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Working-Class Queers: Time, Place and Politics
‘A much-needed and timely dive into the underrepresentation of working-class queers within our queer structures and concepts’-- Juno Roche, author of A Working-Class Family Ages Badly
‘Holds rich insights into lived experience, the power lines of learning within institutions, and how people transform each other in community. Yvette’s book opens doors and transforms fault lines. It will be beneficial for years to come’-- Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show
‘Working-Class Queers makes major intellectual and ethical contributions to queer feminist methods. This is a must-read’-- Matt Brim, Professor, College of Staten Island, City University of New York, author of Poor Queer Studies
Who cares about working-class queers in Britain today? Are queers marginal to the study of class, and are the working classes marginal to queer studies? Yvette Taylor critically engages with the experience of working-class queers through cycles of crisis, austerity, recession, and migration to show how they have been underrepresented–and demands that this changes. Drawing on growing research and radical activism in queer studies and feminism, she critiques the policy, theory, and practice that have maintained queer middle-class privilege at the expense of working-class queers.
Yvette Taylor is a sociologist and has researched class and queer lives in the UK for over 20 years. This includes work on the experience of deindustrialization, class, and austerity in England, published as Fitting into Place? Class and Gender Geographies and Temporalities. She has worked with educational professionals, policymakers, and community organizations on developing intersectional approaches to challenging working-class queer exclusion.
‘Holds rich insights into lived experience, the power lines of learning within institutions, and how people transform each other in community. Yvette’s book opens doors and transforms fault lines. It will be beneficial for years to come’-- Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show
‘Working-Class Queers makes major intellectual and ethical contributions to queer feminist methods. This is a must-read’-- Matt Brim, Professor, College of Staten Island, City University of New York, author of Poor Queer Studies
Who cares about working-class queers in Britain today? Are queers marginal to the study of class, and are the working classes marginal to queer studies? Yvette Taylor critically engages with the experience of working-class queers through cycles of crisis, austerity, recession, and migration to show how they have been underrepresented–and demands that this changes. Drawing on growing research and radical activism in queer studies and feminism, she critiques the policy, theory, and practice that have maintained queer middle-class privilege at the expense of working-class queers.
Yvette Taylor is a sociologist and has researched class and queer lives in the UK for over 20 years. This includes work on the experience of deindustrialization, class, and austerity in England, published as Fitting into Place? Class and Gender Geographies and Temporalities. She has worked with educational professionals, policymakers, and community organizations on developing intersectional approaches to challenging working-class queer exclusion.
- GenresNonfictionQueerLGBT
199 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 20, 2023
232 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 17, 2023
This is more like a 1.25/1.5 stars for me.
Pretty disappointing book. I think Pluto Press has this thing of releasing books with enticing titles like this and to some extent Transgender Marxism (although that anthology is more interesting with some really good essays), but it's almost misleading in the lack of discussions on class and sexuality in here.
One thing that probably makes it difficult for me is that this is coming from a mainly Gender Studies perspective, which is a legitimate field in the social sciences, but it's not my field if that makes sense. The author repeatedly mentions how they're from a working class background in Drumchapel in Glasgow and being at the bottom of their reading group at school, it comes across as constantly explaining their positionality in this. This almost borders into being a bit irritating to the reader when this kind of context and establishment of positionality is something the introduction should have really focused on. It almost feels like the author is apologising for positions of privilege, such as having grants during their university years and being able to study/work in places such as Rutgers on scholarships. It feels like a certain kind of working class academic, who you could even argue is part of the petite bourgeoisie now, being able to access these opportunities.
The book itself is effectively a published PhD project (or various projects the author has undertaken), but made to be a bit more accessible and personal. The main study (again, repeatedly mentioned) is conducting interviews with ~250 LGBT+ working class people over a 20 year period. The scope and scale of the project itself sounds very impressive and I think the testimonies are the most interesting parts of this book. But for such a huge project, the book is very short, only about 160 pages (with illustrations in a few pages) make up the main body of the book. Which is a shame, this kind of scale and scope deserves a lot more in-depth analysis and showcasing of the testimonies.
