3: Lisa Diamond

Sep 2

Welcome to Episode 3, where I discuss the science and politics ofsexual identity with LISA DIAMOND of the University of Utah. We’ll also hear about Lisa’s personal story—how she came to identify as a feminist, as a lesbian, and as a scientist, and how all of those identities have converged on a profound body of work. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into this research, you should check out her award-winning 2009 book entitled, SEXUAL FLUIDITY: UNDERSTANDING WOMEN'S LOVE AND DESIRE, about which Hanne Blank of Ms. had this to say:

"Captivating, nuanced, and rigorous… Diamond’s work is vital precisely because sexual fluidity is not a new concept—Freud called his version ‘polymorphous perversity’—but merely one that is typically dismissed. Nor is it news to women, particularly not to a generation for whom a nonspecific ‘queer’ affiliation, or no affiliation at all, is increasingly common. What is so important is not that this fluidity exists, but that someone has finally paid it systematic attention and found that it is in fact not the exception, but may well be the rule."

And while you're at it, check out this truly seminal paper Lisa wrote for Psychological Review on the differences between romantic love and sexual attraction in the determination of sexual orientation. It’s an amazing piece of work, and pretty accessible even for non-specialists. Here it is: WHAT DOES SEXUAL ORIENTATION ORIENT? A BIOBEHAVIORAL MODEL DISTINGUISHING ROMANTIC LOVE AND SEXUAL DESIRE * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page. Find out more at http://circleofwillispodcast.com This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Jim Coan
From VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship, this is episode three of Circle of Willis, where I discuss the science and politics of sexual identity with Lisa Diamond of the University of Utah. And we'll also hear about Lisa's personal story, how she came to identify as a as a feminist, as a lesbian, and as a scientist, and how all of those identities have really converged on a profound body of work. Have a listen.
Jim Coan
Hey, everyone, it's Jim Coan. This is my podcast, it's called Circle of Willis. You're not gonna believe this, but this episode features Lisa diamond, Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah. And we are going to talk about everything from the science and politics of sexual identity to Lisa's personal experience coming to identify as a lesbian. How about that? I feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to talk to Lisa because well, because, you know, Lisa is both an excellent conversation partner and an internationally recognized pioneer in the scientific study of sexual identity development. And that's not too easy to pull off, that combination. Lisa, Lisa's sort of fearless. I don't know if she cop to that. But it's true. For example, one of the things, one of the one of the many things to admire about Lisa, is that she sees no contradiction and having both a kind of a strong scientific and a strong political point of view. Certainly, certainly on questions of sexual identity and bonding, but on a number of other issues as well. And she, in fact, she described herself as a feminist scientist. Which is not to say that her science is uniquely feminist in some way, but rather to sort of just assert that she's both a feminist and a scientist, and proudly so. Sometimes controversially so. I mean, she's absolutely willing to let politics inform her scientific point of view. But she is equally willing to let science sort of update and inform her politics. Now, in our conversation, we talk a lot about the sample of women this the sample that she studied for years, for decades now. And how her pursuit of the sample grew out of a social commitment to bring sexual identity development into the sort of scientific light. But we also discuss how the systematic study of this sample caused her to almost completely rethink her understanding of same-sex sexuality. And I guess, I guess now's a good time to point out that if you're interested in a sort of a deeper dive into this research, you should check out her award winning 2009 book entitled, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire. I'll link to which you can find at Circle of Willis podcast.com. And I guess, while I'm at that, while I'm at it here, you can also find a link there to a truly, really a truly seminal paper that Lisa wrote for psychological review, on the differences between romantic love and sexual attraction in the determination of sexual orientation. It's an amazing, amazing piece of work and really, really pretty accessible, even for non specialists. I think you should read it. But now, I've already said that Lisa spends a lot of time discussing her own sort of emerging identity as a lesbian, but in listening to the conversation again, as I did, recently, just this morning. It struck me that Lisa's is really the story of multiple emerging identities. For example, you know, it's also about the development of her political identity as a feminist and about the development of her professional identity as a scientist. And what's fascinating to me about her story is how as each of these identities develops, they slowly sort of intertwine over time to kind of converge on her work as one of our, really one of our most important psychological scientists. I think, you know, I think her story is instructive, you know? The way that we develop really can inform our interests and the questions we ask. And it's probably true that we should draw from, or at the very least, sort of respect, the sources of information and identity that constitute who we are, as we're developing our professional lives. Lisa's story really illustrates for me how the convergence of personal and professional interests can be powerfully rewarding. Not only for her, but you know, owing to the body of knowledge she's contributed and really for all of us. And at any rate, I'm deeply, deeply grateful that Lisa took the time with me to record this conversation. You know, throughout she's really she's thoughtful, she's funny, she's wise. And above all, I would say extremely generous in her level of self disclosure. That kind of generosity is really, it's priceless. And I'm so glad to have captured just a little bit of it to share with you here. So that said, people of the world, struggling students, colleagues, friends, perplexed adolescents everywhere. Here's Lisa diamond.
Lisa Diamond
It's the most low brow, you know. You can you can do it just from your bedroom.
Jim Coan
That's what I'm...
Lisa Diamond
And then you can get a huge number of followers, and then it just sort of takes off.
Jim Coan
Does its own thing. Well, that's why I asked you to come in and talk to me so I can get a huge number of followers.
Lisa Diamond
There you go. That'll work.
Jim Coan
Yeah, it should. You're kind of famous. You have a Wikipedia entry.
Lisa Diamond
What?
Jim Coan
Did you know that?
Lisa Diamond
No.
Jim Coan
Yeah. I found it. I don't have a Wikipedia entry. There. How do you do that?
Lisa Diamond
I had no idea.
Jim Coan
Yeah I found it. Now, don't look at it yet because I don't want to bias you. I don't know if it's true or not.
Lisa Diamond
I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what's on there.
Jim Coan
It said you're a feminist is that...
Lisa Diamond
I am a feminist dammit!
Jim Coan
See, that's excellent. It's accurate.
Lisa Diamond
It's accurate.
Jim Coan
What... Okay, so, I guess, when I think of you, I think of feminism. I also think of sexual identity. And you've sort of blown my mind with that because I I really...
Lisa Diamond
Just doing my job.
Jim Coan
Well, you know, I didn't, I never, I well... Part of it is that I come from a very working class background. Good people, right? Not bad people. But definitely sexist people. Definitely homophobic.
Lisa Diamond
My parents came from... My mom's from a very small town in Florida, and still has a lot of like, sexism and racism. And my dad, you know, was raised, you know, very poor and working class. His father died when he was 16. So his mom was... so they both came from not explicitly conservative, but kind of traditional. And I think especially my mom from the south. I mean, when we visit her relatives it's like a different world. It's like, you know, a much more segregated world.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And that's always a bit of a shock.
Jim Coan
But did she go to college?
Lisa Diamond
She did go to college. She is interesting. She has a background that I didn't know a lot about until I started doing interviews with her. And I was sort of blew my mind because I didn't know that much about her background. And, you know, she was in this really kind of small town where education for girls was not a big thing.
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
And she, at some point, she decided that she really wanted to get out of Lakeland and go to college. But there was no money. Her piano teacher, because my mom was a pianist and she and she ended up becoming a piano teacher. Her piano teacher found a bunch of scholarships for her to apply to and sent my mom on these, you know, made tapes of her playing piano. And she got a scholarship to pay for the first year. But then she showed up to at Wesleyan, Georgia. And her mom was not in favor of it. She was like, this is crazy. We don't have enough money for you, you know this, but you know, just trying to get through the first year. And she ended up being something like $200 short. And her piano teacher took a collection from other families in the community
Jim Coan
In Lakeland.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, to support my mom.
Jim Coan
Lakeland, Florida.
Lisa Diamond
Lakeland, Florida.
Jim Coan
And that's, that's in Georgia, the Wesleyan and Georgia is in Atlanta.
Lisa Diamond
No.
Jim Coan
No? where is it?
Lisa Diamond
I don't remember. I visited it once. But it's small.
Jim Coan
It's small town? Like something like Athens that kind of small?
Lisa Diamond
And I remember at one point, you know, as because Lakeland again, is a kind of in... I remember saying to my mother at some point, I don't know how you came out of that cloud. How did you, you know, how did you know to you know, how did you not end up there. And mom looked at me and she said, I was not going to stay.
Jim Coan
But she wanted out.
Lisa Diamond
She wanted out and she got out. And I gained of this respect for her because...
Jim Coan
Because that's, that's tricky.
Lisa Diamond
She became a really...
Jim Coan
When was that? That was like the mid 60s.
Lisa Diamond
Let's see she and my dad got married 64. So I think she got out around... She was born in 43. So she got out and she was 18.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
But she didn't finish college because she met my dad during the summer.
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
Working as a waitress in New Jersey.
