Sexual Fluidity

Understanding Women’s Love and Desire

Lisa M. Diamond

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English

Harvard University Press
15 April 2009

Gender studies: women; Psychology; Sexual behaviour; Health & Self-Help

"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 M. 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."

By: Lisa M. Diamond
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 340g
ISBN: 9780674032262
ISBN 10: 0674032268
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 15 April 2009
Audience: General/trade , Adult education , ELT Advanced , Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lisa M. Diamond is Associate Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah.

Reviews for Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire

[Diamond] 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... With her compassionate, understated approach, she has stepped up the business of gender research. - Lily Burana, Washington Post Book World Captivating, nuanced, and rigorous... Diamond's work is vital precisely because sexual fluidity is not a new concept - Freud called his version 'polymorphous perversity' - but merely one that is typically dismissed. Nor is it news to women, particularly not to a generation for whom a nonspecific 'queer' affiliation, or no affiliation at all, is increasingly common. What is so important is not that this fluidity exists, but that someone has finally paid it systematic attention and found that it is in fact not the exception, but may well be the rule. - Hanne Blank, Ms.

Nominated for Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award 2009
Winner of Independent Publisher Book Awards: Gay/Lesbian Category Silver Award 2008
Winner of Independent Publisher Book Awards: Gay/Lesbian Category Silver Award 2008.
Winner of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues Distinguished Book Award 2009