Why Women Are Leaving Men for Other Women

Cynthia Nixon did it. Lindsay Lohan's doing it. TV shows are based on it. Is it our imaginations, or are wives and girlfriends ditching their men and falling in love with other women? New science says that sexuality is more fluid than we thought.

Lately, a new kind of sisterly love seems to be in the air. In the past few years, Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon left a boyfriend after a decade and a half and started dating a woman (and talked openly about it). Actress Lindsay Lohan and DJ Samantha Ronson flaunted their relationship from New York to Dubai. Katy Perry's song "I Kissed a Girl" topped the charts. The L Word, Work Out, and Top Chef are featuring gay women on TV, and there's even talk of a lesbian reality show in the works. Certainly nothing is new about women having sex with women, but we've arrived at a moment in the popular culture when it all suddenly seems almost fashionable — or at least, acceptable.

Statistics on how many women have traded boyfriends and husbands for girlfriends are hard to come by. Although the U.S. Census Bureau keeps track of married, divorced, single, and even same-sex partners living together, it doesn't look for the stories behind those numbers. But experts like Binnie Klein, a Connecticut-based psychotherapist and lecturer in Yale's department of psychiatry, agree that alternative relationships are on the rise. "It's clear that a change in sexual orientation is imaginable to more people than ever before, and there's more opportunity — and acceptance — to cross over the line," says Klein, noting that a half-dozen of her married female patients in the past few years have fallen in love with women. "Most are afraid that if they don't go for it, they'll end up with regrets."

Feminist philosopher Susan Bordo, Ph.D., a professor of English and gender and women's studies at the University of Kentucky and author of Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, also agrees that in the current environment, more women may be stepping out of the conventional gender box. "When a taboo is lifted or diminished, it's going to leave people freer to pursue things," she says. "So it makes sense that we would see women, for all sorts of reasons, walking through that door now that the culture has cracked it open. Of course, we shouldn't imagine that we're living in a world where all sexual choices are possible. Just look at the cast of The L Word and it's clear that only a certain kind of lesbian — slim and elegant or butch in just the right androgynous way — is acceptable to mainstream culture."

That said, of the recent high-profile cases, it's Cynthia Nixon's down-to-earth attitude that may have blazed a trail for many women. In 1998, when Sex and the City debuted on HBO, she was settled in a long-term relationship with Danny Mozes, an English professor, with whom she had two children. They hadn't gotten married: "I was wary of it and felt like it was potentially a trap, so I steered clear of it," Nixon said in an interview with London's Daily Mirror. In 2004, after ending her 15-year relationship with Mozes, Nixon began seeing Christine Marinoni, at the time a public school advocate whom she'd met while working on a campaign to reduce class sizes in New York City. Marinoni was a great support when the actress was diagnosed with breast cancer. Far from hiding the relationship, Nixon has spoken freely in TV and newspaper interviews about it not being a big deal. "I have been with men all my life and had never met a woman I had fallen in love with before," she told the Daily Mirror. "But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. It didn't change who I am. I'm just a woman who fell in love with a woman."

Over the past several decades, scientists have struggled in fits and starts to get a handle on sexual orientation. Born or bred? Can it change during one's lifetime? A handful of studies in the 1990s, most of them focused on men, suggested that homosexuality is hardwired. In one study, researchers linked DNA markers in the Xq28 region of the X chromosome to gay males. But a subsequent larger study failed to replicate the results, leaving the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association to speculate that sexual orientation probably has multiple causes, including environmental, cognitive, and biological factors.

Today, however, a new line of research is beginning to approach sexual orientation as much less fixed than previously thought, especially when it comes to women. The idea that human sexuality forms a continuum has been around since 1948, when Alfred Kinsey introduced his famous seven-point scale, with 0 representing complete heterosexuality, 7 signifying complete homosexuality, and bisexuality in the middle, where many of the men and women he interviewed fell. The new buzz phrase coming out of contemporary studies is "sexual fluidity."

"People always ask me if this research means everyone is bisexual. No, it doesn't," says Lisa Diamond, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah and author of the 2008 book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire. "Fluidity represents a capacity to respond erotically in unexpected ways due to particular situations or relationships. It doesn't appear to be something a woman can control." Furthermore, studies indicate that it's more prevalent in women than in men, according to Bonnie Zylbergold, assistant editor of American Sexuality, an online magazine.