Jim Coan
Wait I don't know, that's a lot of story there.
Lisa Diamond
She just you know, from one of her roommates, she was like, I need to make money over the summer or else I can't keep going I need to go to college.
Jim Coan
So go to New Jersey to make money?
Lisa Diamond
Well, that was where a lot of the Catskills let there were a lot of these sort of summer clubs for the New York...
Jim Coan
She got a job.
Lisa Diamond
She got a job as a waitress and that's where she met my dad at the New Jersey Shore during the summer. And they knew each other for three months. And he proposed and
Jim Coan
They did that then!
Lisa Diamond
I know
Jim Coan
People did that then.
Lisa Diamond
They did that then and that kindof shocked me. And her mom totally disapproved and wouldn't go to the wedding.
Jim Coan
Wouldn't go to the wedding... Yeah, well, there you go.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Three months. And your dad was going to med school?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, yeah. And he had also sort of pulled himself up by his bootstraps to...
Jim Coan
He was from New Jersey?
Lisa Diamond
He was from, well, he spent his childhood in Washington Heights in New York.
Jim Coan
New York.
Lisa Diamond
And then they moved on to New Jersey.
Jim Coan
Sort of on the northern part of Manhattan
Lisa Diamond
And went to Rutgers for undergrad.
Jim Coan
Yeah. In Newark?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. Yeah. So they both had these really hardscrabble backgrounds. And we're both really... and so then they ended up in Los Angeles
Jim Coan
Los Angeles.
Lisa Diamond
Which is like for, you know, someone raised in the winters of New York, for my dad was like, you know, this sounds good!
Jim Coan
It does I bet. I mean, you're physician in the early 70s in Los Angeles it's warm.
Lisa Diamond
And, you know, he went to...
Jim Coan
Sunny all the time.
Lisa Diamond
Cedars Sinai Medical Center, which was at that time, was really becoming like a rising star for cardiovascular medicine, which was what, you know, he ended up doing. So it was one of those, you know, right place right time.
Jim Coan
And that's where you spring forth out of the void. So you're an LA girl.
Lisa Diamond
Born in LA.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Yeah. And raised.
Lisa Diamond
And raised.
Jim Coan
And how did it affect you?
Lisa Diamond
I really was not crazy about LA. So I don't know how it affected me. And it's funny, because as I got older, and especially when I went to college in Chicago, people would say to me, you don't seem like you're from LA. You seem like an East Coast person. And everyone has always told me that I seem like I'm from New York.
Jim Coan
Yeah, you do have a New York-y kind of vibe.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, you know, I don't who knows? You know...
Jim Coan
You know LA, you know, LA can have a similar kind of vibe, it seems to me sometimes. It depends on what part. LA is very diverse.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
But there are parts of LA that have that sort of already, you know, cultural...
Lisa Diamond
And I did a lot of theater. I mean, because it's LA...
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
I was into acting at a very young age. And I tried to do it, you know, because the bad thing about being raised in LA, if you're into theater at all, is like, if you show any aptitude for anything theatrical, then everyone's like, always try and get an agent and start to do commercials. Right? And that's actually really hard to do if you really want to do that. It's like a full time job. So like, I was going to an acting school where everybody else and my acting classes was like, doing professional stuff. There was like people who ended up being like, famous in my... like, Stephen Dorff was like, in my classes.
Jim Coan
Was he was like, a action guy or something?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, he did some like big movie and I was like, oh my God. but that like I was not... you know, I was never successful with that. I never managed to get an agent or do anything and so I felt like, Oh. I was just doing plays, you know? But it was, it's hard in LA to you know, just want to do that because everyone was trying to get you to do some toothpaste commercial and was not my thing.
Jim Coan
That wasn't your thing. What was your I mean... did you identify as sort of feminist early on...
Lisa Diamond
It was not until later in high school.
Jim Coan
Well, high school is sort of like, I mean, I think about, if you're gonna get that way, it's not going to be before high school.
Lisa Diamond
You know, Betty Friedan, because I went to an all girls high school...
Jim Coan
Is that how you pronounce it? Friedan? I thought it was Freeden. Oh, my whole life. I've just my mind blown all of a sudden.
Lisa Diamond
And she came to talk at my high school. I think when I was in like, ninth grade, maybe? I don't even I don't even know who she was.
Jim Coan
Freidan goes goes to your high school?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
In the ninth grade?
Lisa Diamond
When I was in the ninth grade. And, you know, she was an old curmudgeon, you know, at that high school. But it was kind of controversial, because, you know, this was an all girl school. It was, you know... There were a lot of sort of society girls there. And a lot of them thought that feminism was just like, not for them. So it was very controversial. And I remember hearing people debate, you know, like, whether it was a good idea that Betty Freedan was coming in, I was like, I don't even know.
Jim Coan
This is what like, 1985?
Lisa Diamond
This would have been... Yeah, I guess 1985. And she just said, you know, this is what feminism is. If you think that you should be able to make your own decision about whether you want a job, or whether you have a family or whether you do both. If you just think that that should be your own decision to make. Welcome to feminism.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And I was like, Oh, my God, really? You know, and...
Jim Coan
Why? Because you didn't you hadn't entertained that? Oh, one of the things that I thought I remember first learning about feminism. And one of the things that I think that that struck me when I was first experiencing that was I hadn't thought about the fact that those things weren't true. Until someone was telling me that that ought to be true. Like it didn't. I mean, I was sort of, I mean, not that I didn't see sexism happening. But I hadn't really reflected upon it.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, I don't have a clear memory of what I thought before that. I just hadn't, you know... I think maybe it was just again, right person, right time. My brain was sort of ready for it. And my closest friends, you know, my very best friend, who I've known since I was five, is a woman named Janice Kim. And she was the child... she was a Korean child of immigrants. You know, her parents basically came over here, had her, and she didn't speak any English. And that she went through kindergarten twice, just to learn English. And then we met, you know, in elementary school, and she was always really interested because because she knew from a very early age. And again, it was a sort of classic Korean immigrant experience of: I need to succeed for my parents, because I'm gonna support them. She was an only child.
Jim Coan
She's gonna make the change.
Lisa Diamond
So she even at that age, she was like, thinking about her future and thinking about, you know, career. And so, because she was so career focused, she was like that, you know, that was an amazing speech. That is awesome. Like, feminism is awesome. And so she sort of helped to articulate for me, you know, like, yeah! So a part of it was hearing Betty Freedan and part of it was having a group of friends that were like, well, hell yeah.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
You know, hello.
Jim Coan
And you were in an all girls for private school?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Boarding School?
Lisa Diamond
No not boarding school just private school.
Jim Coan
Just private school. So that that probably helped a bit too.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. I mean, I thought it was great. Because there wasn't, you know, all this attention on how you looked, you know? We had uniforms. Right? You know, you just showed up for class wear your uniform with your hair all crazy. And it wasn't this, you know, when I see a television series where you see people at high school and there's like, it's basically a meat market. You know? And it wasn't like that at all.
Jim Coan
So you went on, you went to the University of Chicago, right? For undergrad? You must have been a really good student.
Lisa Diamond
I was a very good student.
Lisa Diamond
Holy crap.
Lisa Diamond
But my dad was really disappointed that I didn't want to go to, you know, Harvard or Yale or Princeton.
Jim Coan
Really?
Lisa Diamond
Every cut... Yeah. Because, you know, he had in his mind, I think he was really proud of me, but he had a certain, you know, I think University of Chicago was sort of lower on the radar. And so I, you know, I quickly figured out...
Jim Coan
You don't think about it. It's not as much a part of the popular... You know, they take that as a badge of honor.
Lisa Diamond
Exactly.
Jim Coan
It's where it's where fun goes to die. That's the that's slogan
Lisa Diamond
And that was, you know, because I was not like a social, you know, kind of kid. So, but I think as once I was there, he, you know, I think he understood the reputation.
Jim Coan
Oh my God, it's an incredible reputation..
Lisa Diamond
Well, I mean, I think I've had in some ways it has more of a reputation as a place for graduate study than undergrad. And at that time, the ratio of graduate students, there were two graduate students for every undergrad student. So there were a lot of graduate students.
Jim Coan
So that gave you a lot of exposure to graduate school as well, probably.
Lisa Diamond
Somewhat although, you know, it was almost like a big mystery. The thing that was funny, you know, because I did a lot of theater and I did a lot of music. And I was always meeting first or second year graduate students. Because as we all know, after the first or second year, you're really working hard to just kind of disappear.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And so I was like, just graduate school take? Because the only graduate students I've ever met...
Jim Coan
It takes two years.
Lisa Diamond
Like they just they disappeared. Like poof! They're gone. You know, I met the first years and the second years, and then, like, they go underground.
Jim Coan
Well, so what do you do at University of Chicago? Did you... were you psych major?
