A Note on Trying to Define ‘Gay Identity’ in Late 2022

by George Campbell

In 2022, people who identify with the label ‘gay’ do so in a world that is perhaps more confused than it has ever been about what it wants to do with ‘gay’ people. In the UK, homosexuality was partially decriminalised in 1967, and more than two decades ago the age of consent for same-sex partners was brought down from 21 to 16 (equal to that of straight couples). It wasn’t until 2014 that same-sex marriages were allowed to take place in Britain. But, more recently, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill was passed in Florida, preventing classroom discussion of gender identity and sexuality in public schools, and the latest bill to be drafted by Republican lawmakers would see a similar legislature implemented at a federal level.

Why then, at this critical juncture, is the question of gay identity so important? In one of the foundational texts on queer theory (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity), Judith Butler gives us as nuanced an answer as we are likely to find. The book begins by arguing for the importance of creating a clearly defined category called ‘woman’. Without this central category of organisation, Butler claims feminism struggles to make much progress in fields such as representation and emancipation. That is to say: how can a feminist campaign for women decide whether women are adequately represented in politics or media, without first deciding which people are women and which people are not? As this last question makes clear and, as Butler goes on to argue, the creation of a category is necessarily exclusionary. Furthermore, if you exclude people who should have been included, you end up fighting for the rights of only the most privileged members of a group.

Women of colour had to wait 50 years longer than their white counterparts to gain the right to vote in America. This was a direct result of the decision of the white, middle-class suffragette movement to exclude non-white Americans from their category of ‘woman’. Even today, in the UK, we see an example of exclusionary categorisation by the LGB Alliance; a hate group that seeks, among other things, to exclude identity from and allegiance with trans people. As a result, before we begin to define terms like gay, woman, or black, we must first acknowledge that what we are doing is vital for meaningful political action but also dangerous for those we might overlook.

The second thing we must have in mind when attempting to define gay identity is the history of homosexuality as a fairly recent subcategory of academia. To be clear, there have always been people who are attracted to those of the same gender but ‘gayness’ as an identity in Britain is very much a product of the last two hundred years. As such, it was constructed by the minds which held power at the time; mostly straight, white and male minds. In his now infamous study Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948), biologist Alfred Kinsey brought into the ‘Western’ consciousness the ideas that would go on to shape conceptions of what it meant to be gay for the next seven decades. Today, the study can be understood as littered with errors (both with its sample selection and general academic ethics) but its influence is still stronger than any text from the first half of the 20th century simply because it was, for some time, the only study available which covered homosexuality in detail.

Kinsey interviewed only two African Americans as part of his research, which supposedly included more than 5,300 participants over a fifteen-year period. As a result, the common conception of gay identity is painfully white. The majority of his participants were also college students or academics and so tended to be middle and upper class. Perhaps most significantly, Kinsey did not release the follow-up study Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female until 1953 (five years later). It is unsurprising, then, that women are often an afterthought when it comes to building an understanding of homosexuality and lesbian identity. Homosexual acts between women were never made illegal in the UK, and whilst works like Kinsey’s influenced perceptions of same-sex desire, it is also important to recognise such work as a product of its time.

So, what is gay identity? How do we go about defining it without being exclusionary or divisive? Is it on Canal Street or on any street? Is it online? Is it defined by the discrimination it still faces or does it exist despite it? Is it religious or secular? Black or white? Cis or trans? The answer is perhaps none of these things or maybe all of them. I can tell you what it is for me, but it will not be the same thing for you.

If I were to leave you with only one note on defining gay identity at the end of 2022, it would be this: