Laboring lesbians: Queering emotional labor

Abstract

Through an ethnographic examination of the everyday lives of lesbians working in gas stations, this article highlights the ways in which sexuality matters within the workplace. One of the unique aspects of the service economy is the position of the body at the center of the market transaction. In other words, it is the body that serves as the point of production between the customer and the company. Within this productive space, the concept of emotional labor highlights how emotions are a critical aspect of labor within a position of service required in order to develop relationships with consumers. The goals of this article are to strengthen the original concept of emotional labor by complicating our understanding of the body with specific reference to sexuality, an intersectional analysis of the assumption of the heteronormative worker, examining the multiple ways in which workers interpret and enact emotional labor and the accompanying rewards and punishments that shape the experience of emotional labor and exploring how gender and sexuality are performed. Ultimately, laboring lesbian bodies are informing, resisting, and playing as well as conforming to this complex production.