ABSTRACT
For many historians the clash of instinct and culture suggests important continuities in the history of sexuality. According to these historians sexuality did not appear as an independent domain until people began to be classified as either heterosexual or pervert. Nonetheless, the sharp disjuncture between the emphasis on continuity or difference inhibits as much as illuminates the history of sexuality. The history of sexuality, then, can be seen as a clash of sexual identities, a dominant heterosexual culture oppressing alternatives such as homosexuality and lesbianism. It is important to recognize that there are themes of long duration and others of marked specificity in the history of sexuality. Sex may be a biological drive but it is also a set of practices through which men and women shape and are shaped by culture. Greater recognition of the complexity of sexual history, however, has undermined old antipathies between essentialism and constructionism.
