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Gay identities and the culture of class

Material queer analyses argue the urgent need to reincorporate class to comprehend sexual (re)formations in advanced capitalism, and some theorists propose a revitalized historical materialism as a framework for doing this. In contrast, this article illuminates the significance of class for late modern sexualities by taking a ‘cultural’ approach to the issue. By analysing gay men’s personal accounts of class (dis-)identification that were told in interviews in Britain, the article elucidates the ways in which class and sexuality were articulated as intertwined, and how class and gay identities were constructed relationally through each other. Specifically, it generates insights into the performativities of classed gay identities; the differential value attached to working- and middle-class identities; and how narratives of (dis)identification often articulate gay and working class identities as relational ‘Others’. Contrary to some theoretical and popular notions of gay identities as classless, my analysis shows that class identities can be centrally important to gay ones. While the relationship between gay classed identities and socio-economic positioning is not straightforward, such identities illuminate how cultural, social and economic (dis-)incentives promote distancing from ‘working-class’ forms of existence and strong attachments to ‘middle-class’ ones and to the idea of gay class transcendence. Such distancing and attachments are also features of sexualities theory and research that deny the significance of class.