As loathe as I am about doing so, I’m forced to refer today’s post topic to Oprah.com’s essays on Sexual Fluidity. I wont do this often as Oprah is the crowned queen of feminine matrix-think. However, these articles outline a what I see as the nascent development of a new feminine social convention – sexual fluidity is the newly developing rational for late-life sexual and gender dissatisfaction for post-wall ‘New Women’ . I’ve already touched on how feminine social conventions and their latent purposes effect inter-gender relations in a few prior posts, and I have forthcoming posts dedicated to better outlining established social conventions and their functions, but I think this newly developing convention may be a great starting point in understanding how they evolve.
The most recent post over at Heartiste / Roissy’s (?) site enumerating the post-wall woes of Sinead O’Conner reminded me of an interesting phenomenon that has been gathering popular cultural awareness now for almost 4 years – the newly accepted convention of sexual fluidity. Quoting Sinead O’Conner here:
And further posts [from Sinead] brought more. Prospective lovers can be lesbian; may even, she conceded, be christened Brian or Nigel; but anal sex is non-negotiable.
As distracting as it is let’s ignore the anal sex reference for now, we’ll return to it later. Here we have an illustration of an otherwise heterosexual woman petitioning the general public for a sexual partner. Male or female, the gender is irrelevant to her, all that matters now is her sexual gratification. What we observe here is an example of what cognitive (see, touchy-feely) psychologists are terming sexual fluidity. This new concept revolves around the idea that a person’s sexuality can turn on a dime; it is essentially fluid and can change throughout a person’s lifetime and in accord with one’s conditions.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the psychology of this per se, only how popular, feminized, culture is conveniently turning this idea to the purposes of its own imperatives. Heterosexual male prison inmates can and often do resort to homosexuality during their incarceration and return to heterosexuality upon their release. This is in effect a sexually fluid response to solving a sexual release imperative under the conditions of being sequestered in a same sex environment for a long period of time. The conditions dictate the response.
Feminized culture has embraced sexual fluidity, but has rejected the underlying reasons for it. As a new social convention, sexual fluidity becomes less about conditions and more about the individual for women. For the post-wall, aging spinster, the concept of sexual fluidity is a godsend. As a rationale for her lackluster personal life it becomes a salve for her ego – homosexuality becomes a realizable, socially acceptable option. The true reason for her long term unhappiness is that she was, in actuality, an unacknowledged lesbian for all these years. And naturally, for all women, there is a wide base of emotional support from the sisterhood ready to embrace and accept the ‘real’ her. The necessity of accepting homosexuality as her only, conditional, sexual option becomes a new virtue to be proud of in Oprah-world. Never is there a mention that the choices she’s made in life had any bearing on her present condition, nor is there any doubt that the measures she’s now forced to resort to were dictated by those choices.
Now, before I get too far along on the anti-femme-train I want to point out that much of the reasons for constructing a social convention such as this have a lot more to do with the conflict between social conditions and our innate biomechanics. If you read through the article Why Women are Leaving Men for Other Women, you can’t help but notice the commonalities of the testimonies coming from otherwise feminine women being attracted to more dominant, masculine women. Often these come from long married-with-children women who’ve divorced their beta husbands in favor of a more dominant, butch, Alpha lesbian.
Ironically—or not, as some might argue—it is certain “masculine” qualities that draw many straight-labeled women to female partners; that, in combination with emotional connection, intimacy, and intensity.
“Men can’t understand why I want to be with Jack, a lesbian, when I could be with a biological man,” says Gomez-Barris. “And at first I thought it would be threatening, but I have a rebellious spirit. He’s powerful, accomplished, and appealing. And in some ways, the experience is better than in heterosexual sex.
So what are we seeing here? Heterosexual women, still crave the masculine dominance that men cannot or will not provide her. Thus, we see condition dictate response. Kind of explains Sinead O’Conner’s exceptionalism for lesbian anal sex now doesn’t it?
In 2004, after earning her master’s degree in counseling at Loyola University New Orleans, (Bridget) Falcon met April Villa, now 34, who works as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “April is a beautiful, feminine woman,” says Falcon, “yet she’s so much like a guy, analytical but not overly introspective, and, just like my dad, she likes to build things and can fix anything.”
What are the commonalities we see in each of these? Past-prime, mostly well educated women, each dissatisfied with an inability to attract and marry “powerful, accomplished, and appealing” men who attempted to ‘have it all’ by starting families with the only betas they could attract. Later in life they grow even more uncomfortable with the proposition of spending their remaining years with the herb they married and so opt out of the marriage for the growingly more accepted idea of “sexually flowing” into a homosexual relationship with a woman who qualifies as powerful, accomplished, and appealing, ergo traditionally masculine, that her former husband did not.
The advent of embracing sexual fluidity in women is an attempt by feminized culture to put a bandaid on a lingering problem. As western feminized culture progresses onward from the late 60s, more and more women are awakening to the disillusionment that the choice they made to participate as an ‘equal’ in a masculine world required sacrifices of her femininity. Sacrifices that most come to regret later in life. Between 35 and 45 women are increasingly feeling the repercussions of their attempts to ‘have it all’ or have HAD it all, yet are left wondering why they’re not satisfied in sublimating their expectations – betraying their uniquely female biomechanics – to play the role of the New Woman.
That consensus is growing, even in Oprah-world, so what to do? What feminism has always done, move the goalposts and redefine the game. Men, for any variety of shameful reasonings, are cast as incapable of living up to the standards of being powerful, accomplished, and appealing, but even if you regret having married one, and possibly brought children into the world, you can still have a second chance at ‘having it all’ thanks to sexual fluidity. It’s not him, it’s the undiscovered homosexual you that’s been repressed all this time. Never mind that those infantile men are too preoccupied with youthful sexuality to appreciate your post-wall physique, there’s a world of lesbian women out there ready to deliver on the promise of powerful, accomplished, and appealing masculinity that your man is incapable of. It’s not that neo-feminism was wrong in promising you a satisfying life, it’s just that you were really a lesbian all this time and either didn’t know it, or were a victim of the Patriarchy and were repressed from it.
The newest feminine social convention, sexual fluidity, simply attempts to patch one of the many the holes that’s sinking the New Woman’s ship. Feminized culture needs a reason for the masculine disappointment it’s systematically acculturated into society for the past 50 years.