Reality and ambiguity in sexual identity

pp. 129-135

in: William Wilkerson, Ambiguity and sexuality, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

What, in the end, is the emerging fusion account of sexual identity? Where does it locate sexual identity in the midst of all these factors and forces? In the common sense view of minority sexual identity, a person begins with a desire for same-sex relations, which they initially ignore or repress. This factor may be thought to result from an independent biological force acting within a person's life. At some point, in a singular moment of selection, the individual chooses to express this desire and create a minority sexual identity. Identity on this account reflects an already given desire; indeed identity expresses the desire in a self-consciously chosen life. Choice, accordingly, lies between a given desire and the identity, and this makes it easily compatible with an equally common sense picture in which desire originates within the body, as a biological fact to which individuals must acquiesce. Here we deal with coming out as a kind of discovery, a revealing of what already is.