The Gentrification of Queer Activism: Diversity Politics and the Promise of Inclusion in London (Sociology of Diversity) [1 ed.] 9781529228564, 9781529228571, 9781529228588, 1529228565

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Olimpia Burchiellaro

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The Gentrification of Queer Activism

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The Gentrification of Queer Activism Diversity Politics and the Promise of Inclusion in London Olimpia Burchiellaro

Sociology of Diversity series Series Editor: David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut, US

The Sociology of Diversity series brings together the highest quality sociological and interdisciplinary research specific to ethnic, racial, gender and sexualities diversities.

Forthcoming in the series: Critical Race Theory and the Search for Truth Rodney Coates

Out now in the series: Racial Diversity in Contemporary France: The Case of Colorblindness Marie Neiges Léonard Disproportionate Minority Contact and Racism in the US: How We Failed Children of Color Paul R. Ketchum and B. Mitchell Peck Southern Craft Food Diversity: Challenging the Myth of a US Food Revival Kaitland M. Byrd Beer and Racism: How Beer Became White, Why It Matters, and the Movements to Change It Nathaniel Chapman and David Brunsma

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Sociology of Diversity series Series Editor: David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut, US

Advisory board David L. Brunsma, Virginia Tech, US Sharon S. Collins, University of Illinois at Chicago, US Enobong Anna Branch, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US Vessula Misheva, Uppsala Universitet, Sweden J.T. Thomas, University of Mississippi, US Peter Wade, University of Manchester, UK

Find out more at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/sociology-of-diversity

THE GENTRIFICATION OF QUEER ACTIVISM Diversity Politics and the Promise of Inclusion in London Olimpia Burchiellaro

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2023 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2856-​4 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2857-​1 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2858-​8 ePdf The right of Olimpia Burchiellaro to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: blu inc Front cover image: unsplash/Drew Beamer Bristol University Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

I dedicate this book to David Pollard, whose commitment to radical politics, pubs and queerness is the driving force behind this project.

Contents Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction

1

1​

Between Corporate Diversity and the Closure of Queer Spaces: The Neoliberal Politics of Inclusion in East London

25

2​

Coming Out for Business: Lesbian Tech CEOs and the CEO-​ization of Queer Politics

46

3​

Diversity Work and Queer Value: Putting Queer Differences to Work in the LGBTQ-​friendly Corporation

66

4​

The Straightening Tendencies of Inclusion: The Friends of the Joiners Arms and the Normativities of Gentrification

89

5​

As Soon as this Pub Closes: The Temporalities of Gentrification and Other Queer Utopias

109

Conclusion

132

Notes Bibliography Index

139 143 161

vii

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Acknowledgements I am grateful to colleagues and students at the University of Westminster for their support on this project, including Daniel Conway, Elisabeth Michielsens, Francis Ray White, Jennifer Fraser, Catherine Charrett and Caroline Taysen. I also want to thank Nick Rumens, Sadhvi Dar, Angela Martinez Dy, Deborah Brewis, Patrizia Zanoni, Peter Bloom, Cornelius Rijneveld, Gabriel Popham, Francesca Romana Ammaturo, Rahul Rao and Amardeep Dhillon for engaging with my work over the years. My deep thanks and admiration go to Caroline Osella and Mina Cruz for nurturing my interest in gender/​sexuality and for igniting my interest in queerness and anthropology. To you I owe everything. Amy Roberts, Peter Cragg, Jon Ward, Silver Chicón, Dwayne Clarke, Joe Langlois, Dan Glass, Becky Dann, Cal Marrin, Dan Laverick, Izzy Lewis, Jane Clendon, Erkan Affan, Carla Ecola, Silvia Petretti, Jess May and all the other queer activists in London made this project possible through their longstanding commitment to the emancipatory power of queer spaces. Thank you also to all those who have supported the Friends of the Joiners Arms over the last ten years, including all those who have attended campaign meetings, danced the night away at the drag king nights and bought shares to open our community-​owned, community-​run queer pub. I am immensely grateful to the staff at the SOAS Library in London and the Mário de Andrade Library in São Paulo, where the majority of this book was written. The greatest debt of gratitude goes to all those who gave up their time to participate in this project. Your contributions have made this book possible and changed the way I see the world.Some of the material in Chapter 2 appeared in an earlier version in a different form as ‘A (queer) CEO society? Lesbians Who Tech, role models and the politics of (extraordinary) normativity’ in Sexualities (October 2022). Parts of Chapter 3 appeared in ‘Queering control and inclusion in the contemporary LGBT-​friendly organization: On LGBT-​friendly control and the (failed) reproduction of (queer) value’ in a special issue of Organization Studies, 42(5) (May 2021). Parts of Chapter 4 appeared in ‘There’s nowhere wonky left to go: Gentrification, queerness and the class politics of inclusion in (east) London’ in a special issue of Gender, Work & Organization, 28(1) (January 2021). I am grateful to Emily Ross, Shannon Kneis, David Embrick and Anna Richardson for their editorial guidance in preparing this manuscript. viii

Introduction On Christmas eve 2016 The Economist ran an article entitled ‘Gay bars are under threat but not from the obvious attacker’ about the epidemic of closures affecting LGBTQ+​venues in London (Smith, 2016a). A colour photograph illustrating the story features a neon sign reading ‘Cocktails and Dreams’ in blue and pink cursive writing (see the front cover of this book). The article describes LGBTQ+​venues as ‘places that contain memories of first kisses or heart break where people, often persecuted or misunderstood by others, made friends and felt accepted at last’. In an accompanying blog post, author Adam Smith, a white gay man who lives and works in London, situates himself in relation to these experiences, explaining that gay bars were an integral part of his ‘new life’ and ‘newfound freedom’ after coming out (Smith, 2016b). In the article, Smith acknowledges the rich history of LGBTQ+​venues in the city and that their loss might be ‘painful’. Yet, he ultimately reads their closure as ‘an unhappy side-​effect of a far more cheering trend’: the ‘increased acceptance of homosexuality in the rich world’. Gender/​sexual1 Others, or so Smith’s argument goes, have now proven themselves to be valuable contributors to society and thus no longer need to congregate in ‘scruffy’, ‘disintegrating’ and ‘dingy’ bars ‘with peeling leather seats and the sodden smell of stale alcohol’ in order to be ‘free’. Of course, we are not all ‘free’. Smith is adamant in reminding readers that these spaces remain ‘as important as ever in the developing world’, where homosexuality is still illegal. There, these spaces serve as important political and affective reference points for LGBTQ+​activism and community-​making. But here, in the ‘rich world’, social attitudes have become decidedly more tolerant, meaning that ‘many gay men and women, particularly youngsters, do not feel the need to congregate in one spot’. LGBTQ+​spaces, we are encouraged to believe, have no place in the contemporary inclusive landscapes of a city like London, and fighting for their existence is (at best) nostalgic and (at worst) backwards-​looking. The portrayal of ‘the rich world’ as inclusive, accepting and friendly towards previously disenfranchised gender/​sexual Others is emblematic of ‘queer liberalism’ (Eng, 2010): a heavily racialized and classed process by which certain gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans citizen-​subjects in the global 1

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

North become recognized and empowered by particular incarnations of liberal promises of freedom, progress and inclusion. Elsewhere, Jasbir Puar (2007) has argued that this supposed benevolence towards gender/​sexual Others, which Smith attributes to British society in general, and London in particular, is ‘contingent upon ever-​narrowing parameters of white racial privilege, consumption capabilities, gender and kinship normativity and bodily integrity’ (p xii). In simple terms, the promised inclusion of some previously disenfranchised gender/​sexual Others often depends on the exclusion of other Others. But between the celebration and condemnation of desires for and promises of inclusion, much goes unexamined. How does gender/​sexuality come to be reconfigured in the production and consumption of inclusion? What are the conditions for inclusion? Who benefits from the promulgation of these promises? Or, rather, whose dreams, ominously gestured at by the neon sign which accompanies Smith’s article, are coming true, and whose are being shuttered? This book provides answers to these questions by ethnographically tracing the work that goes into bestowing promises of inclusion and their effects on the lived experiences of the subjects who are on the receiving end of this newfound friendliness. It locates promises of inclusion in a longer trajectory of neoliberal capitalist accumulation, gentrification, and the emergence of an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) industrial complex2 which seeks to extract the productive value of differences in pursuit of profit. Bringing together findings emerging from participant observation and open-​ended interviews with a wide spectrum of actors –​including queer activists and anti-​gentrification campaigners, as well ‘career queers’ (Rodriguez, 2018) working in some of the world’s most powerful corporations –​the book tells an ethnographic story unfolding across disparate queer worlds in London, offering a situated account of how queerness is currently becoming incorporated into the dominant institutions of capitalist modernity, and what goes into enabling certain inclusive openings for some while closing down others. Research for this book began in an era of intense celebration of diversity and corporate investments in unlocking the value of differences on the workplace. This new wave of corporate thinking –​that such a thing called ‘diversity’ no longer needed to be the potential cause of a lawsuit or conflict but rather a source of value or a productive advantage –​has also made its way into local government, displacing the goals of equality with the decidedly more up-​beat rhetoric of inclusion. The purported leaders of the LGBTQ+​movement have largely accepted this logic, selling their services to governments and corporations as EDI consultants. These LGBTQ+​activists-​ turned-​EDI practitioners share a worldview: that organizations can become more inclusive, perhaps even ‘queer’. But they are also driven by the same neoliberal logic which has made leftist LGBTQ+​politics increasingly unable 2

Introduction

to address pressing redistributive demands. The process of incorporation by which an otherwise radical leadership is channelled into corporations and local government has meant, among many things, the loss of experience, the loss of imagination and, ultimately, the loss of a genuinely transformative vision for challenging structural inequalities in favour of a more de-​politicized advancement of individual careers and the strategic interests of the institutions to which these individuals are ultimately accountable.3 These contradictory trajectories –​of incorporation and de-​radicalization –​ are particularly relevant in a city like London. Like other aspiring global cities, London is often imagined as an inclusive place that embraces difference. In particular, the city is often petitioned as a shining example of LGBTQ-​friendliness. These discourses play out at a local, (homo)national and international level, working to construct the city as a ‘welcoming, open place for everyone’ (London City Hall, 2017b). Yet, London is also a city riddled with inequalities and exclusions. In particular, empirical studies show that LGBTQ+​inclusion in the city often comes at the expense of communities and forms of difference that cannot be easily accommodated within such ‘geographies of capitalist accumulation’ (Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2014, p3). These include working-​c lass and immigrant communities and other economic, racial and/​or gender/​sexual ‘outsiders’ that are left behind by (neo)liberal narratives of progress. Commitments to and celebrations of diversity and inclusivity can thus both conceal and lubricate other exclusions. This book means to seize this moment in several ways. It aims to join discussions in queer studies, organization studies, urban planning, anthropology and LGBTQ+​studies by delving into how this kind of diversity politics might conceal the fundamental contradictions of what it might mean to promise inclusion in the age of neoliberalism. It also tries to convince Marxists and other critics of capitalism and political economy that following these queer discussions is important and urgent. And I hope it will give radical, queer and LGBTQ+​activists tools to shift the movement’s debates and practices back to the left, or at least to locate opportunities for resistance, co-​optation and doing inclusion otherwise in the pursuit of alternative (queer) futures.

What this book is about There has been a great deal of scholarship on the various dimensions of the politics of diversity and inclusion from a critical perspective, including the ways in which these discourses get in the way of doing actual social justice work, take a clearly managerialist perspective and instrumentalize differences as assets or ‘happy commodities’ to be harnessed in pursuit of business objectives (Aaberg, 2022; Ahmed, 2012; Conway, 2021, 2022; Lorbiecki 3

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

and Jack, 2000; Prasad and Mills, 1997; Swan, 2010; Zanoni et al., 2010). Elsewhere scholars have also argued that the contemporary recognition, celebration and incorporation of LGBTQ+​diversity is effectively the ruse through which capitalism side-​lines issues of redistribution (Fleming and Sturdy, 2011, 2009; Fraser, 1997; Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2014). Although I have found these much-​needed problematizations fundamental in articulating some of the dangers of inclusion, critical scholarship has run the risk of stabilizing gender/​sexual differences as ontological facts to be either rescued from the clutches of capitalism or side-​lined in favour of (what are seen to be) more pressing class struggles. Of course, promises of inclusion can and do often take a managerialist perspective, buttressing capitalism’s capacity to incorporate differences and to constantly reinvent itself in pursuit of profit (something which the arguments put forward by this book will confirm). Yet, while positing diversity as an ‘interchangeable cog in the profit-​making mechanism’ (Litvin, 2006, p87) is surely a powerful metaphor around which to construct a challenge to capitalist versions of queer inclusion, this reading misses the specific ways in which gender/​ sexual differences are currently becoming incorporated in processes of capital accumulation. The book is centrally concerned with the everyday dynamics of this process of ‘queer incorporation’ across two main sites. Corporations have emerged as key actors in the politics of LGBTQ+​ inclusion. From big business sponsorship of Pride to high-​profile partnerships between LGBTQ+​ organizations and multinational corporations, the message that capitalism is now ‘friendly’ to queers is being emblazoned on corporate headquarters and promoted by visible and openly LGBTQ+​ senior executive corporate leaders. LGBTQ-​friendly corporations are understood as places that celebrate and welcome queer people as particularly desirable and productive kinds of workers. In this way, queers are folded into capitalism with the promise that the market will offer opportunities for a kind of emancipation, acceptance and recognition which has not been found elsewhere (Conway, 2021; David, 2016; King, 2009; Ward, 2008a). Initially, I decided to explore the discourse of LGBTQ-​friendliness in the corporate world partly due to my institutional dwelling in a Business School, partly because I was fascinated (and troubled) by the increasingly central role played by such ‘temples of global capitalism’ (Rao, 2015) in the creation of supposedly more inclusive, welcoming and friendlier gender/​ sexual scenarios. I read the corporate world as the quasi-​natural habitat for diversity politics: where its promises emerged and thrived, and as one of the main fields for their production and circulation. The first site where the ethnographic work unfolds is thus the productive sphere of the workplace and, in particular, the LGBTQ-​friendly corporation. While the corporate turn to inclusivity is seen as paving the way ‘to a brighter and more ethical capitalist future’ (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018, p5), 4

Introduction

global financial institutions and the capitalist (dis)orders they produce remain deeply and endemically ‘unfriendly’ towards marginalized populations. Indeed, the valuation of (some) forms of queer labour in the global North have largely relied upon the devaluation of labour in the global South through ‘the economic interests of neoliberalism and whiteness’ (Eng, 2010, pxi). Such displays of corporate inclusivity have also been criticised for promoting a trickle-​down version of inclusion that delegitimizes radically queer, anti-​ racist and feminist politics and replaces it with a politics of ‘homonormativity’ (Duggan, 2003) that reproduces neoliberal norms of market-​based equality, redefines equality in terms of market opportunities, and reductively holds out those queers who can and have mastered the ability to enter the boardroom as ‘winners’ and examples of ‘progress’ while leaving everyone else behind (Conway, 2021, 2022; David, 2015; Irving, 2008; Rao, 2020). In this sense, the process of queer incorporation via the productive sphere of the LGBTQ-​ friendly corporation produces both winners and losers. One of the aims of this book is to explore who these might be and the costs of this convergence between LGBTQ+​politics and corporate agendas for those unable and/​ or unwilling to ‘lean into’ nascent opportunities for queer incorporation. Yet alongside these pragmatic (yet no less political) motivations to trace the discourse of LGBTQ-​friendliness and its promises in the corporate world, fieldwork was also decidedly shaped by my involvement –​since 2012 in the years preceding and during my doctorate –​in various forms of what could tentatively be called ‘queer anti-​capitalist activism’. This involved, among other things, organizing and participating in protests against the marketization and corporatization of Pride in London and organizing alternative and affordable Pride events which celebrated anti-​normativity and rejected a (neo)liberal politics of assimilation. In 2016 I met the Friends of the Joiners Arms, a group of activists who were campaigning to oppose the closure of a local gay pub called the Joiners Arms. The Joiners Arms was closed in 2015 by property developers Regal Homes to make way to offices, retail space and, subsequently, a hotel. The closure triggered a struggle concerning not only the closure of the space but also about what it might even mean to posit London as ‘inclusive’ given the hostility of its socio-​economic landscapes. While I had not initially intended to study this site, the relevance of this struggle quickly became impossible to ignore. Over the past seven years I have become actively involved with the group’s efforts, initially to oppose the closure (Chapter 4) and subsequently to open London’s first community-​ owned, community-​run queer venue (Chapter 5). Drawing from participant observation conducted with the activists across a period of seven years, I trace the campaigners’ contested interactions with the property developers, the local council and broader diversity discourses, thinking about what this struggle could tell us about the politics of inclusion in the city. While an offer to reprovide a replacement LGBTQ+​venue on 5

