Canaday, Margot

OUR SYNOPSIS: Margot Canaday explores the histories of LBGTQIA+ workers from the mid-twentieth century into the present day, utilizing oral histories to tell these human stories. She argues that many of these workers represented “a vulnerable labor force—one whose consciousness was shaped by the government purges [of LBGTQIA+ federal workers], and who commonly knew other queer people who had lost jobs.” (9) For mid-century, she decenters the Lavender Scare to “reconceptualize the gay work experience not as something repressed and hidden but rather as a form of labor in the way one might talk about the history of women’s work or immigrant labor.” (38) However, at least until the 1970s most of these workers were underpaid and undervalued. At the same time, their relative labor flexibility and other “state-created legal vulnerabilities” were taken advantage of. (13) Meanwhile, other LGBTQIA+ workers worked in “the queer work world,” meaning fields where sexuality was not scrutinized, which tended to be low paying and temporary. (70) LGBTQIA+ workers increasingly seized greater workplace acceptance of their identities towards the end of the twentieth century.