"fluid sexuality a superpower" says Dan Savage

[ellenkushner]

in this week's Savage Love column (rated R),

As for "playing for the other team" at college . . . that can indeed be just a phase—but for women, not men. Heterosexual and homosexual women, if legit scientific research is to be believed, "tend to become sexually aroused by both male and female erotica, and, thus, have a bisexual arousal pattern," according to the results of a 2003 study conducted at LUG-infested Northwestern University. Men, on the other hand, prefer erotica that plays exclusively to their professed sexual orientation. Which means, of course, that female sexuality is a fluid and male sexuality is a solid. Or something.

And ladies? Pointing out your fluid sexuality isn't an insult. It's a compliment—hell, it's a freakin' superpower.

Should I even leave this open for comments, given my limited time and even more limited bandwidth this week?

Oh, wotthell. Go for it.

Comments

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Sorry, who is this amazing jerk? One of the benefits of living this side of the Atlantic is that, while we have creeps of our own, this particular idiot hipster is not one we know.

[glasshouses.livejournal.com]

I love Dan, but I'm sure he'll get pounded for that. No bisexual men, eh?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Let the fur fly!

I love him, too, though, just for being out there expressing strong opinions, even when he's probably wrong - he creates a space to discuss stuff that just doesn't usually make it into our finer tabloids.... And sometimes, you know, he's Right.

[dewinblaidd.livejournal.com]

I love him too, but he does have a really long history of arguing that bisexual men don't exist.

I think what he actually meant is that straight guys don't play around with other guys in college. Obviously he wasn't invited to many frat parties. =p

[tylik.livejournal.com]

One can only assume he really enjoys a good pounding.

It's an interesting new variation on his general inability to deal with bisexuals...

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

They have no Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Love) in your country?

[lisatheriveter.livejournal.com]

While I do not necessarily appreciate or condone his phrasing, I do think that Dan Savage has a point here.

It has been my experience as a bisexual that there are, in most places I've been, vastly more women than men who choose to self-label this way. I don't know why that it; I suspect it may be equal parts that straight culture is more accepting of women who occasionally sleep with other women than of men who do the same, and that lesbian culture is more tolerant of gay women who once slept with men. It is also true that in a lot of places, it is still very hard to be a man who sleeps with men, so things like passing and living on the down low complicate the issue and muddy the perceptive waters.

The fact that women of all sexualities find beauty and arousal in types of erotica that do not portray their preferred sexual activities may have less to do with fluid sexuality than with the fact that women are socialized to judge and appreciate each other's attractiveness irrespective of the desire to act upon that appreciation sexually. How many of us have greeted friends at a nightclub by exclaiming, "You look so hot!" And how many times have we done that while hoping that at night's end we would be kissing our friend? In my experience, one usually has nothing to do with the other.

So I don't know. I don't know what it all means, but I do find it interesting, and I think that there is a valid point there. Just not sure what conclusions we should draw from it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

How he can argue for sexual fluidity as a superpower while he's so busy being binary about gender and attraction boggles the mind.

It also emphasizes how not keen I am on the whole push for "being queer is biological." I really, really don't think that piece of information, to whatever extent it's proven, is going to make people chill out in the way folks think it's going to.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Look - at least he's championing bisexual women here. Which I, for one, appreciate.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ha! I knew the truth would out . . . .

[rarelylynne.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'll take superpowers. It sure beats being referred to as indecisive or a slut. *rolls eyes*

I'll still take Dan Savage over other "advice" columnists any day. Yes, he has his blind spots, but, frankly, he is FAR more inclusive of non-heteronormative sexuality of any kind than anyone ELSE out there...

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Does it count when it's mostly used in the service of putting down bi men? (No, really, he has every reason to know better. *really* Hell, one of the other editors is my ex-housemate, and anyone who lived with me during my college years would be hard pressed to deny the existence of bisexuality!... Okay, so I am a chick. Still.)

It reminds me of talking to my baby brother... when he was nineteen and had just been dumped by his bi-curious boyfriend. And lil bro at least grew up and got over it!

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Oh, I looked him up and got even more irritated. I understand the appeal in the abstract of a contrarian gay man who writes about this stuff in an abrasive manner, but somehow, when I think about the actual people whose lives he is speculating on with such wild abandon, I get slightly worried.

