Sexual fluidity: Living a label-free life

Updated

More young people are embracing the notion that human sexuality is dynamic, free and cannot easily be categorised. Despite accusations it is "just a phase," sexual fluidity is now firmly in the mainstream, and could change everything.

It was at age 12 that I first realised my sexuality existed somewhere within the wibbly-wobbly world of "not straight".

My mother was driving me to netball practice and had mentioned something about gay men in the media. I was asking questions, which led her to use the word "bisexual".

"What's that?" I asked, knowing pretty well what was coming.

"That's when someone likes boys and girls," she replied.

'I think that's what I am,' I thought to myself.

It was casual and innocent and only uncomfortable because the word "sexual" was floating around in a car with my mum.

Unbeknownst to my 12-year-old self, my journey through sexuality would be a sprawling mess of trying and changing until I found what felt right for me at the time. It was with relief that I found the concept of sexual fluidity.

What is sexual fluidity?

Sexual fluidity is the acknowledgement that attraction and desire is organic, unpredictable, and something that grows with a person, not something they commit to outright.

What does it mean to live a label-free life? Some say gender and sexual fluidity is just a fad or a phase, but more and more young people are refusing to be categorised as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual… or anything at all.



Over the next few weeks, the ABC will look at whether this generation is quietly threatening a revolution or just finally being honest.



We would love to hear your stories and feedback; please send them to Some say gender and sexual fluidity is just a fad or a phase, but more and more young people are refusing to be categorised as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual… or anything at all.Over the next few weeks, the ABC will look at whether this generation is quietly threatening a revolution or just finally being honest.We would love to hear your stories and feedback; please send them to ABCgenerationfluid@gmail.com

Different to bisexuality and pansexuality (identities where a person constantly feels attraction to two or more genders), sexual fluidity wriggles free from definition. Inconsistent and inextricable, for some, sexual fluidity is feeling gay for years until they meet a partner of the opposite sex. For others it is feeling varying attraction from week to week. It has no formula.

At times sexual fluidity feels like a rollercoaster of continually "coming out", attempting over and over again to form an identity that fits a standard definition.

I've had relationships with as many people as I've claimed to have sexual identities. Every time I felt an incongruent attraction, I would trudge off in search of what I really am, shoulders drooping in adolescent introspection.

On the standard Queer-in-a-straight-world trajectory, I spent a long time in relationships that weren't good for me, my self-doubt and confusion snowballing until I met someone who put stars in my eyes and settled on my real desires. Despite persistent accusations that it is "just a phase," however, I deeply believe sexual fluidity is real, healthy, inherent and the defining change for sexual rights in our time.

But I am not the only young woman who rejects the idea that it is necessary to define sexuality. While the notion that sexuality exists on a spectrum is not new, the fluidity movement is clearly having a moment, in part because young celebrities have spoken out about how they have come to embrace a label-free life.

In recent months, Miley Cyrus came out as genderqueer and started a charity for homeless queer youth. Kristen Stewart predicted that, "in three or four years, there are going to be a whole lot more people who don't think it's necessary to figure out if you're gay or straight. It's like, just do your thing".

Lily-Rose Depp came out as simply "not straight", and French-American musician SoKo chronicles her polysexual, fluid relationships on Instagram in a sparkly stream of shamelessness and creativity.

Celebrities who eschew labels and embody a revolutionary attitude towards sexuality represent a growing number of young people who are challenging norms through constant re-evaluation of their feelings, goals and desires.

When market research firm YouGov recently asked British adults to plot themselves on Alfred Kinsey's Sexuality Scale (where 0 is considered exclusively heterosexual and 6 is homosexual), 89 per cent of respondents described themselves as heterosexual. But the results for 18-24 year-olds were "particularly striking", with 43 per cent positioning themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5. "With each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed in stone," YouGov reports.

Sexuality as a spectrum

Indeed, several studies suggest that more young people and women identify as sexually fluid than any other demographic, while more and more research is being done with the conceptualisation of sex, gender and attraction as a spectrum, rather than a binary or a scale.

The University of Tel Aviv recently published results from a study of 1,400 people, asserting that differences between male and female brains are not inherent to sex; rather, people are biologically diverse in ways previously unacknowledged. There are multiple, overlapping ways to be male and female, said the study's lead author.

But for all the progress we've made in accepting the LGBT+ community, society still struggles with the idea that a person may never identify as gay, straight or any other label, and that attraction is perhaps more nuanced and dynamic than we realise.

And as Caitlyn Jenner's recent comments that transgender people should strive to "pass" as cisgender demonstrate, mainstream activism and conversation about gender and sexuality has outgrown itself, and often alienates the young, increasingly self-educated community of Queers whose identities and self awareness are yet to be publicly understood and accepted.

Sadly, the physical wellbeing of Queer people is still dire. With transphobia rife even in Sydney's Queer headquarters, Newtown, and rates of suicide, mental illness, drug abuse and homelessness at distressingly high levels among LGBT+ youth, the fight for recognition of sexual fluidity is still very much revolutionary.

Lack of representation of sexual fluidity and queerness in mainstream society often manifests as micro-aggression from well-meaning and bigoted people alike. With the assumption that people with non-normative identities owe others an explanation for who they are, public life can become a minefield of questions about genitals and past sexual and romantic partners.

When a customer at the cafe I work at asked me in an incredulous whisper, "How do girls and girls have fun?", I replied, "Google it."

The inherent violation in these kinds of questions is the feeling that Queer identities are foreign objects of fascination, not people to be respected and understood.

The liberation and beauty in fluidity

The conflict between sexual and gender identities with clearly defined borders and sexual and gender fluidity exists even within Queer communities. For decades, Queer has been a conscious reclamation of a homophobic, transphobic slur, and a conscious commitment to counter-culture. At the heart of Queer culture is revolution. The truest rebellion against a world built on categories, labels and binaries is coming from the emergence of identities that refuse to conform.

Even the debate surrounding marriage equality, naively celebrated by many as the fight for "gay marriage", is often rooted in assumptions of normativity.

As invaluable as they were, the driving messages from the Gay Rights Movement are no longer relevant to young Queer people today. Unlike Lady Gaga, I never celebrated being "born this way" because what I really feel is proud that I've managed to respect and acknowledge my changing desires.

I celebrate that gay, lesbian and transgender are part of the cultural vernacular, but I fight for the right to feel without limitation.

Bodies, people and desires are messy and confusing, but there is so much beauty in the liberation of fluidity. And too often in our conversations about sexuality we fail to mention what really matters: love and human connection. Acceptance of fluidity is allowing people to experience intimacy and give love without limitation.

We are not at a crossroads with the liberation of sexual identities; we are at an exciting place where revolutionary change is happening. For a generation of young people, the barriers of definition have been broken down. People are loving themselves and each other more freely than they ever have.

Now it's time for the rest of the world to catch up.

Credits

Words: Lily Edelstein

Lily Edelstein Producer: Hayley Gleeson

Topics: critique-and-theory, sexual-health, sexuality, brisbane-4000

First posted