ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an introductory account of some of the very recent changes and developments in understanding gender and sexual identities and relationships. It points out that a range of dozens, possibly hundreds, of new gender and sexual identity categories, classifications and labels have started to challenge the dominant gender and sexual frameworks that limited gender to masculine/feminine and sexuality to hetero/homo or sometimes straight/LGBT. The chapter introduces some of the social and cultural factors that are a backdrop to this emergence.