Same-Sex Marriages: New Generations, New Relationships

216 Pages·2013·0.877 MB·English

by  Brian Heaphy, Carol Smart, Anna Einarsdottir (auth.)

Same-Sex Marriages
Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
Series Editors: Victoria Robinson, University of Sheffield, UK and Diane
Richardson, University of Newcastle, UK
Editorial Board: Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Australia, Kathy Davis,
Utrecht University, The Netherlands, Stevi Jackson, University of York, UK,
Michael Kimmel, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA, Kimiko
Kimoto, Hitotsubashi University, Japan, Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University, USA,
Steven Seidman, State University of New York, Albany, USA, Carol Smart,
University of Manchester, UK, Liz Stanley, University of Edinburgh, UK, Gill
Valentine, University of Leeds, UK, Jeffrey Weeks, South Bank University, UK,
Kath Woodward, The Open University, UK
Titles include:
Niall Hanlon
MASCULINITIES, CARE AND EQUALITY
Identity and Nurture in Men’s Lives
Brian Heaphy, Carol Smart and Anna Einarsdottir (editors)
SAME SEX MARRIAGES
New Generations, New Relationships
Sally Hines and Yvette Taylor (editors)
SEXUALITIES
Past Reflections, Future Directions
Meredith Nash
MAKING ‘POSTMODERN’ MOTHERS
Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image
Victoria Robinson and Jenny Hockey
MASCULINITIES IN TRANSITION
Yvette Taylor, Sally Hines and Mark E. Casey (editors)
THEORIZING INTERSECTIONALITY AND SEXUALITY
S. Hines and Y. Taylor (editors)
SEXUALITIES: PAST REFLECTIONS, FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Yvette Taylor, Michelle Addison (editors)
QUEER PRESENCES AND ABSENCES
Kath Woodward
SEX POWER AND THE GAMES
Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
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Same-Sex Marriages
New Generations, New Relationships
Brian Heaphy, Carol Smart and Anna Einarsdottir
University of Manchester, UK
© Brian Heaphy, Carol Smart and Anna Einarsdottir 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-30023-1
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ISBN 978-1-349-33596-1 ISBN 978-1-137-31106-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137311061
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Contents
List of Tables vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Ordinary Lives, Vital Relationships:
Same-Sex Marriage in Context 16
2 Relationships, Partnerships and Marriages 41
3 Relational Biographies 60
4 Forming and Formalising Relationships 83
5 Money, Couples and the Self 106
6 Sex and Security 128
7 Couple Worlds 147
Conclusion 168
Appendix 1 Researching Same-Sex Marriage 174
Appendix 2 Biographies of Interviewees 178
Bibliography 188
Index 196
v
List of Tables
5.1 Income levels for men 109
5.2 Income levels for women 110
vi
Preface
This book is about formalised same-sex relationships – what in the UK
are legally termed ‘civil partnerships’ and what in the media and every-
day life are termed ‘gay marriages’. Our aim is to show how younger
generations of same-sex couples, who see their lives and relationships
as relatively ordinary, have responded to new opportunities for legally
recognising their relationships by creating meaningful ‘marriages’.
We also aim to shed light on the social and biographical factors that
influence these relationships, and the significance of their formalisation
for partners themselves, their families and personal communities. The
book documents couples’ and individuals’ accounts of their relating
ideals, imaginaries and practices, and in analysing them makes links
between partners’ relational biographies and broader developments in
personal life.
The book is based on joint and individual interviews with partners in
same-sex couples who were aged up to 35 when they entered into civil
partnership. The interviews were carried out as part of a research project
titled ‘Just like Marriage? Young Couples’ Civil Partnerships’ that was
undertaken in 2009 and 2010 and was funded by the British Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC reference: RES-062-23-1308). In
discussing the couples’ formalised relationships we often use the terms
‘civil partnerships’ and ‘marriages’ interchangeably. We do this not to
deny the important legal differences between these, but to reflect the
ways in which our participants used the terms and conceived their rela-
tionships. As is discussed in the book, most partners saw and described
themselves as married on the basis of their entry into civil partnership,
and the overwhelming tendency was to use the terms interchangeably.
As is also discussed in the book, there is a case to be made for seeing
civil partnerships as a form of marriage. However, where participants,
or we as sociologists, determined the distinctions between civil partner-
ships and marriages to be significant, we have explicitly flagged this
up. In discussing the couples we studied, we also regularly use the term
‘young’ to describe them, which may sound as if we are stretching the
term beyond its reasonable limits. It is not entirely satisfactory to us as
authors, but it is difficult to find a better overarching term to indicate
how the couples were generationally located. Similarly, we sometimes
use the term ‘sexual minorities’ in a descriptive way to include a range
vii
viii Preface
of (non-hetero) sexualities organised around different identities and
practices where appropriate. While it is commonplace to use LGBTI (les-
bian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) to describe a range of sexual
identities, our study took relationships as the primary unit of analysis
and not identity. In narrating their relationships, participants often
made reference to their sexual identities (and in some cases individu-
als referred to several identities) but it was sometimes the case that a
specific sexual identity was not explicitly articulated as such. The study
did not seek to impose or fix sexual identities, and where ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’
and ‘bisexual’ identities are attributed to partners this reflects how they
defined themselves (see Appendix 2).
In the study we sought to do two things. First, we wanted to explore
the meanings and practices associated with younger cohorts’ formalised
same-sex relationships. The everyday possibilities for doing same-sex
relationships have altered radically in recent decades, and we sought to
explore how these were engaged with by ‘new’ generations: generations
that included people who had grown up with the relative visibility and
ordinariness of same-sex relationships from an early age, and who could
claim relational citizenship via civil partnership or ‘marriage’ for most
of their adult lives. Second, we sought to explore these relationships and
marriages in their own right, and not as either ‘mimicking’ or ‘q ueering’
heterosexual ones. We aimed to situate them in terms of changing
meanings and practices associated with same-sex and h eterosexual
relationships. This raised the issues of gender and power.
The tendency in existing analyses of relationships has been to view
heterosexual marriage through the lens of gender difference, power
imbalances and inequality and to view same-sex relationships through
the lens of gender sameness, mutual negotiation and equality. While
the norms, values and practices of heterosexual marriages are often
assumed to be socially ‘given’ along gendered lines, those linked to
same-sex relationships are often assumed to be creatively ‘made’ in the
absence of clear-cut gender differences. This is a crude take on relational
agency and power that undermines developments in heterosexual and
same-sex relationships which are intrinsically interlinked. The fact is
that social changes are reconfiguring marriage, heterosexuality, homo-
sexuality and gender in situated ways on the ground, and legal devel-
opments in same-sex marriage are linked to these. Younger cohorts of
same-sex married partners highlight how in practice marriages involve
the interplay between ‘the given’ and ‘the made’. It would be mistaken
to see marriage as a static and omnipotent institution or to ignore
that marriage continues to speak to relational ideals, imaginaries and
Preface ix
practices in powerful ways. The ‘ordinary’ same-sex marriages that are
considered in this book emerge from conversations between the given
and the made in situated contexts. In this respect they are not so differ-
ent from heterosexual marriages. However, they bring into sharp focus
how in some circumstances ordinariness can be a political act. In the
chapters of this book we seek to develop this argument and draw out
its implications for understanding the flow of power with respect to
relationships, gender and sexuality today.