What is Abrosexuality? An Intro to Sexual Fluidity

Sexual and gender orientation are not necessarily static or fixed. Here are four common ways that orientation and attraction may shift and evolve throughout the life cycle.

Quick notes: Articles will be published Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday this week. Also, this article is free for everyone.

A quick shout-out to one of my favorite musicians, Lorde. I’m super pumped to check out her newest album next month, Virgin, which I can only assume has a ton of commentary about sexuality and gender norms.

Image: Lauren Dukoff, published in an interview with Variety.

Last week, Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone released her latest interview with Lorde. Spanos writes:

“There were expectations placed on Lorde about how a girl becoming a young woman should act. It was another way she made herself small, trying to please the world and be good. But as she oozed, she redefined herself, and she saw that her gender identity could get bigger, too.

On Virgin‘s opening track, she lays the tale of her rebirth bare: “Some days I’m a woman/Some days I’m a man.”

I ask her how she identifies now, what it means and what’s changed. “[Chappell Roan] asked me this…She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’

I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”

From my perspective, that’s one of the most satisfying ways that I’ve heard someone talk about gender. I wish that more people talked about gender and sexuality in this way.

I could say the same thing in reverse. I’m a man except for the days when I’m a woman, such as when I play a vast array of cover songs by female artists, singing lyrics about love and womanhood and sexism, penned by women, voiced in my own high tenor range. (Ironically, I have a mean cover of “Team” by Lorde.)

I realize that there’s a ton of privilege in this statement. I pick and choose when I move into feminine spaces, and very quickly revert back to a stereotypical masculine existence, complete with my beard, louder voice, and collection of beanies of my favorite sports teams. I have never experienced psychological distress, communal castigation, or most importantly, the threat of violence in my experimentation with gender.

I also have not taken a lot of risks moving into practices or representations of femininity, although I long to live in a community with drag queen karaoke and rock an Adele song or two.

LGBTQ+ people, folks who more overtly present and date and relate to their own bodies in ways that aren’t sanctioned by larger social systems, have a history of being repressed by organizations, industries, and governments. The identification as queer will be especially important for survival reasons (as well as community building ones) so long as the threat of violence toward LGBTQ+ people exists from more powerful systems.

I’m wondering if there would be less violence toward queer folks if there was more societal acceptance of the following:

Sexual orientation—what Human Rights Campaign defines as “an inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people”—is not necessarily static.

And to build on Lorde’s observation, gender orientation is not necessarily static either.

I’m using tentative language—“not necessarily”— to communicate that for a lot of folks, sexual orientation and gender orientation become static. They don’t change throughout the lifespan for many folks, either because of choice, consistency, or lack of awareness that queerness could be an option.

However, there’s also a substantial population for whom sexual orientation and gender orientation are fluid. They shift and evolve as our contexts, bodies, and psyches shift and evolve.

And this is a really important reminder in the middle of our two-week conversation about first-time sexual experiences.

As a reminder, our podcast episode this week is with Erica Smith, sex educator and founder of Purity Culture Dropout. We explore six specific types of sexual activities, arrangements, and engagements that might have sexual debuts:

1. A general first time sexual experience.

2. Oral sex.

3. A same-sex sexual experience.

4. Anal sex.

5. A sexual experience that involves vaginal penetration.

6. Group sex.

You might have a first time experience when you’re 16 or 17, the average age for a sexual debut. Or you might have a first time sexual experience in your 30s, 40s, and 50s.

One could make the argument that sexual repression, such as that provided by an Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal community, plays a role in delaying sexual exploration. We’ll definitely make that argument in Sunday’s Substack article when we review Church Camp by

Cara Meredith

.

However, I want to suggest that gender orientation, sexual orientation, attraction, and desire evolve for many folks regardless of the extent to which they were negatively influenced by sexually repressive spaces.

I highly recommend Lisa Diamond’s book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire. Diamond tracks the short- and long-term evolution of sexual fantasies, attraction, and desire for women, noting that older women commonly describe their sexualities in different ways than they do in earlier parts of their lives. This joins other research that suggests that women are more likely to crave variety and diversity in their sexual experiences.

Diamond suggests that sexual fluidity appears in four common processes:

1. Something that resembles bisexuality. Some folks have a consistent attraction and “erotic responsiveness” (to use a Diamond term) to both genders regardless of context and situation.

2. Situational variability. Attraction and desire are often driven by specific contexts, including space, setting, or season of life. For instance, a person might find themselves attracted to their “less-preferred gender” (another Diamond term) in a context where sexuality is more accessible, such as in the first 30 minutes after they wake up in the morning or are in a quiet space.

3. Discrepancies between sexual attraction and sexual partnering. A person may have a specific consistent pattern of sexual attraction, but may have one-off (or multiple one-off) sexual experiences with someone of their less-preferred gender. Diamond describes this as a “responsiveness to an unexpected opportunity, social pressure, or the dynamics of a specific relationship.”
   
   A quick note: Diamond primarily studies the sexuality of women. But I would argue that sexual fluidity in straight men most commonly takes the shape of this option, given the role that homophobia and anti-woman sentiments play in confining and limiting the sexuality of men. Think of the “sex scandals” that arise out of straight men having a hookup with another man. (I’m putting “sex scandals” in quotes to connote that these situations are often consensual, non-exploitative sexual experiences. The scandal exists in the larger community as they attempt to redefine the man’s sexual orientation—”I didn’t realize he was gay”—rather than understanding what was meaningful and enjoyable about the sexual experience.)

4. Instability in day-to-day attractions. The attraction and desires of these folks don’t follow a particular pattern or alignment.

The sapiosexual in me recognizes that using terminology to categorize sexuality has significant limitations, as sexuality is often far more nuanced than the classifying vernacular that we use. (Thank you for the chuckle.)

With that said, I want to introduce the term abrosexual, which has been developed to hold the experience of sexual fluidity for people. Ritu Singh writes for NDTV:

“Abrosexuality refers to the experience of having fluctuating levels of sexual or romantic attraction throughout one's life. An abrosexual is an individual whose sexuality is fluid and fluctuates between different sexualities.

For instance, someone who identifies as abrosexual may feel strongly attracted to men at one point, only to experience a decrease or shift in attraction later on, potentially feeling no sexual attraction to anyone for some time.

Typically, abrosexual people experience fluctuations in terms of who they're attracted to as well as how intense their attraction is. Abrosexual people may change who they're attracted to weekly, yearly, or every few years, but generally, they find their sexual attraction shifts often.”

Again, I invite you to think about sexuality less in terms of “There are hundreds of sexual orientations. Which one best defines me?” and more in terms of tracking “What are the situations, people, relationship structures, and places that best ignite my sexual desires?”

Reflection on the “how does sex work for me and my relationship”, rather than maintaining a fixed, particular sexual orientation or identity, provides the curiosity, flexibility, and openness to explore different kinds of touch, play, and sexual experiences.

Julia and I offer free 30 minute consultations with couples who are interested in pursuing relationship and sex therapy/coaching. (And 60 minute consultations for paying members of Relationship 101!) We specialize in working with who participated in an Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal community, and are looking to discover or rediscover the role that sexuality might play in your life and relationship.

Let’s heal together!

Jeremiah and Julia