Lisa Diamond
I was a psych major. Sort of by accident.
Lisa Diamond
By accident?
Lisa Diamond
Because I had a very... my roommate, was my very best friend. And also like, I was completely in love with her. And...
Lisa Diamond
How'd that go?
Lisa Diamond
We were, well, it never turned out into anything but like, you know, if it wasn't for her...
Jim Coan
But by this time, are you fully identifying as a lesbian?
Lisa Diamond
Oh no way. At that point I just I viewed.... the way I dealt with my sexuality in high school was I believed that I was just not a sexual person. And I, apparently my friend, I've forgotten this. I announced to my friends in 10th grade that I was never planning to get married or have any relationships.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Lisa Diamond
And they were like, oh, okay. All right. But then I did.
Jim Coan
They're like, what, what's the content? Why does this comeup?
Lisa Diamond
I don't even remember. But at around, I think around my junior year, I'd gotten involved with some community theater. And one of the people who was involved in that group ended up being my sort of first like, major boyfriend. And it was perfect because we started, you know, becoming close friends. And then he left to go to college and Berkeley. So it was perfect, right? Because we had no... he was gone! And so we just wrote letters. And that was perfect for me because he was smart and funny. And he was so smart. And, you know, really intellectually challenging. But he was gone.
Jim Coan
He was gone. Thank God.
Lisa Diamond
So that worked out. You know, pretty well. And then he went to England, which was even better!
Jim Coan
You went to England?
Lisa Diamond
No he did.
Jim Coan
Oh he did. Yeah, that's even further away.
Lisa Diamond
Even better!
Jim Coan
Can't fool around.
Lisa Diamond
And so I didn't really spend that much time trying to understand my sexuality at that point. My I was...
Jim Coan
But you were sort of in love with your roommate.
Lisa Diamond
Well, that was in high schools. But you know, so high school boyfriend was the one that was in England.
Jim Coan
Oh, I see.
Lisa Diamond
But I was also in love with my best friend in high school. Who was in like a really intense emotional relationship.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
So I was able to sort of explain that to myself as like, we're just you know, no one understand.
Jim Coan
Right. We have an... You know, that's also a thing. Yeah, that's a...
Lisa Diamond
It's totally thing.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
I remember, you know, there was this dicey period in junior year where we were all in the AP English class, and we were reading Mrs. Dalloway. Which is like this famous lesbian novel.
Jim Coan
Very important book.
Lisa Diamond
But we had just interpreted it as like a version of our friendship. And we're like, oh my God! You know? This is, this is the first novel that understands our relationship. And the other people in the class are kind of like...
Jim Coan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisa Diamond
So I never actually actively questioned my sexuality in high school. I had alternative explanations, I guess was assigned to a part of me for everything. Like I had this boyfriend. You know?
Jim Coan
You were smart. You were really capable of rationalizing everything. Clever people do that.
Jim Coan
Absolutely!
Jim Coan
They're very good at that.
Lisa Diamond
But and it wasn't until I went to college, and just immediately was just so struck by my roommate. And it was also so obvious to me at that point that my feelings for her were erotic and not just emotional.
Jim Coan
Yeah that takes it up a level. That's a different level.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, you know, and so that's when sort of the shit hit the fan. Before then I hadn't, you know, I was not worried about it. I was just like, I'm just not a sexual person. I just don't enjoy sex with men and that's no big deal.
Jim Coan
So was your mind blown open? Or was it did it seem like this... This is understandable, or this was enxorable or this is...
Lisa Diamond
It was pretty blown open. I remember walking around the streets of Chicago, thinking like, what am I going to do? And I couldn't even imagine telling my parents, you know? I just remember thinking, there is no solution to this. There's just no, there's no way that this is gonna work. And now, you know, now it's like, my life is so completely fine, that it's... I find it really instructive for me to remind myself of that, because I think sometimes the queer community can be really unforgiving of folks who take a long time to come out.
Jim Coan
Is that true?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. And so I have to remember my really freaked out, you know, 18 year old self. And I have to, like, consciously remember that feeling of fear.
Jim Coan
Well, it also reminds me of the It Gets Better campaign, you know? That whole thing that seemed like a very important message that that time, you know, is part of this, you know? That time marches on and things change over time. And it can be hard to see how things are improving when you're in it.
Lisa Diamond
And also, I mean, the thing that I find frustrating now is that, you know, if you're living in a big urban center, things are great. But there's a lot of, you know, queer folks living in Lakeland and Neraska. And I think the meat is like, oh wow, it's it's cool to be gay now. And I'm like, no, it's not! Not for some person.
Jim Coan
Oh, my God yeah.
Lisa Diamond
You know, in rural Michigan, it's not. I mean, the Internet has changed everything. I mean, I can't imagine I probably would have come out so much earlier if the internet had existed.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
You know? With it just... I remember walking to the areas where I knew what the gay newspaper in Chicago was. And I would go and I would get it, and I would bring it home. And I would read it cover to cover. And then I would rip it up into pieces and take it to a distant trashcan to throw it away. So that my roommates just did not know.
Jim Coan
Wow. Wow. How about that? Yeah. I mean, I remember, you know, going to high school in Spokane, Washington, which is a really conservative place. Really, really very conservative. Then moving to Seattle and being you know, what, what happened to hell? And but my early explanation was, you know, gay people are from big cities. And really...
Lisa Diamond
I grew up in LA. Like I could have actually had... there's a huge gay community in LA. But I didn't know anything about it.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And also, when I was growing up, you didn't think about like, gay as meeting lesbians who thought of gay as me being gay men.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
You know that time in the 80s, there wasn't as much visibility about women, as there was about men. So I just thought of like, you know, West Hollywood as gay men. Not any women.
Jim Coan
You know, on your mental map.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Well, and it's important for all of us. You were saying that, you know, if the internet had existed then that things might have unfolded differently. I think that's really true. People don't realize, even by the 80s and 90s, it's still pretty fraught. I mean, I remember going to Seattle and trying to find a roommate, and I found a roommate. Nice guy. We're talking and I learned he was gay. And I said, yeah, I'm not going to be your roommate. This was me. I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice guy that wanted to do the right thing. But I...
Lisa Diamond
One of the things that I have, like, such deep shame about is when I fell in with the community theater crowd, when I was around in 10th grade. And so I again, I was clueless then. I thought my intense, you know, best friendship was purely platonic.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And this community theater group was run by four openly gay men all but one of which died of AIDS. And at that time, and the guy who was in charge was infected at that point and actually had active AIDS and I didn't know it. But at some point, like I remember when I first got involved with him, I remember making some anti gay AIDS joke just out of ignorance and not realizing. And like I remember the other...
Unknown Speaker
People did right?
Lisa Diamond
And other folks were like looking at me and then someone was like, do you realize like, all the people in charge are gay man or women who does in fact have AIDS and I was like, oops. And I think oh my God, here I am like, little miss like lesbian poster child, but in 10th grade, I was as ignorant as they can. I was as ignorant as everyone around me. And I think it just shows that that stuff is in the culture.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. It's implicit.
Lisa Diamond
It's implicit. It's all around you. It's all around you.
Jim Coan
Yeah, I think that's right. So you realize, you come to sort of come to terms with your, your emerging sexuality in college? What do you what do you do about it?
Lisa Diamond
I ended up... There wasn't a lot going on on campus. So I ended up getting involved with the National Organization for Women chapter in Chicago. There was a big chapter in Chicago. So I just started showing up to volunteer. And I ended up on the board of directors, you know.
Jim Coan
As an undergrad?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Coan
Holy shit.
Lisa Diamond
Well, because, you know well, I came to realize, you know, soon after volunteering, that there were a lot of folks who come and go, and there are a lot of folks who are not that committed. So when someone shows up, and they're committed, they like, grab them. They're like, okay, you're not flaky, you know? We need non flaky people. And so that was really great because at that point, I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life. And I'm like, do I want to do activism? Or do I want to do academia? So a lot of the work that I did with Chicago now was me trying to figure out what I wanted to do. At that time, there was a lot of activism around the abortion issue going on because that was that was right before the big Casey decision. So I got trained in clinic defense, because there, this was the time that which the anti abortion activists were trying to shut down the clinics. So there was a whole, like, you know, all day training where you learned how to physically protect women, how to link arms, how to, you know, how to get women in and out of the clinics. So we did a lot of clinic defense. We did a lot of, you know, policy activism...
Jim Coan
This was all early 90s.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah around 91 and 92.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And that was amazing. And that was where I met my first lesbian lover.
Jim Coan
Lesbian lover.
Lisa Diamond
Who was 16 years older than I was. Which is not that uncommon, I think...
Jim Coan
No, it's not that uncommon.
Lisa Diamond
I mean she was pretty freaked out about like, you know, you're, you know, I'm, like, spoiling you and I'm like, I'm a willing puppet. Okay.
