ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the lenses through which we are considering vulnerability and marginality, namely intimacy and sexuality. The apparently simple taxonomy of gender and sexuality in fact includes complex factors that comprise biology, anatomy, behaviours, sexual attraction, emotional attraction, and fantasies. The chapter explores some of the socio-political contexts that pose critical challenges to sexual and gender minorities, and why sexual and gender minorities in particular are marginalised and vulnerable. This socio-political context is called heteronormativity, the assumption that heterosexuality, and its accompanying rights, institutions, and privileges is natural, inevitable, or desirable. Contemporary concepts of sexual identity, therefore, have their roots in protest against perceived injustice and legal sanctions against specific minoritised sexual behaviours. A great deal of research time and ink has been spilled in attempting to understand the aetiology of homosexuality; any attempt to explain sexual identity. Nevertheless, these attempts can generally be clustered into three broad categories: essentialism, social constructionism, and life course theory.