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

the site of the former pub was largely celebrated in the media, the book actually tells the story of how this supposedly benevolent promise revealed a much harsher reality about the difficulties of ‘doing inclusion’ in tandem with processes of capital accumulation such as gentrification. Beyond the LGBTQ-​friendly corporation, the book thus also traces queer encounters with promises of inclusion in relation to current debates about gentrification and the closure of LGBTQ+​spaces. LGBTQ+​spaces such as bars, pubs and clubs have played an integral role in enacting and maintaining London as an ‘inclusive’ and ‘LGBTQ-​friendly’ city (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004; Puar, Rushbrook and Schein, 2003; Rushbrook, 2002). It is partly through these spaces that many of us –​me included –​have experienced a slice of what is often referred to as ‘queer London’. While promoted as vital components of the city’s diversity appeal, LGBTQ+​spaces have also been subjected to numerous closures. Research conducted by the UCL Urban Lab found that from 2006 to 2017 the number of LGBTQ+​venues in London fell from 125 to 53, a staggering 58% decline in just over a decade (Campkin and Marshall, 2017, 2018). Some read the closures as a positive side-​effect of the increasing inclusion of LGBTQ+​people in mainstream society (for example, Smith, 2016a). But evidence suggests that the vast majority of the venue closures have in fact been due to gentrification, private property developments and/​or steep hikes in rent prices, rather than the lack of demand or need (Campkin and Marshall, 2017; Ghaziani, 2019). Taking the closure of the Joiners Arms as a case study, I trace how supposedly well-​intentioned promises to ‘save’ the space from closure not only did not address the underlying structural conditions nor the broader processes of privatization that lead to the closure, but also worked to bring the pub’s queerness into a neoliberal frame, with severe consequences for all those ‘undesirable’ forms of queerness that remained outside established lines and could not be easily ‘represented, professionalized, or commodified’ (Ward, 2008a, p2). The story of the Joiners Arms thus points to some of the limits of the politics of inclusion, particularly when inclusion is bestowed in tandem with broader processes of urban gentrification. The tension between new openings promised by corporate inclusivity and the closure of LGBTQ+​spaces is worthy of study as a moment that has exposed some of the paradoxes of inclusion in the age of neoliberalism. In each site I explore queer encounters with inclusion and the lived experiences of those negotiating its promises. Instead of collecting data on inclusion from within organizations, I pursued a series of methodological questions to trace the very production and circulation of its promises across disparate queer worlds. Moving from the corporate world of LGBTQ+​inclusivity to the world of queer anti-​gentrification activists unlocked a major deconstructive possibility in relation to the study of the politics of inclusion: to chip away at the very notion of inclusivity by aligning together phenomena –​such as 6

Introduction

the friendliness and progressiveness of its promises and the unfriendliness of gentrification and of London’s socio-​economic landscapes more broadly –​ that are not always grasped within the purview of a single research site. Indeed, moving from the corporate world of inclusivity to the world of queer activists resisting gentrification –​and inhabiting both simultaneously –​ meant that both these experiences of ‘queer London’ could be understood as two sides of the same coin. The book brings together these two competing and at times incommensurate realities, treating their incommensurabilities as more than just a contextual component of the ethnography. Rather, these reveal something about the broader contradictions engendered by the socio-​economic landscapes enveloping London, the well-​documented effects of gentrification of the city, the neoliberalization of queer activism and the existence and persistence of inequalities within queer communities. Indeed, while corporations have emerged as ‘allies’ in the fight for more socially just and progressive futures, corporate investments in LGBTQ+​inclusion do not automatically translate to more inclusive experiences for queer subjects who work within their folds. Moreover, corporate promises of inclusion can also work to lubricate the privatization of the spaces (both physical and conceptual) of queer politics by reconciling the (private) interests of corporations with (more public) notions of equality. In the book I treat these broader dynamics not merely as context for the ethnography but as an ‘emergent dimension of arguing about the connection among sites’ (Marcus, 1995, p99). East London served as a (local) epicentre for this (global) process of queer incorporation. The east London area of Canary Wharf, in the borough of Tower Hamlets, is host to some of the world’s largest financial corporations, many of which have been making significant investments in LGBTQ-​ friendliness over the last decade. The area offered an interestingly fitting opportunity to examine the incorporation of LGBTQ+​diversity into the productive sphere of capital ‘in the belly of the beast’. On the other hand, east London is also home to some of the most pronounced pockets of disadvantage in Europe and has been on the receiving end of violent forms of gentrification which have dispossessed local working-​class and immigrant communities. The fight against the closure of the Joiners Arms also unfolded in east London. Indeed, the pub was also located in the borough of Tower Hamlets, just a short 15-​minute drive from Canary Wharf. To make sense of this folding in of queerness into processes of capital accumulation in relation to both the world of work and of queer spaces, I draw in part on the (broadly defined) field of ‘queer Marxism’ pioneered by thinkers such as Kevin Floyd, Peter Drucker, Petrus Liu as well as Rahul Rao, Lisa Duggan, Michael Warner, John D’Emilio, Emmanuel David, Lauren Berlant, Rosemary Hennessy, Martin Manalansan, Jack Halberstam, Meg Wesling and Nat Raha. By ‘queer Marxism’ I do not 7

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

mean so much a doctrine of thought as a number of interventions in queer thought that deployed a queering impulse to tackle questions of class and political economy. This has included turning to the vocabularies and tools of Marxism to offer thoughtful reflections on the operations of norms and normativities, demonstrating that normativities are never only about gender/​ sexuality: within them are embedded neoliberal capitalist conceptions of what counts as a ‘good’ life worth living (see Berlant, 2011; Cheng and Kim, 2014). My central assertion in this book has been that neoliberal promises of LGBTQ+​inclusion engender forms of gentrification –​both of queer activism and of queer spaces –​that are ultimately at odds with a genuinely transformative vision for queer leftist politics. This central assertion is constructed around four interrelated arguments. First, I foreground the importance of developing a queer political economy approach to inclusion in order to investigate the emergence of diversity politics in its dynamic and contradictory articulations and in relation to the gender/​sexual politics of neoliberalism. Second, the book provides an ethnographic account of the ways in which diversity is ‘put to work’ in inclusive contexts. Tracing the process by which corporations seek to extract the productive value of queer differences, I ask under what conditions diversity is converted into a profitable resource, and when instead it becomes a source of exclusion. Third, straddling the current tension between new openings promised by inclusivity and the closure of LGBTQ+​spaces in London, the book traces the various contestations between queerness, inclusion and gentrification in order to shed light on the process of ‘straightening’ by which inclusion works to bring (some) forms of queerness into a neoliberal frame. Fourth, by paying attention to the interplay between promises of inclusion, the reproduction of queer value, the gentrification of both space and queer politics, the book ultimately reads the politics of diversity as a kind of urban struggle between those who value interclass contact and those who prefer sterile spaces free from interclass mixing. In so doing I offer an understanding of queer freedom as intrinsically connected to various forms of anti-​capitalist struggle. The arguments presented in the book hinge upon the meaning of queerness. Queer is increasingly becoming a shorthand for a non-​heterosexual identity and/​or as a (more or less accurate) synonym for LGBTQ+​(for example, queer people). In the book I mobilize queer in this way to address some of the problems of what Boellstorff (2006) refers to as ‘the logic of enumeration’, that is, the belief that ‘political and theoretical efficacy can exist only through naming each category of selfhood or experience’ (p19). At the same time, queerness has also been deployed politically to describe a form of activism that distinguishes itself from more ‘mainstream’ LGBTQ+​politics in its critique of assimilation, sameness and inclusion into the dominant institutions of capitalist modernity. Finally, ‘queer’ has also been used as an analytic. 8

Introduction

Analytically, queerness can be deployed both as verb (for example, to queer, queering) and as a mode of being in the world that resists normative definition and categorization, something which is relationally ‘wonky … out of line, on a slant, the odd and the strange’ (Ahmed, 2006b, p566). Much is at stake in grasping these multiple meanings and political/​cultural/​ intellectual modes of operation enabled by queerness. While I do use the term ‘queer’ and ‘LGBTQ+​’ interchangeably, at a more fundamental level I suggest that it is important to understand queerness not merely as (non-​ heterosexual) identity but as ‘an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices’ (Halberstam, 2005, p1). Foregrounding queerness as a relational way of inhabiting space and time outside of the logics of capital accumulation enables us to explore the tensions emerging from extant processes of queer incorporation, where corporations are increasingly becoming sites of entrepreneurial, extra-​ordinary and marketable queerness, while economically marginal(ized) sites are being systematically ‘emptied’ of their queerness. This understanding of queerness –​ as fundamentally linked to the organization of political economy –​also demonstrates the usefulness of a queering approach to contemporary Marxist projects, whereby a critique of norms and normativities via deconstruction becomes integral to our critique of capitalism. The context through which this analysis will take place is that of contemporary London, and much of what I say about inclusion is focused through that lens. However, the arguments and insights that emerge are not necessarily restricted to this context; they clearly resonate with other sites of global North and liberal inclusion. In a sense London is a city that exemplifies wider global trends.

The promise of inclusion Over the past years there has been an explosion of discourses on LGBTQ-​ friendly organizations, institutions, employers, cities and countries. These discourses are sustained by a range of indexes that measure, score, locate and rank ‘inclusiveness’ according to the latest criteria (Rao, 2014; Rumens, 2018). Underpinning these discourses is a conditional promise of acceptance and recognition in exchange for LGBTQ+​people becoming valuable contributors to their communities, workplaces and societies. Inclusion is here sustained not only by an ethics of tolerance and liberalism, but increasingly by an economic promise of financial profit and gain (Rumens, 2018). This promise is buttressed by the maxim, as Stonewall, one of the largest LGBTQ+​organizations in the UK, has put it, that ‘people who can be themselves are more productive’. That authenticity will yield economic benefits is one of the cornerstones of what is often referred to as ‘the business case’ for LGBTQ+​inclusion. As Nick Rumens (2018) suggests, the business case is replacing the social 9

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

justice appeal of earlier waves of LGBTQ+​equality-​driven organizing. Its principles –​that inclusion is ‘good for business’ and for the economy, that homophobia imposes unnecessary costs on queer people’s productivity –​can be found not only in corporate diversity statements but increasingly also in material produced by LGBTQ+​organizations and in local government policy. The accentuation of queer subjects’ economic value has also made its way into development discourses, with World Bank economists making the case for global LGBTQ+​inclusion by arguing that homophobia is costing emerging economies up to 1.7% of GDP (Badgett, 2014). While some argue that making a business case for inclusion might be a strategic way of getting organizational buy-​in for LGBTQ+​progress, others worry that accentuating the productive capacity of queer subjects in this way will leave behind those who are unable and/​or unwilling to be(come) productive within the terms dictated by the market. Moreover, there are also serious issues with the very practices of locating and measuring LGBTQ+​inclusion for the ways in which these might make diverse genders/​ sexualities into objects of management, reducing their complexity as they are lived and experienced in everyday life (Rao, 2014; Rumens, 2018). Nevertheless, notwithstanding the potentially de-​politicizing effects of such business investments in diversity, it is important to recognize that inclusion is not simply being levied from above –​it is also an object of desire for LGBTQ+​people themselves. After all, who would not want to be(come) more ‘productive’? In Cruel Optimism, the late and wonderful Lauren Berlant (2011) writes: When we talk about an object of desire, we are really talking about a cluster of promises we want someone or something to make to us and make possible for us. This cluster of promises could be embedded in a person, a thing, an institution, a text, a norm, a bunch of cells, smells, a good idea –​whatever. To phrase ‘the object of desire’ as a cluster of promises is to allow us to encounter what’s incoherent or enigmatic in our attachments, not as a confirmation of our irrationality but an explanation for our sense of our endurance in the object, insofar as proximity to the object means proximity to the cluster of things that the object promises, some of which may be clear to us while others not so much. (p23, emphasis in original) For Berlant (2011), promises are thus so much more than merely words: they produce a set of relations between promisor, promise and the objects of desire that congeal around such promises. Moreover, promises cannot be understood without an appreciation of the conditions under which they are bestowed, the feelings which sustain them, and the consequences they produce. Promises can be deemed to be ‘happy’ –​or performative –​when 10

Introduction

they bring about their intended effects. On the other hand, promises can also become unhappy –​or non-​performative –​when, bestowed under inappropriate circumstances, their stated intention(s) remain unfulfilled. In this latter case, promises can work to block action and/​or to actually sustain conditions of precarity and inequality (see Ahmed, 2008). Following Berlant (2011), this book conceives of LGBTQ+​inclusion as a ‘technology of power’ or a ‘discourse’ which, underpinned by implicit assumptions about identities, categories and normative designations about what counts as a ‘good’, ‘valuable’ and ‘desirable’ life worth living, is organized around a cluster of promises intended for those who embody recognizable, normalized, regularized and disciplined gender/​sexual diversity categories. From this poststructuralist perspective, inclusion is not a stable or fixed entity but a messy, fluid, dynamic and situational site of contestation. It also does not have a passive relationship to its subjects, that is, it does not simply identify queer subjects, nor does it simply fulfil their desires. Rather, it performatively makes these up and, in the practice of doing so, ‘conceal[s]‌ their own invention’ (Foucault, 1978, p49). At the same time, inclusion not only involves discursive struggles over meanings –​it has real and tangible consequences. Promises are always also a way of ‘mak[ing] the future into an object’ (Ahmed, 2010a, p29), or what Hannah Arendt (1972) has elsewhere called ‘the uniquely human way of ordering the future’ (p92). This book argues that it is of crucial importance to inquire into the kinds of futures promises of inclusion are orienting us towards, the kinds of objects, physical as well as of thought, they are materializing, and for whom. The book looks at the ways in which the discourse of LGBT-​friendliness, as a ‘cluster of promises’ (Berlant, 2006, p20) of inclusion, is being experienced on the ground by the diverse and differently-​situated subjects –​including myself, as a lesbian and thus an imagined target of inclusion –​to whom it is supposedly intended to speak to. Particularly relevant seemed to be an ethnographic interrogation of what these promises do –​who they include, and on what terms –​as well as what they don’t do; how they circulate and are taken up by the gender/​sexual subjects to whom they are intended to speak to; and how we are to conceptualize the dynamics of inclusion/​exclusion amidst these (supposedly) ‘friendlier’ realities. Through these questions, the book works to complicate our understanding of LGBTQ+​inclusion and challenge the benevolence of the discourse of LGBT-​friendliness as it emerges in institutional settings –​from corporations and the world of work, to local councils and queer spaces in the city.

The gender/​sexual politics of neoliberalism Shedding light on the futures and the forms of (affective and material) attachment that queer subjects nurture towards promises of inclusion has 11

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

revealed the manifold contradictions by which we live our lives as gender/​ sexual Others in the age of neoliberalism. The term ‘neoliberalism’ broadly denotes a set of processes and interlocking relationships that elevate the free market as the ideal framework within which human well-​being can be achieved (Harvey, 2005). The task that the term has been performing has been that of naming in a more critical way the economic policies which over the past 30–​40 years have resulted in dilapidated social safety nets and the upward redistribution of societal resources (Cheng and Kim, 2014; Di Feliciantonio, 2015; Duggan, 2009; Kumar, 2018; Spade, 2011). But neoliberalism is not only an economic theory, it is also a ‘cultural formation that … extends market rationality to all spheres of life, including our most intimate ones’ (Kemp and Berkovitch, 2019, p3). In effect, neoliberalism ‘has a sexual politics’ (Duggan, 2003, p177). Dean Spade (2011) suggests that one of its consequences on the fabric of queer socio-​ political life has been the elevation of ‘the emotional and affective … notions of “freedom” and “choice” ’ (p50) at the expense of structural transformation, turning queer social movements away from the demands of redistribution towards assimilation, professionalization and inclusion into the dominant institutions of capitalist modernity (also see Duggan, 2003; Richardson, 2005). While ‘freedom’, ‘choice’, ‘being yourself ’ are sold as things we should aspire towards, inclusion does not necessarily entail more emancipative experiences but may be accompanied by a reconfiguration (at best) and reinvigoration (at worst) of various gender and sexual norms that actually restrict the possibilities for queer subjects to identify, relate with each other, and organize politically (Duggan, 2003; Rumens, 2018). These ‘new’ normativities are not just incidental: they integral to the ways in which the system works, especially given that, as an economic doctrine, neoliberalism places particular emphasis on ‘the individual’ making responsible choices in a heavy deregulated market (Cheng and Kim, 2014; David, 2015, 2016; Duggan, 2003; Irving, 2007, 2008; Ludwig, 2016; Richardson, 2005; Vijayakumar, 2013). Against accounts which posit neoliberalism as an economic doctrine that tends towards freedom, I emphasise neoliberalism’s ‘anti-​democratic’ (Ludwig, 2016), ‘violent’ and ‘unfriendly’ constellations. Indeed, while the attainment of ‘a good life’ (Berlant, 2011) of authenticity and inclusion appears to be just around the corner, neoliberalism systematically threatens the conditions that the vast majority of people need in order to survive. Regardless, queer subjects are encouraged to keep investing in its promises under the illusion of future returns. It is this (perpetually suspended, constantly deferred) future that keeps queer subjects ‘hooked’, so to speak, to the fantasy that they will find in inclusion a kind of acceptance, a form of belonging and recognition that has long been denied (Rao, 2020; Rottenberg, 2017). This fantasy is, inevitably, one of 12

Introduction

material reward, often in the form of a more successful career (Chapter 3), greater productivity (Chapter 5), or a space to call home (Chapter 4). But it would be a mistake to deny its strong affective dimensions, or the ways in which these promises become part of one’s own life projects and aspirations. Ultimately, the fantasy is powerful precisely because it is experienced in deeply affective ways. For queer subjects, the promise of future returns has entailed having to ‘manage’ or ‘invest’ in their ‘diversity’ as efficiently as possible and in ways that will unlock its valuable potential. As I started research for this book, I was taken aback by the sheer breath of publications, workshops, guides and seminars devoted to teaching LGBTQ+​people how to ‘unlock’ the power of ‘authenticity’ and ‘diversity’ in pursuit of a more ‘fulfilling’ life and career, in pursuit of greater ‘productivity’. This kind of self-​managerialism lies at the heart of the promise of inclusion as a form of (self-​)responsibilization of queer subjects ‘to make the ‘right’ choices’ (Rumens, 2018, p13) about where to live, work and gather. Through the deferred promise of futural returns, differences are turned into resources and ‘projects’ that have value and have to be managed in self-​advancing ways. While this might certainly feel good, the process of self-​management through which queerness is converted into a valuable resource ends up re-​organizing (and ultimately limiting) what it means to be a ‘diverse’ gender/​sexual subject, and, ultimately, what it means to do gender/​sexual politics. The analysis has revealed the complex and paradoxical way in which capitalism is currently reshaping itself as an inclusive force for good in the world. Queer people are increasingly asked to make ethical investments in the promises of corporations and capitalism in the hope of future returns. As the following chapters will explore, this can range from investments made in the moral superiority of lesbian tech CEOs, to the willingness of employees to sacrifice time and energy to make their corporations more ‘inclusive’, to an investment in the promises of corporations to reprovide the very spaces it destroyed.

