Labour and Love: Working-Class Lesbians in Vancouver, 1970-1983
| dc.contributor.author | Watson, Morgan | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Lepp, Annalee | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Marks, Lynne | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-01-04T17:50:27Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2023 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-01-04 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of History | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts M.A. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | The experiences of working-class lesbians in Canada after 1969 have not been adequately addressed in historical scholarship. This thesis addresses that gap, using oral history interviews conducted with six working-class lesbians who lived in Vancouver during the 1970s and early 1980s. Situating the interviewees in relation to other working-class lesbians, within the leftist political movements, and within lesbian feminist community, reveals complex trends around class, politics, education, and culture. The cohort of interviewees were found to be removed from some elements of working-class culture; however, they also did not neatly fit into the mixed and middle-class feminist spaces they frequented. Upward mobility resulting from political engagement and education is posited as a reason why interviewees may have experienced a level of removal from working-class culture. Examining interviewees’ relationships to working-class lesbian culture and upward mobility begins the work of connecting the disparate bodies of scholarship that examine pre- and post-1970 lesbian history. Examining interviewees’ relationships to lesbian feminist community indicates the ongoing significance of their class backgrounds as well as the central role feminism played in their lives. By detailing the interviewees’ experiences of love and classism within the lesbian feminist community, this thesis begins the work of including working-class lesbian experiences into historical scholarship after 1969. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2025-12-21 | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/15782 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en_US |
| dc.subject | lesbian | en_US |
| dc.subject | working class | en_US |
| dc.subject | feminism | en_US |
| dc.title | Labour and Love: Working-Class Lesbians in Vancouver, 1970-1983 | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |