> There may be a 'deeper' premise operating in ravi's argument: the
> assumption that concern over one's identity is universal rather than
> emergent from developed capitalism. Such a concern is faintly visible in
> the 17th/18th century but it is only in the 19th century that one's
> identity becomes the over-riding concern that it now appears to be.
> "Appears" is deliberate in the preceding sentence. I am skeptical that
> even today most people are as concerned with the question of "Who am I"
> as theorticians of culture, society, or psychology assume to be the
> case. I suspect, in fact, that the majority of practicing gays don't,
> day in and day out, think of themselves as having a "gay" identity.
I'd say this is a major motif in discussions about sex in our society: our sexual activity is supposed to express some deep, immutable, essential component of who we are. Witness the stigmatization of bisexuals: they get as much (if not more!) social censure from gays as they do from hets because "they can't make up their minds". As with much social influence, the social compulsion that we all have stable sexual identities is taken for granted (and is thus more or less and unnoticed background aspect of social life).
Miles