Class in the History of Sexuality

Class has been crucial both to how individuals have experienced their desires, and to how those desires have been interpreted, categorised, and articulated. An individual’s class could determine how they understood their own sexuality, and that of others, or whether they even connected their sexual desires to their identity at all. It could also determine how the authorities and/or society at large chose to punish (or not to punish) individuals for their ‘transgressions’ against the sexual norms of time and place. This chapter offers an overview of the intersectional relationship between class and sexuality, and demonstrates that the nuances of class difference and division, across continents, and within regions of the same country, could drastically alter the lived experience of same-sex desire. It shows how the development of class identities impacted upon the development of sexual identities, and details how class divisions operated on sexuality in a global context. In terms of sexuality, shared class experiences could produce a similarity of circumstance that bridged geographical and cultural divides. In the same way, class division and misunderstanding could render shared sexual experiences as unrecognisable within the same town or city.