ABSTRACT
But in important ways, they lack the substance. “Identity politics” is usually waged on assumptions that identity inheres in group members, that group membership brings with it a uniformly shared range (or even a core) of authentic experience and attitude; that the political and legal interests of the group are similarly coherent; and that group members are thus able to draw on their own experiences to discern those interests and to establish the authority they need to speak for the group. I will call these the “coherentist” assumptions about identity politics. Sexual orientation and sexuality identities don’t support those assumptions very well.
