwestern University in 2004 performed a landmark study that sought the answer. “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,” the study’s senior researcher, J. Michael Bailey, Ph.D. said in a Patheos article in 2009. “These findings likely represent a fundamental difference between men’s and women’s brains.”
Actress Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City, married her girlfriend last year making headlines because she had previously been in a heterosexual relationship that resulted in two children. Executive creative director of J.Crew Jenna Lyons, named one of Glamour’s Women of the Year, is a style icon not free of scrutiny. Even the woman who is claimed to “dress America” by The New York Times has fallen under criticism for getting into a relationship with her long-term friend Courtney Crangi after divorcing her husband of nine years.
In an interview with The New York Times, Lyons confessed her relationship was a surprise to her as well. “It’s just as surprising to me as it probably is to everyone else. It certainly is strange to wake up, at 44, and look at the person next to you and think: ‘Oh! This wasn’t what I expected.’ But I don’t think love works that way, and I am O.K. with that,” said Lyons.
New York City’s soon-to-be first lady Chirlane McCray has made headlines recently for more than her husband, Bill De Blasio’s campaign, but also, for an article she wrote that appeared in Essence in 1979. In the article, titled “I am a Lesbian,” she writes about being an out and proud, black lesbian. Contradictory to her appearing liberation, she married Bill De Blasio in 1994. In an interview with Huffington Post Live, available to watch here, she believes her love life is a result of falling for her husband as an individual, and admits to identifying as a lesbian before their relationship. Now however, she refuses all labels, including being labeled as homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual.
In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsley announced a scale he developed when studying homosexuality; scoring a one on the scale determined someone as heterosexual and six, homosexual. However, the majority of his research participants scored in between the two numbers. What contemporary studies suggest is that people, most notably, women’s numbers may jump around at different parts of their lives. Author of Sexual Fluidity (2008), Lisa M. Diamond told Elle, “A predominantly heterosexual woman might, at some point in time, become attracted to a woman, just as a predominantly lesbian woman might at some point become attracted to a man.”
While marriage equity laws shine brighter in the limelight everyday, it will be interesting to see how the population, heterosexual and homosexual, reacts and responds. Certainly, the norms are changing.
HCXO,
Taylor