Sexuality

Generally imagined as referring to who you are or what you do sexually, the word “sexuality” is used to name a wide range of social identifications predicated on sexual object choice, romantic desires, political identifications, social affinities, and/or erotic proclivities. Discursively linked to activities of procreation, reproduction, and social organization, sexuality also functions to name nonreproductive sensory pleasures and modes of erotic and amorous expression that exceed gender or genitals and are not reducible to sexual identities such as heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, or gay. Formed through its relationship to other categories of social difference and forms of embodiments, Latinx sexuality is best understood by probing the ways it is mobilized, encountered, and sensed in the body and in the world. Rather than a precise codification of sexual practices, communities, or forms of erotic expression, the histories, politics, and scholarship that surround Latinx sexuality register the ongoing exchanges of power that instantiate and trigger multiple forms of social control. That the delights of corporeal exploration, fantasy, and sexual joy might persist despite these mechanisms of sexual regulation suggests the unruly ways desire disrupts and reroutes these disciplinary flows.