London, May 17 (IANS) If you are a girl and like to have sex with your male partner one day and a female pal the next, you may not be alone. A new theory suggests that women may have been evolutionarily designed to be sexually fluid.
“The theory suggests that women may not have sexual orientations in the same sense as men do,” said Satoshi Kanazawa, reader in London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Rather than being straight or gay, to whom women are sexually attracted may depend largely on the particular partner, their reproductive status, and other circumstances,” Kanazawa said.
Kanazawa proposed the theory in an article published in the journal Biological Reviews.
The theory explains why women can change their sexual desires and identities from lesbian, to bisexual, to heterosexual and back again, according to Kanazawa.
Female sexual fluidity may have evolved as an adaptation to facilitate polygynous marriages, in which a husband can have more than one wife.
In evolutionary terms, sexual fluidity allowed them to have sex with their co-wives in polygynous marriages, therefore, reducing conflict and tension inherent in such marriages while at the same time successfully reproducing with their husbands in heterosexual unions, the research said.
The theory may also help explain why men enjoy watching lesbian sex, and a number of puzzles in human sex research, including differences in female and male homosexuality, and menstrual synchrony.