What’s identity got to do with it? The social life of sexual identity in the Netherlands

Abstract

Same-sex erotic desire, or same-sex orientation, has become commonly understood and expressed through the notion of sexual identity. This article takes an intergenerational perspective to study the genealogy of sexual identity in the Netherlands. The authors explore how queer people perceive their feelings of same-sex desire and whether or not they come to understand their erotic desire in terms of sexual classifications. Their research shows that when discourses on gender and sexuality shift, the way people make sense of their erotic desire takes different forms. It appears that people’s lived reality is messier than the notion of sexual identity presumes.