The Ties That Bind: Intimacy, Class, Sexuality

Abstract

This chapter explores the difference that class makes in same-sex relationships where there has been a tendency to suggest that lesbians ‘do things differently’, freed from normative relational ties (or ‘belonging to’) and living out unconstrained choices and creative intimate biographies (Weeks et al., 2001; Ryan-Flood, 2005; Weeks, 2007; Taylor, 2009). Cathy comments that things are ‘different’ for lesbians and this variance has been widely commented upon, celebrated and contested (Giddens, 1992; Jamieson, 1998; Taylor, 2009; Hines and Taylor, 2012), but often not in the ways that Cathy’s ‘difference’ is complexly articulated. Instead, lesbian relationships are often depicted as examples of ‘pure relationships’, shaped by equality and sameness (Dunne, 1997). Such qualities are seen to transform patterns of intimacy, shaped through a ‘family of friends’ rather than through couple relationships alone (Weston, 1997; Weeks et al., 2001).

You talk to mainstream women [about] class you end up talking about ‘Well, it’s who you marry’ I think that’s the thing with lesbians, that’s what’s different, a woman can change her class by marrying the right fella, that he can kinda drag her up into whatever class ‘cause she then belongs to the husband and joins his family or whatever. For lesbians, that’s different, you don’t have that even if you end up dating a middle-class girl.

(Cathy, 37, Manchester)