Negotiating LGBTQ+ identity at a historically women\u27s college

The literature on sexual identity construction is largely based in the 1970s through 1990s. While some concepts and findings are still relevant, others do not adequately reflect the experiences of my participants and need updating. Sexual identity is still category-based, and thus collective, but my respondents’ understandings of their own sexualities and genders were fundamentally as personal identities. This was evident both in their narratives about sexual identity “discovery” and in their negotiations of in what contexts to come out and what to come out as. My interviewees were constantly negotiating a tension between talking about their own experiences and not wanting to speak for others, and were aware that the way they identify and talk about their own identities shapes others’ identities. Ultimately, I argue that as oppositional consciousness has declined, collective identity has become less salient, and thus LGBTQ+ identity is considered primarily personal, not collective. In response, exclusion-oriented boundary work is now viewed as off-limits rather than normal