Queering the Home

Abstract

In the West, the private sphere of the home is traditionally associated with the heterosexual nuclear family. Through social, cultural, and legal processes, the heterosexual bond has been constructed as central to the family home. Despite these dominant discourses, the home is also a space in which heteronormativity (or the unacknowledged assumption that heterosexuality is the natural and normal form of sexuality) may be subverted. This article considers how the domestic lives of lesbian and gay couples in England challenge the heteronormativity prevalent in dominant discourses of the home. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lesbians and gay men, the article continues to extend and build on the existing literature on queer domesticity by focusing on how lesbian and gay couples divide and understand domestic labor in their homes. The perceived normativity of coupled domesticity and childrearing means that on the one hand the lesbian and gay participants in this study could be seen to fit in with normative ideals of domestic family life. On the other hand, I show how these couples subvert heteronormative assumptions about gendered household practices through their approaches and attitudes towards domestic labor and parenting. In particular, the article focuses on the complex ways in which lesbian and gay couples destabilize traditional domestic gender roles and queer the spaces of the home through the seemingly unremarkable, mundane practices and negotiations of domestic labor and childcare.

Keywords:

• lesbian
• gay
• home
• housework
• domestic labor
• queer
• sexuality

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Kate Boyer and Suzanne Reimer for their continuing support; and to Andrew Gorman-Murray, Rachael Scicluna, and Brent Pilkey for organizing this special issue. The author is also grateful to the other organizers and delegates of the Sexuality at Home workshop (London, 2012) for their inspiration.

Notes

¹ I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for assistance on this point.

² Kentlyn’s preferred pronouns are they/their (personal communication, 2014). Gender-neutral pronouns can be used when a person is neither female nor male, genderqueer, or does not want to be referred to using gendered pronouns such as she/her or he/his.

³ A term used to describe people who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth.

⁴ www.carlabarrett.co.uk and @CarlaGeog.

⁵ In step-parent families, the step-parent tends to perform less childcare because they are perceived to have less responsibility for the child’s well-being (Moore 2008). In the case of Wendy and Debby’s family, Wendy takes primary responsibility for the parenting because she has cared for her teenage daughters since they were babies; whereas she and her children have only lived with Debby for around a year. The couple explained the role division in their home in terms of negotiating and navigating a new (queer) domestic situation. I have not focused on their family in my analysis of parenting roles, because it was the only step-family within my sample.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carla Barrett

Carla Barrett is undertaking a PhD in Geography at the University of Southampton. Her research explores the geographies of sexuality and home in the contemporary UK, with a particular focus on domestic labor. More broadly, Carla’s research interests include feminist, queer, and children’s geographies. [email protected]