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Going with the flow: Sexual fluidity, bisexuals, lesbians and “hasbians” in pop culture

With recent studies indicating that sexual fluidity is even more common in women as they get older, there have been numerous references to public figures like Kelly McGillis, Meredith Baxter and Cynthia Nixon as “late-in-life-lesbians.” But some of them will be the first to tell you that they don’t consider themselves “lesbians”; in fact, they don’t really consider themselves anything but in love with another woman.

But what makes “sexual fluidity” different than our notions of bisexuality? And are we putting too much pressure on some of our peers to take on identities that may not suit them?

The term “hasbian” (meaning a “former lesbian”) has been applied (often in a derogatory manner) to celebrities like Anne Heche, who famously dated Ellen DeGeneres in the 1990s. Post-break-up, Heche has reneged on her romantic interest in women, telling the media she “once had an open mind” and “There’s a door, we can close that door. We can go to another door.”

Candace Walsh, co-editor of Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women (Seal Press, Oct. 2010) says she used to see such behavior as a betrayal.

Walsh says, “First it was like, ‘Hey, these hot celebrities get down with chicks! That validates my experience!’ and then, when they recanted, it felt like we lost something significant, when we ultimately really shouldn’t glom onto other people to feel like we’re OK.” She added, “It’s so revolutionary that so many women have been able to come out without it completely tanking their success level. The more that happens, the less it’s relevant if Anne Heche marries a dude or turns up in Fresno offering to take people to heaven in her spaceship.”

Angelina Jolie once spoke frequently about her relationships with women, even while she was involved with men (including her then husband Billy Bob Thornton). But since she has partnered with Brad Pitt, she’s made comments that there is “no room” for bisexuality in her life.

Lisa M. Diamond, Associate Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, is the author of the book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. Her extensive research on women’s sexuality and their understanding of their own desire has made her the go-to person when it comes to discussing the topic.

On one hand, they [celebrities] bring visibility. On the other hand, there’s the ultimate stereotype that celebrities can afford to have these wild, crazy bisexual goings-on because they’re celebrities – they do whatever they want. Then it’s viewed as sexy and hot. I think they bring visibility to those complicated phenomena but I’m doubtful to the degree to which they’re a direct influence. I do people think treat Hollywood as different. I think they do normalize it and a woman will have what she thinks is a really unusual mid-life transition, seeing a public figure going through that could make her feel less different. I do think they make it more visible for women that are already questioning and going through these issues.

But what about women who specifically identify as lesbians and later decide to date a man? They receive much more scrutiny, as we’ve seen in the reaction of many lesbians to Lisa Cholodenko‘s film The Kids Are All Right. Though one of the lead characters has an affair with a man, she does not consider herself anything other than “gay.”

In 1997, Chasing Amy became a hit indie film and jump-started the careers of Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck and Jason Lee. The film followed Ben’s character as he attempted to bed lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) and he eventually succeeded. Though in the end she resumed being gay, many lesbians were not happy with the storyline and how Alyssa could so easily be swayed.

Shortly after Chasing Amy debuted, Kissing Jessica Stein‘s title character fell for a woman but ended up back with her ex-boyfriend. Many more variations on this theme have popped up in entertainment since (Puccini for Beginners, South of Nowhere, Bad Girls, etc.).

On The L Word, Tina broke up with partner Bette for a man she met online. But she still considered herself a lesbian which her friends found “disgusting.” They told her there was no way she could still identify as a lesbian if she had sex with a man. By the end of the series, however, all was right in the L Word universe because Tina and Bette resolved their issues and reunited.

“It saddens me with how hard we have fought as lesbians to protect our own rights to love who we want to love,” Diamond said. “It’s tragic in after fighting that fight we turn against women who are trying to find their own truth if that truth is unfamiliar to us, or something we can’t relate to. As lesbians, we’ve all known other people not understanding the people we love or the people we’re attracted to; having to explain it and justify it and make it acceptable. So how sort of ironic or tragic if we are then so judgmental of women who find erotic something we can’t understand or relate to. We’re either advocating for sexual freedom and self-determination or we’re not.”

Ironically, if a woman chooses to date a woman after spending much of her life dating men, we often consider this a win – a sudden identification of the gay gene she’s always had in her. But when it comes to queer women who fall for a man at a point in their lives, we are less accepting as a community.

Seeing these issues unfold on film and TV continues to anger many of us, especially when the scenario is so often depicted. That is exactly the sort of storyline that sparks arguments about The Kids Are All Right or can cause a woman to question her friendship with someone who is a “hasbian” in real life – the consistent (and arguably disproportionate) portrayals of lesbians who end up leaving women for men in pop culture.

Diamond said the reason there’s a word like “hasbian” is because it’s a response to something the lesbian community “has already taken note of.”

