ABSTRACT
Discourses about the true nature of sexuality and gender shape how sexuality and gender minority people create and articulate their identities and self-understandings. In this chapter, I analyse how sexuality and gender minority people encounter and interact with such discourses online. I consider how online contexts have shaped the proliferation of sexuality and gender identities via an analysis of my previously published research on the role of the Internet in the identity narratives of sexuality and gender minority young people. I focus on the implications of people’s beliefs about the true nature of sexuality and gender – e.g. whether they believe these categories are defined by a singular, immutable essence or socially constructed – for sexuality and gender identity discourses online. I describe four identity discourses: identity as a feeling of belonging, identity as a tool for representing salient experiences, identity as a process of self-discovery, and identity as a means of world-making. Ultimately, this work suggests the importance of examining links between self-understandings and understandings of the nature of sexuality and gender in the study of sexuality and gender minority young people’s lives.
