The Fixity--or Not--of Sexuality

At one point in his essay “Against Monogamy,” Leo Bersani discusses how “nothing is more important than ‘the relative strength of the masculine and feminine sexual dispositions’…in the determination of our lifelong sexual identity.” He describes the sexual dispositions, and by extension sexuality, as being fixed for one’s entire life once they are decided, but later he also discusses the ever-shifting nature of desire. This instability inherently subverts the stability of sexuality that he previously upheld.

In fact, Bersani decries monogamy for limiting the fluid nature of desire; so if desire can change then why should the “sexual dispositions” be so rigid and unalterable? He even says that the “stable sexual identity” is false by virtue of the effect of the Oedipus complex. So if sexual disposition can change early in life, then who’s to say, again, whether sexual disposition can’t change again later in life, or multiple times in a life? If that’s the case, Bersani may have to change the details of his argument against monogamy.