ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses, through the frame of Foucault's govern-mentality, the political, epistemological and ontological questions which arise from the production of national data on sexually diverse population groups. It considers how sexual identity statistics become state instruments for the control of populations by making them understandable and governable. The chapter discusses the politics of producing knowledge on sexualities suggesting that large-scale national data collection represents a new era in sexual knowledge making. It concentrates on the UK development of including a sexual identity question on some representative government surveys. The chapter suggests that the use of fixed sexual categories to quantify sexual diversity may only be a 'valid measure' for more privileged lesbians, gay men and bisexual people. It argues that the emergence of a 'homosexual demography' which may marginalise age, race, class, gender and queer contributes to the continuing dominance of neo-liberal sexual politics which favours the privileged.
