Kulturkampf

[HaughtyFrank]

Scholar makes case for moving beyond sexual labels

In a new book, sociologist Brandon Andrew Robinson calls for abolishing sexual identities.

Robinson, an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside, knows it’s a provocative thesis. But they argue that discarding these labels is a critical step toward giving people the freedom to relate to one another on a deeper, more respectful, more meaningful, and more pleasurable level. Sexual identity, Robinson asserts, functions as a kind of prison, confining human desire and reinforcing a false notion of gender based on fixed, biological categories.

“Identities limit us,” Robinson writes in “Trans Pleasure: On Gender Liberation and Sexual Freedom.” “And the fact that we keep creating new identities — such as gynosexual, finsexual, sapiosexual, asexual, or pansexual — shows how these categories fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire.”

You argue for abolishing sexual identities. Why get rid of labels like gay or lesbian when many people have found them useful for understanding themselves and finding a sense of belonging?

Robinson: It’s a several-fold argument. First, I want people to question why we privilege gender and genitals above all other attributes — like height or race — when we conceptualize our sexual identity.

Secondly, these categories often rely on gender essentialism. If being “gay” means being a man attracted to men, it assumes “man” is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing. Gender essentialism also harms trans people, who often complicate those binary boundaries.

But if you get rid of these labels, don’t you risk dismantling the communities that have formed under their rubrics and, by extension, the political protections that marginalized people have fought for decades to gain?

Robinson: I think the risk is worth it. While those communities are important, moving beyond those labels allows us to see people more accurately. It leads to a more complex — and more biologically accurate — understanding of ourselves as human beings. It allows us to explore our desires beyond labels that often confine and constrain us. And it allows us to explore our desires beyond shame that often comes with many labels as well.

https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2026/03/06/scholar-makes-case-moving-beyond-sexual-labels

At this point I think actual anthropologists or psychologists should look at how someone can develop such an insanely warped understanding of sexuality where he wonders why gender matters more than height or race.