Home and sexuality

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES

IN FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE

Home and

Sexuality

The ‘Other’ Side

of the Kitchen

Rachael

m Scicluna

Series Editors

Graham Allan

Keele University

Keele, United Kingdom

Lynn Jamieson

University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

David H.J. Morgan

University of Manchester

Manchester, United Kingdom

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family

and Intimate Life

‘The Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life series is

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More information about this series at

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Rachael M Scicluna

Home and Sexuality

The ‘Other’ Side of the Kitchen

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life

ISBN 978-1-137-46037-0 ISBN 978-1-137-46038-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-46038-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930827

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Rachael M Scicluna

School of Anthropology and Conservation

University of Kent, UK

In Memory Of My Sister

JOSETTE SCICLUNA

(1972–2004)

You have been my inspiration,

with much love and affection.

vii

The task of representing a group of older lesbians residing in the diverse

and multi-ethnic metropolis of London to the reader has been enormously

challenging. Considering that older lesbians are generally a geographically

dispersed group, I tried to reach out as far and wide as possible. London

has been the home of many lesbian feminists, who during the 1970s and

1980s migrated from various parts of Britain to the northern regions of inner

London. Similarly, by following the people, I eventually ended up in the

regions of North London, where most key participants lived. My long-term

voluntary services with the charity Opening Doors proved to be an excellent

means of gaining a certain understanding of place and social relations.

I am deeply grateful towards my key participants, all of whom remain

anonymous (including their pet names) who offered their personal and

intimate kitchen stories, and also, their hospitality, trust and helped me

understand who ‘lesbian feminists’ are through their life histories. I would

not have been able to actualise this manuscript without them.

The committed co-ordinators and staff that ran Opening Doors gave me the

unique possibility to volunteer and ‘hang out.’ This was instrumental towards my

understanding of group dynamics and the issues that the older LGBT community

face in their daily lives. Besides the charity being a safe place for the ‘women,’ it

became so for me as well. Most of all, the Opening Doors co-ordinators believed

in my research project, and that it would contribute positively towards the lives

of the older LGBT community. This encouragement was priceless.

I want to thank the editorial staff and anonymous reviewers at Palgrave

Macmillan who made this manuscript come to fruition. Professor David

Morgan enthusiastically suggested that I publish my doctoral thesis after a ser￾endipitous informal chat over a cup of tea. For this, I shall always be grateful.

Acknowledgements

viii Acknowledgements

I also gratefully acknowledge the Research Councils UK (RCUK) funded

project ‘Transitions in Kitchen Living’ (TiKL) within the New Dynamics of

Ageing Programme to which my doctorate was affiliated and which made my

independent research possible. I am ever grateful to Professor Sheila Peace, who

first alerted me to the importance of the centripetal theme of the kitchen. This

led me to look at the ‘anthropology of the kitchen’ and the meaning of home

through the perspectives of older lesbians across their life course. The project

also encouraged me to contemplate more broadly upon the cultural meaning

of the kitchen in the metropolis of London, where my research was based.

During the writing and revisions of this manuscript, I benefitted from the

advice of a number of colleagues: Sarah F. Green, Rebecca Jones, Daniela

Peluso, Ana Porroche-Escudero, Maria Pantas, Brent Pilkey, and Paul Simpson

had especially useful comments. Professor Judith M. Okely’s mentoring on

general anthropological issues, especially those related to anthropological

practice, was invaluable. Finally, I would like to thank my partner and col￾league, Carin Tunåker, who supported me enormously in the last phase of

materialising this monograph. Her critical anthropological observations and

our discussions on the generational differences, and similarities, between the

older and younger LGBT communities has led to a more inspired text.

