Sexual Fluidity “Before Sex”

Abstract

This article considers the concept of sexual fluidity—in the sense of changing sexual desires and identities and lack of fit between desire and behavior and behavior and identity—historically and cross-culturally. Before the formulation of the concept of a homosexual identity, sex was sometimes so defined by the participation of a penis that what women might do with their bodies did not count as sex. Sometimes sex between women was unimportant given the cultural imperative to marry a man and bear children, and sometimes sex between women could be accommodated, even useful, in a heterosexually organized society. In all of these cases, sexual fluidity characterizes the behavior, if not the desires (about which we cannot really know) of women who did not have available to them the identity of bisexual or, for that matter, any clearly defined sexual identity. The history of desire, sex, and love between women suggests that women’s sexual fluidity is nothing new and should be understood in the context of social arrangements that facilitate same-sex sexuality in a heteronormative context.