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Yvette Taylor
Sexualities and class

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DOI: 10.1177/1363460710390559
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Introduction
Sexualities and class
Yvette Taylor
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Abstract
Sexuality frequently neglects class studies, just as class analysis ignores sexualities. This
special issue of the journal Sexualities aims to open debates on class and sexuality with
four original research studies on class and sex, along with four commentaries from
leading experts in the field.
Keywords
class, stratification, inequality, gay identities, heterosexual hierarchy
This collection seeks to bring together attention to class and sexuality in and across
the same pages, if not always in the same, or seamless, way. The range of perspectives
captured here reveal the worth and indeed urgency in engaging with such a tricky
(dis)association: class has been under-investigated in sexuality studies just as sexual-
ity has been frequently absent and often only implicit in class analysis, where het-
erosexuality is embedded yet frequently unnamed across classed terrain. Consider the
experiences and practices of family as a classed and classing site (Gillies, 2007;
Laureau, 2003; Vincent, 2000), where straight and narrow associations and rejec-
tions cast light upon the intersection of class and sexuality in living (non)normative
lives (Weeks et al., 2001; Taylor, 2009a). Think too about education as creating
classed existences, outcomes and endurances, alongside the re-creation of heteronor-
mativity, where the dual inhabitation of outsider positions of being queer and
working-class is likely to be felt materially and emotionally (Epstein, 1994;
Taylor, 2007). If only these two examples are considered there is already a lot
going on, which can make it dicult to express an equal interest in class and sexu-
ality. Do sides have to be chosen, or (awkwardly) allocated, in the refashioning of
academic agendas? Should the signicance of either class or sexuality be fore-
grounded; should either economic or cultural matters be asserted in order to make
proper claims on real agendas and to avoid further dismissal and inattention? These
questions are ongoing and are variously tackled by contributors, who highlight the
salience of class and present empirical data from UK-based research in order to
Corresponding author:
Yvette Taylor, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
Email: Yvette.Taylor@newcastle.ac.uk
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illuminate presences and absences. This includes interrogation of who gets to talk,
what is rendered (in)visible in sexualities studies and what theoretical frameworks
best incorporate, explain and expand sexual and classed intersections. But to include,
or to attempt to ll the gap, is more complicated than an easy insertion of or return
to class, given that its form, analytical worth and even social existence is disputed.
Class has been associated with a failure to capture contemporary identications,
socio-economic transformations, lifestyles, choices and new queerer intimacies
seemingly unbound by tradition, and structure, which the term class still invokes.
Queer approaches are frequently positioned as grappling with sexual complex-
ity, choice and change, while arguably sidelining feminist concerns with the mate-
riality of sexuality and the continued structuring presence of heterosexism, as Stevi
Jackson notes in her commentary piece. Within her redress, the structural is not
invoked as a solid restriction or a complete block against agency. Instead, she
suggests, the slipperiness between heterosexuality as a practice dierently expe-
rienced through, for example, class, race and gender and heterosexuality as an
institution, can and should be conveyed (Bettie, 2003; Skeggs, 1997): norms are
inhabited and resisted dierently and, as Jackson reminds us, it is important to
theorize the conditions, places and possibilities of advantage as well as disadvan-
tage. The risk in leaving privileged lives unproblematized is that these are under-
stood as standard, usual, and chosen, where mobile, agentic subjects now take full
advantage of citizenship (including sexual citizenship) inclusions. Queer lives and
accounts in particular have frequently been situated in terms of a reexive indi-
vidualization where the self is (re)made under conditions of choice, uidity and
risk: we are, not what we are, but what we make of ourselves (Giddens, 1992; see
also Heaphy 2008; McDermott, 2010). Despite the optimistic appeal of choice
many others have demonstrated the errors and meaninglessness of such assump-
tions, where choice must be understood as a resource dierentially framing classed
and sexual lives (Adkins, 2002; Armstrong, 2010; Skeggs, 2004; Wilson-Kovacs,
2010). To be middle-class may well be to inhabit an ordinariness or chosen bench-
mark but slippages between categories of advantage and disadvantage are fre-
quently eaced in this separation of classed lives from sexual ones: the point is not
to conjure up the imagined sum-of-advantage, against that of disadvantage, where
comparisons are complicated in everyday existences, but rather to situate sexual
subjects as also classed subjects, interrogating the relevance, transmission and accu-
mulation of class and sexual (dis)advantages across social contexts (Taylor, 2009a).
