Identity is a word that encompasses multiple facets of our being, namely, gender, ethnicity, race and so forth. One of these important facets is our sexuality. In the past few decades, a number of theoretical and empirical advances have been made in an attempt to understand and map the process of sexual identity development for queer and heterosexual identity groups alike. For our purpose, this paper intends to conceptualise this developmental process in a manner that is all-inclusive and non-linear.
This paper was co-written by Hetvi Parekh and myself for our Developmental Psychology course. We had conversations with multiple people for a wider perspective to assess the existing sexual identity development models with. With our gained insights and our personal insights from our own experiences, this text tries to shed light on the fluidity and the lifespan nature of the process.
The file labelled "Rethinking Sexual Identity Development" is the paper and the one labelled "Interview Questionnaire" are the pointers we used to have conversations with different people.