Working-class Lesbians Research Articles

From Lavender Menace to Queer Nation: the transformation of lesbian identity in the baby boom era

Women of the early baby boom years in the U.S. came out into an environment in which same-sex desire was stigmatized and criminalized. For working-class lesbians, the bar scene provided an environment in which women could find companionship and a way to live a life decoupled from traditional heterosexual roles. For middle class women, bar life was fraught with legal and social risk, and some–mostly white–women worked to establish a more “socially acceptable” communal life through organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis. As the women’s movement flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s, women born in the early years of the baby boom (1946–1950) created distinctive lesbian feminist cultures and identities. In contrast to early baby boomers, women born at the tail end of the baby boom (1960–1964) came out in a vastly different cultural context. Second-wave feminism had already peaked, the AIDS epidemic and debates about sexuality changed the context for lesbian identity and activism, and organizing by women of color created the development of an intersectional view of lesbian identity and activism. Through an analysis of feminist magazines, newsletters, and texts of the late 1960s through the 1990s, this paper explores the cultural contexts through which radical lesbian feminist identities arose and, for a period, flourished in the U.S. By the end of the 1980s and 1990s, as second-wave feminism declined, lesbian feminist identity shifted. Over the last decades of the twentieth century, new queer forms of identification emerged, coupled with a decline of lesbian identification among younger people. I argue that these new forms represent both continuity and disruption with earlier forms of lesbian identification.

This is where we live: queering poor urban spaces in literature of black gay men

This article critiques the exclusion of working-class and impoverished gays and lesbians of color by drawing on popular and academic theories of the development of gay and queer urban spaces. Through an analysis of black gay men's literature of the 1980s and 1990s, it explores the factors that tie black gay men to and ostracize them from their home neighborhoods. It is argued that black gay writers use textual strategies to question their invisibility in their communities of origin and in white gay neighborhoods, show their positions and roles in the home and neighborhood, and queer these spaces.

Working-class lesbian parents’ emotional engagement with their children’s education: Intersections of class and sexuality

This article examines intersections of class and sexuality in lesbian parents’ educational practices, specifically their emotional engagements with their children’s education. This research draws on Bourdieu’s (1986b) concept of capitals and current research that utilizes the concept of ‘emotional capital’, in theorizing mothers’ emotional investments in their children’s education. Studies of working-class lesbians’ experiences of marginalization within education relevant to this investigation are also consulted. Based on qualitative data, this article examines ways in which working-class lesbian parents’ negative experiences of school are used as emotional resources in three key ways; to protect their children from bullying, to teach their children life skills and to promote values of equality and acceptance. I suggest that in utilizing the concept of ‘emotional capital’, this work begins to make sense of the subjective and material realities of educational involvement for working-class lesbian parents.

'That's Not Really My Scene': Working-Class Lesbians In (and Out of) Place

In this article I consider working-class lesbians' views and experiences of commercialized scene space as these venues change in light of social, economic and political developments. Working-class lesbians both participated in and felt excluded from scene spaces, often criticizing them as 'pretentious' and 'unreal' for their cosmopolitan gloss. In this upgrading a politicized perspective was believed to have been sacrificed or in jeopardy, threatened by gendered and classed consumer-based expectations and inhabitations. The reproduction of such space via regeneration and sophistication mediates the construction of lesbian styles, appearances and identities, demarcating boundaries of inclusion across time and place. Interviewees spoke of scene developments and changes with a sense of loss, even nostalgia; their descriptions frequently conjured up binaries of now/then, political/apolitical, marginal/mainstream, metropolitan/provincial — producing an uneasy situation in and out of place. Such positionings illustrate material, embodied and felt exclusions, and tenuous inclusions, as this space is negotiated, contested and rejected.

Defiant desire in Namibia: Female sexual-gender transgression and the making of political being

In this article, I explore local productions of desire in Namibia by focusing on the engagement of young, working-class lesbians with human rights ideologies of sexual freedom. I discuss how various techniques deployed by a sexual minority-rights NGO allow youth to amplify and legitimize their embodied sense of sexual–gender difference. In my analysis of their self-mediated incitement, I regard desire as a moral practice; practices of self-determination and acts of resistance are generated and authenticated through repeated reflection on the internality of desire. My elaborations also emphasize class-related issues. I argue that struggles with class and gender inequality destabilize the very notion of “sexual identity” in ways that open up political and erotic possibilities between lesbians and other working-class women in Namibia, blurring the dividing lines of identity politics and of gender and class politics. [lesbian resistance, African sexuality, moral practice, desire, global queer identity, human rights]

Intersections of class and sexuality in the classroom

This research note aims to address concerns about schools as sites where students wrestle, materially and subjectively, with classed based notions of femininity, the promotion of heterosexuality, and the support of hetero‐normative, middle class families against and in contrast with their own working class families, identities and experiences. Two relatively neglected issues in education, those of sexuality and class, are addressed in order to highlight the interconnections in living out these often analytically separated categories. This piece draws upon the findings of an ESRC funded project ‘Working class lesbians: classed in a classless climate’, which examines the life experiences and identities of self‐identified working class lesbians in the UK.

