Sexual and Gender Diversity Beyond Minority Identities: Do Empirical Trends Call for a Paradigm Shift?

In the United States and many other societies, the 21st century has been characterized by an expansion of cultural and scientific conceptions of sexuality and gender to include such experiences as nonbinary gender, asexuality, sexual and gender fluidity, and forms of intimate diversity such as consensual nonmonogamies and kink. These expansive understandings provide the opportunity to reconsider the dominant paradigm in psychology that has historically positioned forms of sexual and gender diversity as indicative of minority identities. This article reviews four empirical trends that support this reconsideration: (1) the proliferation of new language to describe gender and sexuality; (2) the rising identification with any form of sexual and gender diversity, especially among people born this century; (3) growing evidence of sexuality as flexible and fluid across the life course; and (4) rising visibility of forms of intimate diversity such as consensual nonmonogamies and kink. A psychology of sexuality and gender that centers phenomena associated with sexual and gender diversity, rather than different types of people in an ever-exclusionary minoritized acronym such as “LGBTQ,” might prove more relevant to the current century and more sensitive to historical and cultural variability. Empirical practices within such a paradigm would (1) prioritize social documentation using both qualitative and quantitative methods, (2) be mindful of response categories in interview and survey research, (3) avoid aggregation across identities, and (4) acknowledge cultural variability in sexuality and gender.