A queer political economy of inclusion Queer approaches to diversity (management) have generated particularly useful insights on inclusion. Emerging from wider developments in the humanities and activism in the 1990s, queer approaches have argued that the discourse of diversity defines ‘difference’ against the norm and around ‘fixed notions of identity’ (Bendl, Fleischmann and Walenta, 2008, p383). Understanding diversity as an essentializing discourse of power, queer approaches thus challenge the normalcy with which certain expressions of sexuality (heterosexual and/​or ‘unthreateningly’ homosexual) acquire recognition. 13

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

While queer theory does not contest that some people do indeed experience their identity in coherent and stable ways, it thus also recognizes that the categories we use to define gender/​sexuality are less fixed properties of individuals and more performatively (and messily) constituted and in a constant process of becoming (Butler, 1993b, 1999; Sedgwick, 1990). A queer approach is particularly useful in the context of diversity politics because it exposes the ways in which its categories might operate according to implicit binaries (male/​female, heterosexual/​homosexual) that effectively normalize gender/​sexuality as stable, neat, de-​politicized, contained, manageable and marketable kinds of differences (Bendl, Fleischmann and Walenta, 2008; Bendl and Hoffman, 2015; Rumens, 2018). ‘Queer’ in this way becomes particularly useful for resisting the classificatory impulses of inclusion discourses that seek to render differences visible, identifiable or, indeed, manageable. It also enables us to explore the ways in which a neoliberal politics of inclusion unfolds in relation to queer subjects’ lived experiences. Indeed, the usefulness of the term ‘neoliberalism’ has at times been contested, with scholars arguing that through its use, ‘dissimilar … experience of social change [are] undermine[d]‌[by] the sweeping designations’ (B. Dunn, 2017, p435). A queer appreciation of the intricacies through which gender/​sexuality are lived, performed and experienced in relation to everyday local contexts can move us away from these reductively economic and ‘sweepingly general’ understandings of ‘neoliberalism’ (for example, Harvey, 2005) to emphasize the ways in which neoliberal ideologies are ‘made persuasive within local formations of identity, conceptions of self-​ hood, and idioms of citizenship’ (Kanna, 2010, p102). I deploy queer analytically to pursue two interrelated aims. First, to explore how promises of inclusion work to ‘straighten’ the messiness of gender/​ sexuality or what Nick Rumens (2015) refers to as the ‘disorderliness of organizational life’ (p187) in pursuit of business objectives, and the painstaking labour that queer subjects have to engage in in order to unbend themselves (see also Ahmed, 2006a, 2006b). Secondly, I mobilize queer analytically to shed light on the ‘regimes of intelligibility’ (Tyler, 2019) governing inclusion, ‘the conditions upon which the conferral of recognition depends’ (Pullen et al., 2016, p85) and more broadly the manifold ways in which inclusion works to align (gender/​sexual) differences with normative scripts by making these readable, knowable and (thus) manage-​able and include-​able. While often ‘queer’ has been deployed to signify ‘whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’ (Halperin, 1997, p62), in the book I propose a queering analysis of inclusion that goes beyond a mere identification, and rejection, of ‘the normal’ to explore in more detail the specific ways in which normativities are (re)produced, experienced and lived. In this sense, queering does not (necessarily) entail a ‘moving against’ (Wiegman and Wilson, 2015, p6) norms. Rather, ‘queer’ becomes a way of 14

Introduction

‘moving athwart’ (Wiegman and Wilson, 2015), of circumventing, undoing and resignifying normativities by exposing the ways in which inclusion operates according to what Melissa Tyler (2019) calls ‘normative regimes of intelligibility’. These confer certain forms of life recognition ‘according to the established norms of recognisability, on the condition of and at the cost of conforming to these norms’ (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013, p36). While critical and queer perspectives on inclusion offer an initial entry point from which to challenge ‘the conditions of inclusion’ (Tyler, 2019, p62), class and its politics have to date remained a remarkably under-​explored area of research (for exceptions, see Berrey, 2014; Zanoni, 2011). Many argue that this is symptomatic of the largely corporate nature of inclusion initiatives, the fact that organizations are not simply inscribed in, but actually reproduce, capitalist regimes, and ‘the more general demise of class as an explanatory category in the social sciences’ (Zanoni, 2011, p107). A similar neglect is apparent in queer approaches both within organization studies and beyond. In Profit and Pleasure, Rosemary Hennessy (2000) suggests that queer perspectives in sexuality studies have also often tended to ‘retreat from class analysis’ (p49) whereby ‘the very possibility of linking the changing organizations of sexuality to capitalism remains all but unspeakable’ (p54). Read 20 years after their publication, Hennessy’s comments might appear excessively severe, especially given recent efforts made to link a queer perspective to class and political economy (David, 2015, 2016; Duggan, 2003; Irving, 2007, 2008; Rao, 2015; Valocchi, 2017; Ward, 2008a). Yet these observations do point to a longstanding tendency to pit (what are seen to be) struggles for economic redistribution against cultural ones for recognition (Butler, 1997; Fraser, 1997). This tendency is by no means restricted to academic debates but is a reading which permeates popular culture and society more broadly, and which has, in recent years, voided mainstream LGBTQ+​politics of a sustained or substantial critique of economic injustice (Duggan, 2003; Hennessy, 2000; Richardson, 2005; Vaid, 1995). The lack of attention to political economy is clearly problematic for the queer study of inclusion, preventing us from seeing how ‘inclusiveness’ informs processes of capital accumulation and how capitalism might sustain various (hetero-​and homo-​normativities), ultimately rendering ‘queer’ into an unworkable tool to perform a trenchant anti-​capitalist critique. To this end I develop a theoretical framework which reconciles a political economy approach with a queer focus through the notion of gentrification.

The gentrification of queerness Gentrification describes the process of privatization and sanitization through which previously derelict and economically marginal spaces are ‘regenerated’ and replaced by spaces that are more upscale, consumerist 15

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

and commercialized. This is accompanied by broader socio-​political shifts, including the implementation of austerity policies and the ‘neoliberalization of planning’ (Olesen, 2014), which posit the logics of capital accumulation as serving public interests and make local authorities dependent on private investments for the maintenance and ‘revitalization’ of areas under their jurisdiction (Campkin and Marshall, 2017, 2018). Scholarship on LGBTQ+​spaces and gentrification has often suggested that these spaces struggle ‘to maintain those identities’ (Doan and Higgins, 2011, p20) through the process of gentrification. But I suggest that queerness too can become gentrified through inclusion, and even used to lubricate processes of gentrification leading to the creation of spaces that are queer in the sense that they cater to LGBTQ+​communities but do not embody the forms of interclass mixing that Halberstam (2005) considers to be an integral component of queerness itself. I thus mobilize the term ‘gentrification’ more expansively to distinguish between different zones of ‘commodified gayness’ (Rushbrook, 2002) and trace the ways in which queerness becomes commodified through the process of gentrification. I use gentrification in this way to explore the various contestations between queerness, inclusion and gentrification as they unfold in relation to the urban landscapes of queer politics in London. In the book I explore the different conceptions of value, reality and (ultimately) of the queer future underpinning promises of inclusion in the context of gentrification. The experience of fieldwork revealed that contradictory dynamics shape the organization of inclusion in London. Indeed, while in recent years corporations have emerged as ‘allies’ in the fight for more socially just and progressive futures, corporate investments in LGBTQ+​inclusion have reproduced various normativities geared around the neoliberal notions of safety and productivity. Rather than simply erasing LGBTQ-​ness, these trenchant forms of homonormativity operate by reconfiguring queerness itself in remarkably neoliberal ways, harnessing the productive potential of diversity as a means of facilitating and achieving business outcomes. In this sense, like neoliberalism, gentrification is not only an economic process nor is it only about physical closure –​it is also productive of new subjectivities, aesthetics and rhythms amenable to capital accumulation and extraction, and destructive of ways of being and/​or inhabiting space and time that do not fit within these logics. In The Gentrification of the Mind, Sarah Schulman (2012) makes this argument to make sense of how the loss of queer artists and activists to AIDS partly enabled the gentrification of the East Village in New York in the 1990s. Gentrification involved both the physical replacement of a generation of economically marginal(ized) queers with more privileged gentrifiers, as well as the internalization of gentrified values and modes of conduct by all those living in such increasingly gentrified neighbourhoods. 16

Introduction

Schulman (2012) explains that there is a ‘weird passivity that accompanies gentrification’ (p33), which entails, among other things, a ‘hypnotic identification with authority’ (p34). In a sense, thus, gentrification is also ‘spiritual’ (Schulman, 2012): it gets into people’s minds and souls. Ideas can get gentrified, too, such as when the idea of recognizing (racial, gender, sexual and other) ‘differences’ –​which originates in civil rights organizing and social justice movements –​is reconfigured as a business advantage. Or when remarkably mild and superficial achievements of individual LGBTQ+​people are heralded and sold as liberation for all. Or when the idea of protecting LGBTQ+​spaces from closure is turned into a mere call for redevelopment to retain the LGBTQ+​character of a venue rather than a broader critique of regeneration. Queerness can also become gentrified through the reconfiguration of one’s diverse gender/​sexuality as a productive asset in pursuit of professional success. What Schulman observed in an increasingly gentrified neighbourhood in New York thus parallels the political gentrification of inclusion, where a celebratory diversity politics based on substitution, homogenization and ultimately assimilation have replaced the ‘wrong’ kinds of queerness with more marketable, homogeneous and assimilable kinds, while pretending that differences and privilege do not exist. This process is sustained by a naturalization and de-​ politicization of the status quo, buttressed by a belief that ‘the market’ is the best arbiter for not only economic, but moral goods, while the costs to those who are replaced are all but erased. At a fundamental level, gentrification thus involves a struggle between two different kinds of realities. As Sarah Schulman (2012, p14) writes: Gentrification replaces most people’s experiences with the perceptions of the privileged and call that reality. In this way gentrification is dependent on telling us that things are better than they are –​and this is supposed to make us feel happy. It’s a strange concept of happiness as something that requires the denial of many other people’s experiences. For some of us, on the other hand, the pursuit of reality is essential to happiness. Even if the process gets us in trouble. For Schulman (2012), gentrification is powerful not only because it drains and empties sites of difference but because it ultimately mystifies the various economic, political, social and cultural privileges that sustain the corporate and gentrified version of the story. Interrogating the gentrification of queerness thus involves shedding light on realities that are hidden from view from mainstream accounts of LGBTQ+​inclusion. It involves making space for the ‘bad feelings’ which lurk and linger behind the ‘happy’ narratives of LGBTQ+​progress. And it ultimately entails tracing the ghosts that continue to haunt corporate institutions despite investments in diversity. These ghosts 17

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

continue to exist and live on in east London’s urban landscapes and in present and future queer struggles over who can have access to the spaces of the city and its promise of queer inclusion, whether they know it or not. Part of the work that this book will try to do over the next chapters is to give space to some of these literal and metaphorical ghosts lurking behind the happy façade of inclusivity. Situating corporate investments in inclusivity as part of a broader austerity politics and processes of gentrification affecting urban landscapes in east London, I read the politics of diversity and inclusion as one of the key battlegrounds for various queer struggles unfolding in the city between, in Halberstam’s (2005) words, ‘those who value interclass contact and work hard to maintain those arenas in which it can occur, and those who fear it and who work to create sterile spaces free of class mixing’ (p14). To this end, I trace the ‘straightening’ tendencies that inclusion has on queerness. Such ‘straightening tendencies’ work to bring queer desire and ways of inhabiting space and time back into line with the normative spatio-​temporal logics of capital ‘that have been established for the purposes of protecting the rich from everyone else’ (p10). Yet, while such ‘straightening’ tendencies are part and parcel of the exclusionary logics of neoliberalism, they are not inevitable. In the chapters that follow I identify particular tensions and lines of contestations between ‘straight’ and ‘wonky’ understandings of inclusion, between the individualistic logic of privatization and community ownership, between the temporalities of capital accumulation and those of queerness. As the scenes of queer encounters with promises of inclusion in this book shift from one chapter to the next, the very fabric through which these promises are weaved will begin to unravel. What we are left with are the contradictions, ambivalences and violence(s) of the neoliberal good life which these promises require us to be(come) invested in in order to be(come) included.

Into the multi-​sited field The book is a reflection of over seven years of multi-​sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and around two spatially and politically dislocated social worlds within the tentative construct that is ‘queer London’: the corporate world and the world of queer activists. In the corporate world I conducted participant observation at a number of corporate LGBTQ+​ networking events in Canary Wharf (Chapter 2). During this time, I regularly attended LGBTQ+​diversity events in Canary Wharf, hosted in the offices of corporate giants such as HSBC, Barclays and JP Morgan. These events offered queer people working in the corporate world opportunities for networking, showcasing stories of personal and professional success as told by corporate queer executives for whom things have ‘gotten better’ (Grzanka 18

Introduction

and Mann, 2014). As part of the ethnographic work, I also interviewed LGBTQ+​employees who work in corporations petitioning themselves as ‘LGBTQ-​friendly’ and an array of diversity workers –​including EDI consultants, specialists, experts, managers and consultants –​invested in advancing LGBTQ+​inclusion in the workplace (Chapter 3). While participant observation within the corporate world largely occurred through my role as ‘researcher’, my involvement with the world of queer activists more closely resembled that of the ‘participant-​as-​observer’ (Weatherall, 2019). This meant that I participated fully in the labour required to run the Friends of the Joiners Arms. Of course, this deep level of involvement –​and the fact that I have developed long-​lasting and meaningful friendships with members of the campaign –​inevitably affects my objectivity. However, it would be naïve to assume this would not to some extent be the case in all (non-​positivist) ethnographic engagements. These reflexive limits should be included as part of methodological claims, and I aim to account for them by making explicit my situated research positionality –​its instability and ultimately, its partiality –​in the ethnographic writing. Yet, while the concerns and insights pursued were largely and inevitably developed in conversations with other activists and through the discussions which occurred within the campaign, the observations, reflections and analyses are my own. I alternated my time in east London between Canary Wharf ’s corporate towers, the more recent skyscrapers developed by Silicon Valley tech companies in the adjacent area of Shoreditch, and the run-​down pubs in Dalston and Whitechapel in which the campaigners regularly met. At times I would go to campaign meetings after attending the corporate events, feeling out of place in my suit and ironed white shirt. At other times the campaign brought me back to Canary Wharf, where on two occasions the campaigners expressed their opposition to the redevelopment at the Tower Hamlets Development Planning Committee, located just down the road from HSBC’s global headquarters. I spent a total of three years travelling between these two spatially-​proximate but fundamentally divergent worlds of corporate inclusivity and queer activism –​each revealing one side of the contradictory effects of diversity politics and neoliberalism on the city’s urban landscapes and its queer communities. The book brings together these different stories –​of corporate investments in inclusivity, of broader celebrations of diversity and the closure of queer spaces –​unfolding in close proximity to each other in east London, in order to ask what these can tell us about the shape and direction of queer inclusion in the age of neoliberalism. The coincidence of these two realities is the central organizing tension of the book. This movement from field site to field site is what grants this monograph the moniker of multi-​sited ethnography. While an understanding of what constitutes ethnographic fieldwork can vary, for the purposes of this 19