My main problem with this book is the analysis, so much of it feels vague and underdeveloped, with class being treated more as a concept, idea or identity instead of anything structural or economic. Even so, there's no mention of things like British conceptions of class, where 25% of people earning over £100k per annum consider themselves 'working class,' or the 2011 Great British Class Survey. To talk about 'working class,' things like this are essential to acknowledge in terms of how muddled and complex it has become in British society.
Chapter 1 mentions how 'the queer left had not arrived yet' in the mid-late 2000s.This is an issue in the book where 'queer left' is mentioned but there's not really any concrete examples given on what that exactly means. Chapter 2 uses Wikipedia to describe Drumchapel, where this was the author's upbringing, I think more personal approaches would have been more welcome here. At the end of this chapter, which has a big focus on the Glasgow Women's Library, there's mentions of 'no-go' areas for queers after a Queer/Class event and how despite that, people still went to them nearby. If anyone knows the area of the GWL, it's right near an Orange Order lodge and there is no mention of how sectarianism might play a part in working class queer analysis. It's strange to omit this when the book is very Scottish-centric, even sharing testimonies that praise Scotland as a progressive haven compared to England (Wales is mostly absent). There's no context as to how the country went from only decriminalising homosexuality in 1981 to one of the first acts in the newly formed Scottish Parliament was removing Section 2A/28. I'd love to know how attitudes in Scotland changed and it would be a really good approach for this development of working class queer narratives.
Chapter 3 focuses on the pandemic, again an area where considerations of class could stand out, but again it's more like precarity in terms of the precarity of care work and PPE as well as migration for the testimonies mentioned. There was one weird passage though on how transcription software couldn't pick up Scottish accents, but could pick up 'queer' clearly, feels like that was really trying to find *something* from this. Some testimonies are taken a bit too much for granted, such as saying how libraries are 'LGBT+ spaces,' as if a total truth.
Chapter 4 has some really interesting case studies, but again, class feels barely there. Migration and precarity do show themselves here, including the consequences of Brexit in Scotland. However, this survey mentions how half of the respondents were middle class and you notice it with some accounts like one of a gay man worrying about buying property in Europe after Brexit to move somewhere warmer to help with arthritis.
Chapter 5 focuses on austerity and one of the testimonies from a working class trans woman was really good, again I wish this book had more of a focus and direction on the huge amount of research over such a long period of time. Her discussions on spending, desires and plans for the future were then analysed as somehow being not 'working class enough.' The section on queer parenting felt very basic though, saying how middle class parents were more focuses on schools and the 'best choices' for the child instead of working class parents who just want their child to be happy. I feel like that is really obvious and not specifically unique to LGBT+ working class people. Then a section on queerness and religion shows up near the end and in such a short book, it can feel a bit jarring.
Chapter 6 was weird, the author has previously written about working class lesbian lives and makes these weird points on how lesbian is an out-dated, even offensive term. Saying how most of these reasons aren't legitimate but then says some are because of transmisogyny. Despite research showcasing how the majority of lesbians are trans-friendly, this kind of approach around lesbianism just feels odd and muddled and there's not really much going back on the work previously published. Three testimonies are then brought up by lesbians of colour which again, gets really interesting, passages on class perceptions at Asian women's shelters to the understandings lesbians of colour have in the UK on struggles outside the UK and wider imperial core. (Although the author mentions 'the LGBTQ+ cafe' in Inverness in 2019 and there is nowhere like that as far as I'm aware, LGBT+ friendly yes, but not specifically LGBT+ ones)
The final chapter is a reading list of books which is like a very personalised literature review and I think this should have been more formal and put at the start, to introduce the background literature as well as helping contextualise the project.
Overall, this book has a lot of potential. The large scope of research deserves much more analysis and more room to really consider class as something more than an idea/concept/identity but looking at its relations to gender, sexuality and how it is positioned in the means and modes of production under racial capitalism.
