The Social Construction of
Sexual Identities
From Advancing Sexuality Studies:
a short course on sexuality theory
and research methodologies
The International
Resource Network
Developed by:
The Caribbean International Resource Network
Presented in collaboration with:
The Institute for Gender & Development Studies at the
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
(Trinidad & Tobago)
With funding from The Ford Foundation & the
International Association for the Study of Sexuality,
Culture and Society (IASSCS)
Available under an Attribution, Non-Commercial,
Share Alike licence from Creative Commons
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Schedule
Learning activity
Introduction & aims
Session 1. Sexual identities and Social Constructionism
:Small group work & brainstorm
Lecture
Show pictures
Time allowed
10 mins
120 mins
55
55
10
Session 2. The Development of Caribbean Sexual
Identities
Lecture & Pre-reading review
Small group discussion & feedback (Lunch Break)
55 mins
25
30
Session 3. The Carnivalesque in Caribbean Sexuality
Pairs work
Small group work & feedback (coffee Break)
75 mins
25
50
Session 4. Caribbean Sexual Identity Construction:
“Coming of Age”
Small group work
Large group discussion
90 mins
60
30
Conclusion
Total
15
3
365 mins
Module aims
• To introduce participants to social constructionist
understandings of sexual identity from anthropology, history
and contemporary sociology
• To understand the origins/basis of Caribbean sexual
identities
• To bring together perspectives on culture and sexuality by
exploring the ways in which Caribbean sexuality is
described.
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Participants will:
• Develop a critical understanding of sexual identity as socially
constructed in relations of discourse and power.
•Be able to assess the development of Caribbean sexualities
based on the development of the region’s sexual cultures.
•Examine connections between culture and sexuality through
material culture, especially through exploring the
carnivalesque as an idea through which modern Caribbean
sexual identities are represented and scripted.
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Session 1.
Sexual identities and social
constructionism
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What is sexual identity?
• In groups of three or four:
– Make a list of sexual identities in your social context.
• Try to think of as many different kinds of sexual identity as you can.
– If there is more than one term for a particular identity, group these
together.
• Include: traditional names, formal scientific or legal terms, more recent
terms, slang terms, etc..
– Organise these identities into a hierarchy that reflects their
respective positions within society.
– Note which of these sexual identities might be specific to the
Caribbean or its diaspora, and which (if any) are rarely found in
Caribbean communities.
(20 mins)
• Feedback (5 mins)
7
What is sexual identity?
• Take two different sexual identities from the list:
– How are people with these identities thought about?
• What meanings are attached to these identities? Does gender inform how
these identities are thought about? Does class?
– Where do these ideas come from?
• Scientific truths about sexual nature?
• Legal rules about appropriate social conduct?
• Traditional or contemporary ideas about morality?
– How are these identities reproduced?
• Do people take them on by choice, or are they forced upon them?
– Can people engage in the sexual practices these identities refer
to and not be labelled with these identities?
(20 mins)
8
Brainstorm
• What is sexual identity and how does it relate to sexuality?
(10 mins)
9
Social construction, sexual identity
• Identity is not fixed and unchanging
• It is dependent on social meaning
• Sexual identities do not simply name sexual practices
• They constitute individuals as particular kinds of people, e.g.
– Adulterer
– Homosexual
– Heterosexual
10
About sexuality:
• Dominant ideas about sexuality:
– Sexual behaviour “naturally” follows sexual difference (male and
female)
– Sexuality is “natural,” innate – biological instinct to reproduce; a
psychological drive
– Deviations from the “natural” or “normal” indicate “immorality,”
“depravity” or “disorder”
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Social construction of sexuality
• Rather than types of persons, or individual sexual
behaviours, sexual instincts or drives, this approach
focuses on:
– Socially produced meanings
– Socially accepted practices
– Socially agreed-upon identities
• And their relationship to:
– Discourses
– Institutions
– Power relations
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• Discourses
– Institutionalised ways of thinking about a possible object that, in
turn, limit how that object might be thought about
– Michel Foucault – Knowledge is power (‘power/knowledge’)
– Power exercised through discourse - it may be difficult to speak
about the thing being described in any other way
– Discourses are ‘truth claims’ that support established power
relations:
• “Women are more suited to raising children because they give birth”
• “Sex education for young people encourages sexual promiscuity”
• “Homosexuality is unnatural”
13
Sexual Theory
• Social constructionist theory
– A way of thinking about the world
– The power of culture, language and knowledge to construct
‘reality’
– There is no prior, objective ‘reality’ beyond our interpretation of
it
• We all interpret ‘reality’ differently depending on our social position and
cultural background
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Different but Equal
• Cross-cultural variability in sexuality
– Sambia of New Guinea (Herdt, 1981)
– Practices that appear the same have different meanings in
different cultures
– Same-sex sexual experience before marriage
• In many cultures, same-sex sexual activity raises personal
questions about whether one is homosexual, bisexual, or
heterosexual
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‘Sexuality’
• Historical scholarship - Foucault (1978); Weeks (1977)
• Prior to late 19th century:
– People engaged in sexual acts and behaviours, but were not understood to
have distinct sexual identities
• ‘Sexuality’ emerged as a discrete attribute of human experience in
19th century European thought
– Rise of professional discourses regulating personal conduct and behaviour
– Emergence of specific forms of sexual deviance
• Sexuality can no longer be regarded as an intrinsic attribute of ‘self’
or as biologically inherent (Gagnon & Parker, 1995)
• An outcome of intellectual and social processes bound up in
language and knowledge systems of post-Enlightenment
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Oppositional & binary
thinking
• Western systems of meaning-making
– Oppositional or binary
•
•
•
•
•
Day – Night
White – Black
Man – Woman
North – South
Developed – Underdeveloped, etc.