ix

Contents

1 Introduction: The ‘Other’ Side of the Kitchen 1

Part I Home and Sexuality 27

2 Multiple Meanings of Homes: A Changing Social

and Political Domain across Cultures 29

3 The Domestic Kitchen across Time 53

Part II The Domestic as a Tool for Ethnographic Inquiry 83

4 Towards Alternative Domesticities 85

5 The Kitchen is Good to Think: The Kitchen as a Place

for Theorising 117

Part III The ‘Other’ Side of the Kitchen 147

6 The Kitchen as a Place for Politics: A Contested

and Subversive Place 149

x Contents

7 Turning the Tables: Generational Domestic Battles 183

8 The Kitchen as a Place of, and for, Memory

and Narration 217

9 The Political Liveliness of the Domestic 243

Appendix 1 253

Appendix 2 255

Appendix 3 267

Index 269

xi

Image 1: Shopping window on Mother’s Day, London (June 2011) 255

Image 2: Shopping window on Mother’s Day, London (June 2011) 256

Image 3: ‘The Cup of Dreams’ Underground

Tube Station (January 2011) 256

Image 4: ‘The Alternative to Homecooking (Cook)’ (June 2011) 257

Image 5: ‘Cook’ (June 2011) 258

Image 6: Laura’s kitchen showing folded kitchen table 258

Image 7: Laura’s colourful kitchen 259

Image 8: Rose’s kitchen and her cat 259

Image 9: Rose’s kitchen and whimsical jokes 260

Image 10: Rose’s cat in the kitchen 260

Image 11: Veronica’s kiln 261

Image 12: Kitchen as art studio 261

Image 13: Veronica’s and Sharon’s piecemeal kitchen 262

Image 14: Veronica’s Canadian goose tile 262

Image 15: Veronica’s star tile 263

Image 16: Arielle and friends in her kitchen 263

Image 17: Amelia with her grand-daughter

and the view of her garden 264

Image 18: Amelia’s kitchen showing her sister’s painting 265

Image 19: Lara’s open-plan kitchen and her artwork 265

List of Figures

© The Author(s) 2017 1

R.M. Scicluna, Home and Sexuality, Palgrave Macmillan Studies

in Family and Intimate Life, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-46038-7_1

1

Introduction: The ‘Other’ Side

of the Kitchen

For four years, I volunteered for a London-based organisation called Opening

Doors, which provides services for the older (50+) lesbian, gay, bisexual and

transgender (LGBT, hereafter) community.1

I organised monthly film events

and participated in other social activities for the older lesbian community,

even outside this formal network. On an evening in late September 2012,

I turned up for the film event as usual. A short letter was given to me by

Angela,2

the Opening Doors Women’s Coordinator. Inside the envelope, I

also found an African wooden spoon. It said:

If memory serves me well today, you are Rachael or Rachel. Some months ago a

wee chat with you was creatively added to my life’s recipe, adding thoughtful

flavors of ideas, recollections and on, and on. The kitchen conversations of my

mind and heart.

This spoon is my thankful exchange. My friend, Alice, some years ago was in

Africa somewhere doing something arty. It’s been so long ago now that I’ve for￾gotten the details of her full, multi-layered life and walks.

I have loved, used and looked at this spoon from Africa. I’m passing it on to you.

Go well in health, joy, honesty, contentment and creativity.

In sisterhood,

Jeanette

1Opening Doors London (ODL) is in partnership with Age UK Camden as the lead agency, and in

partnership with Age UK across London. It is the biggest project providing information and support

services with and for OLGBT people in the UK; see http://openingdoorslondon.org.uk/.

2All names used in this text are pseudonyms to protect the confidentiality of key participants.

2

This letter came to me as a surprise. That conversation had happened three

months earlier. I recall it with clarity, maybe because like other anthropolo￾gists, I am trained to learn, remember and note-take encounters, as I did with

this one. After all, it is such experiences, memories and notes which transform

into material. Nonetheless, that evening I remember being struck by Jeanette’s

emotional reaction towards the kitchen; emotions that were steeped in nos￾talgia, as in the letter above. Perhaps through the gift of the wooden spoon

Jeanette was also subconsciously passing on lesbian history and experience to

a younger generation.

Jeanette is an older black lesbian in her late 60s, very youthful and fit. Her

speech is extremely eloquent and poetic, and while talking she has the habit

of moving her body theatrically, like a contemporary dancer, to the charming

lilt of her voice. She joined the group much later than other women. Angela,

the Women’s Coordinator and an older lesbian herself, surprised me with the

way she enthusiastically introduced me to Jeanette, ‘Tell her, tell her what

you are writing about. It is a wonderful topic.’ Jeanette was intrigued. After I

explained briefly what my research was about, Jeanette exclaimed with excite￾ment, ‘What a beautiful topic. This is great as the kitchen is a very important

space. All those discussions we had around the kitchen table in communes

and squats, what memories and stories!’

That evening I sat in the row behind Jeanette and we all watched a lesbian

film called Hanna Free attentively. All the monthly films were chosen by the

women themselves. That evening the film featured an older lesbian in a care

home reminiscing about her lifelong love affair she had with a woman she

grew up with in the same town in the USA, to a younger lesbian. In this film,

Hannah refers to her lover as her ‘home.’ Most of the film scenes were set in

the kitchen. Perhaps the oscillation between the past and the present in the

film, the kitchen scenes and the passing on of personal history from an older

lesbian to a younger lesbian compelled Jeanette to share her memories with

me. As soon as the film finished, Jeanette turned around and eagerly said, ‘I

had two thoughts. Two thoughts about the kitchen. One is about my child￾hood and the intergenerational experiences I had in the kitchen. I remember

sitting around the kitchen table with my mum and grandmother. A lot of

activity went on. The other is about the politics of the eighties because for

black women the kitchen was a very important space. It was empowering and

liberating as that was our space. However, there is also the aspect of class and

money which is very important and makes a difference in what you experi￾ence.’ That evening before she left she said, ‘This is a beautiful topic, go and

write it all up.’