In a 2004 landmark study at Northwestern University, the results were eye-opening. During the experiment, the female subjects became sexually aroused when they viewed heterosexual as well as lesbian erotic films. This was true for both gay and straight women. Among the male subjects, however, the straight men were turned on only by erotic films with women, the gay ones by those with men. "We found that women's sexual desire is less rigidly directed toward a particular sex, as compared with men's, and it's more changeable over time," says the study's senior researcher, J. Michael Bailey, Ph.D. "These findings likely represent a fundamental difference between men's and women's brains."

This idea, that the libido can wander back and forth between genders, Diamond admits, may be threatening and confusing to those with conventional beliefs about sexual orientation. But when the women she's interviewed explain their feelings, it doesn't sound so wild. Many of them say, for example, they are attracted to the person, and not the gender — moved by traits like kindness, intelligence, and humor, which could apply to a man or a woman. Most of all, they long for an emotional connection. And if that comes by way of a female instead of a male, the thrill may override whatever heterosexual orientation they had.


By Mary A. Fischer from O, The Oprah Magazine April 2009 © 2009 Harpo Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Ambitious agenda for first lady

For the past month alone, here’s Michelle Obama’s itinerary:

Travel to North Carolina to rally military families. Stand next to Hillary Clinton to encourage women to get politically active. Show up at a home-building site on the National Mall. Visit a D.C. school to talk up good grades. Cap it off by shoveling dirt for a “kitchen garden” at the White House.

Oh, and in between, the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced that it would honor her with a special tribute for her contribution to the fashion industry.

Traditional? Hardly. In fact, Obama’s approach so far is decidedly different from the usual model of the modern first lady — pick a platform of two or three issues and stick to it, by and large, for four years.

She’s become the spokeswoman for all sorts of issues and topics — from fitness, parenting, the environment and women’s rights, to redefining images of black women in American culture and promoting self-esteem for young girls.

Yet in the midst of all those themes, it isn’t yet clear whether her self-described core messages — about military families, volunteerism, and helping working women balance work and family life – are truly breaking through. Some wonder if she’s spreading herself too thin to emerge in the public mind as a leading voice on those topics.

Of course, it’s early. Her husband’s administration is but two months old, and right now, the nation’s first black First Family is still new and different. She’s more noted for, say, being on the cover of Oprah’s magazine or People, than for any advocacy she might do to help working parents spend more time with their kids.

Aides say she’s flattered and still surprised by the intense interest in her — and sees it as a way to advance part of her unofficial agenda. She did the VOGUE cover, for instance, because it gave her daughters and other young girls a chance to see an accomplished African-American woman on the cover of a mainstream magazine, a rarity.

So rather than worry about diluting her message, they believe she is building a powerful public platform to make her voice heard.

“I think when she thinks about work-life balance, it’s really broader than simply work and family in the general sense,” said Jocelyn Frye, her policy director. “It’s really thinking about how we make sure our families are healthy, how do we make sure that people eat right and take care of themselves and educate themselves about making good choices.”

Yet, for some, Obama’s multi-tasking approach to the job raises the specter of Rosalynn Carter, who was dogged early on by questions of whether she was taking on too much and trying to be all things to all people. Ironically, some are raising the same “too much, too fast?” question about Michelle that they’re raising about her husband, the president.

“I think it’s fragmented. She stands for so many things right now, she’s doing so many things. She’s in the kitchen at the White House, she’s building houses, she’s digging in the garden. It’s all very nice, but I thought to myself, ‘Why is she planting herbs?’” said Mindy Sabella, director of marketing at Siegel+Gale, which specializes in strategic branding.

Some of it is Michelle Obama’s choosing, with an active schedule that reflects her many interests (though this past week was quiet, with her daughters on spring break from Sidwell). Some of it has come to her just by being first lady – the public attention to her fashions, magazine cover stories whether she sat for an interview or not – in a way that contributes to the sense she is everywhere, all the time.

