Embodying Lesbian and Gay Identity

Abstract

The relationship of the body to identity is one that has been explored extensively. In this book it is understood as the ground from which individual subjects interact with and make sense of the world around them. The body is not, however, seen as the source of identity, but is implicated in its production where bodies are bound up in processes of identification, categorization and labelling. Stories are told about bodies and their materiality, about sensations, affects and other bodily qualities, and about how bodies are situated in social hierarchies (Hennessy, 2000). Being a body makes persons subjects of social meanings as they are situated in particular ideological frames and narratives (Garland-Thomson, 1997). It is on this basis that Hennessy (2012) deploys Jay Prossers’ notion of a ‘second skin’ to address how bodies acquire value and meaning through the way they are narrated within distinct social conditions. In Prossers’ account of transsexual body narratives, identity is likened to a second skin. Narratives of sex, he says, ‘weave around the body in order that [the transsexual] body may be “read” ’ (Prosser, 1998: 101). For Prosser, narratives are productive not only of an identity, but a body too. The productive power of stories is taken up in this chapter, as it looks at stories of desire told by lesbian and gay young people. Such stories draw on bodily feelings and encounters to express sexual preferences that suture the subject within a sexual narrative. As feelings are made sense of, a story is told of sexual orientations and identities that reflect how bodies get organized by desire (Foucault, 1979).