Jim Coan
Because you're what, how old were you at that point.
Lisa Diamond
At that point I was 19.
Jim Coan
Well, so you start to really experience it. Did you talk to your parents? What happened?
Lisa Diamond
I did. It did not go great.
Lisa Diamond
It did not go great?
Lisa Diamond
My mom, well, my mom was okay. Mainly because I was crying. And, she I think, you know, turned out to sort of be freaking out on the inside, but she did a good job of being like, I love you. You know, I just want you to be happy. My father did not believe me. He thought that it was a political act. And he said because he was because he was a bit upset that I was like abecoming this feminist, activist. Yeah, so he was like...
Jim Coan
They're just putting ideas in your head.
Lisa Diamond
You don't have to be a zealot. You know, at some point, he called me a zealot. And I'm like, it's not really a zealot thing. So that was, that was not great. But my sister was who I'm so close to was great. And apparently what happened is she sort of sat my parents down to give them a talking to him was like, you know what?
Lisa Diamond
This your older sister?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, she was like, whatever you guys are dealing with. She's two and a half years older. Whatever you're dealing with, you need to not burden Lisa with this.
Jim Coan
Yeah, good advice.
Lisa Diamond
Go to therapy. Go to PFLAG. Work out what you need to work out. But do not share your bad feelings with her. Go ahead. It is pretty wise. So I was like afterwards, I'm like, wow, I guess you know, it was a little rocky, but everything went okay. And I found out that like, they actually were struggling quite a bit. But they kept it to themselves.
Jim Coan
Yeah. That's what parents... parents need to do that sometimes, to work it out by themselves. They need to deal with that.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. They did not like my first lover. She was really butch and I think that freaked them out.
Jim Coan
Yeah, that's a little freaky for...
Lisa Diamond
And so I think that was part of it was they were like, waaaa. You know? And then I went to when I went to grad school, I met my current wife, like right away. Like immediately.
Jim Coan
And that was it. That was at Cornell?
Lisa Diamond
That was at Cornell.
Jim Coan
So you got your undergraduate degree in psychology?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. And that was the thing. So the reason I got it in psychology is because my roommate in college who I was totally in love with. I was gonna... We got sidetracked. Yeah. So, I was going to major in anthropology because the, you know, Chicago is got an amazing anthropology... So all the courses that I really liked were in anthropology. And then she announced that she was going to major in anthropology and I thought it would be bad for our friendship if we have the same major. I thought that would make us competitive. So I'm like, okay, then I'll switch to psychology, so that we don't have the same major. That's why I became a psychologist. And then she ended up switching to psychology too. So all of that was for not.
Jim Coan
What a pain in the ass.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. So if I had not been in love with her, I might have been an anthropologist.
Jim Coan
Well, anthropology lost out.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, there you go.
Jim Coan
Did you? So why did you decide to...
Lisa Diamond
The anthropology department kind of well, at that time...
Jim Coan
It wasn't...
Jim Coan
It wasn't very interesting.
Lisa Diamond
There were boring classes. Like, I'm not even sure... I don't know. It was weird. It just shows how random these things are.
Jim Coan
But so how did you decide to... did you apply widely to grad school or did you...
Lisa Diamond
I did figure out, because I took a year off between graduation and grad school. So I didn't feel panicked. And I knew that I needed to find like a topic to study.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And, you know, because I was a newly out person, I spent a lot of time in the bookstore, like reading all the books about gay people.
Jim Coan
Sure why not?
Lisa Diamond
And I discovered a book written by one of the faculty at Chicago, Gilbert Hurt, called Children of Horizons. And it was about the adolescent gay youth group in Chicago called the Horizons Project. And that was a time that gay youth groups did not exist. It was just not on people's radar that you could be a gay teen. So this was a revolutionary kind of book. And I was like, oh my God, like, this is what I want to do. Like, this is new, it's interesting. Like, I don't see a lot of women in these stories. And so that I hooked on that as like, okay, that's gonna be the thing that I apply to graduate school to do. I want to do stuff on gay youth with a focus on women.
Jim Coan
That sounds... Yeah. Wow. So that really lit your fire?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. Yeah. And so that, you know, it was hard, because there were only two places that had faculty who were doing gay stuff, right? This was a time that...
Jim Coan
Two places?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. And University of Chicago was one of them because Gilbert was there. And Ritch Savin Williams at Cornell. So everywhere else I applied were folks that had stuff during adolescence, but they didn't have stuff doing like University of Michigan.
Jim Coan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And it was just basically for me, the decision was, do I want to have to educate my own adviser about gay stuff? Or do I want to go to a place with someone who already kind of knows the landscape.
Jim Coan
Could thinking, you know, your activism being involved with now and your sort of activism, with regard to your emerging identity... How did the science fit with that? I mean, did science seem very compatible with that? Or did you, was there any tension? Sometimes I think that there's tension around those kinds of advocacy...
Lisa Diamond
You know, my father was an academic. He was an academic cardiologist. And starting from when I was, like, 12, or 13, he would actually give me his journal articles to edit and review. Which I didn't, I was like, what I didn't even understand what journal articles were.
Jim Coan
He was a cardiologists?
Lisa Diamond
He was a cardiologist. But, you know, he basically did a whole lot of work on applying Bayesian statistical methods to the prediction of cardiovascular disease.
Jim Coan
Shit, that's pretty advanced.
Lisa Diamond
It was very advanced. And you know, not just because he's my father, I'll toot his horn. He sort of revolutionized the field of predictive cardiology.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Lisa Diamond
So but his papers were really statistical and theoretical and I couldn't understand.
Jim Coan
Why am I editing this?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. I have no idea. I don't know what a receiver operating characteristic is dad, I don't know. I can't. But he could tell that I had an aptitude for writing and for science, and he wanted to encourage that. So he wanted me to go into academia. He loved that side of me and that was a part of our connection. So I think a part of me wanted to please him and wanted to be a scientist. And when I discovered that there was sort of a field of scientific research on queer people it was like, oh,
Jim Coan
That's me.
Lisa Diamond
I can do both. I can do something that satisfies the activist side of me, but it can also be grounded in science, because this is a legitimately understudied phenomenon.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And you know, yeah so... I think that's what happened. And also, you know, when you're when you're a smart kid and you go to college, you don't really know what to do. Like, I didn't really know what jobs were out there. In the year between graduating and going to grad school, I was working at the University of Chicago's basically rape crisis center. And that was just really kind of frustrating and didn't feel very helpful, because there was there was like a gang rape that was not being dealt with very effectively by the administration. So I felt like wow, I'm not really able to do anything, you know, of value. Like who I am this activist and I'm failing at, you know, advocacy and activism. I think I'll go back to the safe world of books and deep thoughts. Yeah.
Jim Coan
So you get to Cornell, do you meet Judy right away?
Lisa Diamond
I met Judy within like two weeks.
Jim Coan
Holy crap.
Lisa Diamond
Yep.
Jim Coan
That's, well, yeah, that's settled that
Lisa Diamond
Wasted no time.
Jim Coan
Good. I guess. I mean, that I don't know.
Lisa Diamond
And it was interesting, at that time, people did not go to graduate school to work on gay stuff. It was, you know, most of them...
Jim Coan
I mean, it would have been very specialized.
Lisa Diamond
Well, it was not... more than that it was just stigmatized. It wasn't really... it's hard to remember now, how dangerous it was. And Ritch Savin Williams, my advisor, you know, ended up telling me that when my application came in, he had been about to retire early. Because since he had, you know, he was a full professor and he had shifted to doing work on, you know, queer youth. And basically, people stopped applying to work with him. No graduate students wanted to touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Lisa Diamond
So he was like, well, if this is the way, and he had gotten a re-specialization in clinical, so he had started seeing, you know, who's doing research, but it was also seeing clients. And he was thinking, you know..
Jim Coan
I can apply my, my knowledge and skills in a different way.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. And he was like, I think I'm just gonna leave the whole academic thing behind. And then he said, like, I was in that thought process, and your application came in. And I was like, wow, a graduate student is willing to actually do gay research? Like, wow! And so it's like, okay, I'll try this out a little longer. And then he ended up, you know, he just recently retired. So he ended up, you know, staying and doing, like, some amazing work over the past 20 years. And like, I saved your career.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Well, you saved it for all of us.
Lisa Diamond
Because it was just it really was that uncommon. And because it was a small niche, I felt really isolated from the other graduate students.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
Because I would go to the big conferences, like Society for Research on Child Development and APS. And there wasn't anything going on with regard to sexual orientation or LGBT issues. And so I just felt like, I'm doing something that no one else cares about. And, you know, when you go to these conferences, you see all these heartbroken graduate students wearing little suits and carrying their posters, and they know exactly who to talk to. They're, like, already angling for the jobs they're gonna get. And I just, like, it's kind of it was, it was very intimidating. And I just felt like, I'm not apart of that world at all because the work I'm doing. No one's gonna hire like, I'm just not a part of this world. And I came close to quitting, you know, several times, because I would go to these conferences, and I found it's so demoralizing, and I was like, there's no way... there's no way I'm gonna succeed at this.