“You can’t be in the White House without being an expert juggler. It’s like drinking out of a fire hydrant. There are so many requests for your time. There are so many issues and causes that someone could spend 10 lifetimes on,” said Noelia Rodriguez, Laura Bush’s press secretary.

But she also cautioned, “It is important to stay focused on the two or three things where she can make a difference, rather than start to expand the portfolio where her impact won’t be as wide or deep.”

Obama’s early moves have shown the topics where her interests run the deepest. During her visit to a struggling high school in a poor D.C. neighborhood she talked about being teased as a young girl by people who said she talked “like a white girl,” but ignoring the taunt and striving for excellence anyhow.

“I really wanted to write it off as another school visit but I heard the snippets and it was like listening to a woman’s leadership conference. She genuinely wanted to put lift under every chair in that room, and to leave each of them with a picture of possibility that they may or may not have had when they came into that session,” said Sue Hodgkinson, who heads The Personal Brand Company. “She is clear that she has the ability in every exchange to leave that signature behind her, and I was in fact taken by that. She was not just showing up.”

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University, said that in her more unofficial position as a role model, Obama is faced with both a gift and a burden, unlike first ladies in the past.

“Often in many ways just by living her life the way she lives she sends a message out to people, and when you lead a public life you have to be careful about how you appear. That can be an incredible burden and it can give you tremendous power,” she said.

As for her more official three-issue platform, branding expert Hodgkinson said that for Obama, “the broader mission is to install herself in the psyche of the country and then after that take a look at what does she then wants to advance and can reasonably advance. “

Military family issues might not be the right fit, she said.

“When you think about military families it’s not a connection you first make with the first lady,” she said. “Without that natural pull, it’s going to be a harder campaign especially if people’s ears are turned elsewhere.”

Early polling showed that most preferred that Michelle Obama take on education, work-life family balance, or health care.

But she clearly is breaking through and connecting on some level — polls show her favorability ratings in the mid-60s.

“She is not trying to be a symbol of the first lady. She is trying to connect with the vast number of Americans who would like to have a person similar to them and their ideal. It’s more of an indirect approach,” said Howard Rubenstein of Rubenstein Communications, Inc. “She is more like an ambassador of friendliness and good will, and it is working very well. I would want to hire her as a PR person because she hasn’t lost touch. She doesn’t believe that as first lady, she has to be meeting with kings and queens.”

Of course, the first lady does some of that too. Next stop, Europe, where Michelle Obama will have tea with Queen Elizabeth II.

5 Great Microsoft Web Services You Probably Don't Use

Microsoft is so often the behemoth everyone loves to hate that people overlook the stuff it does right. We tried its newer Web services and found five gems.

When you think of Web apps and services, Microsoft doesn't immediately come to mind. Lately, though, the company has been rolling out a slew of them, including several that match or beat competing offerings from Google, Yahoo, and any number of startups you've never heard of.

Which of those Microsoft services are the best? We've tried them all, and we've selected five free hidden gems.

You'll notice that most of these services carry Microsoft's "Live" brand. If you're like most people, you're probably thoroughly confused by the Live lineup, and by what Live actually means--especially since Microsoft has muddied the waters with the newer "Live Essentials" moniker. For the record, Windows Live is a central online location for accessing the Live services and applications. Windows Live Essentials is a subset of the Windows Live brand that houses downloadable applications, including Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger, and others.

Windows Live SkyDrive
How's this for a deal: Get 25GB of online storage, at no cost, with no strings attached. That's what Windows Live SkyDrive offers. Just create folders on the site and upload files to it. You can share any of your folders with colleagues, as well. The site's design is simple and straightforward.

That isn't to say SkyDrive is flawless. You can't use it as a virtual drive--it won't appear on your PC as a drive, so you can't save files directly to it within a program like Microsoft Word. That's a minor point, though. You can't argue with 25GB of free storage, especially considering that neither Google nor Yahoo currently has this kind of service. While Google is rumored to be working on a similar service called GDrive, Yahoo's Briefcase provides only 25MB of space, and is shutting down at the end of March anyway. So right now Windows Live SkyDrive is as good as online storage gets.

Windows Live Sync
If you have more than one PC and you want to keep files and folders on them synchronized, you need this service. After you download and run a small piece of software on each PC, head to the Windows Live Sync Web site and tell it which folders on which PCs should stay in sync.