Against the pull of choice, it is now possible to identify a resurgence in class
research, even a call for a new class studies (and a new working-class studies
specically) if class is enjoying a revival in (some) sociological and geographical
analysis it is important to consider the place of sexuality within moments of resur-
gence (see Russo and Linkon, 2005, Taylor, 2010). Several authors in this special
issue speak of being caught between competing research agendas in their attempts
to combine interests, speak across gaps, and empirically investigate somewhat
hidden lives (even as representations of working-classness, as devalued, excessive
and failing, circulate widely, see Gidley and Rooke, 2010; Parker, 2010): authors
4 Sexualities 14(1)
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highlight the methodological challenges associated with researching working-class
and middle-class lives, as well as navigating a pathway though existing critique and
(dis)engagement. This is apparent as cultural, political and economic aspects are
dierently valued and disputed, at times making the empirical examination of
everyday sexual and class lives dicult, reduced to the specic (or niche) where
the frames of capitalism are invoked to demonstrate the real, higher stakes of class
analysis. Such a stance skips over the complex ways that economic and cultural
features combine to materialize class, bringing it into eect on an everyday level,
through immediate associations and recognitions. Steven Seidmans commentary
piece oers up some provocations on these issues and the reader may ask if and
why does Marxism equal dealing with class, and an absence of Marxism amount
to not dealing with it or with political economy: indeed such a questioning
persists (and is resisted) in Jon Binnies commentary, which demonstrates the
ways that earlier political analyses of class themselves marginalized sexuality.
Seidmans comment that there is virtually no eort to ground class analysis in a
critique of political economy and that critics have so far refused to seriously
defend Marxism as foundational theory and politics against its many critics
seems like a wild indictment, implicating key gures (such as Morton, Hennessy
and Evans) as well as contributors in this volume where Seidman himself may
fall short in readdressing this in his commentary. I would reasonably suggest that
all contributors do highlight the materiality of classed identications, subjectivities
and emotions whether that is manifest in the choice of schools, in post-compul-
sory educational transitions, in a sense of winning the world or in the cultural
expressions of class performances in and across leisure and scene space and,
relationally, in everyday attachments.
Examination of class as re-produced relationally, materially and culturally,
moves beyond a xed numerical measure: such eorts to hold on to and convey
the complexity of class amount to solid attempts and authors here may not be more
successful that others who have also attempted this but they should be under-
stood as part of the serious social analysis proposed by Seidman. Any doubt
about this perhaps results in an all too easy view of proper class analysis, as
starting o with Marx and taking an escalator up, nodding at the great and the
good, and arriving at the top oor of political economy.
But contributors have not taken a completely unconventional route into
Sexuality and Class; many have used a Bourdieusian-inspired framework of class
in order to demonstrate the combination and arrangement of social, economic and
cultural capitals, opening up to explorations of the gendered and sexual contexts of
classed capital. Such a model also oers understanding of the ways that individuals
move through social space, or, conversely, become restricted and xed, through
material inequalities as well as social judgements. This occurs across related ter-
rains of education, employment and family, where (hetro)normativity also shapes
material (im)possibilities and destinations. Such approaches begin to provide the-
oretical frames through which class and sexuality can be investigated as discursive,
material, cultural and institutional; as simultaneously structural and subjective.