Jim Coan
Well, you know, it's, you know, it's really funny, or maybe not fun. Maybe this isn't funny. Maybe this is this is more sad-ish. But I didn't identify... I mean, when I thought about Lisa Diamond, and Lisa Diamond's work, I thought about attachment. And, you know, attachment and bonding, and attachment and health. And so I didn't think about sexuality until I'd known you for a while longer.
Lisa Diamond
What's interesting is that I found that like, you know, because I started doing the attachment stuff, they're sort of like, I have two sets of colleagues. Some know a lot about the attachment stuff I do and like, had no idea about the sexuality stuff. Some know about the sexuality stuff, and have no idea about the attachment stuff. So I always felt like in some ways, I have these like, dual sets of colleagues.
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
That didn't necessarily, you know, interact with each other, but one of the reasons that I, you know, when I got to know Sydney Hasan and started doing the attachment stuff, you know, I was so passionate about it. But I remember Ritch was like, well, it's really good that you're interested in this because you need something more mainstream.
Jim Coan
Right?
Lisa Diamond
You need something other than the gay stuff. And I'm glad that you actually are interested in this and that you're not just doing it, because you need it. But the truth is that you do need it.
Jim Coan
Well, and there's also a very important way in which we need to understand attachment processes in sexuality, right?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. And at that time, there wasn't, there still wasn't a lot of cross-talk for that. So I believe that I would not have gotten the job at Utah if I had only been doing the gay stuff. I think it was the fact that I was doing both. Because I was hired in a joint appointment position. I'm a joint appointment with gender studies. So the Psychology folks really liked the attachment stuff. The Gender Studies program really liked the queer stuff.
Jim Coan
Were you a joint... were you jointly hired right from the beginning?
Lisa Diamond
Right from the beginning, the position was a joint appointment.
Jim Coan
Wow. That's pretty, I mean, University of Utah. You think about going from the frying pan into the fire.
Lisa Diamond
I was so doubtful. And so it was Judy. You know, who had...
Jim Coan
Yeah, no where is she from?
Lisa Diamond
She's actually from Los Angeles as well. But we met.
Jim Coan
Yeah, you meet in Cornell.
Lisa Diamond
But it's worked out well, because it makes the holidays easier. And she was... she had gotten her master's in History and then decided she didn't want to do academia. So she was still kind of casting about for what she wanted to do.
Jim Coan
And she's like, Utah, really? Salt Lake City? This is our destiny?
Lisa Diamond
She was very doubtful about it.
Jim Coan
Yeah, I would be too.
Lisa Diamond
She had done all this research. She's like, there's only one job there that I can imagine wanting, but she got it. And then she, her career ended up really taking off, you know? And so it, it ended up being a good fit, and I cannot, I literally cannot believe that I've been there for 17 years.
Jim Coan
17 years.
Lisa Diamond
It's like what happened? I truly, but it's an amazing place, you know, you're talking about, like, queer migration, every gay person in the state of Utah. And some of them from Idaho, come and live in Salt Lake City.
Jim Coan
Because Salt Lake City is a refuge in their area, sort of a regional refuge. Most regions have one or two of those, you know, Tucson is sort of like that in Arizona.
Lisa Diamond
And we ended up on a list of like one of the top 10 gay places to live like in America. So really, there's a huge queer community there. And it's totally and of course, work at the University, everybody at the university is from someplace else. They're all completely progressive.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And it's been totally awesome to work there.
Jim Coan
So where did your, where has your research... I mean, so now, when I think of Lisa Diamond, predominantly, I think about your certain attachment papers that I always cite and talk about with my students. You know, like, you know, sort of a regulatory system that attachment brings and bonding creates. But what I really think of these days is this concept of sexual fluidity, which was one of the things that really surprised me. I mean, you know, by that time, though, by the time I'm getting surprised by this work, I'm enlightened, you know? I'm fully enlightened about sex, I'm like, I'm good with everything. I'm down some of my best friends are the gays, whatever.
Lisa Diamond
And it's like, what are the gays.
Jim Coan
No, and then wait a minute, what, what?
Lisa Diamond
Who are the gays?
Jim Coan
Exactly, then then, you know, the ground, under even my progressive feet starts becoming very uncertain. When I think about the idea that people change. And I started, I mean, , I think I sort of responded negatively at first to that, I mean because, you know, I'm not opposed to this in any way. But I was sort of surprised.
Lisa Diamond
For a while the progressive, what seemed to be the progressive opinion is like, I know gays are born that way. It's not a choice. Like, let's you know, it's a very sort of ethnic model.
Jim Coan
And even among people that I knew who were gay, all my adult life, you know? I've often felt that even within the sort of queer community, there's a kind of outsider status to bisexuality, for example, and people have talked about that a little bit. I don't really understand it, you know, at a visceral level, but I understand it at a conceptual one.
Lisa Diamond
I think a lot of minority communities have a lot of boundary policing that goes on. I think it's true for you know, ethnicity it's true for religion. There's always a lot of boundary policing. I think that's a part of any marginalized groups coping mechanism.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
Are you in or are you out? And, you know, and so I think that's where that sort of came from. But I think some of the fervor around the boundary policing is energized by the very fact that that those boundaries are permeable. And everyone knows it. And that's why it makes it so scary!
Jim Coan
It makes it very comfortable. Anything that's uncomfortable, we just want to make that go away. So tell me about the sample.
Lisa Diamond
It was just the most simple, the most terrible, terribly organized master's thesis project.
Jim Coan
That goes back to your masters.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, yeah. So basically, I landed at Cornell, and Ritch didn't have any existing samples that are, you know, most graduate students go and their advisor has a research project that they start working on. Well Ritch, you know, didn't, you know? Because he was thinking about leaving it, you know? So he didn't have any data for me to work with. And he's like, well, what are you... what do you want to do? And I'm like, well, you know, all of these studies of sexual identity development are on men. And largely it was because samples were recruited by just going to like community groups.
Lisa Diamond
Right.
Lisa Diamond
And, you know, those groups always drew more men than women. And so I only found like one study that had any women in it, and it was like, 10 women or something. I was like, wow, okay. I'm supposed to find a topic that no one's doing. And like, my, that will be my thing. Like, where are women's voices where women's experiences? I was, like, Ritch, I just want to interview a bunch of women and like, see what, you know what their process of identity development is. And he was like, okay. And I've joked with him like, since then, I've been like, how could you let me do this crazy project? Like, where? You know, why weren't you forcing me to have like, more clear cut... And he's like, well, I think you did okay. So like, obviously, it was not such a disaster. But I really, I...
Jim Coan
He's gonna love that characterization.
Lisa Diamond
I did not have a lot of clear ideas about what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted to interview women and just sort of, you know, get...
Jim Coan
But how did you... so you just came up with your own line of questioning? You know, like, oral history interviews or what? Were they all openended questions?
Lisa Diamond
Oh, no, I had... yeah they were pretty opended. I had questions.
Jim Coan
Did you do like attachment scales and things like that? Because I started the project before I discovered attachment.
Jim Coan
Got it. Okay.
Lisa Diamond
Like I didn't, you know? And so basically, I just wanted to know the process through which women started to question their sexuality.
Jim Coan
And you had to seek out to find the women who identified at time one...
Lisa Diamond
I didn't, I didn't want them to necessarily identify. I just said they just have to have some form of same sex attraction. I didn't require them to identify. So basically, and the internet didn't exist, so I was like, how are we going to find these women? And Ritch was like, well, there are pretty big, you know, communities in like Syracuse and Rochester. So, and I didn't have a car so I bought a used car for $5,000.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Lisa Diamond
A 1989 Toyota Corolla that I still have.
Jim Coan
Stop it. Oh cut it out. What are you talking about?
Lisa Diamond
Oh, yeah. It's, we call it the Firebird because it's actually been on fire. But it's still running. And basically, every single weekend, I would drive to Syracuse or Rochester or Binghamton, or Elmira or Freeville. And I would go to places that had coffee shops, anything where there were, you know, gay community where I thought young women might be. And I would just physically walk up to people and be like, I'm doing a study about...
Jim Coan
You just ask them about their sexuality?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, I was, like, I'm doing this interview. Aaid I had no money.
Jim Coan
Yeah, that's a lot of leg work.
Lisa Diamond
This interview study, you know? And Judy, and I, you know, because we were a new couple. So she would actually sometimes come with me to recruit people. And she was way better at it than I was, she has no fear. She just walked up to people. And she'd be like, I found you like, five more and I'm like, what?
Jim Coan
Angrily.
