Jeffrey Weeks

The world we have won : the remaking of erotic and intimate life

1. A Different World 2. Cultures of Restraint 3. The Great Transition 1: Democratization and Autonomy 4. The Great Transition 2: Regulation, Risk and Resistance 5. Chaotic Pleasures: Diversity and the New Individualism 6. The Contradictions of Contemporary Sexuality 7. Moments of Intimacy: Norms, Values and Everyday Commitments 8. Sexual Wrongs and Sexual Rights

Citizenship and Same Sex Relationships

In the UK in recent years, a dramatic growth in media concern with same sex relationships has led to the suggestion that the resulting visibility is indicative of the extent to which the intimate lives of non-heterosexuals are becoming more acceptable. In this article we question this using data drawn from the Families of Choice Project, a qualitative research project based on interviews with over a hundred non-heterosexual women and men, which highlight the ways in which they are prevented from participating as full citizens in civic, political, economic, and legal society. Using Plummer’s (1995) notion of intimate citizenship, we discuss first how respondents talk about the ways in which their intimate relationships are not recognised or validated legally, economically, politically or socially. We then analyse the respondents, ideas about what policy options could be considered to include their ‘families of choice’. Finally, we argue that the family model on which most legislation and policy is based is too narrow, exclusive and inflexible to include families of choice.

Sex, Money and the Kitchen Sink: Power in Same Sex Couple Relationships

While there has been notable sociological concern with the themes of power, equality and inequality in couple relationships, the focus has almost exclusively been on heterosexual couples. At an empirical level a large body of work has focused on the intimate and domestic lives of men and women, and this suggests that gender relations, particularly within ‘the home’, continue to be marked and structured by inequalities with regard to labour and status (for discussions of change in this context see VanEvery, 1995; Benjamin and Sullivan, 1996). The limited research available on same-sex relationships emphasizes the difference between heterosexual and non-heterosexual relationships in this regard. In brief, it is suggested that members of same-sex couples are allowed to remain free of the traditional ‘entrapments’ of feminine/masculine stereotypes, and in the absence of conventions and guidelines are faced with the opportunity and possibility of developing more egalitarian relationships (for a review of the literature on same-sex couples see Weeks et al., 1996).

Families, Intimacy and Social Capital

Three major emphases in interpretations of the state of contemporary intimate relationships can be broadly characterised. These are (i) breakdown and demoralisation; (ii) individualisation and democratisation; and (iii) a recognition of elements of continuity, particularly around power relations. We consider these three positions, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, relating them to key themes of identities and values, networks and trust and reciprocity, and major theorisations of the concept of social capital. We offer a critique of existing positions and suggestions for the future, cast in the light of potential policy relevance.

Regulation, Resistance, Recognition:

Since Denmark pioneered the legal recognition of same-sex unions in 1989, most West European countries have followed suit, the majority since the Millennium. Five countries, including Canada and South Africa have recognized same-sex marriage. The only major western democracies without similar laws in place today are Italy, Greece, Ireland and the USA (Kollman, 2007; Descoutures et al., 2008). This has been a major and unexpected transformation. In the 1970s, with the rise of gay liberation ideas across most western countries, but especially in the USA, few, whether inside or outside the movement, mentioned the possibility of same-sex marriage. It seemed beyond the horizon of possibility, intelligibility or even of desirability in the context of fierce lesbian and gay critiques of the family and heterosexual marriage. As late as the early 1990s, Denmark’s initiative, and the parallel efforts to get the Hawaiian Supreme Court to recognize same-sex marriage in the USA, seemed almost quixotic. But by the turn of the Millennium it had become a key issue in the LGBT world, and apparently a priority for progressive governments (and a potent symbolic issue for conservative governments and movements) throughout western democracies. The issue surely signals two important, intertwined but separable shifts: shifting priorities within the LGBT world itself, and important changes within the national cultures that were clearly liberalizing their attitudes and laws. Kollman (2007) sees in these shifts an important political convergence, signalling the rise of a human rights oriented network of LGBT activists committed to the recognition of ‘love rights’, and of crossnational political elites educated in new rights discourses and prepared to seize the initiative, even in the absence of high profile campaigns. The recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain, for example, was pushed through by a modernizing Socialist government despite the lack of a mass agitation for it, and in the teeth of Church opposition. Commentary