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

book I understand it not so much as a method of data collection but as an attitude to knowing itself, as ‘a style of research’ (Brewer, 2000, p11) which draws from close observation of and participation with people and/​or communities and ‘relates the words spoken and the practices observed or experienced to the overall cultural framework within which they occurred’ (Watson, 2012, p16). A multi-​sited ethnography deploys participation and observation across two or more ‘social worlds’ (Nadai and Maeder, 2005) with the aim of observing a social phenomenon across these different sites. I too, like Rooke (2009) experienced the ethnographic field as a process of undoing, as a ‘journey without a map’, as a ‘moving within and between categories, slipping out of the comfort of identities of “lesbian”, “activist”, and “researcher” ’ (p158), all three of which provided (at once and in equal measure) a strategic possibility and a sense of unease. At times my lesbian-​ness was a condition of possibility for fieldwork, and I strategically mobilized my gender/​sexual subjectivity to establish a degree of rapport in the field, sharing anecdotes and stories, and communicating a collective understanding of the pleasures and difficulties of queer life in London with participants (also see Burchiellaro, 2020). For example, in the corporate world my queerness often worked to mitigate against some of the incompatibilities between my (anti-​capitalist) politics and those of my participants, most of whom broadly welcomed corporate investments in matters of LGBTQ+​inclusion. While I agree with Rumens and Kerfoot (2009) that we should not assume that a ‘shared sexual identity cultivates trust’ (p771), in many cases it was clear that it was on this basis that participants were willing to disclose their experiences to me. Being a lesbian in the corporate world, that is, being a ‘native’, an ‘insider’, clearly had its perks, ethnographically speaking. Yet, moving in and between the corporate world and the social world of queer activism, it was also clear that the amalgam of ‘lesbian-​researcher activist’ I performatively embodied in each was qualitatively different. Not only did I originally join the Friends of the Joiners Arms as a former patron of the pub and as someone who was politically and personally concerned by the closure of yet another affordable pub in London –​and not as a researcher interested in diversity politics. But, in doing so, I also entered a world inflected by and populated by friends and lovers with whom I had been sharing a slice of queer London since 2012. Unlike the corporate world, this site was familiar and intimate and inevitably modulated by emerging and existing (erotic, passionate, cordial, amicable and political) relationships. Ultimately it is through –​and not in spite of –​these encounters, that the ethnographic journey unfolded, whereby these intimate (affective and political) proximities became the raw material for the ethnography itself: the

20

Introduction

mediums, modes, and manners through which the ethnographic stories in this book are told. At the same time, for all that has been written about the research opportunities created by sharing an insider identity with your participants, I have never felt more of an outsider than in the boardrooms of the glass and steel buildings of Canary Wharf. Surrounded by hundreds of queer people working in the city’s top LGBTQ-​friendly corporate giants, it was only after my third or fourth event that I was able to meaningfully participate by mimicking –​and definitely not mastering –​the art of queer networking which buttressed these events: a mixture of casual flirting, detailed accounts of professional aspirations, and anecdotal and ironic evidence of our collective experiences as queer professionals. Moreover, I often felt unable to truly express my queer and activist concerns on the incorporation of queerness in contemporary regimes of neoliberal capitalism, and often wondered whether such an omission could/​should be read as a form of deception. While I, too, was a queer professional like the people in the room, I felt nothing like a native (see Burchiellaro, 2020). Overall, the experience of fieldwork was thus one where my personal, professional and political boundaries, my role as a lesbian and/​or queer researcher and activist, were gradually undone (also see Rooke, 2009). While at times this process of undoing was exhausting and fraught, it also enabled a nuanced appreciation of the complexities of lived diversities in queer urban life in London, from corporate boardrooms to disappearing pubs.

The chapters to follow I argue that promises of inclusion create unhospitable spaces for all of those who stand in the way of the otherwise productive expansion of neoliberal capitalist landscapes. To this end, I also argue that queer critique should be reconciled with a broader critique of political economy if it is to make sense of some of the fundamental contradictions by which queerness is becoming incorporated into the dominant institutions of capitalist modernity. This argument unfolds throughout the book’s six chapters. Overall, Chapter 1 sets the stage for the ethnographic work by following the emergence of corporate investments in LGBTQ+​diversity in tandem with a story about the gentrification of east London. I read investments in diversity made by east London’s wealthiest dwellers against the backdrop of growing inequalities, austerity policies, the closure of queer spaces and the exclusionary tendencies of neoliberal processes of capital accumulation for some of the area’s most marginalized inhabitants. In the chapter I bring these threads together in order to reconcile corporate investments in LGBTQ+​diversity with a broader critique of capitalism and its crises.

21

The Gentrification of Queer Activism

Chapters 2 and 3 tell the stories of corporate investments in LGBTQ+​ inclusion and how these are experienced by queer subjects on the receiving end of such displays of LGBTQ-​friendliness. Chapter 2 traces the emergence of a new brand of corporate diversity politics which, rather than requiring queer subjects to appear ‘virtually normal’ (Drucker, 2015), actually addresses them in their difference. Here I examine the emergence of queer difference as something that adds value not simply to the corporation but to the entrepreneurial queer self. This operationalization of corporate bottom lines through the professional aspirations, ambitions and dreams of LGBTQ+​ subjects themselves actually blurs the distinction between what is good for the corporation and what is good for queer activism: coming out becomes not only good for well-​being, for social justice, for politics, but, crucially, it is also good for business –​both the corporation and the business of living which requires neoliberal queer subjects to make investments geared towards the maximization of their human capital. The chapter documents fieldwork experiences at corporate LGBTQ+​networking events and, in particular, at the London chapter of the Lesbians Who Tech conference, a networking event catering to lesbian and queer women working in the world of tech. I argue that such events enshrine the neoliberal reconfiguration not only of queer labour but of queer life itself: the social, affective, inter-​personal relations around which queer organizing unfolds. Ultimately, rallying queer people’s aspirations in capitalist economies, I argue that queer and lesbian tech CEOs and the corporate LGBTQ+​networking events that spawn them should be read as part of broader CEO-​ization of the LGBTQ+​ movement, whose interests have become increasingly aligned with those of corporations. Chapter 3 traces the ways in which diversity is ‘put to work’ in supposedly LGBTQ+​inclusive corporations, asking when this labour turns into a direct resource for labourers and/​or for the corporation, and how and when it does not. I build my arguments by drawing from ethnographic interview encounters with employees in engaging in diversity work in supposedly inclusive workplace contexts. The chapter speaks to both managerial and critical readings of corporate inclusivity. On the one hand, focusing on the ways in which diversity work is experienced, negotiated and engaged, I problematize managerial readings of inclusivity by showing how doing diversity work comes with expectations about how differences are supposed to be laboriously performed and put to work in ways which are valuable to the corporation. On the other hand, I problematize critical readings of inclusivity by arguing that queer subjects are not merely subordinate to diversity management but actively, creatively, strategically, exhaustingly and reluctantly engaging the politics of LGBTQ+​diversity in order to become included. Here distinctions between the cultural recognition of diverse gender/​sexual subjects 22

Introduction

(inclusion) and economic matters of workplace redistribution (labour relations) are collapsed, exposing how managerial control in inclusive contexts is at once cultural and economic, operating through the labour involved in reproducing ‘queer value’. Chapters 4 and 5 shift the analytic lens from the corporate world to the social world of queer anti-​gentrification activists and their struggle to resist the closure of a local gay pub. Chapter 4 traces how a promise to reinclude a replacement LGBTQ+​venue on the site of the pub became such a site of contention. I draw from fieldwork conducted with the Friends of the Joiners Arms to trace the ‘straightening’ tendencies that inclusion has on queerness. Such ‘straightening tendencies’ work to bring queer desire and ways of inhabiting space and time back into line with the normative spatio-​ temporal logics of capital. The pub’s queerness was rendered unintelligible by the celebratory rhetoric of LGBTQ+​inclusion and the broader process of gentrification through which the pub was intended to be redeveloped. I argue that the story shows how inclusion can involve a merely instrumental recognition of difference which limits who and/​or what can be(come) included according to capitalist logics. The chapter sheds light on the class politics of inclusion as well as some of the limits of doing inclusion within a broader context of gentrification. While Chapter 4 traces the campaigners’ opposition to the redevelopment of the Joiners Arms, Chapter 5 mostly draws from ethnographic fieldwork and reflections which unfolded after the redevelopment project’s ultimate approval. The chapter explores the temporalities of gentrification, arguing that promises of inclusion can work to keep us hooked to a version of the present that actually forecloses an alternative vision of the future. At the same time, I also argue that the kinds of socialities, relationships and friendships developed in trying to survive a violent present can lead to the creation of alternative queer utopias. These do not emerge from seeking inclusion within the dominant institutions and processes of capital accumulation, but from daring to imagine a queer future that overcomes the limits of the past and the up-​beat, optimistic futures offered by gentrification. In the Conclusion I build on the findings presented in the previous chapters to argue in favour of an approach to the politics of diversity that reconciles contemporary corporate investments in queer inclusion with redistributive demands. Drawing from Samuel Delany’s (1999) distinction between ‘networking’ and ‘contact’ in the city, I suggest that diversity politics, in its current neoliberal formulation, works against spaces of queer interclass contact in favour of more sterile queer networking spaces. I also argue that queer activists should care about the disappearance of queer spaces not simply as memories of a riotous past but as spaces of queerness and interclass contact for the future, rejecting claims that 23

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doing so is either backwards-​looking or mere nostalgia. While the book is critical and pessimistic of diversity politics in its current neoliberal formulation, the stories of the participants featured in the project also reveal that queer subjects remain engaged in various struggles to make their lives more liveable and to acquire resources that enable the successful performance –​and sporadically, resistance to –​the various norms and normativities underpinning promises of inclusion.

24

1

Between Corporate Diversity and the Closure of Queer Spaces: The Neoliberal Politics of Inclusion in East London Located in east London in the borough of Tower Hamlets, Canary Wharf was turned into the city’s second (and largest) financial district in 1987. The area is located on the shores of the river Thames on the West India Docks,1 a quay developed by the Scottish slaveowner Robert Milligan, who controlled the import of sugar, rum and coffee from the Caribbean into London at the turn of the 19th century. Canary Wharf takes its name not from its colonial past but from the site where, over a century later, fruit and vegetables coming from the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands were unloaded. While once a key commercial hub for Britain’s colonial imports, the docklands came into gradual disuse and eventually closed in 1981, increasingly unable to accommodate larger vessels following the ‘containerization’ of the shipping industry. With it went the 25,000 jobs which sustained the cargo trade, leaving behind approximately 8 square miles of derelict land. After the docklands’ closure, the site became the target of an ambitious redevelopment project spearheaded by the Canadian property tycoon Paul Reichmann, owner of the property development company Olympia & York. Reichmann, who had secured investments to build the World Financial Centre in Manhattan just a few years earlier, received lenient tax breaks from the Thatcherite government to turn the docks into the city’s new financial hub. While to this day the closure of the docklands is discussed as if it left behind ‘nothing but mirror-​smooth basins, disturbed only by the occasional arc of a bird taking flight’,2 the area now commonly known as Canary Wharf was anything but empty. Its redevelopment was indeed accompanied by mass protests from the local community,3 including a funeral parade, a direct-​action involving sheep that disrupted a redevelopment meeting, and a declaration of 25

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independence (Brooke, 2017). None of this mattered when Margaret Thatcher granted the London Dockland Development Corporation (LDDC) unlimited powers to develop, effectively taking control of the area out of the hands of the local government. Social housing was replaced by luxury apartments in shiny new skyscrapers, expensively out of reach of the local community. A new class of wealthy gentrifiers arrived, attracted to the possibility of lavish loft-​ living at a (relatively) affordable price. New lucrative jobs were created, but not for the working-​class, who had to settle for less well-​paid and less secure positions as cleaners, security staff and hospitality workers servicing the area’s new residents and their lifestyles. A quay once neglected –​described as ‘dying’ and ‘unused’ by those for whom the city’s local poor are but a feature of the urban landscape –​is now largely considered to be London’s main business districts: a world-​class global financial hub in the financial capital of Capital. Today Canary Wharf ’s clusters of skyscrapers are home to some of the world’s biggest banks, including JP Morgan, Barclays and HSBC. Its impressive portfolio of sleek glass and concrete towers is only one of the things that makes the area attractive to corporations, alongside accommodating financial incentives and a healthy dose of symbolic status. Here the streets are overshadowed by the height of towers, yet they are still better lit and cleaner than in most other parts of the city. While there are not as many LED displays of the stock exchange as in Wall Street, Capital is still pervasive and, as Fiona Moore (2004) notes in one of the rare ethnographic studies of modern-​day Canary Wharf, ‘every building bears the name of a financial firm and boasts at least one security guard on reception’ (p4). This short genesis of Canary Wharf is, in effect, the history of east London and the fulcrum around which many of the themes discussed in this book will unfold: the notion of an object –​an area, a specific site, or an attribute of the self –​once untapped, transformed into a new fruitful site for the accumulation of capital, the ethical rebranding of such an object as ‘desirable’ according to new, more productive, logics, and the consequences of this for all those forms of being that are deemed ‘unproductive’ and that cannot be reconciled with such a process of profitable conversion. This is also the history of imperial Capital and its expansion into supposedly uninhabited ‘frontiers’ (Tsing, 2005). In this chapter I follow its expansion into yet another frontier: the realm of gender/​sexuality and diversity politics. I trace the emergence of corporate investments in LGBTQ+​diversity in tandem with a story about the gentrification of east London, reading investments made by Canary Wharf ’s wealthiest dwellers against the backdrop of growing inequalities, austerity policies, the privatization of local community spaces and the exclusionary tendencies of neoliberal processes of capital accumulation for some of the area’s most marginalized inhabitants. These concurrent trajectories congeal around the story of the closure of a local queer pub, the Joiners Arms, also located in the borough of Tower 26

Between Corporate Diversity and Queer Spaces’ CLOSURE

Hamlets, just a short 15-​minute drive from Canary Wharf. The pub was closed in 2014 by property developers to make space for luxury flats and, subsequently, a hotel. The chapter brings together different stories –​of corporate investments in inclusivity, of city-​wide celebrations of diversity, of financial crisis, austerity, gentrification and the closure of queer spaces –​ unfolding within the same frame in the borough of Tower Hamlets in east London. I spent a total of four years following these different threads, alternating my time between two spatially proximate but fundamentally divergent worlds: the world of corporations and their shiny towers, and the world of activists and their disappearing spaces. Each world reveals one side of the contradictory effects of neoliberalism and diversity politics on the city’s urban landscapes and its queer communities. In this chapter I endeavour to bring these threads together in order to reconcile corporate investments in LGBTQ+​diversity with a broader critique of capitalism and its crises to provide an understanding of diversity politics that goes beyond the feel-​good celebrations with which inclusivity is often embraced. But in order to fully understand these threads, we must trace a broader history of diversity politics and contemporary corporate investments in LGBT-​friendliness.

Corporate investments in diversity In an interview4 for the Portuguese newspaper Expresso (Simões, 2015), the gay CEO of HSBC Antonio Simões explains that the fact that he is 39 years old and Portuguese is a ‘much stranger –​and statistically more improbable’ feat of his leadership than the fact that he is gay. But it is not like his gayness had nothing to do with his career either. Simões is adamant in suggesting that not only did his sexuality not negatively impact his career, but that it actually made him into a better leader: ‘more authentic … better able to empathise, and with more emotional intelligence’. He suggests that if he was not gay, he ‘probably … wouldn’t be CEO of the bank’. Former executive of BP Lord Browne has described Simões as the ‘poster child for diversity in the City’. Browne himself became a vocal supporter of corporate LGBTQ+​inclusion after spending his 38-​year career at BP in the closet, an experience which he retells in his book The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good for Business (2014). In 2013 Simões was recognized as one of the ‘most inspiring top gay executives’ in the Top 50 OUTstanding in Business List. Celebrating executives that champion diversity in the corporate world, the list ranks these according to five criteria, including their seniority and influence, the extent to which they ‘inspire’ others and ‘how much they contribute to the LGBTQ+​anti-​discrimination cause’ (Financial Times, 2013). For Simões, championing diversity and inclusion is not a matter of ‘doing the right thing’ but simply a form of pragmatism. As he explains in one of 27

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HSBC’s promotional videos on diversity and inclusion: ‘we need to create an inclusive environment where [people] can be their best … the idea is, regardless of your gender, of your race, of your creed, you should be allowed to be the best you can and if you perform well, you should be rewarded for good work’ (YouTube, 2013) Promoting diversity and inclusion also connects to the bank’s international operations. ‘Our customers are diverse, we are in 80 countries, we have 54 million customers, we have eight official languages … if we are going to be the world’s leading international bank, the agenda of diversity and inclusion needs to be a key part of what we do as a business’, he explains. While Simões is ‘proud’ to be a banker, in the interview he mentions that many of his employees are ashamed of working at HSBC due to recent scandals involving the bank. Simões himself took charge of the UK arm of the bank in 2012 at a time when the banking sector was facing a public backlash over bankers’ bonuses, violating financial sanctions, manipulating stock markets, money laundering and mis-​selling services (Viswanatha and Wolf, 2012). The British banking sector in particular was facing condemnation over selling useless and wasteful –​but highly profitable –​payment protection insurance (PPI) in what was later referred to as ‘the UK’s biggest financial scandal’ (Coppola, 2019, n/​p). Simões minimizes the problem, saying that ‘99.99% of the people who work for us have never been involved in the PPI scandal or other problems’ and that, despite these problems, he still thinks that the banking system can be a social force for good in the world, that is, a ‘force for economic development’. Simões’ testimony is indicative of the ethical rebranding of corporations towards inclusivity. Indeed, while historically the corporate sector has been associated with the worst excesses of white, straight masculinity, more recently corporations have started to embrace the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion in constructing their global appeal. For example, HSBC’s slogan ‘Diversity is in our roots’ connects the firm’s imperial history, ‘founded more than 150 years ago to finance trade between Europe and Asia’ during the Opium Wars, to a modern-​day goal of ‘bring[ing] different people and cultures together’ (‘Our history: Supporting our customers for more than 150 years’, HSBC website; also see Lowe, 2005). This ethical rebranding of corporations in terms of a commitment towards inclusivity was instigated by broader economic shifts, including the growing transnationalization of corporate operations, intensified competition for global markets, as well as changing workplace demographics, all of which required novel forms of corporate control and management (Gordon, 1995). Outside of corporations, struggles grounded in anti-​racist and feminist movements in the 1970s demanded equality via affirmative action, organizing to overturn traditional structures of power and, ultimately, to challenge the corporate world as we once knew it. 28

