> I think it's very important to distinguish what Luke's conflating here:
> sexual acts and sexual identities. Being "heterosexual" is not simply
> engaging in heterosexual sex acts; it is an identity and a social
> status. Diverse sexual acts are clearly common among human
> beings. However, the dichomization of people into sexual
> types (het/homo) is a social accomplishment. For instance, the
> majority of gays/lesbians (up to 80% in some surveys) report
> that they have had "hetero" sex, and they have no problem
> self-identifying as gay/lesbian! When people like me say
> "sexuality is socially constructed", this is what we mean:
> the translation of sexual activity into sexual identity is
> historically and culturally contingent, not natural and
> necessary.
>
> Miles
I'll readily accept that's what "people like you mean" when they use the term. But others go further (actually, you've also gone farther in the past: e.g. your claim that our aversion to pain is some sort of peculiar cultural artifact). And, besides (though I recognize the distinction you're trying to draw and noted it approvingly in my paper), I _do_ think that it would be pretty odd if, in a society where sexual relations were of great importance (that is, every society that has ever existed to this point), sexual preference wasn't considered to be an important characteristic. Sure, perhaps we might not say "That guy's a homosexual" (or some conceptually equivalent linguistic unit), but we'd probably still track his preference in some manner (for instance, though I'm not a "left-hand," I am left-handed).
-- Luke