Lesbianism begins at 30 for late-blooming ladies
Studies show a rise in the number of women who shun their men for gay relationships, says Julia Molony
Sunday July 25 2010
Are female-to-female relationships more successful than those between members of the opposite sex?
When your most stable relationships are your same-sex friendships, it seems hardly surprising that you might contemplate turning them into something more.
Perhaps this, in part, explains a phenomenon that is of interest to psychologists and sociologists lately -- that of heterosexual women, often those who have had marriages and children, changing their minds later in life and identifying as gay.
Next month, at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, researchers will present their findings in a comprehensive series of studies that focuses on female sexuality.
This will include evidence for an increasing trend of "late-blooming lesbianism" -- a sharp increase in the number of women who conduct heterosexual relationships until their thirties or later, and then switch to a preference (in some cases exclusively) for women.
Those who do (and according to latest reports, there are many) keep good company.
Cynthia Nixon, (Miranda from Sex and the City) singer Alison Goldfrapp, actress Portia De Rossi and TV guru Mary Portas all fall into the category -- having heterosexual long-term relationships, and even children, before realising later in life that their own gender holds more sexual allure.
Cynics might suggest that after the defeat of trying, repeatedly, to reconcile those sometimes intractable differences between the male and female perspective, turning to another woman is a bid for an easier life. And certainly, there are those whose change of orientation is undoubtedly fuelled by a sense of exasperation with a battle of the sexes within the confines of a home.
"It was a bit of a shock to find that I was attracted, sexually, to this woman," says one woman who was interviewed as part of the study, "but then, it was also a decision to leave men. It was a decision to leave a particularly oppressive and restrictive way of living and to try living differently."
The factors that define sexuality, both male and female, remain complex and indefinable. Though women's sexuality is still considered largely more fluid than men's.
A study conducted in 2006 even seemed to prove that same-sex attraction was virtually a universal trait amongst the most highly-sexed women. "The More Women Like Sex The More They Like Women" trumpeted one newspaper headline, above the news that researchers at California State University had made the discovery that not only were 8 per cent of women attracted to their own sex as compared to 0.3 per cent of men, but highly sexed women were 27 times more likely than men to become attracted to their own sex. Concrete scientific evidence there, for what has become of late a generally accepted truth, that women are more flexible around the idea of sexuality than men.
But whether that flexibility is intrinsic, or rather cultural, socialised or even emotionally led, remains a grey area.
Certainly the phenomenon of sexuality-in-flux is by no means exclusive to women. Sexuality fits in to a complex matrix of aspiration, affection, needs and desires.
For some women, perhaps the maternal urge, and the desire to have a family, might be enough to find expression as physical desire for a man during child-bearing years.
With the family project out of the way, and sex no longer so closely (if even unconsciously) linked to the goal of reproduction, perhaps there is space to pursue an attraction that exists for no other reason than personal gratification.
By contrast, it's not unknown for the magnetic pull of the reproductive urge to cause an avowedly gay man to swing the other way. I know, both personally and anecdotally, several examples of men who, after spending their youth living as active and "out" homosexuals, still decided voluntarily, and unbidden by family or social pressures, that at a certain point, they wanted to get married, to a woman, and have babies.
Female bonds can be very profound, enduring things. Given the commonality, the ease of communication, the shared experience women have between them, is it all that surprising that many women would be as likely to encounter the "soul-mate" experience with someone of the same sex as themselves?
This doesn't, by any means, explain the large number of women, according to the study, who identify as lesbians later in life and from that point find themselves wholly disinterested in the opposite sex. But it may be the case that the depth of that emotional connection leads the way for a more physical expression of love.
Originally published in