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The rhetoric of diversity emerges in the US in the late 1980s as corporations’ newest weapon to deal with some of these epochal shifts in the struggle for survival. Launched by the Workforce 2000 Report of the Hudson Institute, the notion of ‘workplace diversity’ was put forward as a much more capital-​ friendly overarching notion for socio-​demographic differences than the legal notions of equal opportunities and affirmative action which had emerged from the civil rights movement. Indeed, where state-​driven equality agendas demanded that corporations be tasked with redressing disadvantage, diversity instead tasked diverse subjects with helping companies succeed. As Zanoni, Romani and Holck (2020) explain, the notion of diversity emerged in the mid-​1980s, at a time in which the world economy was being fundamentally redrawn by the deregulation policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which worked to intensify competition for global markets and erode workers’ rights. The new diversity management orthodoxy embodied a renewed confidence in the ability of the market to adjudicate on matters of social justice, buttressed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the supposed inevitability of capitalism (Zanoni, Romani and Holck, 2020). Refusing the historical and legal burdens of previous equality discourses, diversity points to a future of possibility and progress driven by the market, where differences were no longer repositories of historical inequality or discrimination nor the grounds for litigation, but rather the source of a new productive advantage (Noon, 2007; Swan, 2010). LGBTQ+​issues were not as prominent in earliest waves of social-​ justice-​driven scholarship. But the arrival of the more celebratory (and less politicized) notion of diversity opened the door for interest in the business benefits of LGBTQ+​inclusion, ushering in new corporate investments in LGBTQ-​friendliness. Today, corporations with offices in Canary Wharf are some of Pride in London’s major sponsors, emerging as places that not only welcome, but actually celebrate, queer people. Corporate websites are replete with statements commending the importance of authenticity in the workplace, while their established presence as ‘inclusive employers’ in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index (WEI)5 is lauded as a sign of progress. Corporations that received a top score become recognized as ‘Diversity Champions’. Some of the organizations that have achieved such accreditation over the past few years include corporate giants such as HSBC, Barclays, Unilever and the weapons manufacturer BAE Systems. Of course, greater workplace inclusivity might be good for (maybe all, maybe some) queer people. But it is also good for business. As HSBC’s website states, ‘having a diverse and inclusive culture is key to … business success’ (Pride Life Global, 2018). The benefits of inclusion include, or so the argument goes, greater employee productivity, recruitment and retention, as well as the more ‘global competitiveness’ which arises as respect for diversity becomes increasingly tied to liberal notions of modernity and 29

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progress (Puar, 2007). Here LGBTQ+​inclusion becomes not simply the ‘right’ thing to do, but the ‘smart’ thing to do, financially speaking. Multinational corporations are also increasingly making the case that LGBTQ+​inclusion is good for economic development. This argument rests on research produced by economists, which argues that homophobia is ‘bad for business’. In a 2014 report commissioned by the World Bank, economist Lee Badgett explores ‘the economic cost’ of LGBTQ+​exclusion in India. In the report, Badgett argues that the lack of full participation of LGBTQ+​people in society is not simply unfair but actually ‘reduce[s]‌the economic output of the Indian economy’ (2014, p5). The business case for inclusion here rests both on the assurance of higher productivity resulting from the inclusion of queer people on the workplace, and on the ‘threat of capital withdrawal as a punishment for their exclusion’ (Rao, 2020, p151). Rao (2020) describes the making of LGBTQ+​inclusion into an instrument for economic prosperity and progress in this way as a form of ‘homocapitalism’. Homocapitalism has emerged in recent years as a ‘weapon of choice’ (Rao, 2020, p12) wielded by a growing coalition of global North states, corporations, financial institutions, NGOs as well as elite LGBTQ+​ activists in the fight against global homophobia. The emphasis on the benefits of inclusion for corporations, not just queer employees, aligns with broader shifts away from trade union equality networks to staff networks as key sites of workplace LGBTQ+​organizing. Stonewall recognizes that, unlike trade union equality networks, staff networks ‘include benefits to the organization and not just to LGB [sic] employees’ (p22 in Colgan and McKearney, 2012, p362). This might work to give inclusion traction in the corporate workplace and in global economic development discourses. At the same time, making inclusion good for business in this way might also limit the autonomy of queer workplace organizing, now effectively under the control of corporate structures. Moreover, as Rao (2015) suggests, it might also work to separate queer struggles from other struggles and communities that are in explicit tension and opposition to corporate practices of extraction and capital accumulation.

Pinkwashing and capitalist crisis Critical scholars have argued that metrics such as the Stonewall WEI inaccurately represent the nuanced realities of queer people working in corporations (Rumens, 2018). In some cases, accreditations of inclusivity can also be used to uphold –​and in some cases shield –​the reputation of the corporation against accusations of exclusion (Ahmed, 2008). Others have also argued that, in emphasizing the importance of breaking ‘glass closets’ (Browne, 2014), corporate LGBTQ+​diversity and inclusion initiatives ignore ‘dirty floors’ and side-​line issues of economic inequality within 30

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the organization in favour of business-​friendly versions of social progress and justice (Berrey, 2014). As union organizers have pointed out, diversity work can be used as a form of union-​busting by getting employees to ‘spend [their] energy without turning it into anything’ (Dickey, 2021, n/​p) or ‘vent out some amount of steam on … social justice issues’ (Dickey, 2021, n/​p) without actually threatening corporate power. Thus, while the turn to corporate inclusivity has been lauded by many as a sign of progress, we should approach this trajectory with caution, focusing instead on what these investments do in practice and in relation to the lived intersectional experiences of queer communities. One of the critiques that has gained most traction in activist circles in recent years is that diversity makes the wrong kind of appeal because it does not so strongly appeal to our sense of social justice (Benschop, 2001). Queer activists have indeed suggested that corporations should focus less on the financial benefits of LGBTQ+​inclusion and more on actually supporting their queer employees and the queer community (Mohdin and Perraudin, 2019). Discussions on the presence of corporations at Pride in London have over the past few years been dominated by accusations of ‘pinkwashing’, in which activists reproach corporations for participating purely for commercial gains without making any tangible commitment to queer communities. Queer activist Peter Tatchell writes on his blog that ‘big corporations see [Pride] as a PR opportunity to fete LGBT consumers with their flashy floats [while] … the ideal of LGBT equality are barely visible’ (Tatchell, 2017). The former director of Pride in London, Dan O’Gorman, also acknowledges that pinkwashing is an ‘ongoing concern’ and that Pride organizers always try and ‘hold all brands and organizations to the highest standards … making sure they actively contribute to improving the lives of our community in the capital and beyond’ (2019, n/​p). In recent years, demands for corporations to focus on the actual inclusion of queer people have also translated into homonationalist calls to bring other countries ‘up to speed’ with Western narratives and experiences of progress (Puar, 2007). In this vein, queer activists have called upon corporations that brand themselves as LGBTQ-​friendly to play a more active role in pushing for LGBTQ+​ progress in countries where homosexuality is criminalized (see Rao, 2020; Rossdale, 2019). The pinkwashing critique has been instrumental in politicizing some of the discussions around the involvement of corporations in LGBTQ+​politics. At the same time, this critique can in fact buttress, rather than challenge, corporate power by calling on corporations to play an even bigger role in global LGBTQ+​politics. For example, in 2020 the corporate leadership firm Out Leadership published an article (Houdart, 2020) calling for ‘authentic engagement’ as an antidote to pinkwashing, while a report (2019) by the global corporate network Open for Business also encourages corporations to show they are ‘serious’ about LGBTQ+​ 31

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inclusion by taking more ‘concrete actions’ on LGBTQ+​rights in countries where progress is lacking. Moreover, this critique also runs the risk of reproducing the worst effects of both homonationalism and homocapitalism (Puar, 2007; Rao, 2015; Rossdale, 2019). Chris Rossdale (2019) suggests that, while queer activists might be right in pointing to the hypocrisy of weapons manufacturers such as BAE Systems branding themselves as LGBTQ-​friendly while doing business with countries with a poor record on LGBTQ+​rights, such accounts are ‘reliant on the same logical structure at work in homonationalism’ (p78) and ultimately reinscribe the moral authority of Western capitalism as the arbiter for moral good. A more fruitful Marxist and decolonial critique might instead suggest that, whether LGBTQ-​friendly or not, the very existence of corporations (some, or all, depending on your political dispositions) exerts an ‘unfriendly’ influence on the world, perhaps especially when their business is that of making weapons. Moreover, corporations are increasingly shifting the focus away from the business benefits of inclusion towards neoliberal versions of social justice. Take, for example, the ways in which Barclays articulates its commitment to LGBTQ+​diversity. On its website, Barclays pre-​empts the pinkwashing critique by emphasizing not the business benefits of inclusion but by constructing an imagined history of the company as a ‘champion of LGBTQ+​rights’. The bank cites its recognition in the Stonewall WEI, ongoing sponsorship of Pride, personalized rainbow debit cards and the fact that they were ‘the first bank to promote a transgender woman to the position of branch manager’ (‘LGBT+​’, Barclays website) as evidence of tangible allyship to the LGBTQ+​community. This example suggests that the distinction between the social justice and the business case which forms the basis for the pinkwashing critique of diversity politics might be losing its traction. That is, diversity is increasingly becoming a core element not only of corporate business strategy, but of a new social strategy for liberation. This version of liberation reconfigures the freedom to ‘be yourself ’ as the ultimate freedom of the market: ‘being yourself ’ enables you to achieve your ‘full potential’, to be your most productive self, and what is (queer) freedom if not the ability to reap newfound market opportunities, use a rainbow debit card, be promoted as branch manager of Barclays, or perhaps even CEO of HSBC and, in the process, inspire others to break their own glass closets? The problem with this is not that corporations are invested in business over liberation (the pinkwashing critique), but that the version of liberation they promote is one which is not merely compatible with the individualizing logic of the capital, but that is effectively reconfigured in its service. This is a version of liberation that is fundamentally antithetical to broader struggles for collective queer liberation and for structural change. 32

Between Corporate Diversity and Queer Spaces’ CLOSURE

A more fruitful critical reading of corporate investments in diversity is offered by situating contemporary corporate commitments to LGBTQ+​ inclusion within a broader framework of capitalist crisis. After a decade of near uninterrupted economic growth, the economic system came to an almost grinding halt in 2008 with the breakdown of the global stock market. The housing market collapsed, banks lost the gambles they made on consumers’ savings, unemployment soared and businesses failed. The near economic collapse initially seemed to confirm Marxist readings of capitalist downfall, where the values of the free market, once heralded as inevitable, were finally showing their own internal contradictions. But as Peter Bloom (2016) suggests, despite the widespread belief that these events would lead to a ‘new economic paradigm’, the aftermath ushered in a renewed commitment to the values of the ‘free market’ and ‘financialization’ (p160). The focus quickly shifted from a potential critique of the free market to the need to fight debt and economic crisis with newfound confidence in its ethical mission via new rounds of fiscal responsibility. Corporate investments in diversity have largely coincided with such periods of stringent economic austerity and the emergence of unprecedented precarity, privatization, and the systematic plundering of the conditions which most people require in order to survive. Reconnecting this newfound confidence in the power of the free market with its gender/​sexual politics, feminist scholars have argued that the celebration of successful female executives in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has enabled corporations to redress perceptions of risky behaviour associated with maleness and masculinity (also see Rottenberg, 2014, 2017). These successful female executives are heralded as evidence that the ‘excessive testosterone-​filled trading floors’ (True, 2006, p41) that once characterized global financial institutions have made way for a new kind of (supposedly more ethical) feminist leadership (also see Rottenberg, 2014, 2017). This has enabled corporations to renew their role as forces for economic and social good while avoiding major structural reform. Corporate investments in LGBTQ+​inclusion can also be read as a kind of ethical rehabilitation of corporations via the (moral, social and political) appeals of diversity in the wake of capitalist crisis. During an interview with a senior white gay male executive in a bank, he alluded to this by suggesting that he himself reads the current emphasis on LGBTQ+​leadership in his company as a sort of rebranding exercise in which the involvement of (white, heterosexual and male) financial elites in the crash could be alleviated by ‘hiring “diverse” people, people who look different, people who don’t look like the typical CEO’.6 Here the incorporation of queerness functions ‘to save a dying capitalist order’ (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018, p225) by offering LGBTQ+​CEOs like Antonio Simões as new kinds of ‘authentic’ leaders in exchange for a novel brand of capitalism that is progressive, inclusive, 33

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‘friendly’: a capitalism that has reformed itself and is now a social force for (queer) ‘good’. While corporate commitments to inclusivity and diversity were making headlines in Canary Wharf, other parts of east London were bearing the brunt of the new austerity policies pursued by the Conversative-​led coalition of 2010–​2015. Such policies included harsh processes of privatization, which transferred public goods and resources into the hands of private corporations, resulting in tattered social safety nets, the closure of community spaces, as well as the chasing out of ‘unproductive’ elements and all those who could not be reconciled with corporate-​friendly version of liberation from the city’s urban landscapes. Reconnecting corporate celebrations of ‘inclusivity’ with the violence of neoliberal processes of capital accumulation sheds light on some of the inherent contradiction underpinning such feel-​good celebrations of ‘progress’.

Regeneration and the neoliberalization of urban planning East London is an area characterized by a longstanding association with the city’s immigrant and working-​class populations. The borough of Tower Hamlets in particular is an area with some of the most severe clusters of inequality and disadvantage, not only in UK but in Europe. The area is also home to 32% of the British Bangladeshi population. The borough has, simultaneously, the highest economic output of any city in the UK (except London), and the highest levels of child and pensioner poverty in the UK (Reza, 2021). Canary Wharf ’s corporate towers look down over food banks in this ‘borough of contrasts’ (Neate, 2019), in which many of the highest-​ paid people in the world live and work side-​by-​side with the over 20,000 families on the local council house waiting list. The estimated waiting time for a four-​bedroom home is of over a decade. The crisis facing the borough is largely due to the Conservative government’s decade of austerity policies. Since 2010 the public services budget in the East End has been cut by over 70%, a spending cut amounting to over £200 million. In 2019 the local government announced that its public services were at ‘breaking point’ (Brooke, 2019). These spending cuts are part and parcel of what Jamie Peck (2012) has referred to as ‘austerity urbanism’: a post-​2008 round of public service cuts and welfare retrenchment that has particularly affected cities as sites that are home to many of austerity’s preferred political targets, including the ‘undeserving’ poor and other marginalized populations. Indeed, spending cuts have particularly affected housing and welfare services supporting all those in need of social care. These cuts have also deeply gendered consequences and have had particularly severe impacts on single parents, the majority of whom are women, who 34

Between Corporate Diversity and Queer Spaces’ CLOSURE

now have to perform increasing amount of labour to ‘plug the gaps left by state withdrawal’ (Gillespie, Hardy and Watt, 2018, p813). While cuts are justified in the name of fiscal responsibility and ‘market rationality’, they are not an inevitable reality but a political choice: a form of social cleansing designed to eliminate ‘undesirable’ and ‘unproductive’ elements from the spaces of the city. This political–​e conomic climate of austerity replaced the more community-​centred plans supported by the Greater London Council (GLC) in the 1980s. Under Ken Livingstone’s leadership from 1981 until 1986, the GLC pursued socialist policies geared towards ameliorating conditions for London’s most marginalized communities. This included funding for local disability, anti-​racist and queer groups (Schofield, Sutcliffe-​Braithwaite and Waters, 2021). The GLC was ultimately disbanded by Margaret Thatcher in 1986 as part of her decade-​long attacks against local government and their equality-​driven policies supporting marginalized populations. The disbandment of the GLC marked a shift in urban policy towards regeneration, now embedded within the very fabric of social policy in the London Plan, the capital’s strategic development plan (2021). The aim of regeneration is to invite large-​scale property developments to fulfil a number of social and economic aspirations –​including more housing, growth and employment. The assumption underpinning such a strategy is that these gains will somehow ‘trickle down’ to local communities. In practice, however, as Ben Campkin (2013) has noted, in London as well as other parts of the world in which such neoliberal strategies for urban regeneration are pursued, the effect has been that of heightening inequalities, largely reducing the quantity of genuinely affordable housing and facilitating the demolition of council estates.7 The London Plan is published every five years by the Mayor of London and is endorsed by the Greater London Authority (GLA), the administrative body established in 2000 to replace the GLC. The remarkable continuity of the Plan’s ambitions over the past decade, despite seemingly radical changes in mayoral leadership –​most notably, from Boris Johnson (Conversative) to Sadiq Khan (Labour) –​reveals the ubiquity of neoliberal regeneration: a form of racist and classist warfare masquerading itself as ‘common sense market rationality’. The East End has, over the past decade, become target of considerable ‘regeneration’ efforts. In particular, Tower Hamlets has been designated in the London Plan as an ‘opportunity area’ in most need for regeneration. Local businesses that have been around for over a hundred years are now closing to make space for various kinds of redevelopments, including luxury flats, office space, hotels, upscale restaurants, expensive coffee shops, digital media start-​ups, and even an infamous cereal-​themed café (Khomani and Halliday, 2015). While Canary Wharf ’s glossy skyscrapers were once confined to the south area of the borough, they are now edging closer to areas previously out 35