Taylor 5
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The location and scale of such intersections are often at dispute, invoked again
in (mis)placing the specicities of class as somehow particularly British while all
substantive pieces as based on UK empirical eldwork, Seidmans commentary on
the place of class, and its resurgence, perhaps inspires reection on geographical
and temporal particularities. Seidman traces how dierent categories shifted in
prominence in (and outside of) US academia as class, then gender and then race
based. What is perhaps rather awkward to my mind at least is how, having
traced this escalator-model of development, Seidman then arrives at race but
ignores or neglects the classed inections of race it is not a level playing eld
and race does not erase class just as class does not erase race.
In discussing classed and sexualized trajectories across social space, and in relation
to changing socio-legal frameworks, the term intersections is used by several con-
tributors to covey multiplicity rather than erasure. Intersectionality remains a con-
tested framework, where arguably understanding complexities posed by intersections
of dierent axes of dierentiation is as pressing today as it has always been (Brah and
Phoenix, 2004: 75). Yet this often appears as an over-burdened term, where the
promise of an intersectional focus has not delivered in relation to specic intercon-
nections, such as those between class and sexuality (Plummer, 2008; Taylor 2009a,
Taylor et al., 2010): despite all the talk about intersectionality, we really do not hear
much about class these days (Plummer, 2008: 18). The claim for inclusion and atten-
tion within such frames can be problematic, where the adding in of a specic dif-
ference a case of see/hear my identity becomes a matter of adding up, of being
able to assert and claim identications, rather than one of challenging power relations
in the ways that dierences matter (Ahmed, 1998; Skeggs, 1997). This struggle is also
echoed in the complex relationship that exists between Queer theory and intersection-
ality, where queer theories attempts to avoid analysis of asymmetrical power relations
with its focus on the destabilization of categories, often negates the privileges and
(dis)advantages allowing and denying such inclinations (Haschemi Yekani et al., 2010;
Richardson et al., 2006). Elizabeth McDermott, following Hennessy (2000), partly
attributes such dis-connection to the theoretical gap left behind by reductive class
analyses, and a discredited Marxism, creating a space which has been awkwardly
lled by an exclusive queer emphasis on the cultural and discursive.
In negotiating such gaps and dis-connection, all authors have sought to engage
with interconnections between class and sexuality, where social actors are dier-
ently situated within legislative structures, policies and practice; from the educa-
tional (dis)engagements, to the enactment and experience of equalities legislation.
They raise questions about the (in)visibility of sexual subjects as citizens, where
notions of sexual citizenship arguably dislocate the specic intersections of gender
and class in attending to the implementation, recognition and denial of rights.
Where middle-class voices have arguably taken up more space in rights-based
agendas, activism and campaigning groups, it is worth attending to dierent and
unequal locations. Indeed, academia, as a specically classed site, itself raises ques-
tions on the status of queer academics from working-class backgrounds, and the
invisibility of incongruous locations and awkward inhabitations (Jackson; Binnie,
6 Sexualities 14(1)
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this collection; see also Taylor, 2009b; Wakeling, 2010). A concern with intersec-
tional operations and incongruent locations is highlighted across this special issue
even as the map of sexual and classed lives is more complex and ongoing rather
than xed at a point where the intersection occurs.
In Heterosexual hierarchies: A commentary on class and sexuality Stevi
Jackson notes that the intersections between class and sexuality have only recently
begun to be explored with much of the developing focus attending to LGBT lives
and identities (rather than heterosexual lives and practices): there are important
exceptions to this, such as the work of Skeggs (1997) and Johnson and Lawler
(2005). And there are important enduring connections between the economics of
domestic life and employment, where class shapes lifestyles, opportunities and
choices, which are still materially as well as morally bounded, circumscribed by
constructions of appropriate femininity. Across domestic, educational, employ-
ment and cultural spheres, working-class femininity is positioned as mis-tting and
out of place in new times of choice and change, where an excessive heterosexuality
is part of the backwardness attached to appearances, manifest in other signs of
lack, and mapped on classed terrain on ever more intimate levels (Skeggs, 2004).
