"Historians have noted that gay identity is central to the history of capitalism, but because of an assumption that workplaces were "straight spaces" in which queer people passed, historians of sexuality have had almost nothing to say about work, instead directing their attention to the street and to the bar. This book presents employment and the accompanying fear of job loss as one of the most salient features of queer life for most of the twentieth century, and looks at the political and legal developments of gay labor in the workplace, alongside the histories of women's, minorities', and immigrants' labor. Starting midcentury with the Lavender Scare-the federal government's massive purge of gay people from the Civil Service-the book traces how workplaces opened to gay workers, albeit unevenly, over the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a number of archival sources and interviews, this is a history of the workplace that shows larger structural change while also giving voice to many underrepresented individuals. Throughout, Margot Canaday emphasizes the concept of precariousness, a commonly deployed category within labor studies to designate that expanding category of workers in industrial societies who are detached from permanent, standardized, secure, and protected employment. While women and racial minorities also share this longer history of precarious work, the LGBT experience was a particularly powerful precedent for the changing character of economic life at the end of the 20th century. Despite that, the book shows that workplaces were surprisingly responsive to demands from gay employees for protection and benefits. Canaday shows that business was out ahead of both the government and labor unions in offering antidiscrimination protection and domestic partner benefits to gay workers. The final part of the book traces how gay rights came to be the most marketized/privatized civil rights social movement and how we should consider the gay experience in the workplace not as marginal or atypical but as central and predictive for all workers"-- Provided by publisher. "A masterful history of the LGBT workforce in AmericaWorkplaces have traditionally been viewed as "straight spaces" in which queer people passed. As a result, historians have directed limited attention to the experiences of queer people on the job. Queer Career rectifies this, offering an expansive historical look at sexual minorities in the modern American workforce. Arguing that queer workers were more visible than hidden and, against the backdrop of state aggression, vulnerable to employer exploitation, Margot Canaday positions employment and fear of job loss as central to gay life in postwar America.Rather than finding that many midcentury employers tried to root out gay employees, Canaday sees an early version of "don't ask/don't tell": in all kinds of work, as long as queer workers were discreet, they were valued for the lower wages they could be paid, their contingency, their perceived lack of familial ties, and the ease with which they could be pulled in and pushed out of the labor market. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, they were harbingers of post-Fordist employment regimes we now associate with precarity. While progress was not linear, by century's end some gay workers rejected their former discretion, and some employers eventually offered them protection unattained through law. Pushed by activists at the corporate grassroots, business emerged at the forefront of employment rights for sexual minorities. It did so, at least in part, in response to the way that queer workers aligned with, and even prefigured, the labor system of late capitalism.Queer Career shows how LGBT history helps us understand the recent history of capitalism and labor and rewrites our understanding of the queer past"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.