What Does It Mean To Be Sexually Fluid
wow
[Applause]
the night of my college graduation
changed everything in my life
little did i know i was about to break
up with my boyfriend
of five years come out to my father as a
lesbian
and move clear across the country to
berkeley to explore my sexuality
so was june 1999 i had just graduated
from college and my boyfriend andrew
said
frankie i’m not able to make it but you
should go ahead go and be with your
friends celebrate
well when i got to the party i was
approached by a woman named nicole
and she had the biggest warmest smile
and a ton of confidence
and she said you’re frankie right and i
said
yeah and i smiled right back at her
and she said well since you’re about to
move
across the country i’m going to take a
risk and i’m going to tell you a secret
i’ve had the biggest crush on you since
freshman year
say what i had never been approached
by a guy like that before and i’d never
met nicole
or even had a conversation with her
before that night
we flirted all night long and i couldn’t
believe what i was feeling
i was surprised i was attracted
i was flattered and i so appreciated her
bold move
and yes i spent the night with her the
next morning i woke up
and i had this feeling like something
really big
had just changed inside of me i thought
i liked men
but i just cheated on my boyfriend with
a woman
i was excited and euphoric and at the
same time
i was so perplexed by my sudden change
in sexual desire that’s what i want to
speak to you about today
this switch that i had made that abrupt
yet meaningful change in my sexual
attraction
it turns out there’s a name for that
it’s called sexual fluidity
sexual fluidity is the concept that your
attraction is less about who you’re
attracted to
overall and more about who you’re
attracted to
at a given time let me say that again
it’s about who you’re attracted to
at a given time sexual fluidity means
that a person’s erotic responsiveness
may change but it doesn’t mean that it
will change
you know have you ever experienced
someone who seems to contradict the
label that they were given
like a lesbian who ends up getting
involved
with a man or a straight woman who ends
up having a long-term relationship
with another woman these are examples of
sexual fluidity
i’m a psychologist and a lesbian
matchmaker who is also married to a
woman
and we have two awesome kids and no it’s
not nicole
and i can tell you that sexuality is so
much more complex
than we once thought in order to
understand a human’s potential
for sexual fluidity we must look back at
the past
one of the reasons why sexual fluidity
is so perplexing
is because it contradicts what we’ve
been told
that sexuality develops early and is
consistent over time
or we may have been told by our
faith-based families
that being anything other than straight
is a sin and not an option
until now we haven’t even had a word
that describes this concept
the idea of sexual fluidity is a
contradiction
to the gay rights movement and position
that we were born this way
but is it the gay rights movement about
being born this way
or is it about equal rights no matter
who you love
so let’s go back to my time with nicole
it was the end of the summer and i was
ready to tell my dad my secret
dad i need to tell you something i’ve
been dating a woman
and we’ve been together for a few months
now
really frankie but you’re so
beautiful and feminine you have such
long beautiful hair
i know you can’t help it and i’m going
to love you no matter what
but it’s like a disease like you have a
sickness
i know my dad cared about me and i
know that he was worried that my life
would be harder because i had this
sickness
throughout the years i’ve had clients
come to me say that they feel strange
and they feel different like there’s
something wrong with them
they too felt like they thought that
they were straight and then all of a
sudden
they’re finding themselves attracted to
somebody of the same gender or it’s like
the flip
where somebody is queer
and all of a sudden they’re finding
themselves attracted to the opposite
gender
it can happen both ways and it can
happen at any time
so i’d like to propose that instead of
us saying
that we’re born this way with a fixed
sexual orientation
let’s instead say that we’re born this
way with the potential for sexual
fluidity
that frees us to follow our desires and
make different choices over time
let’s acknowledge that humans are born
to love throughout a spectrum
in 1997 ellen’s coming out episode was
revolutionary
it was such a big deal that it actually
was banned in certain parts of the
country
and today millennials and generation z
folks
they get so much exposure thanks to
shows like
lee orange is the new black queer eye
for the straight guy
and will and grace a range of sexual
expression is so
normal to them there’s no more shock
value to them
they just get it they get that human
nature has sexual fluidity
unlike baby boomers and generation xers
like me
i have a bisexual friend who’s the proud
mom of a teen trans boy
we’ll call him matt like most parents
she
likes to fall along with her son’s love
life
well one day matt’s friend came over to
the house before matt actually came home
from school
and he was talking to matt’s mom
and he said hey you know there’s a girl
in class that
likes matt and you know she also liked
matt
when matt was michelle before she became
a guy
and then my friend said well does the
girl
consider herself queer straight
bi matt’s friend said
i don’t know she never came out or
anything
does she have to be anything i’ve been
asked that question a lot
why do we need to label people
especially when i was hired to be the
relationship and dating coach
on mtv’s first ever sexually fluid
dating game show society has a love-hate
relationship with labels
they create a sense of inclusiveness and
understanding
but at the same time they box us in and
they constrict us
and we’re living in a time where there’s
a heightened sensitivity
around labels labels can be stressful
they even stress me out i’m not perfect
and sometimes i feel like i’m walking
into a minefield when i’m talking to
clients in my community
i’m afraid that i might accidentally say
the wrong thing
i do this for a living and i still get
it wrong
who knows i may change my label i might
instead
call myself an lgbtq plus matchmaker or
a queer matchmaker let’s talk briefly
about pronouns
when they then pronouns first started
being used
in 2015. you just hear me say that 2015.