• Difference is the basis to meaning-making
• One term is powerful by virtue of defining the other as different
• The power to classify, define and make knowledge about an Other
contributes to their subjectification and marginalisation
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Power Discourses
• Heterosexual - homosexual
• But 1960s onwards:
– From homosexual, to gay and lesbian – identity politics
movements on the basis of identification with ‘masterdiscourses’
– Challenged the dominant (institutionalised) meanings that applied
to the category homosexual
– Identity can be a source of power
• New possibilities for being sexual emerge even in conditions of regulation
and repression
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• Heterosexuality is an ‘unmarked’ category
– Homosexuality is understood to be the deviation from the
heterosexual norm
• Brainstorm
– How do we know people are heterosexual?
– How often are people required to identify themselves as
heterosexual?
– How do they do this?
• Questions?
(5 mins)
(5 mins)
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The ‘charmed circle’
Source: Gayle Rubin (1984) Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality
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• Heterosexuality is not a natural category
– Favoured practices and norms
• Individuals are subject to regulations that construct
heterosexuality as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ – and
individuals who identify as heterosexual as moral citizens
• Others are constituted as unnatural, sinful, ill, or immoral
• Heterosexual/homosexual binary sustains unequal sexual
and social relations, and constrains the possibilities for
sexual expression
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Exercise
• Brainstorm:
– What purposes might the classification and differentiation of
sexual desires, sexual bodies, or sexual practices actually serve?
– Who benefits from this organisation of social life?
(5 mins)
22
Sexual practise &
interpretation
• Masturbation
– A specific social problem in 19th century Europe (how to stop
children from engaging in ‘self-abuse’)
– Shift from shameful activity to legitimate aspect of personal
(private) sexual expression in 20th century
– A ‘normal’ activity: individuals less likely to think of themselves
as deviant or immoral
– Enormous shift in meaning over 120 years
• Debates between experts
• Political activists and social groups
• Broader shifts in social values and attitudes
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Sexual practise &
interpretation (cont’d)
• The social construction of sexual problems in medical
discourse:
– ‘Female sexual disorder’
– ‘Erectile dysfunction’
• Are these:
– Biological problems with pharmaceutical solutions (Viagra,
Hormone Replacement Therapy)?
– Or social problems?
• Unequal gender relations between men and women?
• Understandings of male sexuality that prioritise the erection and
penetration as the definition of sex? (Tiefer, 1995; Marshall, 2006)
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Pictures - cultural objects
You are given a set of pictorial culture objects to view. At
this point extended feedback on these pictures is not
required.
(10 mins)
25
Session 2.
The development of Caribbean
Sexual Identities
26
Session 2. Pre-reading review
Brainstorm:
• What social processes are related to colonisation?
• How is colonisation understood to impact upon Caribbean
sexual cultures?
(5 mins)
27
The problem of sexual
identity
• Regarding Caribbean sexual identities, fundamental issues
that emerge concern whether such identities should be
considered “private” or “public” and, if private, how can they
be created under societal rules made by a colonial
authority?
• An additional issue is whether or not sexual identity within a
society can be fixed or interpreted in one way by a
particular group within the society and be similarly fixed, or
interpreted differently by other groups within that same
society.
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Background
• The colonial sexual norms imposed on the Caribbean
colonies only officially ended in 1917 with the end of Indian
indentureship and in 1886 with the ending of slavery in
Cuba.
• For an extended period in time (which in some places
continues) the colonial context was dominant, influencing
all forms of identity, including sexual identity.
• In the colonial context the society was not an homogenous
one but consisted of different groups of which only one was
dominant and therefore set the sexual “norms” for the
society
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Sex & power in colonial
society
•As in all aspects of societies, norms concerning sexual
matters are generally made by particular interest groups
within the society and, often, the most powerful groups
construct laws and norms in their best interest.
•In so far as Caribbean sexual identities are concerned, male,
heterosexual interest groups have traditionally been the main
creators and beneficiaries of the freedoms of both secular and
religious laws and customs controlling sexual matters.
30
Sex & Caribbean women
• Often Caribbean women were seen as property (sources of
children, unpaid labor and/or heterosexual sex) to be
protected or as individuals not capable of seeing about
themselves.
