To celebrate Pride Month, we are sharing some of the LGBTQ+ research taking place in our Department at the moment.
A study published in The Sociological Review earlier this year found that one’s social class has a large role in shaping how one performs intimacy within a relationship.
Co-authored by DPhil student See Pok Loa and Susanne Y.P. Choi of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the study compared how working- and middle-class gay men constructed relationship ideals, navigated the process of relationship formation, and maintained relationships.
Previous research has linked social class to relationship outcomes (such as a couple’s transition into marriage and marital stability). However, little has been done to link social class with the processes and mechanisms by which individuals develop and maintain intimate relationships.
To address this, the paper conducted in-depth interviews with 38 gay men from Hong Kong. Half of the participants were working-class, while the other half were middle-class.
To investigate the relationship between social class and intimacy, Loa and Choi introduced a framework of ‘intimacy fields’, building on Bourdieu's work and the concept of sexual fields. They defined an ‘intimacy field’ as the configurations of social relationships underlying the 'doing' of romantic and sexual relationships.
Since an intimacy field chiefly concerns connections with a degree of closeness, the formation and maintenance of relationships of durability and stability often become a central issue.
Loa and Choi’s study found that, as well as sexual attractiveness, participants often considered the cultural, social and financial capital of a potential partner in their performance of intimacy. Intimacy fields were therefore heavily shaped by social class differences.
Both working- and middle-class participants considered an ideal partner as someone who was compatible with them in terms of financial standing, spending power, consumption patterns, and profession.
This preference encouraged within-class relationships and meant intimacy fields were often constructed following class boundaries.
Both working- and middle-class participants aspired to form long-term relationships. However, class inequalities in financial, social and cultural capital meant working- and middle-class men often adopted different relationship formation strategies, and had different abilities to maintain these relationships.
For example, the middle-class participants used class markers such as salary, type of job, education, and lifestyle to create exclusive online dating networks, which working-class men found difficult to join.
Furthermore, differences in cultural capital prevented working-class participants from using dating apps that required a certain level of English proficiency, and thus a certain level of educational attainment.
The commodification of public gay spaces and their association with neo-liberal and middle-class lifestyles also marginalised the working-class participants, leaving them feeling like they were ‘less desirable’.
Despite their class disadvantages, the working-class participants actively avoided financial dependence on their partners. They insisted on being financially independent to preserve their masculinity. They also shared a much looser boundary between casual sex encounters and intimate relationships.
Getting married (abroad, as same-sex marriage is not recognised in Hong Kong) was also considered a key marker of signalling commitment. However, working-class men felt this to be a luxury that was denied to them due to their economic and work circumstances. Working-class men therefore felt unconfident in building long-term future plans and overcoming institutional barriers, and less able to maintain a long-term relationship.
When participants attempted to forge relationships across the class divide, they faced challenges navigating a different intimacy field marked by different class-related social frameworks and capital mismatches.
The findings demonstrate how class inequality impacts everyday lives (including the personal and private domains of intimacy) and how class and intimacy are mutually constituted. Class inequalities and hierarchies shape the practices of intimacy, which in turn reproduce class hierarchies and police class boundaries.
You can get in touch with See Pok here.
