Bringing The Body Back In: The Social Construction of Embodied Sexual Identities

Abstract

In this paper, we build on the sociology of the body and existentialism to explore the relationships between sexual bodies and sexual identities" and to contribute to a fuller understanding of the processes of sexuality formation from the actor's perspective. Specifically, by centering respondents' bodily experiences and the situations in which they find themselves. this study not only provides an insight into the processes of sexual identity formation and its fluid nature, but also into the possibility that sexual nature can be stable for some and changeable for others. In this context, we introduce the concept of "embodied sexual identity," which can be successfully applied to grasp the different facets, stable and unstable, rigid and malleable, of sexuality as well as the complex relationships between individual experiences of the body and sexual identities.