Gender and Sexuality: Contested Relations

If one defines gender as the social, cultural, and political construction of women and men in relation to one another and sexuality as libidinal desires and other sensations, the relationship between the two is contested in a number of ways. The relationship between the subject and object of desire can be gendered in different ways across ethnographic contexts and historical times, with the modern‐day Western contrast between heterosexuality and homosexuality or straight and gay identities being only one among other models. How gender and sexuality are configured can be the object of different views within the same society. Finally, different models of the relationship exist or have existed in the past: some explain sexuality in terms of gender while others do the reverse. The relationship between gender and sexuality must be understood with reference to the social and political context in which it is located.