Suggested readings for me would be D. Hunter's books for more personal testimonies on being working class/living in extreme poverty, which has a much stronger analysis of class. I'd also check out the journal Lumpen for more various showcases of poor and working class writing today, fiction, poetry and non-fiction.
Otherwise, I would not recommend this book.
Pretty disappointing book. I think Pluto Press has this thing of releasing books with enticing titles like this and to some extent Transgender Marxism (although that anthology is more interesting with some really good essays), but it's almost misleading in the lack of discussions on class and sexuality in here.
One thing that probably makes it difficult for me is that this is coming from a mainly Gender Studies perspective, which is a legitimate field in the social sciences, but it's not my field if that makes sense. The author repeatedly mentions how they're from a working class background in Drumchapel in Glasgow and being at the bottom of their reading group at school, it comes across as constantly explaining their positionality in this. This almost borders into being a bit irritating to the reader when this kind of context and establishment of positionality is something the introduction should have really focused on. It almost feels like the author is apologising for positions of privilege, such as having grants during their university years and being able to study/work in places such as Rutgers on scholarships. It feels like a certain kind of working class academic, who you could even argue is part of the petite bourgeoisie now, being able to access these opportunities.
The book itself is effectively a published PhD project (or various projects the author has undertaken), but made to be a bit more accessible and personal. The main study (again, repeatedly mentioned) is conducting interviews with ~250 LGBT+ working class people over a 20 year period. The scope and scale of the project itself sounds very impressive and I think the testimonies are the most interesting parts of this book. But for such a huge project, the book is very short, only about 160 pages (with illustrations in a few pages) make up the main body of the book. Which is a shame, this kind of scale and scope deserves a lot more in-depth analysis and showcasing of the testimonies.
My main problem with this book is the analysis, so much of it feels vague and underdeveloped, with class being treated more as a concept, idea or identity instead of anything structural or economic. Even so, there's no mention of things like British conceptions of class, where 25% of people earning over £100k per annum consider themselves 'working class,' or the 2011 Great British Class Survey. To talk about 'working class,' things like this are essential to acknowledge in terms of how muddled and complex it has become in British society.
Chapter 1 mentions how 'the queer left had not arrived yet' in the mid-late 2000s.This is an issue in the book where 'queer left' is mentioned but there's not really any concrete examples given on what that exactly means. Chapter 2 uses Wikipedia to describe Drumchapel, where this was the author's upbringing, I think more personal approaches would have been more welcome here. At the end of this chapter, which has a big focus on the Glasgow Women's Library, there's mentions of 'no-go' areas for queers after a Queer/Class event and how despite that, people still went to them nearby. If anyone knows the area of the GWL, it's right near an Orange Order lodge and there is no mention of how sectarianism might play a part in working class queer analysis. It's strange to omit this when the book is very Scottish-centric, even sharing testimonies that praise Scotland as a progressive haven compared to England (Wales is mostly absent). There's no context as to how the country went from only decriminalising homosexuality in 1981 to one of the first acts in the newly formed Scottish Parliament was removing Section 2A/28. I'd love to know how attitudes in Scotland changed and it would be a really good approach for this development of working class queer narratives.
Chapter 3 focuses on the pandemic, again an area where considerations of class could stand out, but again it's more like precarity in terms of the precarity of care work and PPE as well as migration for the testimonies mentioned. There was one weird passage though on how transcription software couldn't pick up Scottish accents, but could pick up 'queer' clearly, feels like that was really trying to find *something* from this. Some testimonies are taken a bit too much for granted, such as saying how libraries are 'LGBT+ spaces,' as if a total truth.
Chapter 4 has some really interesting case studies, but again, class feels barely there. Migration and precarity do show themselves here, including the consequences of Brexit in Scotland. However, this survey mentions how half of the respondents were middle class and you notice it with some accounts like one of a gay man worrying about buying property in Europe after Brexit to move somewhere warmer to help with arthritis.