The examples of heterosexual hierarchies interrogated by Jackson show how these
frame intimacy more generally within ongoing re-evaluations and re-circulations of
worth and distinction, where further research is called for.
In Class, sexuality and space Jon Binnie provides a commentary on some common
threads throughout this special issue, identied rstly as the classing of epistemology
and methodology within sexuality studies: Who gets to speak? Who gets listened to?
And with what consequences? Attending to the gap cannot mean re-positioning class
as primary and absolute, and in evidencing the feelings of class within academia
Binnie moves away from a sole focus on the economic as the absolute pinnacle
of class analysis towards an understanding of troubling classed emotions and the
manifestation of pain, shame and embarrassment. Many others, particularly feminist
researchers, have also pointed out the subjective elements of classed dis-identications
in academia (Mahony and Zmroczek 1997, Ryan and Sackrey 1995 and Tokarczyk
and Fay 1993; Wakeling, 2010) but again the intersection of class and sexuality is
somewhat of an absence in considering the spatial, subjective and material aspects of
not tting in (Taylor, 2009a; Wilson, 2008). Binnie highlights the signicance of
space and place in contextualizing classed re-productions across dierent geographies,
also arguing for a more intersectional approach, capable of combining the cultural
and economic aspects of class and sexuality.
This raises questions about how such an intersection can be captured method-
ologically and in Where was the land where neither I nor my children are prop-
erty? A lesbian mother speaks, Minnie Bruce Pratt uses a nonction narrative to
highlight the connections between sexuality, children, property, and the State. This
is achieved in remembering the international struggle to return Elia n Gonza lez to
Cuba in 2000, and writing on the signicance of that moment almost 10 years later.
In acknowledging the signicance and scope of oppressive regimes it would seem
important not to idealize other places. The kinds of (dis)connections that are
Taylor 7
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being made in this article are occurring not only across cultures and states but also
across time where there is a quarter of a century between the personalized experi-
ences of loss of children and the advocacy for Elia n Gonza lez to be returned to his
father. The intervening time here foregrounds the relevance of the lesbian mother
position, combining the personal and the global, and connects to the following
commentary on the proper place of class analysis.
In Class matters. . . but how much? Class, nation, and queer life, Steven
Seidman provides a quick run-through of the centrality and demise of class-centred
social analysis, relating this to social movements of the 1960s and the subsequent
fracturing of identity politics inside and outside of academia, where an enduring
materialist feminist critique then gave way to Queer theory. This trajectory is con-
tested, where legacies and struggles remain, discussed through UK- and US-based
dierences; while Seidman welcomes the resurgence in class analysis, he issues a
warning about what is at stake here, urging a reconnection to political economy.
This call, however, arguably eaces the economics of (changing) culture, equality,
legality and employability, via the education system, as substantively discussed here
by Heaphy, McDermott, Nixon and Browne. In asking if queer lives are classed
based, Seidman turns back to the USA to provide an analysis of class mixed queer
cultures and scenes; the middle-classes are positioned as inspiring this mix (the
queer middle-class came out), moving from the bar to the spaces of culture and
politics. This inspires reection on what exactly constitutes a mix and who ben-
ets from this: many have highlighted renewed classed and racial divisions within
new, mixed spaces as amounting to more than a caveat against a good mix but
as actually re-embedding classed, gendered and racial inequalities in, on and across
scene spaces (Held, 2009; Taylor, 2008; Ward, 2008).
In Gay identities and the culture of class Brian Heaphy reinvestigates the worth of
material queer analyses, while his approach favours a cultural approach to illuminate
the signicance of class for late modern sexualities. Heaphy is concerned with gay
mens personal accounts of class (dis)identication where class and sexuality were
articulated as intertwined and constructed relationally through each other, being
(un)equally re-produced in everyday performativities. Heaphy argues for the con-
tinuing signicance of class for identity, even as this does not necessarily map directly
onto objective measures of class and for understanding the links between class,
culture and the socio-economic. Understanding gay identities and the culture of
class refocuses away from the centring of privileged lives as gay experience itself,
where the challenge, Heaphy proposes, is to explore the complex interplay between
late modern recongurations of sexualities and of class, rather than viewing sexuality
as the product of class, to be gauged through political economy alone.
