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16 January 2008
Female Sexuality Hard To Pin Down 
Writing in Developmental Psychology, University of Utah psychologists contend that bisexuality in women appears to be a distinctive sexual orientation and not an experimental or transitional stage that some women adopt "on their way" to lesbianism. Conducted over 10 years, the study found that bisexual women maintained a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes. In addition, the research appears to have debunked the stereotype that bisexual women are uninterested in or unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships. "This research provides the first empirical examination of competing assumptions about the nature of bisexuality, both as a sexual identity label and as a pattern of nonexclusive sexual attraction and behavior," wrote U-of-U psychologist Lisa M. Diamond. "The findings demonstrate considerable fluidity in bisexual and lesbian women's attractions, behaviors and identities and contribute to researchers' understanding of the complexity of sexual-minority development over the life span." Key findings include: - Bisexual and unlabeled women were more likely than lesbians to change their identity over the course of the study, but they tended to switch between bisexual and unlabeled rather than to settle on lesbian or heterosexual as their identities.
- Seventeen percent of respondents switched from a bisexual or unlabeled identity to heterosexual during the study - but more than half of these women switched back to bisexual or unlabeled by the end.
- By year 10, most of the women were involved in long-term monogamous relationships - 70 percent of the self-identified lesbians, 89 percent of the bisexuals, 85 percent of the unlabeled women and 67 percent of those who were then calling themselves heterosexual.
- Women's definitions of lesbianism appeared to permit more flexibility in behavior than their definitions of heterosexuality. For example, of the women who identified as lesbian in the last round of interviews, 15 percent reported having sexual contact with a man during the prior two years. In contrast, none of the women who settled on a heterosexual label at that point reported having sexual contact with a woman within the previous two years.
"This provides further support for the notion that female sexuality is relatively fluid and that the distinction between lesbian and bisexual women is not a rigid one," Diamond concluded. Related:
Female Sexual Arousal Surprise
Gay Adolescents? Just Normal Teenagers!
Study Finds Big Rise In Female-Female Sex Source: American Psychological Association
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