Dear Earthlings:
The
EcoSex course at U Conn is complete. It was a great experience. We
spent time reading amazing books. And here we resume posts to be shared
with you. Thinking out of the box and across
disciplines. Students had been sending their responses in, with
discussion
questions. In class, we did connected the dots: a
holograph of what we've read together, the "required readings."
Multiple perspectives and good synergy. Here, we offer a glimpse.
Lisa Diamond's Sexual Fluidity was one of two cultural-theory theory books. We got five responses: from Adam, Michael, Alissa, John, and Rhiann.
Here is John's take:
I found this book
to be very interesting, albeit a little bizarre in the self-referential aspect.
As a male, reading a book that declares its intention to broaden the horizons
of female
sexual identity, it was
hard for me not to read it with my own experiences in mind.
Pretty much
universally, I liked reading it. Lisa Diamond has a nice voice that makes her
concepts easy to understand, however they are a bit long winded. She makes a
compelling argument for looking at sexuality, females in particular, as a fluid
rather than an identifiable label such as heterosexual, homosexual, or
bisexual. Being the big grammar nerd that I am, I’m typically of the opinion
that if you have sexual contact with only the opposite sex, you are
heterosexual. If you have sexual contact with only the same sex, you are
homosexual. If you have sex with both, then you are bisexual. I don’t see the
problem with this classification linguistically, but the problem with
“bisexuality” as a concept is that it is culturally understood as a transitional
form of sexuality, rather than an actual category. I can’t find the page
number, but there’s a section where Diamond asks the reader to identify which
of her examples comes off as bisexual, and I would say all of them. I don’t
find anything derogatory with saying that. It’s just the word itself for me. I
identify as heterosexual because I cannot ever see myself in a sexual
relationship with another man. In a world and in a life with so many
uncertainties, I’m at least glad to have that down.
What’s the real
goal of the book’s reorientation of labels? At the end of the day, if “the
women who kept the same identity for the whole ten years proved to be the
smallest and most atypical group,” (65), then aren’t we all really sort of
sexually fluid? Or just the women? What’s the point of sexual identity if
that’s the case? We seem to be moving in a direction of no labels: an area where
identity is so entirely individual and personal that there’s nothing
substantial there to replace it.
That being said, I
can appreciate fully the value of her science and the book’s purpose. Because
life doesn’t necessarily follow logical or clear-cut lines (like along
grammatical boundaries) so why should sexuality? No one wants to be looked at
as “developing” if they’re settled into a bisexual (or as Diamond calls it,
non-exclusive sexuality) framework that they believe is a permanent state of being.
Nor do they want to be stigmatized for being “confused” if “queer” will give
them more credibility in the alternative sexuality community.
But I don’t feel satisfied with
this book. It seems to be the inverse of Dr. Anapol’s “The Seven Natural Laws
of Love.” Anapol’s Laws can really apply to any situation. All of her laws are
applicable to family, friends, lovers, animals, even the Earth, but there’s a
distinguishable difference between the love one feels for a parent and the love
one feels for a lover. It’s pretty universally established that one cannot love
a parent in the same way as a lover. Diamond’s “Sexual Fluidity” seems to
follow this same path, just in a physical, rather than esoteric, way. For
example, Diamond’s subjects have to “decide whether their sexual identity was
better categorized by patterns of “love” or patterns of “lust,” and they had to
fore- cast what sort of relationships they might desire in the future,” (77). She
goes on to conclude that lesbian or bisexual identities are more about degree
of attachment (love vs. lust) than about a personal commitment to one sexual
exclusivity or the other.
I don’t even know how to formulate
my question. Ok, so sex doesn’t matter when determining a mate. Or at least, it
shouldn’t. I really enjoyed the chapter “Attractions to ‘the Person, Not the
Gender,’” because it opened all sorts of new understandings about falling in
love with a person, with their gender in the background as opposed to the
conventional “boy meets girl” narrative. I think this is important, and it
would be interesting to see a comparative study on men.
I think I’m in the minority of men
in that I don’t typically like to hookup. The few times I’ve actually had
sexual encounters that were short lived, they were unsatisfying and not
experiences I was eager to repeat. I prefer to at least know my partners at
some level. Once, I went home with a girl I met, and it was supposed to be a
one-night stand. It was sex. Fine whatever. But we traded numbers, got to know
each other, and while I don’t know if we fit all of Dr. Anapol’s laws, the sex
certainly became more intimate because we were attracted to each other as
people, not as sex objects.
I like the book. It was geared
toward women as a study in women’s sexuality. It was very interesting, I’m just
seeing how Chapters like 6 apply across the board.
John Nitowski
Published with permission
WGSS 3998 - Ecosexuality and the Ecology of Love
Prof. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio
U Conn, Storrs, Spring 2013
Dear Earthlings:
Let "nature" be your teacher in the arts of love. Education is the heart of democracy, education to love. Come
back for more wonders: Students Responses have resumed, to appear now every Tuesday.
More Book Reports to be scheduled soon, every other Thursday.
Namaste,
Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
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