Reflexive Sexualities and Reflexive Sociology

Abstract

Since the 1990s some sociologists have discussed sexual identities and lifestyles as ‘reflexive’ to conceptualize their increasingly self-conscious and self-determined nature. In this chapter I reflect on how reflexivity has, in fact, been a long-standing (if latent) theme in sociological theory and research about lesbian and gay sexualities, and how it is often linked to the privileging of exclusive experience, the inadequate theorizing of power, and to overly affirmative and normative political projects. I argue that future research should be less concerned with reflexive sexualities and more with ‘reflexive sociology’. Reflexivity has a wide range of meanings in sociology (Lynch, 2000), and I discuss the topic in two ways. First, I consider recent theories that associate lesbian and gay identities and lifestyles with reflexive self-consciousness, self-determination and empowered agency in everyday living. Second, I consider reflexivity as a methodological issue.

This is a slightly modified version of a paper that was originally published in 2008 under the title ‘The Sociology of Lesbian and Gay Reflexivity or Reflexive Sociology?’ in Sociological Research Online 13(1): 9, <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/1/9.html>