Female desire is complicated.
Lesbians know this. We know it because of "lesbian bed death" - that pervasive phenomenon that makes long-term couples sink into acting like roommates instead of lovers.
And we know it because all of us have friends who have come out late in life, or who have gone back to men after being lesbians forever, or who say that they're "attracted to a person, not to a gender."
Now we have research that - well, if it doesn't quite explain what's going on, at least confirms our intuition that female desire is messier and perhaps more expansive than men's.
Men, say researchers, are easy. A New York Times story on female desire looks at the studies of Meredith Chivers at Queen's University in Ontario.
When gay men are shown film of gay sex or a man masturbating, they get aroused. And they know they are. With straight men, it's similar - show them film of heterosexual sex or female masturbation, and they get excited and know it.
But women are different. Show women film of heterosexual sex, gay male sex, lesbian sex, or monkey sex (really) and women, lesbian or straight, get hot.
What is interesting, however, is that even though their bodies are responsive, women don't always know they are feeling desire - so, a woman who calls herself straight will say that she is only responding to the heterosexual sex videos, even though she is actually responding in the same degree to everything; and a lesbian will think that she is only responding to lesbian sex, even though she has the same degree of physical arousal when it comes to films of gay male sex or heterosexual sex.
Other researchers say that although men with the highest sex drives have a "more polarized attraction than most males" - meaning if they're gay they're REALLY only attracted to men, with women, "the higher the drive, the greater the attraction to both sexes." The article, though, adds the confusing caveat "this may not be so for lesbians."
So - straight women are more likely to be bi if they're more sexual, but lesbians are more likely to be lesbian?
Female desire is complicated indeed.
Researchers are divided over whether this male/female difference is due to biology, hormones, culture, or a confluence of the three.
What they do know is that women feel desire in the mind, no matter what is happening in the body. Some women can think themselves into orgasm (lucky women!) Some women are more turned on by the idea of unfamiliarity, of sex with strangers (thus lesbian bed death); others find their desire dictated by intimacy and emotional connection (hence the women who are "heteroflexible.")
These things are independent of physical arousal, since physical arousal for women happens all the time.
"Fluidity is not a fluke," sexologist Lisa Diamond told the Times. Of the women who told Diamond that they were lesbian, only one-third reported attraction solely to women. The other two-thirds felt genuine, periodic attraction to men.
This means that, if we were all honest in our labeling, the majority of women would need to call ourselves "bisexual" or "queer," instead of "straight" or "gay," as we do. The research says that there are far more women attracted to people of both sexes than there are women who are attracted to only one sex. If only one-third of lesbians are completely women-centered when it comes to desire - and only two percent of the country is lesbian - then that is a tiny number, about 2 million.
Of course, being a lesbian is about more than desiring other women. It is also about a female-centered culture, about consensus building, about emotional bonds with other women. That is what we mean, usually, when we talk about a lesbian "community" - and why lesbian communities often have such a different feel than gay male ones.
Yet despite all our focus on processing and intimacy, we need to remember that lesbians - and all women - also have an expansive sexuality. We underrate ourselves by focusing on "lesbian bed death" instead of all the ways we are sexual. Thank goodness for the surge in queer burlesque shows, sexy lesbian club nights and the last season of "The 'L' Word," all of which remind us that lesbians are sexy, and sexy is fun.
Female desire is complicated; how we experience lust is complex. Here's to more sex for women however we label ourselves.
4 Comments for “Women’s Desire, Lesbians’ Sexuality”
posted by TS on
I’m very fascinated by this topic. I was already familiar with Chivers’s work. Thanks for writing about it here.
posted by Amicus on
It is also about a female-centered culture …
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I’m curious. Do you view this as a primarily historical development (an political/social choice related to the times), related to biology (e.g. a social adaptation to tamp down on an expansive sexuality, say), or something else (competition?).
Do you think these research results might create a problem with the ‘ex-gay’ circle of jerks?
Last, what is the standard for … liberation (or whatever)? Despite that figure of 2/3’s in a study, what is the percentage of lesbians who genuinely feel unsatisfied, if they are limited to same-sex sex? I mean, despite testing for an empathy or sexual response, what is the subjective assessment of that response among women (apart from what you already alluded to)? Is that the politically more relevant quantity? Also, does that subjective assessment change for those with reportedly high sex drives or are their needs fulfilled by frequency, rather than variety?
posted by jay on
There’s a very strange epistemology being used here to determine when desire is and is not present. The “researchers” seem to accept without question that desire and an erection correlate one hundred percent of the time with men, but that same assumption is not made regarding women’s physical arousal, otherwise we’d have to conclude that all women are pansexually oriented including zoophiliac, and probably pedophiliac, tendencies. Instead, we let the women’s own judgement of their sexuality have weight. It seems we have an emotional attachment in this culture to the maxim that men’s sexuality is simple and women’s is complex. But how do these findings explain the prevalence of pederasty in numerous cultures throughout history, or the sexuality that erupts in male homosocial environments, or married men who have sex with their wives and with men in secret, or the fact that male rape victims often respond genitally?
posted by PB Coffey on
This study seems a bit lopsided to me, and seems to stare firmly at the results and not at the socio-environmental factors that contribute to one’s sexuality.
In American society it’s a lot more okay to be a lesbian than it is to be a gay man. In fact, at least bisexuality is encouraged in women by a lot of men. Now of course, this is not always the case with masculine women, but on the whole, women kissing or sleeping with another woman is much more accepted than it’s opposite. Therefore there’s not as strong a reaction against it. Men are socialized not to be a faggot in nearly all instances of male bonding. Men are conditioned very strongly not to show any sort of attraction to other men. I’m not saying that lesbians don’t face discrimination, I’m not saying that lesbians aren’t socialized to be straight. All I’m saying is that expectations of sexuality and the socialization therein are different for men and women. I think that warranted being said. G’day.