The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II

by Stephen Vider

Vider uncovers how LGBTQ people reshaped domestic life in the postwar United States.

From the Stonewall riots to the protests of ACT UP, histories of queer and trans politics have almost exclusively centered on public activism. In The Queerness of Home , Stephen Vider turns the focus inward, showing that the intimacy of domestic space has been equally crucial to the history of postwar LGBTQ life.

Beginning in the 1940s, LGBTQ activists looked increasingly to the home as a site of connection, care, and cultural inclusion. They struggled against the conventions of marriage, challenged the gendered codes of everyday labor, reimagined domestic architecture, and contested the racial and class boundaries of kinship and belonging. Retelling LGBTQ history from the inside out, Vider reveals the surprising ways that the home became, and remains, a charged space in battles for social and economic justice, making it clear that LGBTQ people not only realized new forms of community and culture for themselves—they remade the possibilities of home life for everyone.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, History, LGBT, Sociology, Grad School

306 pages, Paperback

Published January 21, 2022

Reviews

[Dasha]

In his first book, The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II (2021), Vider shifts his analysis away from public activism, where the historiography has generally focused, and into the domestic space. In three concise sections, integrations, revolutions, and reforms, Vider traces how the domestic sphere transformed from a haven from the state in the 1950s and 1960s, a site of integration and resistance, to a haven protected by the state in the 1990s. Vider disrupts the notion of the home as a space of heteronormative, nuclear relationships by queering the home. Vider also shows how through LGBTQ people’s adaptation and resistance they “reformed the terms of domestic citizenship” by experimenting with household scripts, denaturalizing gender and social norms, and asserting their right to create domestic spaces that reflected their identities and relationships (p. 17).

[Sarah Schulman]

Very engaging, and in places a fun read. Lots of interesting information that should fascinate readers. The section on gay male collective housing is really new and a great contribution. My one complaint: too much credit to academics for values that were community based. Raises many important questions.

[Lisa Krissoff Boehm]

A must read!

I first became aware of this book while attending a panel at the American Historical Association in Boston. As an urban historian, I knew I had to get a copy! This book is exceedingly well researched, well written and important. It is a must read for urban historians.

[Vincent Micheli]

Vider raises interesting concepts, but I never got super invested in the work. The prose sometimes drags its feet, and the author doesn’t always connect the stories being told to the book’s overall thesis.

[Nina M]

"Some Hearts Go Hungering" is a must-read

[Trent]

Fascinating research. Some of the chapters could have been developed as separate books themselbes.