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of reach. Amazon opened a giant new office in 2017 just north of Canary Wharf in the adjacent and trendy area of Shoreditch. The 6,000 square foot of office space is designed to host around 5,000 of the tech company’s employees (Shead, 2017). These redevelopments have brought with them new waves of middle-​ class gentrifiers. Some moved to the East End in search of more affordable rents and to take advantage of the area’s arts, music and queer scene. Others, who work in Canary Wharf or in Shoreditch’s start-​ups, to take advantage of shorter commutes. I also moved to the East End in 2012, initially in Hackney, then in Tower Hamlets, and subsequently back in Hackney, where I currently live. Aside from two short stints in north London, I have lived in the East End for the better part of the last 11 years. The process of (so-​called) urban regeneration has been largely facilitated by the neoliberalization of urban planning. Kristian Olesen (2014) defines this as a process which posits the logics of capital accumulation as serving public interests and which effectively rigs planning in favour of property developers. This promotes regeneration by making local councils increasingly dependent on private investments (whose underlying imperative is the maximization of profit accruing to land use) for the maintenance and ‘revitalization’ of areas under their jurisdiction. Indeed, as increasing amounts of capital have moved into global corporations beyond the reach of the state, the main goal of the state now rests on its ability to attract investment. In planning terms, this has meant a reconfiguration of planning regimes away from both more redistributive understandings of urban improvement and the modernist pursuit of ideal conditions, towards the more unstable logic of the market, where capitalists seek the complete exploitation of the markets, and where the goal of planning is merely that of ‘attract[ing] footloose capital, only to collapse again once incentives dry up’ (Abrams and Weszkalnys, 2011, p7). Such strategies encourage local councils to act ‘entrepreneurially’ to promote up-​market, cosmopolitan and middle-​class forms of consumption to facilitate processes of capital accumulation (also see Andersson, 2009; Ludwig, 2016; Kanai, 2014). In its wake, all those who stand in the way of otherwise productive expansion of neoliberal capitalist landscapes are left to deal with what Abrams and Weszkalnys (2011) call ‘the detritus of industrial development’ (p7), including depleted resources, unemployment, monopolistic economic and welfare crises. This process is also deeply depoliticizing, turning local councillors into pencil pushers whose job is to simply maintain and provide certainty to the market in order to facilitate corporate investments in the area. No alternative to unfettered capital expansion can even be articulated because the grounds for opposition to redevelopments must be legal/​technical, not political. Local planners and impoverished councils tasked with regulating redevelopment are overpowered by large international corporations that often threaten to 36

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counteract the rejection of planning applications with ‘legal appeals too expensive for authorities to defend’ (Abrams and Weszkalnys, 2011). What one might argue should be the central function of urban planning in a neoliberal era, that is to protect local communities against the failures of the market, is totally eclipsed. As areas are transformed by luxury redevelopments and rapidly rising property prices, social and financial divides deepen and tensions between local communities mount. In the 2019 documentary The Street, director Zed Nelson follows the stories of some of the East End’s ageing white working-​class residents in Hoxton Street, round the corner from Amazon’s new office, whose feeling is overwhelmingly one of being left behind. Residents lamented the loss of their jobs, a previous way of life and, regrettably, immigration, echoing some of the Brexit campaign’s own racist talking points. Tensions have also risen between local communities and local Labour leaders. The local council elections of May 2022 saw Labour lose the majority of its seats in a borough once considered to be one of its strongholds. Former Labour mayoral and council candidate Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire Party did particularly well, gaining a majority with 24 seats, running on a platform of radical ‘change’ and addressing inequalities. In the run-​up to the elections, the general sentiment was that the Labour-​run council had largely failed to curb both cuts to public spending and the process of privatization (Reza, 2021). The nail in the coffin was delivered when, just a few months before the election, Labour councillors voted in favour of a massive redevelopment project on Brick Lane that residents fear will privilege corporate businesses over independent curry houses that employ predominantly Bangladeshi and Bengali migrants (Shead, 2017). The Truman Brewery redevelopment received 7,500 objection letters from local residents, but councillor Kevin Brady argued that there were no legal grounds to oppose the redevelopment. Rahman, on the other hand, expressed strong opposition to the redevelopment. Nijjor Manush, a group formed in 2018 to empower and promote critical organizing around issues impacting Bangladeshis and Bengalis in the UK, accused two councillors who voted in favour of the redevelopment of serving property developers’ interests over those of local communities and of putting profit over people. Both councillors lost their seat in the election. Anti-​gentrification campaigners hope that Rahman will not prioritize property developers’ interests over local communities. However, the neoliberalization of planning extends far beyond single councillors: the problem is structural, and it is yet to be seen if Rahman’s stated opposition to the Truman Brewery redevelopment will be implemented. The neoliberal urban policies pursued over the last decade have participated in the creation of unhospitable spaces, if any, for the East End’s working-​ class communities (Campkin, 2013). Yet, despite its devastating effects on 37

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the economic and racial diversity of east London, regeneration is often sold and packaged through the language and rhetoric of diversity. An interesting example is the London 2012 Olympics. While the mega-​event enabled London to market itself as a ‘multicultural’, ‘LGBTQ-​friendly’ and ‘diverse’ city, promising to ‘transform the heart of east London’ (Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, 2008) by generating massive investments, in practice such celebrations of inclusion worked to efface certain kinds of diversities from the spaces of the city, including all those that could not be accommodated within the geographies of capitalist accumulation and/​ or communities –​especially Muslim communities –​who were perceived to be at odds with the specific emphasis on (liberal notions of) ‘inclusion’ (Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2014). LGBTQ+ ​inclusivity plays a specific role in these discourses, becoming linked to wider projects of urban regeneration that aim to create LGBTQ+ spaces in areas traditionally associated with homophobic working-​class and immigrant masculinities (Andersson, 2009; Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2014). This causes deeply problematic rifts between the goals of queer politics (as manifested in its mainstream formulations) and broader anti-​racist and class struggles. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate the importance of reconciling these in practice and in relation to the politics of queer spaces in east London.

The Joiners Arms and the closure of queer spaces What we now understand as LGBTQ+​or queer spaces owe their emergence to a number of socio-​economic transformations that occurred at the turn of the 19th century as part of a capitalist industrialization and reorganization of production. As working people moved to cities to fulfil the demands of an increasingly urbanized economy, gay identities and lifestyles emerged outside of the constraints of traditional familial life (D’Emilio, 1983; Drucker, 2015). Cities are transformed into sites of subcultural queer experimentation which, over time, congeal around a night-​time economy of bars, clubs and other urban spaces of same-​sex sociality. As queerness becomes more visible in public, however, it also becomes an object of intense regulation, lest it disrupt the productivity of capitalism itself and the very organization of production to which it partly owes its existence. LGBTQ+​spaces thus also become targets of various forms of planning controls intended to expunge what are seen to be ‘risky’ or ‘dangerous’ forms of conviviality from the city’s urban landscapes (Bell and Binnie, 2004). In Soho, considered to be London’s first and most historic gay district, LGBTQ+​spaces were subject to intense forms of policing and control targeted at those engaging in what were seen to be ‘undesirable’ gender/​sexual practices that challenged the mores of heteronormative reproductive life. 38

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But as (some) forms of queerness become reconfigured as particularly desirable kinds of capitalist subjectivity, certain kinds of LGBTQ+​spaces, too, emerge as valuable sites in broader urban processes of capital accumulation (Oswin, 2015). Today, spaces such as LGBTQ+​bars, pubs and clubs play an integral role in enacting and maintaining London’s status as a global city in line with (neo)liberal narratives of Western modernity and progress. These spaces are celebrated as key components of the city’s diverse and inclusive appeal, as sites which render London ‘one of the most LGBTQ-​friendly cities in the world’ (Khan, 2022). Drawing in part from the work of Richard Florida (2002) and other mainstream urban policy advisors who argue that cities that invest in LGBTQ-​friendliness are more globally competitive, such strategies encourage cities to act entrepreneurially to capitalize on a rising market for LGBTQ+​inclusion via queer consumers and tourists. The establishment of Soho’s gay village in the 1990s can be read as marking this –​albeit contradictory –​shift from the exclusion to the inclusion of LGBTQ+​spaces within broader urban strategies of place-​promotion and urban regeneration. The incorporation of LGBTQ+​spaces into regeneration discourses has the effect of sanitizing these spaces, reducing queerness to commodified sites that cater primarily to up-​market, cosmopolitan and middle-​class forms of gay and lesbian consumption (Bell and Binnie, 2004). East London’s queer nightlife organically developed in response to such increasingly commodified and sanitized versions of gay cultural consumption (Andersson, 2009). Made up of a number of scattered venues across the area, east London’s queer nightlife emerged as a ‘grittier, fashion-​forward and often outrageous hotbeds of gay night life’ (Chen, 2007) that largely distinguished itself from the more commercialized forms of gay consumption on offer in Soho. These hidden locations of queer nightlife functioned as safe havens and cruising grounds for those queers who lived and worked in these ‘dangerous’ and ‘derelict’ urban landscapes, those who could not afford a night out in Soho, or perhaps those who simply did not fit within the limited notions of queer identity forged around commercial interests on offer in other, more sanitized, gay districts. Amid these venues stood the Joiners Arms. The pub was opened by David Pollard, a working-​class gay man from ‘up North’, in May 1997. The pub was located on Hackney Road, just off Shoreditch High Street, in an area that was then still largely beyond the control and active policymaking reach of the state. Andersson (2009) suggests that the Joiners Arms played an important role in east London’s emerging queer scene, and that its ‘unwelcoming exteriors’, ‘permanently flooded toilets’, ‘haggard rainbow flag’, ‘closed blinds’ and ‘almost invisible entrance’ all represented ‘an East End tradition of working-​class pub culture’ (p64) that strongly contrasted with both Shoreditch’s ‘more fashionable bar scene’ and with Soho’s more ‘cosmopolitan and classy’ atmosphere. David had always been very passionate 39

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about the rich working-​class history of pubs as transformative spaces for collective organizing. The pub was the first in the country to adopt the London Living Wage (LLW) for all its staff. Described as ‘a genuine meeting place for actual outsiders’ (Neate, 2017a), the pub had an easy-​going vibe that attracted a mixed, relaxed and eclectic crowd. Initially, this was mostly local working-​class residents, including some of David’s friends as well as strippers that worked in other establishments on Hackney Road (see Andersson, 2009). Some of the staff working the bar –​including the manager, Giuliano, from Italy –​were immigrants from southern Europe. Over time, however, following broader patterns of regeneration in east London, the pub became populated by new waves of middle-​class visitors in search of an adventure amidst the ‘ruins of the urban landscape’ (Andersson, 2009, p63). In an article in the New York Times, one of the original patrons explains that ‘ten years ago, the only regulars here were a three-​legged dog and a one-​armed man playing pool … but now, it’s fashion designers, filmmakers, artists’ (Chen, 2007). Its appeal to visitors from the adjacent and rapidly gentrifying area of Shoreditch was not only due to the fact that the pub stayed open later than other venues, but also that it was located in an area that had a reputation of urban disorder and decay at a time in which working-​class culture and aesthetics were becoming increasingly romanticized and fetishized by middle-​class audiences in search of authentic forms of ‘street credibility’ (Andersson, 2009). Yet, encroaching gentrification did not initially seem to fundamentally alter the character of the pub. I suggest this had something to do with the fact that the Joiners ‘was never really about making money’ (Flynn, 2014) and that the forms of capital valorised in this space were not dictated by the logic of commercialization. Rather, what mostly seemed to concern David was ‘joyful sin’. In an interview for I-​d magazine, David explains that the Joiners was fundamentally about ‘having a good time’: We don’t want to know how important you are. Are you interesting to talk to? Are you a good shag? Can you dance? These are the questions we’re interested in as a pub … It has to be an environment that allows dancing because all this is about the joy of sin. (Flynn, 2014) The pub indeed seemed to provide a space for interclass contact and mixing, bringing together people who would not normally talk to each other or share a space. This was all lubricated by a healthy dose of hedonism and, of course, drugs. Jonny Woo, who now owns a popular queer venue in the adjacent area of Dalston, explains that ‘a lot of people … who I used to see out and didn’t talk to, suddenly now everyone is talking to each other at the Joiner’s Arms … [the pub] used to be fucking drug city’ (in Andersson, 40

Between Corporate Diversity and Queer Spaces’ CLOSURE

2009). Its reputation as a ‘drug city’ is also what made it subject to a number of interventions by the local council and the police, which, on more than one occasion, threatened to revoke its licence on grounds of promoting ‘anti-​social behaviour’. Although LGBTQ+​spaces are promoted as integral components of the city’s global city discourses, over the past ten years these spaces have also been subjected to numerous closures. In 2016, the GLA commissioned research into LGBTQ+​venues in the city with a view to informing the mayor’s cultural infrastructure plan (Campkin and Marshall, 2017, p5) and the London Plan, among other things. The research, conducted by the UCL Urban Lab found that, from 2006 to 2017, the number of LGBTQ+​venues in London fell from 125 to 53, a staggering 58% decline in just over a decade (Campkin and Marshall, 2017, 2018). Some read the closures as a positive side-​effect of the increasing inclusion of queer people in mainstream society. But evidence suggests that the bulk of the closures have in fact been due not to the lack of demand or need but private property developments, steep hikes in rent prices, and, more broadly, the various processes of neoliberal urban regeneration previously described. The research also found that east London’s more community-​orientated spaces of queer nightlife have been particularly affected over more commercially-​orientated establishments. Tower Hamlets in particular has lost over 70% of its queer venues in the last ten years. This included the Joiners Arms, which closed its doors at the end of 2014 after being sold for a staggering £1½ million. The pub was one of multiple buildings on the block due to be turned into luxury flats and office spaces in a redevelopment project managed by Regal Homes. The firm has been at the forefront of a number of redevelopment projects in London, the most recent of which have been in east London. These are often couched in the language of ‘regeneration’ and ‘revitalization’ of derelict areas to the benefit of local communities. In a promotional video entitled ‘Regeneration Story’, co-​founder Simon De Friend and Paul Eden explain that they are proud to be involved in redevelopment projects that make a ‘difference in the area’ and that ‘benefit local communities’. The spate of closures triggered extensive media and public discussion on the threats faced by venues serving London’s LGBTQ+​communities and the importance of queer spaces in the city. Sadiq Khan responded to the closures by saying that he holds queer venues in ‘very high regard’ and that ‘protecting them is an integral part of … [his] plans to grow London’s night-​time economy and culture’ (London City Hall, 2017a). In 2016 he appointed queer comedian and DJ Amy Lamé, co-​founder and host of the queer club night Duckie, as London’s first Night Tsar, ‘to champion the capital’s [£26.3 billion] night-​time economy and to take action to stem the flow of closures of LGBT+​spaces in the city’ (London Assembly, 2017). She was the main initiator of the LGBT+​Venues Charter (discussed 41

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in Chapter 4) and has since committed to undertaking an annual audit of LGBT+​venues ‘so that the number of LGBT+​venues in the capital can be tracked more closely, and efforts can be made to stem the flow of closures in the city’ (London Assembly, 2017). While initially she was lauded for her activist background, she has since attracted criticism for allowing legislation to be passed in Hackney restricting venues’ operating hours and for ‘selling out’ to the establishment (Connick, 2018). Indeed, while Lamé’s appointment may indeed be a laudable effort to protect LGBTQ+​nightlife in London, it is unclear what exactly her powers and responsibilities are and whether these might be equipped to tackle the economic pressures which account for the bulk of the closures. Lamé has also heralded the invaluable contributions that LGBTQ+​spaces make to London’s night-​time economy as a reason for which these spaces must be protected (Eloise, 2017). During her term as Night Tsar, Lamé would work with property developers, the GLA and queer venue operators to protect queer spaces from closure. LGBTQ+​groups also organized against the disappearance of queer spaces in the city. In February 2018, I attended a meeting organized by the Queer Spaces Network to discuss the London Plan and how to ensure this included specific strategies to protect queer venues from closure. The group included venue owners, campaigners, planning and policy specialists, queer performers, as well as members of the queer community with an interest in protecting queer venues in the UK more broadly. The discussions resulted in a document containing a number of recommendations on how local authorities can support LGBTQ+​venues. The document draws from the language of global city discourses suggesting that if London wants to remain ‘a world-​class queer city’ its queer venues need to be both ‘preserved and supported’.8 In the document, particular focus is also placed on the need for planning to be more ‘inclusive’ of LGBTQ+​ communities through the development of ‘toolkits’ designed to ensure that venues’ queerness is protected through the process of redevelopment. An example of this is a document produced in 2019 by the LGBTQ+​planning network Planning Out entitled ‘LGBT+​Placemaking Toolkit’. Stressing that LGBTQ+​venues are important not just for LGBTQ+​communities but that they actually enrich ‘the overall fabric of our society’, the toolkit outlines a number of tools that members of the LGBTQ+​community –​ from campaigners to operators –​can adopt in order to protect their spaces through planning. While the Joiners Arms had initially remained a relatively marginal part of these discussions, the establishment of an agreement between Tower Hamlets council and Regal Homes catapulted the pub into these debates (Chapter 3). These efforts place particular emphasis on the importance of monitoring queer venues, as well as developing criteria to define queer spaces and 42

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working with queer communities to identify potential venue operators to work with property developers. Notably absent from these debates, however, is a broader critique of economic injustice and the neoliberal urban strategies which lubricate processes of regeneration. Indeed, while efforts to identify, measure and locate queerness in order to protect it through the process of redevelopment are surely well-​intentioned, such strategies not only do not address the underlying structural conditions leading to the closure of queer spaces, but are also likely to bring existing queer venues into a neoliberal frame. As explored in Chapter 3, this has severe consequences for all those ‘undesirable’ forms of queerness that remain outside established lines and ‘can’t easily be represented, professionalized, or commodified’ (Ward, 2008a, p2), casting serious doubts on whether commitments to ‘inclusivity’ can indeed be reconciled with processes of capital accumulation.