2 Home and Sexuality

3

This prelude sets the scene and tone of this ethnography. The context is

chosen purposely, as it is a typical one. The term ‘other’ (Said 1978) in the title

is used as a metaphor both to imply the aspect of the peripheral position that

older lesbians hold in society as a minority group and to bring out the mean￾ing of alternative homes and family formations, both theoretically and experi￾entially. In addition, this emotional reaction to the theme of the kitchen is not

unusual.3

According to some women that feature in this ethnography, it was

‘a breath of fresh air,’ as they confided that they had had enough of researchers

prying into their lives and would then continue telling me, ‘but your topic

is interesting, fun and different.’4

The topic seemed to compel the women

to talk about their lives. It elicited a unique mode of memory-telling. I also

observed and experienced how at times this type of excitement was accompa￾nied by tension and ambivalence. This ambivalence came out strongly once

their excitement was juxtaposed with the stories I was told, which held some

poignant life experiences, as I illustrate in Chaps. 6, 7 and 8.

Such profound sentiments about the domestic are taken seriously and the￾orised in relation to wider social issues, and especially in relation to hetero￾normativity, and expressions of daily resistance at home. Their life experiences

are recounted through memories of domestic place, mainly those that are

attached to the kitchen. I explore the way the domestic kitchen is experienced,

spoken about and imagined by this specific group of older lesbians. There was

some form of hidden tension and ambivalence behind the smiles with which

people initially greeted the subject of the kitchen. These ambivalent emo￾tions are taken as a wider and collective emotion representing more generally

gender inequality and family politics in the UK and beyond. By focusing on

the experiences of this group of older lesbians, and the memories they attach

to the domestic kitchen, it is possible to bring out the heterogeneity of the

domestic (Das et  al. 2008), including lesbian living places (Elwood 2000;

Gabb 2005). In so doing, this ethnography aims to contribute to the diversity

of gendered and sexual experience within the domestic across time and space.

Also, it seeks to complement the extensive literature and ongoing dialogue

between sexuality and spatialities, and the meaning of space and place, so it

draws on key aspects of cross-cultural perspectives on social space often stud￾ied beyond Europe (e.g. Humphrey 1974; de Certeau 1984; Bourdieu 1990;

Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995; Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995; Cieraad 1999;

Cook 2014).

3 I use the present tense as till today I experience and observe this kind of reaction.

4This reaction is related to the fact that the older lesbian and gay community is now an over-researched

group and suffers from research fatigue—a long way from the mid-1990s when it was a burgeoning field.

1 Introduction: The ‘Other’ Side of the Kitchen 3

4

In addition to my anthropological work, I also turn to that of social his￾torians, sociologists and cultural geographers to understand how the idea of

domesticity has attained its natural power as heteronormative. The meaning

of heteronormativity is taken to be ‘the privileging and naturalizing of domi￾nant versions of heterosexuality’ (Jones and Ward 2010). These dominant het￾erosexual assumptions or social norms are also analysed in relation to wider

historical institutions and practices (Castro et  al. 2011). In so doing, this

ethnography aims to contribute to the diversity of gendered and sexual expe￾rience within the domestic across time and cultures. Here, seemingly private

‘home’ space is problematised within a Western metropolis with gendered,

historical specificity.

1 The Context and the Study

This book is an ethnographic analysis about the meanings of home and domes￾tic place among a group of people who over the past five decades or so have

sought to create alternative, intimate and public living spaces. The protago￾nists who enact the ethnographic narrative are a small group of older lesbians,

mainly feminist activists, residing in the metropolis of London. Although at

times, I do use the term ‘queer’ in order to refer to current literature, many

would not identify to this term, at least at the time when this research was

conducted. In fact, during an inter-generational arts activity held in Central

London, one activity asked the participants to write how they identify. Many

of the younger generation, in fact, used the term ‘queer.’ The older generation

preferred terms such as feminist lesbian or gay woman. At Opening Doors,

the coordinators would use the term ‘women’ to refer to the members. This

seemed more than acceptable. Hence, I use their preferred self-ascribed terms

such as women, feminist lesbian and gay women accordingly.

Along the way, I met some incredible women who taught me a great deal

about the politics of sexuality through their lives, their hurdles, their achieve￾ments, their joys and the disagreements amongst each other. They taught me

about feminism and what it meant to be a feminist from their perspective.

Some of their lives and thoughts form part of this ethnography. Not all the

older lesbians who feature in this ethnography were part of this official net￾work, but through it I was able to experience and understand group politics

and their daily lives. Part of the data presented here was also collected through

repeated semi-structured interviews in 13 urban homes and 2 unstructured

discussion groups, mainly in North London. Like other ethnographers, I lis￾tened to their stories, asked questions and got drawn into their lives. When

4 Home and Sexuality