• Male views dominated (and perhaps continue to?)
• Issue of interpretation of these views to present
31
Richard Ligon’s description of
indigenous women
• …very small breasts; and have more of the shape of the
Europeans than the Negroe, their hair black and long, a
great part whereof hangs down upon their backs…with a
large lock hanging over either breasts, which seldom or
never curls; clothes they scorn to wear especially if they are
well-shaped. (Ligon, 1673:54)
• Emphasis on heterosexual sexual identity
32
The 17th and 18th Century sugar
plantation and sexuality
• Imposed sexuality and sexual identity on plantations
• Heterosexual “Jezebel,” “Mammy” and “Buck” sexual
identities created for black women and men by colonizers
• White women were put on a pedestal as virtuous and
chaste, while white men were seen as powerful
• Indian women were stereotyped as innocent but easy to
seduce; Indian men as predatory and violent, but less than
black men
• The colonized often held reverse stereotypes…
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Sum up
• The importance of this overview is that the sugar estates
were present on every island of the Caribbean and, as
such, the attitudes created in the formation of sexual
identities and imposed by the colonial class have
resonance to this present day.
• Note also “anomalies” in early creation of sexual identities
• The Caribbean provides an excellent example of how
constructionist sexual identity formation dominated the
society.
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Small group discussion
• In your society, what are among the most prevalent
influences on the way people think about and practice
sexuality?
• In what ways are contemporary sexualities influenced by
the state or other forms of national power such as the law?
• In your society, do you see changes in sexual attitudes and
practices that might be associated with the processes of
colonialism, imperialism, or globalization?
(20 mins)
• Feedback
(10 mins)
35
Session 3.
The carnivalesque and the
social construction of
Caribbean sexualities
36
Pairs discussion
• In pairs use the following questions to help you reflect upon
the relationship between sexuality and culture in your own
life:
– What about the carnival experience contributes to more overt
public sexual behavior?
– Do you think public sexual behavior during carnival is specifically
influenced by the fact that participants are in costume?
(25 mins)
37
Pairs discussion
• Consider schools and/or the workplace. What kinds of
sexual expression are supported in such contexts and what
is considered unacceptable? Where do peer groups
exercise definitions of sexuality and do they help to
determine what does and does not count as legitimate
sexuality?
• Do carnival and other Caribbean festivals allow sites for the
expression and exploration of sexuality in Caribbean
culture and society ?
38
In relation to history and other social factors
• How do historical factors influence sexual identity differently
across social groups in the Caribbean?
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Small group work
• In groups of 4-6, compare and contrast your findings
• On a flipchart, attempt to hierarchically organise the
historical and cultural influences on sexuality
(25 mins)
• Feedback
• Discussion: Are the influences identified conceived as
bearing down on an already existing sexuality, or do they
constitute sexuality through social interaction?
• Does it make sense to think of sexuality in terms of discrete
local or historical domains, or are these closely
interrelated?
(25 mins)
40
Session 4.
Caribbean Sexual Construction:
“Coming of age”
41
Small group work
•
Break into groups of 3-4:
–
Produce a ‘critical sexual commentary’ of each picture as it relates to the
wider society
•
Do the pictures evoke personal meanings from participants' own
experiences or those of friends and family?
•
What do the pictures reveal about social and cultural context?
•
Do the pictures evoke ideas regarding social, political and/or
economic realities and their relationship to contemporary
sexualities?
(60 mins)
42
Group discussion
• Do the pictures suggest anything in particular about Caribbean
sexual identities and sexual cultures?
• Do the pictures evoke ideas of ‘traditional’ sexualities or ideas more
strongly associated with modernity?
– Can sexuality be easily categorised as ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’?
• What, if anything, do the pictures imply specifically about carnival
and Passa Passa, or more generally about the carnivalesque? Are
the pictures regionally specific or culturally specific, or linked to
broader flows of information globally?
(30 mins)
43
Conclusion
• The historical development of the Caribbean influenced its
sexual development from the fifteenth through to the
twentieth centuries.
• Caribbean ideas of sexuality demonstrated, in their early
development, accepted notions of constructionist sexual
identity creation theory.
• The carnivalesque is an important indigenous cultural
creation, which ironically, in its expression, can both
reinforce and challenge the heterosexual ‘norm.’
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Module adapted for the Anglophone Caribbean by:
Professor John Campbell, University of the West Indies, St.
Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago
Original module created by:
Professor Gary W. Dowsett, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health
and Society. With input from Dr Sean Slavin, Ms Gillian Fletcher, Mr
Murray Couch, Dr Duane Duncan and Dr Jon Willis
Caribbean short course developed by:
The Caribbean International Resource Network
with the Institute for Gender & Development Studies, The University of
the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago
Original short course developed by:
The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe
University, Melbourne, Australia and The International Association for
the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS)
With funding from The Ford Foundation
Available under an Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike licence
from Creative Commons
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