It's just my aversion to big theories about sex - I've had too many of those in my life...

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

We consistently present women as sex objects, and cast male desire for women as the default sexuality without leaving a whole heck of a lot of room for women's desire for men, men's desire for men, women's desire for women, and so on.

Is it possible that IF, as this "study" says, women's sexuality is more "fluid", as measured by watching porn, that is because that is the behavior that is modeled and approved of? That if I want to find sexual material to enjoy, almost all of it is going to be geared toward straight men, and unless I'm resourceful and diligent I'd better learn to identify with the straight male point of view or go hungry (like I had to when I was young and we didn't have the internet)? Couldn't the saturation of het male sexuality be a factor here? How about the way that (conventionally attractive) lesbians are objectified by straight men, thus including them in the straight male's spectrum of sexual desirability, whereas gay men are not fetishized like that?

These are all factors, and I don't think this study says anything about how women inherently are. It says a lot about how women are trained to behave in this culture. Human sexuality is fluid. Men, too. However, the exercise of fluid female sexuality has been idealized and somewhat embraced, we appreciate women in sexual terms. Men, not so much.

[glasshouses.livejournal.com]

Hee! Doesn't Dan know the only difference between a straight guy and a bi/gay guy is a 6-pack of beer?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And because God knows there are no men who identify gay who occasionally sleep with women, or vice versa.

This whole gay/straight/bisexual thing is a modern construct, Dan. Get with the program.

Are any of the people commenting guys?

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

He's qualifying this. I've read some of the research and some comments elsewhere. Bisexual guys do appear to be rarer than bisexual women. The studies appear to show that all women have a wider range of things that turn them on (lub check for the women; erection tests for the guys) than do the guys). The qualifier is "if legit scientific research is to be believed."

The argument against no-bi guys was that porn isn't the only stimulus that would get males aroused, that individuals might respond differently in RL than when watching a movie. Also, how turned on do you get with gadgets on or in your genitalia.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

If I was going to pull any wild theories out of my parts, I would go with this one.

I'm pretty sure what attraction to women I have comes out of that ability everyone who's not white guys has to assume the perspective of white guys.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

I do think the study and Savage are perhaps ignoring the part where women have been the standard of sexual beauty in our culture.

Oh, actually it looks like naamah_darling said everything I wanted to say, and probably more eloquently than I would have.

[redbird]

Yes. An awful lot of what is presented to me as "lesbian" material is clearly by and for straight men. (While it's possible that some of the models and actresses are lesbian or bi, in many cases the people making the stuff have no interest in actually talking to women who have sex with other women.)

[amy34.livejournal.com]

I remember reading about that research a few years ago in this article: What Makes People Gay? Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/08/14/what_makes_people_gay/?/?page=full). A quote from the article:

"Researchers at Northwestern University, outside Chicago, are doing this work as a follow-up to their studies of arousal using genital measurement tools. They found that while straight men were aroused by film clips of two women having sex, and gay men were aroused by clips of two men having sex, most of the men who identified themselves as bisexual showed gay arousal patterns. More surprising was just how different the story with women turned out to be. Most women, whether they identified as straight, lesbian, or bisexual, were significantly aroused by straight, gay, and lesbian sex. 'I'm not suggesting that most women are bisexual,' says Michael Bailey, the psychology professor whose lab conducted the studies. 'I'm suggesting that whatever a woman's sexual arousal pattern is, it has little to do with her sexual orientation.' That's fundamentally different from men. 'In men, arousal is orientation. It's as simple as that. That's how gay men learn they are gay.'"

Sounds like sexuality and arousal patterns are pretty complicated.

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

Ah, men studying female sexuality -- always fun. Let me guess, they used those 'probes'? And equated arousal and desire? And only considered porn as means of stimulating said desire? And based on that one study men are discussing female sexuality? Oh science no.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

I love Dan savage, both for the superpower quote and the last paragraph.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Bien compris. Well, lotsa interesting comments below, including from his regular readers.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

This is Dan Savage being Dan Savage, after all -- and I for one am cheerfully amused by the "superpower" characterization.

Also, what lisatheriveter and naamah_darling said.

As someone who now has occasion to use the phrase "my ex-boyfriend Sarah," I think I may have gone beyond fluid and into "liquefy" territory (thanks, Alison Bechdel).