Lisa Diamond
And so then I would schedule the interviews, and then I would kind of drive back and do like 10 interviews in a day, you know? And in a particular location. And just drive back and forth, drive back and forth, drive back and forth, drive back and forth.
Jim Coan
Oh my god. And as a grad student. You're taking classes and you're, you're eating, you know, eating rice and Top Ramen.
Lisa Diamond
I remember eating a lot of sweet potatoes while I was driving. And I could munch them in one hand while driving the car.
Jim Coan
What, you didn't cook them?
Lisa Diamond
No I cooked them in the microwave, but then I would eat them like an apple. Really?
Lisa Diamond
You know? Yeah.
Jim Coan
Holy crap.
Lisa Diamond
Just nuke 'em and then wrap them in tinfoil.
Jim Coan
That's a little crazy. I would say that's a little that qualifies, that crosses over the line into crazy a little bit
Lisa Diamond
It's a good portable food.
Jim Coan
Yeah, I guess that's true.
Lisa Diamond
So, you know, so I did the interviews, and I knew I wanted to follow folks over time. But I didn't really have a clear plan on that. And so, you know, it just sort of emerged spontaneously, but I just recently have been doing the 20 year old follow up interviews.
Jim Coan
20 years?
Lisa Diamond
20 years.
Jim Coan
That's amazing.
Lisa Diamond
And what's hilarious and I only lost..
Jim Coan
I just have to process this for a sec can I do that? I just have to, because when I think about a 20 year longitudinal study, I think of a multicenter NIH, you know, gigantic fucking, you know, millions of dollars with multiple, you know, PIs. And you know, and and you're talking about a...
Lisa Diamond
One person, no money, no funding. And I think the reason that I haven't lost folks is because it's always me. I never had anybody else do the interviews.
Jim Coan
They know you.
Lisa Diamond
They know me and
Jim Coan
Trust you.
Lisa Diamond
What's been sort of gratifying over the years is, you know, because I was a grad student, when I started, I was close in age to a lot of the participants. And so when I, when I call them, you know, every couple of years, they're like, what's going on with you. So you have a job, like, you're at Utah, I saw you on the web, like, I'm so proud of you. So the, there's not a big power imbalance. The way there is because I was young and naive when I started it. And so they feel proud of me. And when I, when I published the book, I sent them all a copy of the book.
Jim Coan
That's nice. They're like your collaborators in a way. All they have to do is be honest.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
And so at what point do you realize that people are not being consistent in their reporting?
Lisa Diamond
Well, when I asked women to talk about some of their earliest attractions, a lot of them were just describing these really passionate friendships similar to the one that I had in high school, my with my best friend. And I would be like, well, you know, were you attracted to her? And they'd be like, no, I really wasn't. And I was like, wow, that because, you know, similarly, because I wasn't really aware of feeling like erotically attracted to my best friend in high school. It was the one I college. It was like, we were really like, we were in a romantic relationship with one another.
Jim Coan
Yeah. And adolescence is so intense anyway. It would be easy to...
Lisa Diamond
And so that was that was the first thing that struck me was that there was something that we were all assuming that those romantic feelings always cooccurred with sexual feelings. And it was clear to me from the interviews that that wasn't the case. And that's why I sought out Sydney Hasan because I was like trying to understand this. And she introduced me to attachment theory. And I started doing notes reading, I'm like, oh, they're attachment bonds. They're just not sexual attachment. They're more analogous to parental attachment bonds. And so she introduced me to sort of a framework that helped me make sense of the fact that there were these romantic relationships between women that had all of the signature features of romantic attachments: the obsessive proximity seeking, the separation distress, the safe haven. They just weren't sexual. And it was, you know, maybe a developmental thing. And that was, you know, the big sort of aha moment.
Jim Coan
Well, and also you're catching these young women basically still as adolescents.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. The age range was 16 to 20.
Jim Coan
Right. So adolescence is a time, I mean, in attachment terms, where you're where your world is turning upside down, because you're sort of cutting those early attachments.
Lisa Diamond
And those systems have not really intergrated yet. Yeah, you're in this transitional thing, where...
Jim Coan
You have to rebuild your social set of attachments. And that's terrifying!
Lisa Diamond
And for most adolescents, their first full fledged attachment figure, that's not their parent, is a romantic partner. But these girls had sort of figured out a sort of transition. That their first attachment figure, other than a parent, was their best friend. And it just wasn't a sexual relationship.
Jim Coan
I mean, I think about Eleanor Maccabee stuff about how girls'...
Lisa Diamond
Same-sex friendships.
Jim Coan
Same sex friendships, how they're sort of nicer. For girls especially, right? Because boys are kind of a pain in the ass. I mean, you know, I mean, I don't want to be too generalizing. And boys have their own, I think version of this.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
But the inculturation in the way, the way things go, they're not oriented towards that sort of supportive behavior.
Lisa Diamond
And they don't get that sort of cultural permission.
Jim Coan
They don't. That's right. So they have their own issue there.
Lisa Diamond
You know, so I ended up designing my dissertation around female friendships to try to sort of, you know...
Jim Coan
That was very ahead of its time.
Lisa Diamond
But it was a total failure. It was like the worst dissertation ever and nothing ever got published from it and it was a complete bust.
Jim Coan
That's how that happens.
Lisa Diamond
You know, but so it's odd. It's like the work that I ended up publishing more and getting more known for was my master's thesis research.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And the dissertation just sort of died.
Jim Coan
You know I published my master's thesis and I never ever ever published, would never publish my shitty dissertation.
Lisa Diamond
And I was tell that to graduate students to sort of reassure them. I'm like, it's just another study.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
It's not going to be the last study you do. So don't try and make it your be all end all. You know, it may not, you know, work out. But it was the dissertation that got me into psychophysiology because I was using really bad psychophysics methods to try and sort of test the difference between romantic relationships and best friendships. So then when I get hired at Utah...
Jim Coan
That's a good idea.
Lisa Diamond
They're like, Oh, well, so you want to set up a psychophys lab? And yet, I had never been trained in it. Like we didn't... the psychophys measures that Cindy Hassan was using, were basically the heart rate monitors that runners buy. It was it was just heart rate. There was nothing else.
Lisa Diamond
They weren't so great then.
Lisa Diamond
No. And so I didn't know, I mean, it was my dad, who was like, you know, you really need separate measures of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. I'm like, oh. And I was like, wow, I'm like trying to get into this field. And yeah, I'm not being trained by people who know anything about it. So when I landed at Utah, it was just luck because Tim Smith was there, Berta Chino was there. And you know, and they're like, you're gonna benefit a lot from being here. And they just supported me completely. I had to set up the psychophys lab, having never actually collected valid psychophys data ever. So I just hit the books, and was completely 100% self taught on everything, because I never had any training in it.
Jim Coan
And what kind of stuff did you start finding?
Lisa Diamond
Right away, I mean I was very, I became really interested in the emerging research on emotion regulation, and the parasympathetic nervous system, the whole porges and vagal stuff. And so I quickly was like, wait. This all suggests that attachment security should be related to, you know, vagal tone. And I couldn't understand why I couldn't find any research on attachment theory and psychophysiology. Other than like, one chapter that was on like, kids getting, you know, in the strange situation. And that was, you know, what I really wanted to do. So I ended up writing a review paper on. I'm like, wow, either I'm, you know, is it possible that I'm the first person who's seeing why this is relevant? And it turned out that that was sort of true. Like, no one was doing it in adults, there was stuff on kids.
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
So I wrote this review paper that basically was a way to sort of force myself to really articulate okay, like, where am I going with this? You know, if I'm going to commit to this, like, I'm need to make sure I'm not going down a rabbit hole. So a part of it was just me boning up on it. But that sort of served as the framework for what I ended up doing, which was looking for associations between vagal tone and vagal withdrawal and attachment and security.
Jim Coan
What was the bottom line there? I mean, it's a vagal... So does attachment security, increase parasympathetic tone?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, so individuals who are insecurely attached, have lower vagal tone. Which is exactly what you would expect if attachment insecurity is some form of regulatory deficit.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
So that was true. And so you know, that was the first thing I found. And then since then, I've found other manifestations of that and other ways in terms of looking at couples and looking at how individuals who have lower vagal tone have different sorts of reactions to their partners, negative affects, and stuff like that.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
But all of that was on like, heterosexual couples. So, I was still doing the gay stuff and I was doing this attachment stuff. I basically had two different careers going on and two different sets of colleagues. But because I had a joint appointment in Gender Studies, it was okay. And my biggest insecurity early on at Utah was that someone was going to say to me at some point, either you're a qualitative sexuality researcher, or you're a quantitative psychophysiologist, who does attachment like, pick one.
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
Pick a direction, because right now, you're all over the map. But to me that were always deeply connected.
Jim Coan
Wait, someone did say that to you?
