OUT OF TIME AND OUT OF PLACE Habitus dislocation and the importance of affinity groups for ...

360 Pages·2017·2.72 MB·English

OUT OF TIME AND OUT OF PLACE

Habitus dislocation and the importance of
affinity groups for older lesbians and bisexual
women

JILL WILKENS
ORCID IDENTIFIER:0000-0002-2261-6696

THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY

September 2016

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I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in
whole or in part to another university for the award of any other degree.

Signature:

Jill Wilkens

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Acknowledgements

Without the thirty-five participants and the gate-keepers who gave me
access to them, this research would not exist. Skeggs (1997) observes that
the affectivity of research is diminished through the ‘academic analytical
filtering process’ (p.15) but I hope some trace of my participants’ resilience
and good humour remains. Their warm hospitality and patience in
answering my questions made the interviews a joy. Nothing could make
transcription a pleasure, but their attention to detail when reviewing their
transcripts, made the process feel worthwhile. Most importantly, the courage
and joie de vivre with which they have lived their lives and told their stories
are an inspiration to generations of women, including my own, for which I
am truly grateful. As someone born in the 1960s, I am mindful of my
privilege and protection. The experiences of self-concealment,
discrimination, family estrangement and harassment bear little resemblance
to my own and those of my contemporaries, although I do not suggest that
they have been eradicated.

Back and Puwar (2012) urge us to ‘take time, think carefully and slowly’
(p.13), a luxurious imperative not easily followed given the pace and
pressure of current academic funding regimes. I am therefore indebted to
London South Bank University for offering me a scholarship which
supported this research, and particularly grateful to Craig Barker and Cait
Beaumont for securing additional funding to enable me to write up
thoughtfully and attentively. I hope I have achieved my intent in finding a
balance between work that is ‘readerly’ and that which is ‘writerly’ (Plummer,
2001:171). During my time at London South Bank University I had four
supervisors, each of whom inspired and supported me in different ways. I
would particularly like to thank Yvonne Robinson and Jeffrey Weeks for their
time, positivity and inspirational guidance throughout my final year.

My friends and colleagues have had a trying four years. Many people have
patiently read extracts of chapters, talked endlessly about method and, most
importantly, provided encouragement and cheer when I was weary. Julie
Harpin, Tuula Juvonen, Ellis Morgan, Anna Shadrina, Lotika Singha, Jane
Traies and Kairen Zonena all helped to move me on when I was stuck. The
generosity of Louise Mycroft and the rest of the teacher-education team at
Northern College made it possible for me to continue teaching throughout
the life course of this research, demonstrating their genuine commitment to
social purpose and praxis.

A very special mention goes to my friend Maggie Rutter who has read every
chapter at least once, shared her own ideas about cleft habitus as a
working-class, socially mobile woman and generally offered a level of
support well above and beyond the call of our thirty-year friendship.

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Thanks to my small family of origin - Janet and Freddy - for always, always
being there. You are my genes and my blood and most definitely, my family
of choice.

My partner Sarah has lived every minute of this research and done it
patiently, calmly and with the same love and generosity she bestows on me
always. When I started this research we had just returned to Essex from
Yorkshire; as I finish it we are making the journey in reverse. I can’t wait for
our next chapter to begin.

Dedication

Everything I write is, and always will be, dedicated to the loving memory of
Jacqueline and Frederick Wilkens, whose unswerving love and belief in their
daughters continues to make everything possible.

This particular piece of work is also dedicated, with love, to Gwen
(21st December 1936 - 20th September 1996).
I wish I’d known you better.

Publications
Part of Chapters Seven and Eight were initially published in 2016 as ‘The significance of
affinity groups and safe spaces for older lesbians and bisexual women: creating support
networks and resisting heteronormativity in older age’, in Quality in Ageing and Older
Adults, 17 (1), pp. 26-35.

