Human sexuality is fluid and dynamic, fashioned and influenced by the socio-cultural, and situational factors.
For most of our parents especially for our mothers the first words she must have heard after we emerged from the womb must be a declaration of our biological gender: “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Our parents bought crib sheets and clothes that were pink or blue to match our gender. We soon learned the sociocultural meanings of gender: Boys and girls are socialized to play in different styles and usually learn to prefer different sets of toys. Our moms and/or dads tended to do gender-specific chores. If I may assert that the first scientific view on human sexuality seems to have been that men and women are strikingly different in their sexual nature. This viewpoint was vehemently opposed by the rise of scientific psychology and the emphasis was on the similarity between men’s and women’s sexuality. And researchers in the field captured the attention by proposing a human sexual response cycle applicable to both sexes. Feminist scholars cautioned against exaggerating male-female differences and argued for women’s sexual equality with men. Recently, researchers have looked through the scientific materials available to them and was surprised to see striking indications pointing towards the earliest perceptions on male-female sexuality.
Reviews of empirical research on diverse aspects of human sexuality have identified four important male-female differences. These gender differences are pervasive, affecting thoughts and feelings as well as behaviour, and they characterize not only heterosexuals but lesbians and gay men as well (Peplau, 2003). These male female differences are observations noticeable on their ‘Sexual desire, Sexuality and relationship, Sexuality and aggression, and Sexual plasticity. Considering the volume of information available to us from scientific research we will be forced to redefine and restate our understanding of human sexuality and particularly female sexuality. The picture that we have is too inadequate to capture the complexity and dynamism it embodies. The indications are that human sexuality is fluid and dynamic, fashioned and influenced by the socio-cultural, and situational factors. This discussion will centre on two important themes that forms the core of scientific investigation concerning this experiential and enigmatic facet of human existence: ‘Gender Fluidity and Sexual Fluidity’. Gender Fluidity: An adjective describing a child who is unconfined by one single gender identity, and whose gender identity manifests differently over time.
Some gender fluid youth will identify differently day to day, while others will shift over longer periods of time. While speaking about gender fluidity, we need to remind ourselves that our gender identity contains two important dimensions. One is founded on our anatomy which is recognised and declared to the world as “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl! It is the condition of being male, female, or neuter. In a human context, the distinction between gender and sex reflects the usage of these terms: Sex usually refers to the biological aspects of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender implies the psychological, behavioural, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female (i.e., masculinity or femininity.) The second is designated by the self as a member of one sex or the other, an identification both behaviourally expressed and known by the individual who possesses it. The first part is greatly determined by our biology and the socio-cultural and situational factors have very little to contribute to it. But the second dimension ‘the psychological, behavioural, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female (i.e., masculinity or femininity.)’ is greatly influenced and guided by these environmental forces. And since these influences lasts the entire lifespan of an individual; and not as conceived by some of the earlier theories in behavioural sciences; the possibility for its continued influence and possible plasticity needs to be considered and studied. Sexual Fluidity: Sexual fluidity has been defined as a capacity for situation-dependent flexibility in sexual responsiveness, which allows individuals to experience changes in same-sex or other-sex desire across both short-term and long-term time periods. The reality of sexual fluidity does not invalidate the understanding of sexual orientation or imply that people are fundamentally bisexual. This reality points to the fact that our sexual orientation does not rigidly predict every desire a human person has during his/her lifespan.
Most individuals are bound to experience periodic same sex attractions or other sex attractions in those people who do not conform to the gender binary. Some may show constant same sex or other sex attractions at various periods in their lives whereas some others show variations in their sexual attractions. Scholars from many disciplines have noted that, in comparison with men’s sexuality, women’s sexuality tends to have greater plasticity. That is, women’s sexual beliefs and behaviours can be more easily shaped and altered by cultural, social, and situational factors. One sign of plasticity concerns changes in aspects of a person’s sexuality over time. Such changes are more common among women than among men. For example, the frequency of women’s sexual activity is more variable than men’s. Lisa M. Diamond in her research on sexual fluidity consider the extent of gender differences in sexual fluidity by examining the prevalence of three phenomena: nonexclusive (bisexual) patterns of attraction, longitudinal change in sexual attractions, and inconsistencies among sexual attraction, behaviour, and identity.
The nonexclusive (bisexual) patterns of attraction or desire points to the question that how is sexual fluidity different from bisexuality? After all, both sexual fluidity and bisexuality produce the same phenomenological result: sexual attractions for both men and women (although not always concurrently). The primary difference between sexual fluidity and bisexuality is that the latter is conceptualized as a stable sexual predisposition giving rise to consistent experiences of nonexclusive desires (i.e., desires for both men and women) over the life course. In contrast, sexual fluidity is conceptualized as a capacity for change in erotic responsiveness. For some individuals, this capacity may never be expressed. Others may only encounter one or two circumstances over their lifespan which give rise to changes in sexual feelings. The second phenomenon is the longitudinal change in sexual attractions. The studies show that any pattern of sexual attractions change over time. Exclusively same-sex patterns of attraction proved less stable among women than among men, and in women, there was no difference between the stability of bisexual versus exclusively same-sex patterns of attraction.
In men, bisexual patterns of attraction proved less stable than either exclusively same-sex or exclusively other sex patterns. This pattern of results is consistent with the possibility that greater sexual fluidity in women. Thirdly, inconsistencies among sexual attraction, behaviour, and identity. It is commonly assumed that individuals with exclusive same sex attractions pursue exclusive same-sex behaviour and adopt lesbian or gay identities, whereas individuals with bisexual attractions pursue bisexual behaviour and adopt bisexual identities. But the reality and research point to the fact that there is great amount of discrepancy and inconsistency around this assumption. All three of these phenomena appear to be widespread across a large body of independent, representative studies conducted in numerous countries, supporting an emerging understanding of sexuality as fluid rather than rigid and categorical. These studies also provide evidence for gender differences in sexual fluidity, but the extent and cause of these gender differences remain unclear and are an important topic for future research.
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