Lisa Diamond
No, no, that was my fear.
Jim Coan
That was your fear.
Lisa Diamond
It was my fear.
Jim Coan
That doesn't seem to have happened.
Lisa Diamond
No! I remember when I was writing my third year statement, for my third year review, really trying to like articulate why these were both actually connected.
Jim Coan
Figure out what the nexus is that links them up.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. And I think from that, a big part of that was the psych review piece, you know, on the links between attachment and sexuality. That for me, was like, I needed to publish that to show that these were not two different lines of research. They were actually connected. If I could just, you know, explain how they were connected.
Jim Coan
Well, and you know, there's there's sort of a meta scientific aspect to this too. Because by the time you're doing the psychophys attachment stuff, there's a big giant literature on attachment and a big giant literature on psychophysiology and measuring parasympathetic tone and what it's associated with in terms of self regulatory capabilities and on. But there's not that much about about sexuality and sexual identity formation, all that stuff. And and one of the things that I mean, even Pauper wrote about was that you have to develop the hypotheses, you got to figure out what to look at.
Lisa Diamond
I was totally shocked by the fact that, because I always would attend the IARR meetings, the International Association of Relationship Research. And every other year, they would be international. And I would always attend the International Academy of Sex Research. And they also alternated. And I was always shocked by the fact that I was the only person who was at both meetings. I'm like, don't the relationships people want to know about sexuality?
Jim Coan
God, its still such a problem.
Lisa Diamond
And don't sexuality people want to know about relationships? And I kept thinking, oh, I'm sure next year I'll see some of the same people. I'm like, no? Like, what's going on? I mean, the fields were very segregated. And I think a part of it is this sort of squeamishness about sexuality among the relationship researchers.
Jim Coan
Has it gotten better?
Lisa Diamond
Not that much better.
Jim Coan
Really?
Lisa Diamond
I gave a talk at the IARR meeting in Israel called Where's the Sex in Relationship Research?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And, you know, I was saying to folks, you know, we have these 36 item measures of conflict.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And then the measure of sexual satisfaction would be like, are you satisfied? Yeah? Okay, all right, that's all we need to know.
Jim Coan
And forget psychophys, there's no applied to sexuality...
Lisa Diamond
Nothing about like, what you do, how you negotiate. You know, your sexual practices.
Jim Coan
And that's what I'm saying that's why you need to have these more open ended qualitative approaches, because you're gathering clues as to where to look more quantitatively, systematically down the road. You really need to build that foundation. And but it's so I want to pivot a little bit, because I really want to get back to what sexual fluidity is. What did you discover it is? And it sounds like you've been using the attachment framework to explain it a little bit. But I wanna just, what is it?
Lisa Diamond
The way I would describe it and sort of what sort of happened as I started doing follow up interviews around every two years with my respondents was, I would find that their sexual identity labels kept changing. And I found that a lot of them were engaging in relationships that didn't match their pattern of attraction. So some of the women who were like, oh, I'm 95%, attracted to women, then I talked to them two years later, they're like, well, I started sleeping with my male best friend. And I'd be like, whoa.
Jim Coan
That's a pretty big change.
Lisa Diamond
What's going on there? And it was clear from talking to them that it wasn't like they were going back in the closet, or they were repressed. They were... all my respondents were really open and like, you know, they were not deluded or repressed. So that standard explanation of, oh, you're just going back into the closet or your false consciousness. Instead, they were like, wow, this relationship just really kind of blew my mind. And so again, I was really drawn to this notion of attachment, that there's something about specific relationships that can be so compelling that it draws women into erotic feelings that they didn't have before.
Lisa Diamond
In for either...
Lisa Diamond
For either direction!
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
Because I also was talking to women who I was interviewing, who were like, I think I'm pretty heterosexual, but I just started sleeping with my female best friend, and I don't know where that came from. And then I was talking to them two years later, and they were like, yeah, back with man. And I'd be like, so were you deluded? Were you... and they'd be like, I don't know. It was just that one woman.
Jim Coan
Thar was a thing that happened. That was a thing that happened.
Lisa Diamond
It was a thing that happened.
Jim Coan
Was there like, confusion or shame?
Lisa Diamond
I mean, yeah. For them, there was a lot of confusion, a lot of shame. I think, especially for the women who had been identified as lesbian who started relationships with men. The lesbian community was like, get out, you know? So some of them had...
Jim Coan
So coming from all directions.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's changed a lot since then. But at that time, it was really fraught for a lot of these individuals. Which was part of what you know, as I started to do the research became really compelling to me. Because invariably, the women who had those sorts of experiences felt that they were the only one they were like, one woman actually said to me, I feel like I'm a bad example of a lesbian. So if you don't want to continue interviewing me, that's fine because I don't want to mess up your study. And I was like, oh my God, you don't realize.
Lisa Diamond
This is my study.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah, I'm like You don't realize how common you actually are. And so that was something that struck me right away was that all of them seem to think they were the only one having this sort of more fluid experience. And I was like, oh, my God, I think our whole model of what's normal and what's exceptional is reversed.
Jim Coan
Because the the fluidity was the norm.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Right? I mean, it was relatively rare that people were all in one direction or all in the other.
Lisa Diamond
So I was like, oh my God, we've got this completely wrong. Like, completely upsidedown. The thing is that early on, you know, when I was publishing the first, you know, from the first couple rounds of follow up data, people were like, well, you know, you've got this weird sample, and that's a small sample. And I was like, I totally get that. They're like, you know what, you may be onto something, but it's probably not that big of a phenomenon as your sample is making it seem like. You got a weird sample. Now, I feel so validated because now we have these unbelievable representative studies. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, longitudinal studies from New Zealand, and they've all shown the same thing. And I'm like, I was right! It wasn't just my tiny... Like, you're right! I had this tiny sample but I was not wrong about the phenomenon. And now I feel... So now when I give talks, I present all the big data, because I'm like, see! I wasn't crazy.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Right? Because especially in the current climate, it's a little bit nerve wracking, you know? But you know, your sample wasn't that small. It was what, over 100?
Lisa Diamond
It started with 100 women.
Jim Coan
With a decade?
Lisa Diamond
That is small and it's like, you know, completely snowball sample. So I mean, I totally get that. But I also feel that there is a role for small sample research. And I feel like my study is an example of the fact that you need that sort of work for hypothesis generation.
Jim Coan
Yes.
Lisa Diamond
And you need it to be able to figure out what questions to ask. So certainly, I never expected it to be the last word on anything. But the only way to get some of the information that we need is through that more intensive small sample work.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And you know, that has no funding, and that is cheap to do. And that, you know, you just kind of pull it out of your, you know, out of your hat.
Jim Coan
And is there any evidence that there are sex differences in this?
Lisa Diamond
Initially, I really thought there were. Initially I was like, this is like a female phenomenon. But I think largely, I'm starting to doubt that because I've started collecting data from men, and they're showing some of the same kind of variability that I used to think was more common in women. So I kind of feel like the jury's out on that. I used to think that women were way more fluid than men.
Jim Coan
The common story is that women are more you know.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah and I was part of that. I was one of the people, you know, making that argument.
Jim Coan
That it is more of a genetic...
Lisa Diamond
It might be. It might be that there is, you know, more fluidity in women than men. But I think the size of that gender differences is an open imperical question.
Jim Coan
That's just amazing stuff.
Lisa Diamond
I mean, women have had more cultural permission to dabble in same sex sexuality than men have. And so that gives them more opportunities to sort of figure out.
Jim Coan
But what about the historical record? I mean, I've heard, for example of, you know, ancient Greek culture being the opposite.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Coan
I don't know whether if there's anything, I don't know what... I mean, I have no, literally no idea what the evidence is, for any of that.
Lisa Diamond
I think a lot of that just shows that sexuality, I mean other cultures, you know, it's only the contemporary West that has linked same sex behavior and attraction rigidly to an idea of a fixed orientation.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
You know, you find same sex sexuality in every culture that you look at. But it coexists with normal heterosexual behavior. And so it's only relatively recently that we think about it as a trait of a person. And so how they explain it is kind of up to every culture. Is it just men being horny? Is it a form of male friendship, which was true in a lot of cultures? So you find different versions of it, you know, across history and across different cultures. And, you know, in some cultures, for example, the penetrating male, the active partner is not considered gay. You know, it's only the passive partner who is considered gay. So it's like, yeah, you can engage in as much same sex behavior as you want. As long as you are the penetrator. That's a totally heterosexual male role.
Jim Coan
Well, in th that seems to me that there's also ample space for other sort of sexual behaviors that are not you know, fully penetration right?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
I remember reading one of the surprising things I've read...
Lisa Diamond
Or as Bill Clinton would say they're not sex.
