ABSTRACT
Undoubtedly the central issue of the modern ‘gay and lesbian movement’ which we locate from the Stonewall riots has been the need to create, express or even discover an identity which sets us apart from the heterosexual other. This need hurled us along the treacherous path of drawing boundaries between them and us; of making up lists of who we are, and are not; of solidifying acceptable political positions of those included under the gay and lesbian umbrella. The building of gay and lesbian ‘community’ then, or at least the political positing of a gay and lesbian identity, necessitated constructing a coherent story about our experience of marginalization. Expressions of collective identity are stories told to ensure sameness-of deviant desire and of social exclusion. They are, in the words of Jeffrey Weeks, “necessary fictions” (1995:98-9).
