Nulla di impersonale? L’identità sessuale fra natura e cultura

Sexual identity is a multi-componential construct that expresses the subjective feeling of being sexually characterized. Far from being a choice, sexual identity proceeds from a sentiment originating from a personal dimension as much as an impersonal dimension. Twentieth-century psychological and psychiatric approaches, emphasizing above all the personal dimension of sexual identity, produced stigmatizing and pathologizing models of gender and sexual variances, while contemporary models, emphasizing also the impersonal, namely cultural, dimension, offer a less pathological and more affirmative approach. This work proposes an interpretation of sexual identity as a “liminar” phenomenon, that is, as a border dimension between personal and impersonal dynamics.