Chapter 5 focuses on austerity and one of the testimonies from a working class trans woman was really good, again I wish this book had more of a focus and direction on the huge amount of research over such a long period of time. Her discussions on spending, desires and plans for the future were then analysed as somehow being not 'working class enough.' The section on queer parenting felt very basic though, saying how middle class parents were more focuses on schools and the 'best choices' for the child instead of working class parents who just want their child to be happy. I feel like that is really obvious and not specifically unique to LGBT+ working class people. Then a section on queerness and religion shows up near the end and in such a short book, it can feel a bit jarring.
Chapter 6 was weird, the author has previously written about working class lesbian lives and makes these weird points on how lesbian is an out-dated, even offensive term. Saying how most of these reasons aren't legitimate but then says some are because of transmisogyny. Despite research showcasing how the majority of lesbians are trans-friendly, this kind of approach around lesbianism just feels odd and muddled and there's not really much going back on the work previously published. Three testimonies are then brought up by lesbians of colour which again, gets really interesting, passages on class perceptions at Asian women's shelters to the understandings lesbians of colour have in the UK on struggles outside the UK and wider imperial core. (Although the author mentions 'the LGBTQ+ cafe' in Inverness in 2019 and there is nowhere like that as far as I'm aware, LGBT+ friendly yes, but not specifically LGBT+ ones)
The final chapter is a reading list of books which is like a very personalised literature review and I think this should have been more formal and put at the start, to introduce the background literature as well as helping contextualise the project.
Overall, this book has a lot of potential. The large scope of research deserves much more analysis and more room to really consider class as something more than an idea/concept/identity but looking at its relations to gender, sexuality and how it is positioned in the means and modes of production under racial capitalism.
Suggested readings for me would be D. Hunter's books for more personal testimonies on being working class/living in extreme poverty, which has a much stronger analysis of class. I'd also check out the journal Lumpen for more various showcases of poor and working class writing today, fiction, poetry and non-fiction.
Otherwise, I would not recommend this book.
July 13, 2023
This rating is more a 3.5 for me. This book almost forms a sort of "academic memoir" (or that is the best way I can describe it). There are some very interesting discussion points that definitely got me thinking about my own working class identity. I particularly enjoyed the time period (the last 20 or so years) and it's consideration of Brexit and COVID.
However, this is a very short study and I feel that a longer investigation would have been beneficial and then would also have provided a better format to explore the research the author has carried out over many years and would provide space to explore these themes with more detail and nuance.
Although I enjoyed the final chapter, and felt it was very useful to those interested in gender and feminist studies, I felt this could have been its own text and I struggled to understand it's relevance in this text.
Overall, I think this provides a good a jumping off point for further research.
However, this is a very short study and I feel that a longer investigation would have been beneficial and then would also have provided a better format to explore the research the author has carried out over many years and would provide space to explore these themes with more detail and nuance.
Although I enjoyed the final chapter, and felt it was very useful to those interested in gender and feminist studies, I felt this could have been its own text and I struggled to understand it's relevance in this text.
Overall, I think this provides a good a jumping off point for further research.
January 4, 2026
I was very underwhelmed by this. Taylor's points are often repetitive and delivered in a jarring, recap way. I know she is Scottish because she mentions it roughly 400 times as the book goes on and a lot of the issues really needed more thorough analysis. I also didn't learn anything new, which you could argue isn't the fault of the author - maybe I'm just not the intended audience.
The interview segments were interesting and at times I wished I was reading transcripts of those instead.
The final third is basically a reading list padded out to make the text seem more weighty than it is. This is what a bibliography is for!
The interview segments were interesting and at times I wished I was reading transcripts of those instead.
The final third is basically a reading list padded out to make the text seem more weighty than it is. This is what a bibliography is for!
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August 23, 2023I didn't actually finish because it felt too much like homework. Very, very academic.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews