I don’t know how convincing I was. But I do know that almost every conversation in that seminar was essentially about two things: desire and identity. These two ideas were so closely related that they were often referred to synonymously. Desire is identity, and identity is desire. To be fair, I don’t know whether anyone ever said this explicitly. But it was the orbit of the conversations. This conflation of desire and identity has only become more apparent in popular culture in the twenty-plus years since I was in grad school.

Sexual Desire and Personal Identity in Our Culture

I don’t think graduate seminars and academic papers are too influential on the public, at least not directly. Culture is most widely shaped by our video shorts and Netflix series, our media posts and linked articles, our young-adult novels and long-form podcasts. In a word, it’s in the way that our culture tells its story. Stories are how young people are being catechized to think about themselves. Stories of what we long to be, the bad things that oppose it, and our courage to overcome those bad things. And one of the main plotlines that our culture follows is this dual theme of identity and desire.

My intention is not to explore the competing LGBTQ narratives of identity, which get pretty complex with their distinctions between biological sex, gender identity, and gender roles. Then comes the accumulating list of possible gender identities and sexual attractions. Some focus on sexual desire, others on gender perception. Some insist on the male/female binary; others insist on gender fluidity. My intention is not to delineate those stories. Rather, my intention is to show a single theme that is consistently displayed in the contemporary social imagination: Personal desires indicate identity. Affirming one’s identity, then, means living consistently with those desires.

This is the main story, told in countless ways. The hero triumphs in living out her true identity by first recognizing and then following her desires. But there are bad guys who oppose such heroes. The two main sources of opposition in this story are an internal nonaffirming sense of shame and an external nonaffirming collection of voices in society. The hero must overcome these bad guys to live authentically. This is a process of learning how to silence the internal and the external nonaffirming voices.

Such a story usually has a few “canon events.” It often begins with a sense of estrangement from oneself—that inner sense that something is wrong with her because of these desires. If she carries around this shame too long, she becomes depressed and even suicidal. Eventually, she learns that instead of continuing the pain of denying these desires, she could embrace them. To embrace her desires is actually to embrace her true identity. She is discovering her true self. Thus, the hero overcomes the first bad guy—the internal nonaffirming voice.

This prepares the hero to take on the second oppositional force: other people who would deny her identity. These are the external nonaffirming voices. So she does the next act of courage: the coming-out event. This is where she publicly affirms her identity to others. This is the pathway to living in a way that is authentic to her desires and finally enjoying peace with herself (or whatever prefix is chosen to go before self).

This story arc is powerful. And it is precious to the people who map this arc onto their own experience. This is why disagreements on sexual issues are often so heated—they are seen as disagreements about personal identity, which is sacred territory in our culture. This is why any nonaffirming word is seen as violence against personal identity. This is why you see so many misgendering meltdown videos online and so many school boards making policies that encourage children to express themselves sexually without the “danger” of parental nonaffirmation. This story is precious to people.