Uloop Blog ? Where Do I Fit on the 'Spectrum' of Sexuality?

College is generally a time for experimentation; whether it be with drugs, alcohol, new friends, girls, and guys. Another big subject for experimentation, especially in my generation, is sexuality. More specifically, this experimentation is more common amongst women.

Having talked to many young women about sexual orientation, it seemed that the majority of them didn?t identify with being straight, bi, or gay, as society?s definitions of these strictly identifying terms just didn?t fit with how they felt about their sexual orientation as a whole.?A lot of women go through this struggle of their overall sexual orientation and how to label it, and a recent book I read titled Sexual Fluidity by Lisa Diamond tackles this issue head on.

Courtesy of http://lisa.diamond.socialpsychology.org/

Diamond is an esteemed psychologist who focuses her research on ?adolescent and young adult social and sexual development, particularly the development of female sexual identity and orientation over the life course; the formation, functioning, and psychobiology of adolescent and adult attachment relationships, with special attention to the health-protective and emotion-regulating functions of these relationships, as well as dynamic systems models of coregulatory processes in such relationships.? (http://lisa.diamond.socialpsychology.org/) As a result of some of her research on these two primary subjects, she has written Sexual Fluidity.?

Diamond?s original book brings an entirely new understanding to this fairly new term: ?sexual fluidity? within female sexuality. Per her research subjects, all of whom were women ranging in age from around 18 to mid to late 40?s and 50?s, would simply have their attractions change with time. For instance, a couple of her subjects found themselves more drawn to women in college and through their twenties, then in their thirties on, they were more drawn to men. On the?flip side, women who were primarily attracted to men in their college days and early 20s suddenly found that they were more attracted to women in their 30?s and onward. Some of the women never had any attraction to the same sex, until a special someone came along and resulted in their attraction to the same sex. The reason for all of these things to happen, Diamond believes, is sexual fluidity, which in a nutshell, per her research subjects, ?means being attracted to the person not the gender.

Due to the fact that so many people not only in my generation, but in society as a whole do struggle with their sexual orientation at various points in their lives, Sexual Fludity may clear up a lot of the confusion many people have felt over the years about their sexual orientation. This book explores many of the unanswered questions that psychological science has failed to answer over the billions of years sexual orientation have incredibly prominent in our society. It will give anyone who is unsure where they fit on the Kinsey Scale more of any idea that they may not even belong on the scale at all as what they are going through is a very normal and common phenomenon occurring all over the world in all ages groups, religions, and races that simply allows them to be attracted to any person, no matter their sex or gender.

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