Diversity politics: cultural recognition or economic redistribution? The tension between new openings promised by corporate ‘inclusivity’ and the closure of queer spaces is worthy of study as a moment that has exposed some of the contradictions of promises of inclusion in the age of neoliberalism. I have attempted to think through some of the ways in which corporate commitments to inclusion do not merely co-​exist with but actually lubricate conditions of precarity and exclusion in seeking to extract the productive value of differences. To do this I have offered an account of the ways in which corporate investments in LGBTQ+​inclusivity have coincided with the exaltation of the market as an arbiter of what counts as moral good and the emergence of austerity policies following the 2008 financial crisis. Against the up-​beat celebratory naivete of much of the corporate discourse on LGBTQ+​inclusion, I have attempted to demonstrate that a much more fruitful reading is offered if we read corporate investments in diversity as part of efforts to restore the profitability of capital in response to a number of socio-​political and cultural challenges to corporate power, including state-​driven equality agendas and distrust of corporations in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The traction and visibility that accusations of pinkwashing are receiving within LGBTQ+​politics and media suggest that activists are becoming more cautious about corporate investments in LGBTQ+​inclusion. At the same time, unless these critiques are grounded in a much broader critique of capitalism, they run the risk of simply becoming assimilated into corporate diversity politics, actually buttressing corporate practices of capital accumulation. Similarly, recent efforts to save LGBTQ+​venues from closure have attempted to ‘protect’ LGBTQ+​venues by identifying and measuring their value to the night-​time economy without addressing the 43

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broader structural conditions of privatization. In so doing, such strategies can actually work to facilitate processes of regeneration that create unhospitable environments for the East End’s working-​class communities. Reading contemporary corporate investments in ‘inclusivity’ against the backdrop of a broader reorganization of global capital, the redistribution of public resources into private domains, the privatization of planning, the pursuit of austerity policies in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and its effects on local communities and spaces, I have tried to demonstrate both the importance of economic questions to queer activists today, and the relevance of queer issues and understandings to Marxist critiques of capitalism. Queer activists need to become, to paraphrase Lisa Duggan (2012), much more fluent, literate and versed in economic policy and analysis if they want to challenge corporate-​friendly versions of inclusion and reconcile the goals of queer politics with the broader pursuit of economic justice. In framing the conceptual and political work this book intends to do through the lens of queer Marxism, I have found debates on the politics of recognition/​ redistribution to be particularly useful. In an exchange with Judith Butler (1997) in an issue of Social Text, Nancy Fraser (1997) understands injustices relating to gender/​sexuality, such as ‘heterosexism’, as stemming from issues of cultural misrecognition, as ‘status injuries’. While she is careful not to minimize the gravity of these injustices, she nevertheless argues that these are separate from class struggles which unfold in the economic realm, which have to be addressed by tackling redistributive issues. Against this, Judith Butler (1997) accuses Fraser of proposing a ‘merely cultural’ understanding of gender/​sexuality which fails to problematize the culture/​economy binary. In Butler’s view, Fraser’s reading represents a tendency manifest in critical Marxist thinking ‘to relegate new social movements seeking inclusion through recognition to the sphere of cultural … to dismiss them as being preoccupied with what is called the “merely” cultural’ (pp33–​34). This tendency is by no means restricted to critical Marxist scholars but is a reading which permeates popular culture and society more broadly, and which has, in recent years, voided mainstream LGBTQ+​politics of a sustained or substantial critique of economic injustice (Duggan, 2003; Hennessy, 2000; Richardson, 2005; Vaid, 1995). From Butler’s perspective, struggles of recognition (gender/​sexuality) should not be separated from struggles of redistribution (class). Thus, while ‘both critics strive toward a leftist politics … they disagree over the inherent ability of identity politics to deal with this fact’ (Oswin, 2007, p655). By offering an ‘impoverished’ (Rao, 2015) understanding of homophobia as something that stems from the mere misrecognition of queerness, corporations are able to brand themselves as ‘allies’ to queer struggles rather than complicit in the reproduction of the various crises and precarities which threaten forms of queerness that cannot be reconciled with extant processes 44

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of capital accumulation. From this perspective, corporate investments in inclusion pursue a ‘merely cultural’ (Butler, 1997 politics of recognition that is not simply ill-​equipped but that actually undermines struggles for redistribution in the city. Yet, as Rahul Rao (2015) has argued, ‘far from marking a real separation between different kinds of injustices’ (p44), the distinction between cultural struggles for recognition and economic struggles for redistribution is nothing but ‘the ruse through which neoliberal capitalism pretends to become more inclusive’ (p44). In the book, I try and reconcile the politics of inclusion with its redistributive dimensions by foregrounding diversity as a cultural and economic phenomenon. Read in this way, the politics of diversity becomes one of the key battlegrounds for various queer and class struggles unfolding in the city. The following chapters trace these struggles across different contexts –​from LGBTQ+​networking events and LGBTQ-​friendly corporations, to queer and anti-​gentrification activism.

45

2

Coming Out for Business: Lesbian Tech CEOs and the CEO-​ization of Queer Politics ‘We need to create an inspirational group of people who can show you that things are possible, who can show you the power of being you’,1 said Alison, as she sat on the stage. Alison is a director at Barclays and is listed as one of the UK’s Top 50 LGBTQ+​executives (Macleod, 2015). It is a Wednesday evening on the 31st and highest floor of Barclays’ HQ. Around 100 LGBTQ+​ professionals have gathered to hear seven ‘very visible lesbian and bisexual role models’ discuss ways to ‘support and advise organizations to create an environment where women can be authentic in work, be comfortable being out, and be much more confident in self-​promotion’.2 The event, like the majority of the ones I would attend in coming years, took place in the conference suites of one of the large glass and steel structures in Canary Wharf. Hosted by Barclays’ LGBTQ+​staff network Spectrum and organized by LBTQWomen,3 the event offered canapés and refreshments, networking opportunities and impassionate speeches about the importance of being you. ‘You need a group of people everywhere to show you that this is real and every day’,4 Alison continued, standing up. ‘Everyone needs to get involved … only then will we start to change mindsets and create the right kind of culture’.5 Alison’s remarks touch on some of the central themes of corporate LGBTQ+​networking events: the power of authenticity, the power of individuals as agents of change, and the importance of changing workplace cultures. These are also central themes of the diversity (management) literature and of current efforts to rank employers according to their ‘inclusivity’. These events attract queer people at different stages of their career: from graduate students looking for their first job, to activists turned EDI pundits who recently joined from the (not-​so-​distant) world of LGBTQ+​NGOs, to seasoned senior executives and even anthropologists, like me, who are fascinated by corporate investments in queerness. 46

Coming Out for Business

Events like this are important sites of cultural transmission and construction of LGBTQ-​friendliness, where its promise of inclusion is produced, sold and consumed. At these events senior leaders showcase their experiences of being LGBTQ+​at work with the aim of encouraging (especially more junior and/​or closeted) LGBTQ+​employees to come out, become more visible and more involved in promoting inclusion at work. The sharing of these experiences –​through stories and anecdotes of personal and professional success as told by those for whom things have ‘gotten better’ –​ creates veritable inspirational narratives about the value of being yourself on the workplace. After all, these are people who spend a lot of their time at work, and it not only ‘makes it more fun to be who you are’6 but also, under these circumstances, it can be difficult to ‘hide and pretend to be somebody else’.7 But it was not simply the difficulties involved with the closet which buttressed the importance of ‘being yourself ’: senior LGBTQ+​leaders are the first to admit that ‘being yourself ’ is also good for business. Critical scholars have argued that, in reconfiguring differences as assets in pursued of corporate bottom lines, diversity is a managerial discourse that ‘assaults human difference’ and denies diverse subjects’ ‘full subjectivity’ (Litvin, 2002, 2006; Costea and Introna, 2006). Queer critics have also argued that the recognition of some queer differences by corporations is achieved by accentuating their ‘sameness’ (Richardson, 2005). While there is some truth to these critiques, these ignore the ways in which promises of inclusion also work by enjoining workers to develop personal aspirations and orientations that are congruent with corporate objectives. Against readings which lament the ways in which diversity politics erases queer differences and/​or requires queer subjects to appear ‘virtually normal’ (Drucker, 2015), I suggest that corporate practices of inclusion actually buttress managerialism in positive terms, by addressing queer subjects in their diversity and particularity. Diversity emerges here as something that adds value not simply to the corporation but to the entrepreneurial queer self, reshaping the boundary between what counts as queer activism and what is good for business: what is valuable for the corporation, and what is valuable for the self. Ultimately, this new brand of corporate diversity politics enshrines the neoliberal reconfiguration not only of queer labour but of queer life itself: the social, affective, inter-​personal relations around which queer organizing unfolds.

The productive value of authenticity Coming out and being your ‘true self ’ has been a central operating impulse of queer political and social life since the advent of modernity. Notwithstanding poststructuralist critiques of the fiction of an authentic self as well as postcolonial critiques of the partiality of this discourse for 47

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experiences of queerness beyond global North contexts, coming out has been largely understood as one of the central tools of queer liberation. Management scholarship, too, posits coming out as a key component of LGBTQ+​employees’ well-​being and sense of belonging in the workplace. The possibility of ‘being yourself ’ at work is also one of the key promises of LGBTQ-​friendly corporations. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the very essence of what it meant to be included in the corporate world unfolded around this pervasive truism. References to the new, happier and healthier, ways of life unleashed by coming out of the closet were common in the field, imbuing LGBTQ+​corporate networking events with a quasi-​ religious zeal for authenticity. From a queer perspective the emphasis on ‘authenticity’ may reintroduce the subject to new, more subtle, domains of power (Benozzo et al., 2015). Indeed, crucial to a queer sensitivity is an understanding and appreciation of gender/​sexuality less as a fixed property of individuals, and the categories we use to define it, less as a means through which to ‘discover the ‘roots’ or ‘authentic’ content of one’s identity’ (Lorbiecki and Jack, 2000, p26), and more as performatively and messily constituted and in a constant process of becoming. From this perspective the emphasis on ‘being authentic’ is not only misleading but might actually work to fix queer desires and identities in ways that limit their disruptive potential. Yet, what seemed most striking about the emphasis on authenticity was that this was not simply an emotional or political good, but actually good for your career. ‘We’ve all seen the stats, when you’re authentic and yourself, you are something like 35% more productive’, announces Alison, striding across the stage. Appealing to the authoritative and world-​making power of statistical knowledge, Alison sells authenticity as a professional game-​ changer. She continues: ‘I’ve been there, I’ve had that, I know that being out throughout my career, not having to be conscious of it all the time, has enabled me to just do my job, I feel like I’ve probably been more productive and had a better career just because I’ve turned up being me.’ Authenticity, we are told, is one of the very reasons she is standing on this stage tonight, elevated from the rest of us. Alison’s testimony is emblematic of the corporate mantra that ‘authenticity makes you more productive’. This mantra largely achieved its status as truth or fact in the field through endless and performative repetition, working to bestow a number of highly seductive promises –​ of productivity, professional success, a more fulfilling career –​unlocked by coming out and becoming more ‘visible’ at work. These promises are circulated by sympathetic advisors who draw from their own experiences 48

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to encourage others –​especially more junior LGBTQ+​employees who attend these events –​to follow suit. Take, for example, a testimony shared by a participant at a panel discussion organized by the LGBTQ+​network of Norton Rose Fulbright, a corporate law firm.8 The event was advertised as ‘a lively discussion on female participation in LGBTQ+​professional networks’ and featured six relatively senior lesbian and bisexual women working in corporations. At the event the chair asked each panellist whether they thought that coming out had a positive impact on their career and whether they could ‘tangibly express the difference that it has made in their success’. One of the panellists, a white woman and senior partner of the banking unit of the law firm, responds by saying that she personally thinks that she ‘was made partner quite young’ because she is ‘visible and authentic’, and that ‘there are many benefits to coming out’. She explains that because she is visible as a lesbian leader at work –​co-​chairing the LGBTQ+​network and participating in events such as these –​she gets to know ‘lots of different people’. She credits visibility with the fact that she was made a partner at the law firm. Indeed, she explains that ‘when the time came to elect a new a partner of the firm’ and ‘that piece of paper was sent out to every single partner globally and showed pictures of the shortlisted partners for that year, everybody knew who [she] was’. Being ‘authentic’ at work is sold as something which can enhance your career. But simply coming out is not enough –​one also needs to learn how to carefully cultivate and harness one’s diversity in order to extract its full potential. Many of the events I attended also had the explicit aim of coaching and training LGBTQ+​employees on how to come out in a way in which diversity’s value could be ‘allowed to flourish’.9 I attended an event entitled ‘Board Readiness’ in May 2017, organized by OUTstanding, an organization which helps companies harness diversity to ‘foster inclusive cultures’. The event was organized with the aim of preparing LGBTQ+​ employees ‘transition onto a board’10 and ‘train the next generation of leaders on how to manage their diversity as successfully as possible’. I arrived at the offices of the insurance company in which the meeting was going to take place at 8 am, reaching the 15th floor to find myself in a room of around 30 people socializing and networking over breakfast. As we waited for the meeting to begin, I met Jack, a senior manager in what he describes as ‘a very LGBTQ-​friendly bank’. I asked him about his motivation for attending and what he was hoping to get out of it. Sipping a coffee, he explains that he is here because he wants to ‘be a better role model’, because he feels like he should ‘be much more strategic about how he markets himself in this world’ and, ultimately, that he thinks he can ‘do more’ to enhance his career prospects as a gay man. This breakfast meeting is one such opportunity. As we take a seat, Siobhan enters the room. Siobhan is the HR director and board member at Mercer, 49

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the world’s largest human resources consulting firm. She is also one of OUTStanding’s Top 100 LGBTQ+​Business Leaders. ‘Thank you for taking the time this morning to invest in yourself ’, she opens, not simply acknowledging but performatively enacting our presence in the room as orientated towards a desire to ‘become better’ queer subjects. I look around as participants in the room nod consentingly, almost grateful their efforts had been recognized. For the rest of the two-​hour session, senior LGBTQ+​ board members explain to us ways in which we should position ourselves in order to become part of the corporate world, and how to manage our diversity so that ‘people experience you positively and usefully’. The likening of diversity to an investment suggests that the subject of inclusion in the corporate world is someone who is an entrepreneur of themselves, someone who organizes their life as a business, and who makes adequate provisions for the reproduction of their human capital. As scholars working on the cultural politics of neoliberalism have argued, this understanding of the self marks a shift in the logics of our everyday existence towards the self-​managerialization of identity and of all personal relations according to the neoliberal requirement to assess aspects of our lives in terms of the extent to which they contribute to our personal happiness through career enhancement and lifestyle maximization (Cheng and Kim, 2014; Rose, 1999). Underpinning such promises is an understanding and a desire for a culture which enables the logic of the market and in which queer people are not prevented from achieving their full market potential. This is a culture which is not simply modelled on, but whose central operating principle is in fact to enable market mechanisms: a culture in which exclusion (read: not being yourself) should be circumvented because of the avoidable costs it places on the economy (read: not doing your job, not reaching your full market potential) (also see Rao, 2020). The aspirational imperative to reproduce and extract value from one’s diversity as productively and authentically as possible is one of the central components of the ways in which LGBTQ+​subjects are folded into neoliberal processes of capital accumulation. While this suggests that business logics can indeed be productive of queer subjects’ agency, these trajectories are far from emancipative. Rather, they serve corporate objectives in the sense that they try and harness as much energy as possible from employees in pursuit of business bottom lines. Yet, while we might be tempted to read these exchanges as confirmation that diversity is being (ab)used by management in pursuit of corporate objectives, this misses the theoretically significant point about the convergence between the idea of ‘being yourself ’ and the notion of ‘productivity’: that the business to which authenticity seems to make a contribution is not so much, or at least not only, the corporation, but rather the business of the self. This confirms that diversity can align with corporate bottom lines in 50

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some important and powerful ways. Yet, this alignment unfolds less through managerial domination but rather through the operation of softer forms of power, which seductively incorporates LGBTQ+​desires for inclusion within the discourse of productivity. This operationalization of corporate bottom lines through the professional aspirations, ambitions and dreams of LGBTQ+​ subjects themselves actually blurs the distinction between what is good for the corporation and what is good for queer activism: coming out is not only good for well-​being, for social justice, for politics, but, crucially, it is also good for business –​both the corporation and the business of living which requires neoliberal queer subjects to make investments geared towards the maximization of their human capital (also see Conway, 2021, 2022). Rather than being mere passive victims whose diversity is simply being externally harnessed in the pursuit of corporate bottom lines, LGBTQ+​subjects are thus complicit participants, cultivating and managing their own authentic diversity as a form of human capital and as an entrepreneurial asset in the pursuit of a ‘good life’ of professional success. While many of the people I talked to at these events welcomed this de-​ compartmentalization of the personal and the professional, appearing to be heavily invested in the mantras of authenticity and speaking of a newfound sense of meaning in work unlocked by discovering its power, there are also those who, for whatever reason, fail to live their life as if it were a (successful) enterprise and thus fall short of its promises, internalizing failure as an individual shortcoming (Chapter 3). Indeed, as Rahul Rao (2015) has argued, positing inclusion in these terms premises ‘personhood on productivity’ and encourages LGBTQ+​subjects to relate to their lives in ways which exclude those who are unable and/​or unwilling to become productive according to the logics of the market (also see Rao, 2020). In the next chapter I delve into the intricacies of queer subjects’ experiences of authenticity in LGBTQ-​ friendly corporations, revealing that the version of the ‘good life’ promoted by senior leaders at corporate LGBTQ+​networking events may in fact be rather perverse: a life in which work is but the only form of self-​fulfillment, a life (almost) entirely submitted to the improvement of one’s employability, a life of endless cost/​benefit analyses, responsible decisions and added values which, while empowering for some, might ultimately prove to be damaging for most.