Frankly it’s sort of a side effect of the fact that contrary to a lot of our stereotypes, it is far more common for women to be attracted to both sexes than be exclusively 100 percent attracted to women. Even women who would identify themselves as 95 percent attracted to women, if she happens to meet that one guy, with that 5 percent, that can turn your life upside down.

It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I don’t think it invalidates at all her lesbian fornication and identity. Those anomalies and sometimes exceptional experiences are simply complicated parts of life. And so I think we do a disservice to those women when we call them a derogatory term like hasbian because often they maintain very strong social ties to the community. But the truth is sexuality is complicated and there are more women with bisexual tendencies and attractions, even if they’re bisexual but mainly lesbian. That’s just a reality.

We didn’t really used to know that before but now we have really, really good data from multiple countries and cultures around the world and it’s just the truth of the matter. Instead of stigmatizing these women, we have to say “This is the diversity of our community” and accept that’s going to lead some women into patterns of attraction and behavior they might never have expected.

Walsh agreed, saying, “The more we understand sexual fluidity, the more we see that things aren’t so black and white. If you’re with women for 20 years and then you have a relationship with a man, it does not cancel out the 20 years with women any more than if someone lived in England for 20 years and then moved to Canada, they’d still have spent that time in England. Both things can be true: that someone was having a fulfilling and true intimate relationship with one person, and now is doing so with someone else. “

Last year, Details magazine penned an article on “The Lure of Dating an Ex-Lesbian.” An excerpt:

Just look at Tom Cole, a pastoral-care director at International House of Prayer in Kansas City. Without a healthy exploration of his feminine side, he probably wouldn’t have met his wife, Donna-who like Tom identifies as a “former homosexual.” Before the two met years ago at church meetings for born-again Christians, Donna was in a lesbian rugby league. “They didn’t even wear pads or anything,” Cole recalls. “She had a tattoo and she drove a motorcycle.” Since then, Cole notes, Donna has “softened up,” and he’s learned that the right woman can get him “extremely aroused.” But a few aspects of their former selves never changed. “She doesn’t love to cook, that’s for sure,” says Cole. “But I do, so it works out really well.”

AfterEllen.com wasn’t the only site to take issue with this men’s magazine article. Jezebel also commented on the piece:

This anecdote isn’t especially revealing on its own, but it does speak to a performance view of sex that’s all too common in both men’s magazines and lady mags The idea that sex is all about skill, and that what’s important is being better (or at least bigger) than a woman’s previous partners is annoying because it makes female sexual pleasure about male ego. But it’s also bad for men, who might have less performance anxiety if their magazines emphasized that sex is about two (or more!) people and the way their desires, tastes, kinks, and idiosyncrasies fit together – not whether one person is “good at it.”

When it comes down to the sexual satisfaction issue, of course lesbians are going to be offended. Women leave other women because they long for the male sex organ? Then I would have to agree that this person was never really a lesbian in the first place. If you prefer sex with men over sex with women in general, it is likely you are not a “lesbian.”

The very basic definition for a lesbian, as if we need a reminder, is “A woman whose sexual orientation is to women.” In contrast, bisexual is “Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of either sex.”

Now obviously we have created our own much broader definitions for these ideas in our heads and in our lives, but for the sake of being able to understand the discussion on what makes someone sexually fluid vs. bisexual, I think it is much easier to use the basic labels in terms of following the argument.

Bisexuality has received a bad rap because of stereotypes that are often perpetuated by the same media in which we long to see ourselves reflected. In the realm of pop culture, bisexual female characters are more likely to end up with or prefer men (see: 90210, FastLane, Soul Food, Mistresses, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, etc.).

And when female characters actually identify as lesbians, many eventually still pursue relationships with men. That tired storyline is perceived as a proverbial slap in the face. In general, the lesbian community doesn’t tend to support women (fictional or otherwise) who identify themselves as lesbians – “a woman whose sexual orientation is to women” – and then don’t follow the very basic definition that comes with it.

This could be why a growing number of women are not interested in defining themselves as lesbian or bisexual. Committing to a sexuality today is like committing to a favorite color for the rest of your life: What if you love red now but find you prefer green later in life? There are many discoveries one makes about one’s self after having varied life experiences.

I don’t mean to say that sexuality is fleeting – for many, it could be (and is) set in stone. Instead, I’m suggesting that it is very possible for women and men alike to have fluctuating romantic and sexual interests and perhaps, for those individuals, it’s best not to attempt to identify with one of just a few labels we’ve been given to choose from over the last century.

“It’s interesting how many [lesbians] have said to me ‘Oh man, when I was first coming out when I was 20, I would have been skeptical about bisexual women. But as I’ve gotten older in this community, you realize how unpredictable life can be and how fluid sexuality is.’ You see it in the women around you and you see it in yourself and what you find attractive when your 22 changes when you’re 38,” Diamond said. “That’s something the community needs to get a grip in. The more time you spend in the community, you realize how diverse and complicated our community is. We need to embrace that diversity, and embrace everyone in it.”