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OUT OF TIME AND OUT OF PLACE
Habitus dislocation and the importance of affinity groups for older
lesbians and bisexual women
Abstract
This research investigates the intersection of ageing, gender, class and
sexual identity with a particular focus on the role of same-sexuality social
groups and networks for older lesbians and bisexual women.

Thirty-five women aged between 57 and 73 were interviewed about a range
of topics including what it was like to come out in the 1950s and 1960s, their
education and employment, their feelings about ageing, whether they had
been lonely or isolated and their experiences of attending groups for
lesbians and bisexual women.

The research found that many participants experienced feelings of being
‘out of place’ that were not to do with financial or structural inequalities but
were culturally and socially shaped by aspects of their social mobility,
generation, gender and sexuality. Using an intersectional approach, I draw
on Bourdieu’s work, using the concept of habitus dislocation to consider the
contradictions of these mobilities. I suggest that many of my participants
faced unprecedented and unique disjunctures between their original habitus
and the new classed, sexual and gendered locations in which they finally
‘arrived’.

The research indicates that participants’ friendships and families of choice,
as well as the social groups they have created and attended across the life
course, have had an important role to play in helping to alleviate the feelings
of difference that are a consequence of multiple mobilities. For many
participants they are sites of resilience and help to promote positive ageing,
offering a sense of belonging to a generation of lesbian and bisexual women
who have faced marginalisation across their life course. However, they are
also locations of hierarchy and privilege, where some are excluded or
precariously positioned.

This study offers a unique view of habitus dislocation as a consequence of
multiple mobilities across the life course of a generational cohort of women,
often under-represented or absent from sexualities research. It makes an
important contribution to the literature on lesbian, gay and bisexual ageing
that focuses solely on loneliness and isolation and the significance of social
support.

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Contents

Acknowledgements p.3
Publications p.4
Abstract p.5
Chapter One: Introduction
1.0 The scope of the research p.9
1.1 The rationale for this study p.10
1.2 Theoretical foundations and methodological approaches p.14
1.3 Conceptualising and defining ‘sexual minorities’ p.20
1.4 Research aims and questions p.23
1.5 Outline of chapters p.26

Chapter Two: A review of the literature
2.0 A word of caution: The limitations of existing research p.28
2.1 The historical context of the current generation of LGB p.29
elders:
Forming an alternative sexual identity in post-war Britain
2.2 Identity and difference: p.34
The intersections of multiple inequalities
2.3 Out of field and out of place: p.47
The habitus and contemporary mobilities
2.4 Loneliness and resilience in older LGBT individuals p.52
2.5 LGBT communities, friendships, groups and belonging p.59
2.6 Research questions p.78

Chapter Three: Methodology
3.0 Introduction p.81
3.1 Who can speak? p.82
Defining and refining the scope of the research.
3.2 Situating my ‘self’ in the research: p.85
Researcher as a positioned subject
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3.3 Designing and ‘doing’ qualitative feminist research p.87
3.4 Issues of ethics and care p.103
3.5 Demographics: Talking about the participants p.112
3.6 Analysis: The art of interpretation p.115

Chapter Four: Social mobility as a site of habitus dislocation
4.0 Vignette: Ivy p.123
4.1 Introduction p.125
4.2 The timing of lives p.128
4.3 1950s education as an agent of social (im)mobility p.129
4.4 A material world: p. 138
Intersections of gender and class in employment
4.5 Theorising adult class identity: p. 143
‘Upward’ mobility and habitus dislocation

Chapter Five: Life course diversity: Gender and sexuality -
contemporary mobilities as a site of habitus dislocation
5.0 Vignette: Gillian p.157
5.1 Introduction p.158
5.2 Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s: p.163
Recognition and transgression of gender role
5.3 Swimming against the tide: p.168
Recognition and transgression of heteronormativity
5.4 Women at work: Gender, sexuality and employment p.181
5.5 Fish out of water: p.190
Adult lesbian identity as uncharted territory

