Reading the Queer Domestic Aesthetic Discourse

Abstract

The stereotype of the gay man as arbiter of domestic style and design is widely recognized. Robin Williams humorously referenced this in a joke: “We had gay burglars the other night,” he notes, “They broke in and rearranged the furniture.” What remains unclear is the ways in which stereotypes relate to the lives of ordinary people and the homes they inhabit. This article brings together the idiosyncrasies of queer design that circulate at a number of levels in a mainly transatlantic discourse—thanks to the help of mass media, television programs, and a niche of scholarly literature—with a study of ordinary homes belonging to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) lives in a global city. It is argued that this wider queer aesthetic penetrates everyday space and shapes homes in complicated ways; there is a tension between these two domains. The empirical research draws from in-depth semi-structured interviews with Londoners gathered as part of a larger project on sexual minority identity at home in London, UK. Looking to these domestic case studies allows for a spatialized reading that challenges celebrated and exclusive interiors. Offering a timely and distinct architectural approach looking to the everyday users of ordinary domestic space aims to modestly move in another direction towards a model of diversity, opening up queer domesticity and sexual minority identity to multiple representations.