ABSTRACT
Sexuality is one of the prime sites for the expression of identity. Yet, there is little consensus over what it is the term sexuality describes or its significance for the ways in which individuals experience and organise their lives. Nevertheless, there are defining features that unite particular perspectives. Commonplace usage in lay and popular discourse refers (simplistically) both to sexual practice (‘having sex’) and sexual identity (in making the distinction between hetero-, homo-, and bi-sexuality). Academic perspectives with origins in medicine, psychiatry, psychology, religion and sociobiology focus on the extent to which sexual identity and sexual behaviour are biologically and genetically determined as products of ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ instincts and drives. This emphasis on sexuality as a physically determined phenomenon is oft referred to as the essentialist view.
