The article discusses the present-day state and the future of gay and lesbian politics, with a special reference to Finland. It points out the constraints and strategic dead-ends inherent in gay and lesbian identity politics. Mapping the possibilities of a less category-bound and more flexible politics of emancipatory transgression the article draws from the theoretical contributions of Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau in particular. Consequently, the strategy of identity politics is not sexual politically innovative anymore, either. The natural, the perverse and the radical gender politics.
Modernity tries to find the basis for sexual behaviour from nature.
Homosexual culture is thus either something inexplicable in nature or a cultural phenomenon without a natural basis. Lesbian identity servers as a political-philosophical argument against this universalising heterosexuality. An alternative identity politics involves the risk of naturalising identities and stabilising what the radical gender politics has set in motion. On the other hand, identity is essential in all gender politics. We must only understand that a sexual identity that has not become naturalised, that is random and whose structure has been deconstructed is still an identity and it can serve as a framework in various political situations.