In this book, James W. Messerschmidt and Tristan Bridges apply a new conceptual framework of sex, gender, and sexual identity formation. Sociologists tend to study social practice as exclusively or primarily accomplished either routinely or reflexively, although theorizing gender has been less susceptible to that criticism than have other subfields. Yet, the dynamic relationship between routine and reflexivity is undertheorized. Sociologists often miss the coexistence of reflexivity and routine in gender practice and identity formations.

Rather than interrogating gender practice as either routine or reflexivity, Messerschmidt and Bridges present data from life history interviews that documents routine and reflexive sex, gender, and sexual identities as typical and extensive rather than exceptional. A Kaleidoscope of Identities reveals the more elusive elements of sex, gender, and sexual life, which are often difficult to capture in quantifiable variables.