Of Models and Muddles: Disorientating Theories of Sexuality

Abstract

Debates concerning sexuality have tended to polarise across the axis of essentialism/constructionism. This is, in effect, a slightly more sophisticated version of familiar nature/nurture arguments; are individuals sexually orientated, that is, somehow homo-, hetero- or bisexual in essence, or do they acquire a sexual preference at some point during their life course, in response to circumstance? There are, of course, additional complexities, since human beings are both reflexively self-aware and social, meaning- making creatures. Thus it is perfectly possible that an innate, biologically determined sexual orientation may or may not lead individuals to behave in specific ways, let alone to adopt a specific identity based on that orientation.

… the books I write constitute an experience for me that I’d like to be as rich as possible. An experience is something you come out of changed…I write precisely because I don’t know yet what to think about a subject that attracts me. In so doing, the book transforms me, changes what I think.

(Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx 1991)