Where Kinsey,Christ, and Tila Tequila Meet: Discourse and the Sexual (Non)-Binary

Drawing on 80 interviews and 17 months of participant observation in Lexington, Kentucky, this article details how individuals drew on three areas of national and local discourse to conceptualize sexuality. Media, popular science, and religious discourses can be viewed as portraying sexuality bifocally—as both a binary of heterosexual/homosexual and as a non-binary that encompasses fluidity. However, individuals in Lexington drew on each of these areas of discourse differently. Religion was thought to produce a binary vision of sexuality, whereas popular science accounts were understood as both binary and not. The media was understood as portraying non-binary identities that were not viable, thus strengthening the sexual binary. These differing points of view led identities such as bisexual and queer to lack cultural intelligibility.