CURRENT PREOCCUPATIONS WITH QUESTIONS OF DESIRE have a certain logic of development. Recent research about sexuality, including my own, has been shaped by a rejection of essentialist arguments, and an attempt to elaborate what has generally, though inadequately, been called "social constructionism." The basic assumption of this research has been that it is deeply problematic to think of sexuality as a purely natural phenomenon, outside the boundaries of society and culture, that we have all too readily believed that sexuality is the most natural thing about us, our drives fixed and inherent, our identities dictated by that nature and those drives, and a history of sexuality therefore no more than an account of reactions to those basic biological givens.