Jim Coan
I remember reading Christopher Hitchens' autobiography. Do you know what I'm referring to? And I mean, Christopher Hitchens is sort of like chest pounding neocon guy. And he, there's all kinds of stuff in there about about engaging in sexual behavior with with boys, all through his adolescence and describing that this was utterly normative. At least in his recollection. This was not...
Lisa Diamond
A lot of folks think like, oh the boarding schools, circle jerks, and stuff like that. You know, so I think that there's a lot of space for individuals to interpret attractions and behaviors in a lot of different ways, depending on the context. And we are relatively unique as a culture in that we take any sign of same sex sexuality, and we say, that must be an indicator of something permanent about you.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And the truth is that sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.
Jim Coan
And maybe the truth is that often it isn't. Often, it's just, but you know,
Lisa Diamond
it's a pretty flexible system. Think about, I mean, the people, you always hear about people being like, well, I can't reach orgasm unless I think about some particular thing, and it will be something kind of crazy. We're like, wow, obviously, sexuality is a pretty flexible system. You know, that you've learned something at some point that gets integrated into your mind.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And, you know, so clearly, cognition and exposure, play a role in helping to set sexual trajectories.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
So why are we so surprised, you know, by that amount of fluidity. It's like, clearly we're not, you know, like, the animals that literally cannot mate unless they are, you know, ovulating.
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
We are a pretty complicated species.
Jim Coan
If you... I was saying to someone, maybe Eli, a little while ago that, you know, if you try to find real unequivocal generalizations about human behavior, it's just really fucking hard to do. You can't... The rule for humans is flexibility.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. Because that's what's adaptive because of our large brains and because we lived in diverse environments.
Jim Coan
We created this capability over phylogeny to flexibly adapt to all kinds of conditions and that means that, you know, not only sexuality, but brought mating strat- you know, like monogamy. You know, all of these other things that we sort of, on one camp or another, we want to say is a fixed trait.
Lisa Diamond
It's also true with stress sensitivity. Which I think is so interesting that all of us research showing that exposure to early adversity, can render children sort of set the development of their stress response systems to be hypersensitive. And that hypersensitivity is adaptive, right? Because if you're living in a dangerous environment, you need to be hyper vigilant.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And that hyper vigilance actually makes them more sort of absorbent of good environments as well as bad. So we, as a species have evolved mechanisms to take in what kind of environment am I in? And the body changes. It's not just a, you know, a behavioral change. There are physiological changes that occur. And that's what I find, you know, so fascinating.
Jim Coan
I guess, I have really one more thing I really wanted to ask you, which is, given this almost dizzying array of flexibility, fluidity, of difficulty typologizing individuales, where does that leave us politically?
Lisa Diamond
Interesting, that's part of what I'm going to talk about. You know, I think that the gay community has made a huge mistake in using the fixedness of sexual orientation as the grounds for civil rights by saying, we're born this way. So it's not our fault and please love and accept us. That, first of all, is just scientifically wrong. There are definitely biological contributions, but they're not deterministic.
Jim Coan
Right. Like anything that...
Lisa Diamond
I know, it's like any geneticists just like, that's a stupid thing to say about anything. But it's again, it's like the way science gets popularized.
Lisa Diamond
Right. For political reasons.
Lisa Diamond
For political reasons. So A: it's it's just wrong. And there's enough data on change now, to show that it's just completely whacked. B: it's actually not...
Jim Coan
You're gonna catch hell for that.
Lisa Diamond
You know, I don't... That's the point. I feel like at this point in my career, I need to like... I always joke with my partner. I'm like, you know, I have job security and I'm like, I need to use my power for good. So if anyone's gonna catch hell for it, I'm safe. Go ahead.
Jim Coan
Good. Good.
Lisa Diamond
So A: it's wrong. B it's actually unnecessary. I partnered up with a brilliant colleague of mine in the law school at the University of Utah. Cliff Roski who does work on sort of the LGBT legal stuff. And if you actually look at the decisions, the immutability of sexual orientation has not actually been a factor in all the legal victories. We think it is, but it's actually not. So we think that it's helping us and it actually hasn't been that important, because there are so many other grounds on which those decisions have been made. And it wasn't a factor in the most recent Supreme Court victory. Usually, it's the fact that animus against any particular group is not constitutional. So if you know, regardless of whether it's immutable or not, if a law appears to be motivated by animus, it's just wrong and that was the basis for the Lawrence vs. Texas decision.
Jim Coan
Very good point.
Lisa Diamond
Also, laws against LGBT discrimination are often founded on the sex discrimination industry. It ends up being a form of sex discrimination to discriminate against like same sex marriage. In terms of the Equal Protection statutes, immutability is one of the list of things that folks can consider, that the Supreme Court can consider in whether or not a law is constitutional. But it's not the only one. History of discrimination is another one. So it's again, it's like it hasn't been you know, it's one of several things that can be considered. Another was that courts have changed their definition of immutability from a trait that cannot change to a trait that is so central to a person's sense of self, that it would be wrong to make them change it.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
So even the definition of immutability, from the courts perspective is not what most of us think it is.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
So for all these reasons, we've just been on the wrong road. And then the final thing which, you know, for me, is the most important take home message is that it is simply unjust to the entirety of the queer community to make the fixedness of your sexual same sex sexuality, a condition for your right.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
Because it marginalizes bisexual individuals. It marginalizes the kind of women in my study who had one same sex relationship. That there shouldn't be some litmus test for rights where it's like, well, if you're a stable lesbian, you're allowed to be protected by the laws. But if you're someone who had just one same sex relationship, you don't deserve your rights. It sets up a hierarchy of you know, queerness. And, you know, there was, basically, any civil rights strategy needs to protect the entire population.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Lisa Diamond
And so this notion that fixed patterns of sexual orientation are worthy of respect, and others are not, it's just antithetical to any sort of movement for self respect. So the correct answer to like, oh, you know, are people born this way or are they not? That's an interesting scientific question. Like, it's one of my interesting scientific questions. But it has no role in public policy debate. It's like a so what? It's like, it doesn't matter how you got there to be doing... Either, we're a society that protects the privacy of individuals to determine their intimate lives or we're not. No one ever asked during Loving vs Virginia: are some people born, like attracted to people of the other race?
Jim Coan
Right.
Lisa Diamond
No one cares why you want to marry someone of another race? Do you have the right to make your own marriage choice or do you not? We don't care why like, are some people born loving black people? I mean, like, that's going to be a ridiculous question. No one would ever think to ask that question.
Jim Coan
These people are in love now.
Lisa Diamond
Yeah. How you got there is a is an interesting scientific question. But it absolutely should have no role in the public policy debate at all. And so I feel like, part of my mission now is to try and make that point because I'm so tired of seeing the science be bastardized. I mean it's just, it's amazing. Even on the website for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is like this, famously, progressive site.
Jim Coan
Yeah, sure.
Lisa Diamond
They're like, if homosexuality is genetic, as most scientists believe it is, then, you know, discrimination again... I'm like, okay, that statement. If homosexuality is genetic, as most scientists believe. I'm like, do you understand how heritability works? And yes, there's a genetic contribution. But the heritability of sexual orientation is actually lower than the heritability of smoking. And it's lower than the heritability of job satisfaction.
Jim Coan
Okay. Both of those things surprise me a lot.
Lisa Diamond
And you will not open up any magazine and see a picture of a baby and saying, is this child born unsatisfied with their job? You know? The heritability of sexual orientation is around 35%.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Lisa Diamond
So yes, it that is significantly greater than zero. That is statistically significant, you know, contribution, but it's obviously not deterministic. And we can't make that a precondition.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Yeah. Lisa, it's so great to talk to you. Thank you for doing this with me. Was it fun?
Lisa Diamond
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Oh good.
Lisa Diamond
All right. I look forward to hearing the rest of these. I want to hear Eli's.
Jim Coan
Yeah, I'll play for you. Okay. Okay, that's it. That's all I got. Thanks to Lisa Diamond for being so forthcoming and candid. I could have kept going for a lot longer. But I didn't want to push my luck. And I hope in any case that at least they enjoyed it as much as I did. And then hopefully as much as you did. Folks, the music on Circle of Willis is written by Tom Stouffer and Jean Rulli and performed by their band the New Drake's current information about how to purchase their music, check out the the about page at Circle of Willis podcast.com. Don't forget that Circle of Willis is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. And that the Circle of Willis is a member of the TEEJFM network. You can find out more about them, that network, those guys @teej.fm. And if you if you like this podcast, why not give us a little review at iTunes? And let us know how we're doing? It's easy. Just do that. I'll see you all again, at episode four, where I talk with Will Cunningham of the University of Toronto, about becoming one of the world's preeminent neuroscientists and about the aesthetics of data analysis, believe it or not, among many other things. Until that time, I'll see you later. Bye bye.

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3: Lisa Diamond

TRANSCRIPT

4: Wil Cunningham

2: Eli Finkel