Abstract
There has been a persistent neglect of class within sexuality studies and marginalization of working-class perspectives within queer politics and theory. Working-Class Queers is a rare monography explicitly focusing on queer working-class experiences. It provides a rich and engaging examination in a wide range of spatial, temporal and thematic contexts within the United Kingdom. Taylor draws on 20 years of empirical research conducted between 2001 and 2021 involving interviews with more than 250 LGBTQ+ people in total across a wide range of empirical projects she has either led or participated in, on topics ranging from working-class lesbians, to lesbian and gay parenting, to religion and queer youth. As articulated by Taylor, “One of my long-term goals across projects has been both to represent queer working-class life and to imbue it with worth” (p. 108). The achievement of this goal constitutes a key contribution of the book, particularly given the persistent underrepresentation of working-class experience within sexuality studies. Recognizing the value of this specific contribution, however, should not obscure the importance of the book’s wider intellectual importance.
Working-Class Queers foregrounds the material conditions that shape working-class queer experience and the book is framed by crises ranging from global recession, austerity, the global COVID pandemic and the cost of living crisis. For instance, in Chapter 3, Taylor examines LGBTQ+ experiences of lockdowns during the COVID-19 in Scotland, which one lesbian interviewee frames as “government enforced monogamy” (p. 53), showing how failings of the state during the pandemic led to queer collective actions and forms of mutual support, while also questioning the sustainability of queer collective and DIY responses to the pandemic such as cooking for people outside their own households.
A key theme throughout the book is temporality, as Taylor looks back over her previous empirical projects examining lesbian and queer lives, as well as re-reading queer and feminist literature. In doing so, she considers major transformations and fault-lines in British politics over a 20-year period, including austerity, debates on Scottish independence, Brexit, COVID, and the cost-of-living crisis. Reflecting on time, Taylor notes, “I carry queer class project(s) into the present, through the past, remembering successes and failures, including the failure of a linear, completed project, as done and ready to be deposited in the archive. Going back can mean feeling stuck—‘she’s still researching working-class lesbians!’” (p. 115).
The notion of being stuck relates to themes of place, mobility, and immobility within working-class queer lives, which is a second main theme of the book. In Chapter 6, Taylor describes the precarious nature of lesbian claims on urban space and place, providing an extensive discussion of movement and mobility and how this engenders attachments to multiple places. This discussion also draws on her own experiences of mobility and crossing boundaries, for instance, moving between different types of academic institutions, between North-East England and Yorkshire and metropolitan London, as well as between her working-class home of origin in Drumchapel, Glasgow and academic life in the city of Edinburgh, and between England and Scotland. It is this sensitivity to the boundaries that keep people in place and the constant vigilance to how boundaries shape and constrain working-class queer lives that is a particular strength of Working-Class Queers.
The boundaries of identity suggest a third theme of the book, which is authenticity, as Taylor reflects on who is recognized as working-class and who is not. Authenticity is often connected to place, gender, and race, for instance, how dominant narratives about class frame it in terms of masculinity and whiteness in relation to Glasgow and Glaswegian identity. A key strength of the book is how Taylor challenges the idea of a singular working-class queer experience and asserts that “the stories of class and queerness are multiple and messy” (p. 38).
That the book is written in such an accessible and engaging way is in no small measure due to the use of auto-biographical vignettes and sections throughout. Place and time feature prominently in relation to the autobiography, for instance, in the discussion of how one colleague framed Taylor’s place of origin as evidence of a success story of class mobility and working-class academic achievement. Working-Class Queers represents a major contribution to the study of sexuality and class. It should no doubt engage readers in a similar manner to how Taylor describes inspiring feminist writing on working-class experience.