that’s five years ago can you believe
that
well i can’t tell you how many times i
got it wrong
somebody would tell me that they go by
they them pronouns and i would
accidentally
say he she
come on it’s probably happened to you
too right
i mean we definitely still have work to
do there
but i was so embarrassed i was ashamed i
felt like if i wasn’t getting this who’s
gonna get this and i don’t ever want
somebody to feel like
i didn’t care but we’ve got to keep
talking
even when the conversations get really
hard in order to better understand each
other
i’m part of the queer community and if
i’m anxious
about mislabeling i can only imagine
how folks in the straight community must
be feeling right now
damn uncomfortable so i want to play a
little true or false
and bust some myths around sexual labels
so myth number one fluid is the same as
the terms
bisexual and pansexual any guesses
well that’s false sexual fluidity refers
to someone who can move across an arc
of sexual attraction over time
the term bisexual refers to someone who
is attracted to more than one gender
and pansexual is a more recent label
where someone is attracted to another
person regardless of their gender
okay if you’re getting dizzy right now
trying to keep up with all these labels
know this you can be more than one at
the same time
and many of them overlap your sexuality
is truly up to you
you get to decide you get to decide
what’s best for you
and the switch can happen at any time
okay next myth
true or false folks who identify as
bisexual pansexual or fluid
are into group sex are kinky and
incapable of monogamy is that true or
false
false it’s an outdated belief that if
you’re anything other than straight
it’s a sickness come on people are just
into who they’re into
and by the way we all know there are
plenty of straight people who are kinky
or incapable of monogamy
i mean just look at billions on showtime
there are straight people who are kinky
there are bisexual people who are plain
vanilla
being queer doesn’t mean that i’m a
nymphomaniac
maybe since i’m tattooed and i have a
partially shaved head and i’ve got some
muscles
people feel like they can make
assumptions about my sexuality
i can’t tell you how many times i’ve
been invited to join a couple sexually
i’ve never been into that i’ve never
been a part of any swingers groups
or threesomes and yet i get these
requests
so often and why
just because i look the way that i do it
doesn’t even surprise me anymore
okay let’s bust that myth for sure on to
the next
true or false the term sexually fluid
may make the term bisexual outdated
true or false well i have to say maybe
i can’t predict the future but here’s
why i think fluid is becoming the new
term for bisexual teens are using the
term
sexually fluid or fluid as a possible
replacement for the term bisexual
they don’t even say bye they just say
fluid
we all know things are in flux right now
there’s a lot of cultural shifts
happening and like so many movements
there’s conflict and confusion while a
greater collective understanding is
being created
sexual fluidity is a label of
inclusiveness
understanding and liberation
the night of my college graduation i
didn’t know
i was going to meet nicole and fall in
love
i didn’t know i was going to have a big
secret to tell my dad
and i didn’t know my life was going to
change completely
overnight i wasn’t expecting this switch
but when it happened i had a choice
i could either be scared and run
or i could stay and be open
and i leaned into it and i discovered
who i
am i am sexually fluid and i
know who makes me happy at any given
time
i wish you all the same happiness
thank you