Chapter Six: Identity building as women and lesbians: Creating
communities of belonging and resistance across the life course
6.0 Introduction p.204
6.1 Loneliness, isolation and a sense of being different p.204
6.2 Organising and belonging to groups across the life course: p.212
Feminist groups and Greenham Common Peace Camp

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6.3 Organising and belonging to groups across the life course: p.228
Lesbian groups
6.4 Other ways of belonging p.231

Chapter Seven: Affinity groups and safe spaces: Creating support
networks and resisting heteronormativity in older age
7.0 Introduction p.243
7.1 The cumulative effect of multiple mobilities in older age p.244
7.2 Establishing the continued need for affinity groups p.250
in older age: resisting heteronormativity and ageism
7.3 Affinity groups close up p.253
7.4 Support and belongingness p.262
7.5 Not all rosy: hierarchies and exclusion p.269
7.6 Affinity groups close down p.276

Chapter Eight: Looking back, looking forward
8.0 Summary of findings p.283
8.1 Methodology revisited p.287
8.2 So what? The significance of this work p.289
8.3 Future perfect: p.291
Recommendations for research, policy and practice
8.4 Future imperfect p.297

References p.305

Appendices p.332

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Chapter One: Introduction
1.0 The scope of the research
In this research I explore the challenges and consequences of living a non-
heterosexual life in a heteronormative society, attending particularly to the
intersections within and between ageing, sexuality, gender and social
support. Plummer (2010) proposes that age is a significant location for such
a study, seeing sexualities as ‘situated in age standpoints’ (p.165). My
research focuses on women born between 1940 and 1956 who identify as
lesbian or bisexual. It explores the ways in which they have been ‘mobile’
within their lifetimes, transgressing class boundaries through further and
higher education and resisting the conservative gender and sexual norms of
the mid-twentieth century. Such mobility comes at a cost; lesbians and
bisexual women of this generation are at risk of increased loneliness and
isolation, particularly in their older age. My study investigates the ‘hidden
injuries’ of social class mobility, the impact of self-concealment and
exclusion and the effects of living with sexism, homophobia and
heteronormative regulation, which have led some women to feel ‘out of
place’. It exposes the support networks and communities of resistance and
activism built by lesbian and bisexual women; places that offer a sense of
belonging and social and emotional care to many but are also hierarchical
and rent by disagreement and exclusion. Essentially, this study considers
the impact of multiple mobilities experienced by some older lesbians and
bisexual women, looks at whether belonging to social or support groups
mitigates their sense of ‘difference’ and asks how individuals are positioned
in different ways with regard to these groups and the benefits they afford.
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My specific research aims and questions are further detailed in sections 1.4
and 2.6.

1.1 The rationale for this study
I embarked on this project for many reasons; as a sociologist, teacher and
feminist, committed to empowering others through my work, I am drawn to
the words of Back (2007) when he asserts that sociology has an
increasingly important role to play in attending to otherwise unheard voices:
[S]ociologists can still pay attention to the fragments, the voices and
stories that are otherwise passed over or ignored. (p.1)

This study contributes to and informs the growing body of research
regarding the lives and needs of lesbian gay and bisexual individuals
becoming old in the twenty first century. This generation has grown up and
come of age in a unique social environment with diverse social, economic
and political influences. The post-war, so-called ‘baby boomer’ 1 generations
of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (hereafter LGBT) people, whose
formative years were lived in an era where same-sex attraction was still
widely condemned and generally regarded as deviant, are coming to
retirement and older age; on 1st January 2016, the first ‘boomers’ turned 70.
Although recent estimates put the total lesbian, gay and bisexual (hereafter
LGB) population in England at around 1.6%,2 it is impossible to accurately
calculate the number of individuals in this cohort as there is evidence of

1 The term ‘baby boomer’ is generally used to refer to anyone born between 1946 and 1964.
Although this is often regarded as one generation, there will obviously be a diversity of experiences
between the two ends of this period.
2 In 2014, 1.6% of adults in the UK identified their sexual identity as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Integrated Household Survey (Experimental statistics): January to December 2014.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ [Accessed 1.3.16]

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