Same-Sex Partnerships

As I thought about, and then wrote, this article in the first half of 2003, the press startlingly filled up with commentaries about same-sex partnerships. Partly this was because same-sex relationships became a major issue for the Christian (and especially Anglican) Church. Thus the British newspaper, The Guardian, headlined a story: ‘Blessing for Male Partners Reopens Church’s Wounds on Gays’ (Bates, 2003: 3), whilst a subsidiary headline said ‘Calling on us to resign would mean the church losing a third of its staff’. The ‘us’ are lesbian or gay clergy, and the overall story was about the Anglican communion being wracked by divisions about the recognition and blessing of same-sex unions. The question of gay bishops and their celibacy further inflamed the situation, following the nomination of Canon Jeffrey John (and his subsequent withdrawal) as Bishop of Reading. His ‘active’ homosexual past, even in a long-term committed relationship with another man, was sufficient to deny him preferment (Gledhill 2003; Morgan, 2003). The Church was apparently in danger of splitting apart on an issue that less than a generation earlier would have been regarded as too arcane and irrelevant to be worthy of consideration. But ructions in the Church were only one aspect of a genuine cultural revolution, which left many people unsettled. From being a minority concern little more than a decade ago (in the desire for ‘gay marriage’), today the campaign for the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in some form has become the dominant claim in the non-heterosexual communities (see Wintermute and Andenaes, 2001; Merin, 2002), as well as of obvious concern to the faith communities whose injunctions helped taboo same-sex activities in the first place. Even in the laggard UK, partly under pressure from Europe and the courts, there were modest changes from the late 1990s, for example in the immigration regulations and on tenancy rights, which recognized same-sex relationships. Several UK cities, including London, Brighton and Leeds, instituted symbolic, though not legally binding, commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples in the early 2000s. Yet more significant changes were signaled in 2002–03. At the end of 2002 the Blair government successfully passed through Parliament new adoption procedures, which fully recognized the rights of lesbian and gay couples (and in fact

Fallen Heroes? All about Men

The question of what men are and what they want has become central to public debates and private concerns but we cannot understand what is happening if we see it as a problem for men alone. It needs to be considered as part of a long process in which masculinity and femininity, sexual normality and abnormality, and the nature of intimate life are being profoundly shaken. The emergence of a crisis discourse around masculinity has served to obscure the different conditions under which men live their lives, and to exaggerate in turn the radical dichotomy of men and women. Binary divisions along gender and sexual lines can be seen as an historical fiction which conceals a much more confused mixture of fears, anxieties and desires about what being a man means. The dramatic social and cultural changes that we are now witnessing provide conditions for reinventing the relations of gender and sexuality.

Community and contracts: Tensions and dilemmas in the voluntary sector response to HIV and AIDS

Abstract Voluntary action rooted in community activism was central to the earliest collective responses to AIDS in Britain and the US, and resulted in the emergence of a wide range of community and non‐governmental organisations working to alleviate the impact of the epidemic on affected communities. Drawing on data from a series of in‐depth case studies conducted among voluntary agencies working in the field of HIV and AIDS in Britain, this paper illuminates some of the tensions and contradictions facing such agencies as they seek to respond to changes in Government policy. Central among the themes to emerge are tensions over service norms and the role of volunteers, between self‐help and altruism, informal versus formal organisational structure, political campaigning and service delivery, responding to national or to local needs, generalism and specialism, and autonomy and co‐ordination. Future challenges identified include targeting and mainstreaming, as well as maintaining intact the political project...

Community Responses to HIV and AIDS: the ‘de-gaying’ and ‘re-gaying’ of AIDS

The term ‘community’ has a resonant tone. This resonance is evoked in a variety of ways, suggesting something more than the individual (though it is composed of individuals), less than the state (though the state can embody a sense of community) — a vital intermediary body, or rather series of bodies, between both. Hardly anyone, unless they are prepared to deny altogether that society is something more than individuals and their families, is against the notion of community. The difficulty lies in the fact that this evocative term means different things to different people.

Traps We Set Ourselves

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