In The world some have won: Sexuality, class and inequality, Elizabeth
McDermott repositions the victories of equalities legislation, visibilities and inclu-
sions, as a classed achievement, noting the ways that certain LGBT people still face
continued battles to face positive, armed, validated and resourced lives. Drawing
on two empirical studies, McDermott addresses inequalities arising at the intersection
of class and sexuality apparent in young LGBT peoples post compulsory schooling
8 Sexualities 14(1)
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choices. A focus on education illuminates the complex and hidden ways class privilege
and disadvantage may conate or compound sexual and gender inequalities, where
more privileged participants middle-class young LGBT people with the right cap-
itals could navigate uncertainty, both imagining and materializing new biographies
and identities via educational progression (Evans, 2010).
Catherine Nixon, in Working-class lesbian parents emotional engagement with
their childrens education: Intersections of class and sexuality, also uses a frame-
work of capitals to reveal tenuous, uneasy investments in education, and the disrup-
tion of choices, as highlighted by McDermott. Nixon looks specically at parents
emotional engagements with schooling where, by virtue of their class and sexuality,
parents may already be seen as failing. Building on studies of working-class les-
bians experiences of marginalization within education, Nixon examines ways that
parents negative experiences of school are used as emotional resources: to protect
their children from bullying, to teach their children life skills and to promote values
of equality and acceptance. This then is a very dierent valuing of education on an
alternative sense of worth based in the here and now rather than individualistic and
career-orientated future projections (Gillies, 2007; Taylor, 2009a). Her piece points
to classed dierences within educational experiences where institutions are now
encompassed within legal equalities frameworks, which still nonetheless fail to cap-
ture enduring dis-junctures in mainstreaming policies.
In By partner we mean. . .: Alternative geographies of gay marriage, Kath
Browne attends to the geographical specicity of civil partnership legislation,
enacted through local authorities, which actively reconstitutes sexualities in rela-
tion to spatial and material classed relations. As has been noted, new equalities
legislation does not represent wholesale improvements and dierently materializes
dierent families, where, for example, those dependent on state benets may be
subject to penalty rather than praise (Kandaswamy, 2008; Taylor, 2009a). Browne
aims to reinsert a spatial analysis into such classed re-shapings using data collected
from local government websites, revealing that those who are now included and
understood as new couples vary according to local government district. Like
previous articles, the attention to the intersection of class and sexuality here
casts light on whose choices are (dis)allowed in changing legal contexts, important
when evaluating the dierential eects of new equalities and sexual citizenship.
Throughout this special issue there is a welcomed departure away from the dan-
gerous classlessness often framing accounts of queer lives, with the need to fur-
ther explore classed heterosexual lives also signalled.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank all contributors and reviewers of this special issue your eorts have
been very much appreciated.
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Yvette Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics, Sociology
at Newcastle University and held the Lillian S. Robinson Scholarship at Concordia
University, Montreal (2009). Publications include Working-Class Lesbian Life:
Classed Outsiders (Palgrave, 2007), Lesbian and Gay Parenting: Securing Social
and Educational Capitals (Palgrave, 2009), an edited collection Classed
Intersections: Spaces, Selves, Knowledges (Ashgate, 2010) and (with S Hines and
M Casey) Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality (Palgrave, 2010). She has arti-
cles in a range of journals including British Journal of the Sociology of Education,
Womens Studies International Forum, Sexualities, Feminism and Psychology.
Yvette is working on a forthcoming book Fitting Into Place? (Ashgate) from
Economic and Social Research Council funded research (20072009) and is begin-
ning a new ESRC standard grant Making space for queer identifying religious
youth. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Distinguished Scholars Award held at
Womens & Gender Studies, Rutgers University (20102011).
Taylor 11
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