You can synchronize your personal folders as well as your shared ones. Whenever any of your PCs are connected to the Internet, they will automatically sync the specified folders with one another. In addition, you can connect to any synced computer from any other computer to browse through the remote system's entire hard disk and to download files.

Note that unlike some of the fee-based sync services we looked at last year, Live Sync does not keep copies of your files in the cloud: It merely serves as a conduit between PCs. Since it involves no online storage, however, it puts no iimit on the amount of data you can sync. And, of course, it's free.

Live Mesh
Here's a free Microsoft service for people who do want to keep their files in the cloud. Though Live Mesh is more powerful than Windows Live Sync, it's also a bit more complicated.

Rather than synchronize files and folders from PC to PC, you create folders in Live Mesh and then have all of your PCs synchronize with those folders. With this arrangement, you can access the files and folders from any Internet-connected computer. You have an exceptional amount of control over the synchronization, too--for example, you can choose to synchronize only the files modified in the last 30 days, or those under 500MB. Live Mesh supports remote control of any PC in your mesh, as well. So far, Microsoft has announced no plans to charge for storage--or to limit the amount of data you can store.

Read More HERE!!!

Energy vampires: Fact versus fiction

It's well-known that most electronic devices in our homes are sucking up energy even while they are turned off. But for all the information out there, many questions remain. I got hundreds of reader questions after writing the post What's wasting energy in your home right now. Below are answers to the five most common inquiries:

Which electronic devices waste the most energy when they are turned off but still plugged in?

Set-top cable boxes and digital video recorders are some of the biggest energy hogs. Unfortunately, there's little consumers can do since television shows can't be taped if boxes are unplugged. It also typically takes a long time to reboot boxes.

However, some of the other major consumers of standby power are more easily dealt with: computers, multifunction printers, flat-screen TVs, DVDs, VCRs, CD players, power tools, and hand-held vacuums. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) measured standby power for a long list of products.

While it's true each individual product draws relatively little standby power, the LBNL says that when added together, standby power can amount to 10% of residential energy use.

Why do electronic devices use energy when they are switched off?

Electronics consume standby power for one of two reasons, says Chris Kielich of the Department of Energy. They either have an adapter that will continue to draw electricity, or they have devices (such as clocks and touchpads) that draw power. Anything with a remote control will also draw standby power, she says, since the device needs to be able to detect the remote when it's pushed.

Does everything suck energy when it's plugged in and turned off?

No. If your coffeemaker or toaster doesn't have a clock, then it's probably not using standby power, says Kielich. Chances are your hair dryer and lamps (although they may have a power adapter for the dimmer) are not drawing standby power either, she says. Devices with a switch that physically breaks the circuit don't consume standby power.

Will switching things on and off shorten their life?

Probably not, says Kielich. You'd have to turn devices on and off thousands of times to shorten their lives. The real downside, she says, to unplugging electronics is that clocks and remotes will not work, and you do have to reset everything.

Can you ruin batteries by unplugging battery chargers and causing batteries to completely discharge?

It could be a possibility, says Kielich. Her advice: Don't let batteries get completely drained. But you don't need to have things like hand-held power vacuums and drills plugged into the charger when it's 100% charged, or even 50% charged.

Power Strip FAQs

Plugging electronics into a power strip and turning it off when you're not using it is a widely prescribed solution for curbing vampire power. Here are answers to common questions:

* Power strips draw energy when they are turned on, but not when they are switched off.
* Any decent power strip should have surge protection, according to Kielich. Flicking your power strip on and off will not create a power surge capable of damaging electronic devices. In fact, it will protect devices from other surges.
* Several readers were worried about the possibility of fires caused by plugging too many things in at once. If you plug in the allowed number of devices, then power strips are safe, says Kielich. Just don't plug your power strip into another power strip, or you run the risk of creating an overload.


Environmental journalist Lori Bongiorno shares green-living tips and product reviews with Yahoo! Green's users. Send Lori a question or suggestion for potential use in a future column. Her book, Green Greener Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-smart Choices a Part of Your Life is available on Yahoo! Shopping and Amazon.com.