Sexual Orientation: Historical and Social Construction

Abstract

‘Sexual orientation’ suggests an essential sexual nature. The task of historical or social constructionist approaches is to suggest that this belief is what itself needs investigation. Constructionist approaches seek to do two broad things: to understand the emergence of sexual categorizations (such as ‘the homosexual’ or ‘the heterosexual’ in Western cultures since the nineteenth century) within their specific historical and cultural contexts; and to interpret the sexual meanings, both subjective and social, which allow people to identify with, or reject, these categorizations. It is, thus, preoccupied largely not with what causes individual desires or orientations, but with how specific definitions develop within their historic contexts, and the effects these definitions have on individual self identifications and collective meanings. The origins of constructionist approaches can be traced to the creative confluence of several theoretical strands: role and labeling theories, sexual scripting, and discourse theories. Together they shaped the key preoccupations of social and historical constructionism: with the shaping of sexual identities in specific historical circumstances; with the construction of the heterosexual/homosexual binary divide in Western societies; and with the comparative exploration of varying patterns of the organization of sexuality in different cultures.