Real politik or real politics? Working-class lesbians' political ‘awareness’ and activism

Synopsis This article is based upon my PhD research ‘Working-class lesbians: classed in a classless climate’, (2001–2004) which examined the significance of class and sexuality in the lives of women who self-identified themselves as working-class and lesbian. Here I look specifically at the women's political ‘awareness’ and activism, within a changing political climate that promotes notions of ‘classless’, yet in which classed conflict, processes, activism and responses remain apparent. I interconnect the inequalities of class and sexuality in the sphere of citizenship – both sexual and otherwise – looking at Section 2a/28 as a particular site of contested sexual citizenship, yet where the significance of class was apparent in many ways. For example, the economic resources mobilised by anti-repeal protestors were highly relevant, as was the ownership of social connections and forms of capital, which bestowed confidence and entitlement [Skeggs, Beverly (1995). Women's Studies in the 1990's. Entitlement Cultures and Institutional Constraints. Women's Studies International Forum , 18 (4): 475–485] . This, I suggest, was utilised and actively mobilised by both pro- and anti-repeal protesters, whose members, as potential and actual sexual citizens were able to occupy and argue for social positions legitimated as ‘normal’, as ‘respectable’—and in doing so made their classed investments and forms of protest apparent. I point to the many ways that interviewees were politically aware—they had opinions and beliefs to express, especially around ‘past’ and present class struggles, but rarely did these achieve political credibility; rarely were their concerns easily assimilable or respectably mainstream.

The Gap and how to Mind It: Intersections of Class and Sexuality (Research Note)

This research note is grounded in the findings of my PhD thesis ‘Working-class lesbians: classed in a classless climate’ (2004), which examines the significance of class and sexuality in the lives of women who self-identify themselves as working-class and lesbian, who are necessarily, unavoidably, painfully and pleasurably, living out the intersection of class and sexuality. I aim to offer an oversight of the project, taking account of the material and subjective inputs into working-class lesbian identity. Drawing on data collected from a series of interviews I will highlight the interconnections between class and sexuality and the role they play in relation to identities and experiences. By drawing on and critically evaluating previous work in the field and related fields I will illustrate the various ways in which working-class lesbians may be seen to constitute a gap in the literature. Hoping to address this gap and this invisibility, I will examine the ways in which class and sexuality are negotiated and represented by my interviewees. I contrast lived experience with notions of a ‘queer identity’ and the material constraints imposed upon the normative expression of identity.

‘Negotiation and Navigation - an Exploration of the Spaces/Places of Working-class Lesbians’

This article draws upon my research on working-class lesbians, which explores the relationship between class, sexuality and social exclusion. Research participants were drawn mainly from Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Highlands), with smaller samples in Yorkshire and Manchester; in total fifty-three women took part, most being interviewed individually, others as part of three focus groups, and a couple in ‘paired’ interviews. The significance of sexuality and class position is highlighted across various social sites from family background and schooling to work experiences and leisure activities. The women's own identifications, understandings and vivid descriptions point to the continued salience of class as a factor in shaping life experiences. This article focuses primarily on the women's ‘sense of place’ and their relations to the often devalued territories that they inhabit. The relationship between sexual identity and class has received little academic attention - here the ‘gaps’ in the literature pertaining to ‘lesbian and gay’ space, and to (de-sexualised) class space, will be identified. By including empirical data I offer a picture of the ways in which classed spaces is sexualised and sexualised space is classed and suggest that space is constitutive of identity in terms of where it places people, both materially and emotionally.

ARE BUTCH AND FEM WORKING-CLASS AND ANTIFEMINIST?

Many authors argue that middle-class lesbians present themselves as butch or fem less than working-class lesbians and that butch and fem were discouraged by 1970s feminist stigma but are reemerging in postfeminist decades. By analyzing “women seeking women” personal ads, this study provides a longitudinal, quantitative analysis of the validity of these assumptions. The results suggest that middle-class lesbians were less likely to present themselves as butch or fem than working-class lesbians but no less likely to be seeking a butch or fem partner. Also, butch and fem were found to be much more prevalent in the 1990s than in the 1970s or 1980s. Generational cohorts of lesbians based on feminist political ideologies about butch and fem were not found. Prevailing cultural norms within lesbian communities appear to affect all lesbians in an era.

Redefining the Body

the same size. And gyms, forget it, people work hard in New York, and in factories or in offices, not on cell phones. When they get off work, they relax with a cigarette and a cup of coffee, not on some treadmill.... Well, I was wrong ... I began noticing that all of my old friends from growing up here looked like they stopped eating. One after the other, we'd get together and I'd look at them, and the only way I'd remember them is if I imagined a little more fat on their face. -Danielle Abrams, unpublished script for her performance Butch in the Kitchen, 2000. s Butch in the Kitchen discovered, even the unhealthy denizens of New York City have succumbed to the ubiquitous gym culture that has swept America in the past twenty years. Everyone, from the rural farmer in Kentucky to the ivory tower academic in New York City, goes to the gym in order to work out. Even overweight, masculine, working-class lesbians such as Butch feels compelled to join a gym, work out, get in shape, lose weight, and build muscle. Today, it is not enough to simply be thin. One must be thin and healthy, with low cholesterol, clean lungs, caffeine-free brains, and the correct ratio of body fat to muscle. Functional activities, such as

Who cares if Barbie loves Midge, as long as they get the Dreamhouse?: Poor and working class lesbians of the new millenium

Who cares if Barbie loves Midge, as long as they get the Dreamhouse?: Poor and working class lesbians of the new millenium

Remembering lesbian bars: Montreal, 1955-1975.

This essay retraces the development of lesbian bars in Montreal between 1955 and 1975. It analyzes this process as a form of appropriation of urban public space which reveals the repressive elements confronting lesbians in their pursuit of the right to exist socially, and examines the key-role played by working-class lesbians in struggling against them. It also describes class-related divisions in the way these places are remembered, which may be paralleled to the opposite positions in the current debate about the role of bars in the development of a lesbian culture. Finally, it suggests explanations for class-related differences in bar-going habits and ways of expressing lesbian identity.