Setting history aside, try to enumerate from daily conversation around you what a sexual identity is supposed to do for its bearers. You might conclude—as I have—that such an identity consoles, trains, organizes, and markets those who wear it. Consoles: it grants a stable sense of belonging to something very much like a natural kind, a new family. As Lady Gaga says, you are "Born This Way." Trains: belonging to this natural kind requires a good deal of education. You have to be taught to listen to Lady Gaga, for example, rather than Anita Bryant. ... More urgently, you have to acquire a range of tastes, memorize a series of codes, and affirm a prescribed politics. Organizes: if a sexual identity is supposed to be a natural kind, it has also been, for several decades now, a political declaration or act of allegiance. Finally, most important, an identity markets you. It is your license to participate in various specialized exchanges, especially for sexual pleasures or, at least, motions.
With Sedgwick, I fear that the last point may be too obvious, but it can also disclose the multiple incoherence of claiming that the choice of a sexual identity is a free and authentic expression of your innermost self. Take as a concrete example the so-called gay handkerchief code. (It became popular about the time that identity language began to spread in gay manifestos and the underground press.) The idea was that you would stuff a colored hanky in the back pocket of your Levi’s—because of course you were wearing Levi’s and a black T-shirt, as perfectly autonomous declarations of your unique sense of style. The handkerchief’s color would signal what you were offering or seeking in the sexual marketplace. Wearing the hanky in the left pocket meant you were top or active; on the right, bottom or passive. If all of this strikes you as unbearably passé, glance at the “Tribes” on Grindr (Bear, Twink, Daddy, Geek, Jock, Leather, and so on) or the drop-down menus of self-categorization on any other hookup app.
The code was simple in theory, troublesome in practice. For example, the system supposed that you could distinguish, at 1:30 a.m., under dim bar lighting, fuchsia from lavender. A mistake could be awkward. You might end up being spanked when what you really wanted was to compare notes on drag queen hairstyles. But there were other troubles. In early iterations, you had to squeeze your desires into one of a handful of recognized colors. If there was no suitable color, perhaps there was something wrong with your desires. Then, after a while, there were just too many colors—and competing guides to decoding them.
So it goes with sex/gender identities. Whatever identities promise, one of their actual consequences is the oscillation between restricted choice and endless multiplication. If you haven’t looked lately at an online list of sex/gender identities, you should do so. The lists vary wildly in length and do not always agree on definitions. An average list will run to a hundred or so. If you combine all the possibilities on other lists, you end up near a thousand.
Sex/gender identities multiply because there are no clear criteria for how much of what kind of human difference constitutes a new one. For example, have you dated any Therians? Are you yourself perhaps a Therian without knowing it? According to one Internet questionnaire, you are a Therian or Therianthrope if you feel that you are a particular animal, experience a connection to that animal, find yourself at peace when you picture that animal, or transform into that animal (psychologically, to be clear). But Therians are not to be confused with furries or puppy players or any others who don animal costumes or mimic animal behaviors during sex. Some Therians do consider their identity to be a sexual identity. Others heatedly deny this. What is incontestable is that Therians have maintained websites, conducted actual and virtual meetings, run a YouTube channel, and circulated fan fiction. So why not count Therian as a new sexual identity? But if any variation of human fantasy can constitute a sexual identity, what is the meaning of the term?
Perhaps it was never meant to have a meaning in the ordinary way. From the beginning, the language of sexual identity has been candid about its contradictions. They are part of its charm, if they are not necessary to its core functions. A sexual identity is a same that is not the same. It doesn’t resolve the tensions of intimate individuality and political community, real self and revolutionary cadre, authenticity and group acceptance. It just restates those tensions with a smiling both . . . and. “Identity,” like older sexual terms, is powerful because it means whatever you need it to mean.