But this begs the question: Why do we need labels?

Maybe we don’t. But what we do need, as a minority group, is an identifier. It’s true that we are all different – some of us are queer, dykes, poly, omni, gay, fluid, or resist all of the above at any cost. But when you need to find those that are like you on this level, how else can you find them? There has to be a word, or a few words, that you can seek out or Google or use in conversation in order to find what it is you are looking for. That is what makes a community a community.

Walsh says she doesn’t feel like labels are important. “They can connect to a pecking order of the ‘gold star lesbian’ being more legit or more truly evolved than someone who has a more diverse sexual history,” she said. “I also think that if we cling too hard to a particular self-identification, it can blind us to the full spectrum of what feeds our souls – and can make us more prone to judgment, and too rigid about others’ situations. Instead of parsing and arguing and classifying, we could be spending that time making out, or meditating, or having some really groundbreaking new conversations.”

“I feel it’s very personally important to me to identify as a lesbian,” Diamond said. “It’s part of how I find other lesbians; how I have a home in this world. I also understand, and I’m aware of this when I’m talking to a younger generation of women, they have a sort of different understandings of labels. We need labels because we need to find a way to identify ourselves and form a community and have solidarity … Labels are political functions.”

Community: a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists.

It is possible that Anne Heche once felt like she was a lesbian or that Cynthia Nixon or Lindsay Lohan assumed that they were straight. It is also possible now that they can identify feelings that prove otherwise. What matters is not how they come to these conclusions or how they label themselves for the public to understand, but how they use their public voices to communicate about the subject. When discussing their own personal lives and pasts, they are standing on a soap box for the gay community, whether they like it or not; whether we like it or not.

The harm is done when those who used to publicly identify themselves as lesbians renege on it, also very publicly. For instance, Venus publisher Charlene Cothran, who went through ex-gay conversion therapy used her formerly gay magazine as a platform to help those “who desire to leave a life of homosexuality.”

Recently, British comedienne Jackie Clune wrote a piece for The Daily Mail about how she was “exhausted by the emotional dysfunction of her lesbian relationships” and then “discovered in her subsequent relationship with her husband a freedom to [walk] alongside each other rather than spending life locked in face-to-face intimacy or combat.”

She also wrote of the lesbian community’s reaction:

It seemed a betrayal of all they and I had stood for. Diva magazine, the biggest lesbian publication in the UK, voted me Most Disappointing Lesbian Of The Year. And the criticism still continues. There was (briefly) a Facebook group saying “People Like Jackie Clune Should Be Taken Outside And Shot.” Although the criticism is hurtful, I understand where it’s coming from – I’ve confused everybody. In the gay world some people hate the way many of us believe sexuality can be fluid. The idea of bisexuality is anathema to them. They see it as a mark of indecision or even self-delusion.

So why are we so angry when someone becomes a “former lesbian?” Because they often ignore the idea of sexual fluidity or bisexuality and go straight back to, well, straight. It gives mainstream society the notion that we are changeable; that lesbians really are just waiting for the right man to come along – the one to save us from exhaustion and “emotional dysfunction.”

Further more, people like Charlene Cothran can be used to help the Christian right in attacks against the LGBT community at large. It fuels their attempts to keep us away from basic human rights, like protection from being fired for being gay or the ability to receive the benefits of our partners.

Diamond said that these public figures are just as unsure as anyone else can be what the future holds for their own sexual desires.

“On one hand, I laugh when they’re like ‘I’m pretty sure it’ll never happen again.’ Well I’m pretty sure that you were pretty sure that this wouldn’t happen the first time,” she said. “It’s obvious that nobody really knows what you’re going to find attractive in 20 years. There’s a great thing about finding examples of women finding women they want to be involved with and going after that, that can be an incredibly powerful thing just on the level of a feminist level: You want something, go get it, regardless if it fits your previous pattern or not. It empowers us to see images of women going after other women because they want them then to agonize about what they call it. To see attractive, successful women going after other women, I can’t help but feel it’s a good thing. It makes it normal, it makes it possible for a girl to say ‘What am I feeling for this friend?'”

We can all benefit from the studies that illustrate the fluidity of women’s sexuality, and understanding our friends and partners who don’t identify themselves as women who are only ever going to be attracted to women. Hopefully, the ones who have a public platform to discuss these issues based on their own personal experiences will acknowledge and explain it when given their soap box opportunity.

“The mistake is in thinking that they are an Everywoman that calls herself a lesbian and that that is the ‘right way’ or the ‘authentic way,'” Diamond said. “The truth is that there are a million different lesbians with different life stories and views of relationships. It’s not threatening, it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s something to embrace and be proud of.”

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