In their provocative new book, Trans Pleasure: On Gender Liberation and Sexual Freedom, sociologist Brandon Andrew Robinson issues a bold challenge to modern social constructs: it is time to abolish sexual identities entirely.
Robinson, an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside, acknowledges that calling for the end of labels like “gay,” “straight,” or “bisexual” is a radical thesis.
However, they argue that these categories—while once serving as tools for community and visibility—have become a restrictive “prison” for human desire.
Robinson asserts that the modern impulse to constantly expand the lexicon of attraction is actually a symptom of the system’s failure. By creating hyper-specific labels such as gynosexual, sapiosexual, or pansexual, Robinson argues we are merely building smaller rooms within the same confinement.
“Identities limit us,” Robinson writes. “The fact that we keep creating new identities shows how these categories fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire.”
The core of Robinson’s research suggests that sexual identity reinforces a false, binary notion of gender rooted in fixed biological categories. By discarding these labels, Robinson believes society can achieve:
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Deeper Authenticity: Moving away from “performing” an identity and toward experiencing genuine connection.
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Fluidity of Desire: Allowing attraction to exist as a spectrum that can shift over a lifetime without the “crisis” of changing a label.
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Enhanced Pleasure: Freeing the body from the “rules” of what a specific identity is supposed to find erotic or meaningful.
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Relational Respect: Prioritizing the individual person over the category they occupy.
For Robinson, the goal isn’t to erase the history of queer struggle, but to evolve beyond the need for a “biological” anchor for love. They posit that true gender liberation is impossible as long as we are required to declare a sexual “type.”
By moving toward a “post-identity” world, Robinson argues we can finally relate to one another on a level that is more respectful, more meaningful, and – crucially – more pleasurable.
