| Un/Civil Partnerships:
Class in Lesbian Relationships
Yvette
Taylor
School
of Geography, Politics, Sociology
Newcastle
University, Newcastle Upon Tyne
(Inglaterra)
The difference that class
makes in same-sex relationships, where there has been a
tendency to suggest that lesbians ‘do things differently’
is interrogated in this paper. Such a redress, namely the
inclusion of class inequality in the framework of sexual
‘difference’, is of critical importance, given the
recent and continued UK/Euro demands for ‘sexual
citizenship’, as notably manifest in the Repeal of
Section 28/2a and the Civil Partnership Act (UK). Both
pieces of legislation promise ‘inclusion’ into the
mainstream state – and the mainstream family – and
sexual citizens are granted a degree of ‘tolerance’,
arguably based on their middle-class consumer based ‘respectability’.
In seeking to recognise the
plurality of ‘families’, I problematise both the
sexual and classed aspects of constructed ‘proper
families’, depicted and implicitly assumed in these ‘positive’
legislative changes. This paper draws upon ESRC funded
research ‘Working-class lesbians: classed in a classless
climate,’ (2001-2004) which examines the significance of
class and sexuality in the lives of women who
self-identify themselves as working-class and lesbian,
achieved through interviews with fifty-three women living
in a range of localities in the UK: the Highlands,
Glasgow, Edinburgh in Scotland, and Yorkshire and
Manchester, England. My purpose is not to pathologise
respondents’ relationships but instead to explore the
material and subjective ways that class manifests itself
in intimate relationships, forcing an awareness of the ‘other’
inequalities faced by lesbians as they negotiate their
increasingly ‘equal’ rights.
About Yvette Taylor
Yvette Taylor is a
Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University. She has
written about the interconnections between class and
sexuality in the lives of working-class lesbians.
Publications include Taylor, Y. (2005) ‘Inclusion,
Exclusion, Exclusive? Sexual Citizenship and the Repeal
of Section 28/2a’ Sexualities, 8(3), 375-380; Taylor,
Y. (2005) ‘Real Politik or Real Politics?
Working-class lesbians’ political ‘awareness’ and
activism’ Women’s Studies International Forum,
28(6), 484-494.
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