Homonormativity and the cult of queer ordinariness Queer scholars have argued that the incorporation of some upwardly-​mobile queers into corporations has been accompanied by a depoliticization and mainstreaming of queerness. Here the various forms of self-​management engendered by the requirement to cultivate or literally invest in one’s diversity in order to unlock opportunities for success entails the internalization of new (homo)norms of identity. 51

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Defined as a form of politics that ‘does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions … but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption’ (Duggan, 2003, p179), the term homormativity emerges as a critique of the various norms, arrangements and negotiations through which (some) privileged LGBTQ+​subjects become included into the dominant institutions of late-​capitalist modernity. Indeed, despite the mantras of diversity and inclusion, queer critiques have argued that the new forms of recognition and inclusion opened up by the celebration of diversity have only been reserved for those who are willing and able to assimilate into straight culture and can appear to be ‘virtually normal’ (Drucker, 2015; Richardson, 2005). Part of the work the term homonormativity has been doing over the past two decades is that of naming and critiquing what David Halperin (2012) refers to as ‘the rise of a new and vehement cult of gay ordinariness’ (p443) in which those queers who are able and willing to be(come) incorporated do so by insisting ‘on their dullness, commonness, averageness … [to appear] completely indistinguishable from every one else’ (Halperin, 2012). These sentiments are echoed by queer academics and activists alike, who lament the ‘mainstreaming of queerness’ (Halberstam, Muñoz and Eng, 2005), its loss of a ‘critical edge’ (Tatchell, 2019), the emergence of queer desires for ‘sameness’ (Richardson, 2005), and the fact that many queer people now ‘seem to aspire to little more than an LGBT+​version of straight … life’ (Tatchell, 2019, n/​p). These debates encapsulate the tensions between (homo)normativity and anti-​normativity: the former embodying an assimilationist impulse towards dominant institutions and norms, the latter marking an unassimilable form of difference and political and activist desire to disrupt them. Queer activists and scholars have pursued the latter to both conceptualize non-​conformity to norms and to ultimately rupture and/​or ‘undo’ them (Butler, 1999. While what exactly constitutes ‘anti-​normativity’ has been the subject of much debate (Martin, 1994a; Wiegman and Wilson, 2015). Suffice to say that the concept has been mobilized –​both theoretically and as political activism –​ as a remarkably resistant form of engagement that opposes precisely the kind of mainstreaming, normalization, sanitization, sameness and assimilation –​ of politics, identities, lifestyles and aspirations –​identified as one of the most troubling aspects of extant forms of capitalist queer incorporation. In queer political activism, this resistance to norms and assimilation has taken shape through slogans such as ‘queer liberation –​not rainbow capitalism’, increasingly visible at Pride marches –​especially in North America and the UK –​as a critique of the incorporation of queer people into capitalist institutions and the need for Pride to remain a protest. 52

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Critiques of homonormativity via anti-​normativity have been instrumental for the development of the queer anti-​capitalist sensibilities which inform this book. At the same time, within these debates there has been a lack of consideration of how anti-​normativity and queer resistance to norms might itself be co-​opted by neoliberalism (Winnubst, 2012). Rao (2020) alerts us to the postcolonial politics of the temporal frames which inform a queer rejection of norms and assimilation in the West where inclusion, however fraught and conditional, has been achieved and therefore can be rejected (also see Kao, 2021). Quick (2021) also points out that anti-​normativity itself is increasingly congealing into an identity that is exclusionary for those who do not have access to the necessary capital to perform oppositional renderings of queerness. A growing body of work has indeed been problematizing homonormativity critiques by arguing that, in certain contexts and at certain times, the performance of anti-​normativity might in fact confirm, rather than trouble, existing hierarchies of power (Jagose, 2015; Ludwig, 2016; Menon, 2015; Wiegman and Wilson, 2015; Winnubst, 2012; Ye, 2021). In an essay entitled ‘On queer privilege’, anonymous writer and academic Fuck Theory (2018) argues that this seems to be particularly the case in activist and social justice spaces ‘where a generalized ideology of anti-​ normativity holds sway, [and where] queerness is a badge of honour, a marker of specialness, and a source of crucial and moral authority: in short, a form of privilege’ (n/​p). I suggest that, as the boundary between what counts as social justice or activism and what counts as business becomes increasingly blurry, this might also apply to corporate spaces such as Lesbians Who Tech.

Lesbians Who Tech Lesbians Who Tech has emerged in recent years as the worlds’ largest congregation of queer women in tech. Boasting over 70,000 members, the network was founded in 2012 by Leanne Pittsford, a white lesbian woman entrepreneur who began her career working for Equality California, campaigning to overturn prop 8.11 Now CEO of Lesbians Who Tech, Leanne describes herself as a queer and women’s rights activist who ‘loves politics and technology equally’ (Model View Culture, 2014). In an interview for Model View Culture, she explains that Lesbians Who Tech was created in response to her own experiences of Silicon Valley’s ‘Boys Club’ and the exclusion of queer women in tech. Lesbians Who Tech hopes to ‘build from a tech perspective to solve the world’s problems’,12 particularly the problem of diversity and the dominance of cis men –​ straight and gay –​in corporations. To this end, Lesbians Who Tech functions as a networking space to connect not only lesbian and queer women, but all those excluded from ‘the mainstream’ corporate world, with each other and with ‘inclusive’ start-​ups and companies in pursuit 53

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of greater equality. This extends beyond the realm of the professional work and into everyday life. As a Vogue article explains, the particular benefit of Lesbians Who Tech arises from enabling participants to forge connections ‘beyond day-​to-​day work’ (Heller, 2017). Underpinned by a strong belief in technology as a force for good in the world, Lesbians Who Tech is representative of an East Coast liberalism that places in Silicon Valley’s tech corporations the faith to create a more socially-​ just society (Turner, 2006). Emerging from the syncretic combination of both anti-​authoritarian ideals of liberal democracy and a conviction in the power of the free market to save us from the vagaries of politics, this belief is based on a reconfiguration of the private, for-​profit tech corporation not as an oppressive force but as a supposedly countercultural site of progressive political and cultural change that is on the side of the people. Lesbians Who Tech is a manifestation of Silicon Valley’s insurgent but ultimately corporate ethos. While it is critical of the Valley’s ‘tech-​bro culture’, it betrays a similar belief in the emancipatory potential of (inclusive) technology. Moreover, like Silicon Valley’s cis straight male leaders, Leanne has also fashioned herself as somewhat of a ‘rebel’ and ‘revolutionary’, liberating queer workers from the normativities of corporate life. The Lesbians Who Tech summit –​held in 40+​cities across the world and sponsored by tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook –​is the network’s main annual event. The San Francisco chapter of the summit, held at the historic LGBTQ+​landmark Castro Theatre, is by far the network’s largest event. The summit attracts over 5,000 ‘lesbians, queer women and their allies in tech’ (Heller, 2017), making it one of the biggest corporate LGBTQ+​networking events in the world. While the summits’ attendees are mainly lesbian and queer women, the events are open to non-​binary, gender nonconforming and trans people. With tickets ranging from $70 to $200, the summits’ keynote speakers include major figures from Silicon Valley’s corporations –​from YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki, Netflix’s CMO Bozoma Saint John and Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg. Session speakers include lesbian and trans entrepreneurs who have launched their own start-​ ups, such as New York Times journalist Kara Swisher (founder of Recode) and actress, businesswoman and trans right activist Angelica Ross (founder of TransTech), as well as lesbian and queer women software engineers, service designers, diversity officers and marketing managers working at companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. Diversity is at the heart of the summits’ ethos, with a requirement that, of those who speak on the stage, at least half have to be women of colour, 30% black or Latinx, and 15% trans or gender nonconforming. While most speakers at the summits come from the corporate world, at times these also include activists from social movements such as civil rights activist Stacey Abrams and feminist activist Gloria Steinem. Most notably, in 54

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2016 the summit featured a keynote by BLM co-​founder Patrisse Cullors, who spoke about systemic racism and taking care of the community. Speakers also include queer cultural icons, such as the captain of the US women’s football team Megan Rapinoe, the cast of the lesbian hit series The L Word and queer astrologer Chani Nicholas. The combination of both demonstrably corporate and queer activist/​cultural themes is also reflected in the summits’ slogans (‘technology, diversity, community’ at the 2017 San Francisco Summit) and their session topics: from coding, AI, networking, the ‘hottest trends’ in tech and how to raise funds for your new start-​up company, to climate change, police brutality, human rights, resistance, protest, and cyberactivsm. Indeed, most striking about the Lesbians Who Tech summits and the network more broadly is the way in which they confound neat distinctions between ‘the activist’ and ‘the corporate’.13 On the one hand, the summits are distinctly corporate spaces: not only sponsored and hosted by corporations and marketed to their lesbian, queer, trans and non-​binary employees, but also anchored in a corporatized culture which glorifies networking and displays of (lesbian) entrepreneurship. At the same time, the summits also clearly tap into queer activist sensibilities, movements, motivations and culture. As Leanne explains in an interview with Inc.: the summits are meant to be ‘part networking event … part technology conference, and part social justice rally’ (Lagorio-​Chafkin, 2019). By bringing together different speakers –​some activist, some corporate –​the summits not only bring together communities that do not normally share a space but also demonstrate capitalism’s capacity to absorb and market potentially critical elements for its own ends.

The politics of extraordinary homonormativity In November 2017 I attended the London chapter of the Lesbians Who Tech summit main event, held at Facebook’s offices on Euston Road. Sponsored by IBM, it is only the second year the summit has been hosted in London and a significant level of excitement and anxiety emanates from the summit volunteers –​unpaid, mostly quite junior employees of Facebook and Amazon, who hosted the launch party the previous night. They greet me in the foyer of the building on Euston Road wearing T-​shirts with the summit’s slogan, ‘Queer, Badass, Inclusive’. As I wait to be checked in, I start talking to Amy, who has worked in the tech industry for a few years and is here today to ‘find some inspiration and maybe a new job, or maybe just to have fun’. Sitting next to a large polyester rainbow Facebook logo located on the ground floor, we discuss why we decided to attend the event. ‘When I went to tech events it was just me and a bunch of men, when I went to queer tech events, it was just me and some more men’, she explains. This 55

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event caters to people like Amy, promising to inspire and open up networking opportunities for queer and lesbian women looking to enhance their career and be connected to other queer women in tech. After registration, we make our way to the 15th floor. A large screen just outside the lift projects a black and white picture of Audre Lorde, accompanied by her quote ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’. I walk past the screen, horrified but also intrigued by such a display in a corporate setting. ‘Her work is so inspiring’ remarks a volunteer, who must have seen me gasp. I smile awkwardly, following Amy into the open-​ plan room, which extends across the totality of the 15th floor, where I see approximately 200 ‘queer women and their allies’14 who too, like me, have given up their Saturday to be here. They are mingling and talking in groups of two or three, pouring themselves coffees from large metal containers scattered across the room, waiting for the event to begin. At around 10 am, we are encouraged to take our seats. The lights dim and the eight screens hoisted around the stage light up to read: ‘THIS IS NOT YOUR TYPICAL TECH CONFERENCE. There won’t be a lot of this’. At this point, the screens cut to a series of images. In an article published on BuzzFeed, Ellen Cushing (2015) describes these very images (projected at the San Francisco chapter of the summit) as displaying ‘shots of white tech dudes in various poses of white tech dude-​ness, before showing us what we were in for, namely, “great hair”, “hula hoop contests”, “lesbians who look like Bieber”, “high-​fives”, “geeking out”, and “more hugs than business cards” ’. In juxtaposing images of ‘white tech dudes’ and ‘lesbians’, a distinction is established between ‘the normal’ and this ‘un-​ordinary’, ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive’ corporate event. After lunch, and just as I thought I had become adequately accustomed to the excitement and enthusiasm which accompanied each speaker, there came a drum roll. ‘And now’, announces the presenter, ‘our founder, CEO and lesbian leader … Leanne Pittsford!’ The drum roll fades to Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’ as Leanne makes her way onto the stage, met with expansive cheers. ‘Here comes the “cyber hero” of the lesbians’, whispers Amy, who is sitting next to me in the dark auditorium. ‘Hello! Is this what 200 lesbians look like?’ opens Leanne as the cheers are still lingering. I later find out from watching YouTube videos of other summits that she uses this line or some permutation of it frequently in her entrances. Her performance suddenly felt very staged. ‘We are the most diverse conference in tech, there’s something so unique about all our identities. There’s rock-​star talent from the queer women’s community. Turn to your neighbour and give them a high-​five’, she continues. I turn to Amy, we high-​five. The summit –​like the Lesbians Who Tech organization more broadly –​ operationalized the language and temperament of queer to market itself as un-​ordinary, even ‘revolutionary’. This was evident in the explicit use of the 56

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word ‘queer’ to denote the constituency at whom the summit was aimed (‘queer women in or around tech’) and in the summit’s own marketing (‘Queer, Badass, Inclusive’). It was also evident in references to ‘white cis male privilege’ and social justice figures such as Audre Lorde. In media coverage of Lesbians Who Tech it is not uncommon to read that a corporate event is not where this is supposed to happen. The choice of speakers –​senior queer and lesbian women CEOs, founders of their own start-​ups, but also an academic giving a presentation on queer theory, community-​organizers, a drag performer –​and the actual content of their presentations –​on queer theory, cyber-​activism, community-​building –​was also understood as an explicit challenge to the norms of maleness and straightness in the corporate world: a form of anti-​normativity. The performance of queer anti-​normativity articulated at the summit constitutes a specific form of homonormativity not denoted by ordinariness but accompanied by the rise of a cult of queer, ‘badass’, extra-​ordinariness. I term this an extra-​ordinary form of homonormativity: a neoliberal politics of corporate diversity that is accompanied not by the erasure of queerness or a desire for assimilation, but rather a desire for an extra-​ordinary life of ‘rock-​star talent’ and ‘uniqueness’. Positioning itself against normativity in its celebration of diversity, this is a politics of homonormativity that folds queers into capitalism not by accentuating their sameness but their distinctiveness, their uniqueness and their non-​conformity to norms –​in other words, their queerness. Here queerness is reconfigured as a form of capital that is at once social, cultural and financial: a networking tool, a marker of ‘specialness’, a way of raising literal capital for investment (for example, the Lesbians Who Tech Summit Pitch Competition15). Of course, at times the conversations I had in the field did reproduce ways of living and becoming a gender/​sexual subject which queer theory would (happily and gladly) understand as forms of homonormativity (for example, getting married, having kids, a career). And, of course, that is not to say that expressions of so-​called anti-​normativity were not also contained, albeit in different ways. For example, on the one hand, the Lesbians Who Tech conference was not as de-​sexualized as discussions of homonormativity would have us believe (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004; Duggan, 2003; Priola et al., 2018; Richardson, 2005). This included participants openly discussing the event as a way to meet potential sexual partners –​‘I’m not sure if this is a pickup event or a networking event, but either way, it’s great’ (Cushing, 2015, n/​p) –​hooking up with each other, flirting, and an environment in which allusions to lesbian sexuality (the bodily and physical kind, not just the identity), were not uncommon. On the other hand, however, these displays never really approached the radical potential of sex –​public (Berlant and Warner, 1998), pharmacological (Loe, 2001; Preciado, 2008) post-​ human (MacCormack, 2009), cyborgian (Miyake, 2004), without gender 57

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(Martin, 1994b) –​as envisaged by queer theory, nor did they challenge the heteronormative narrative through which we are all imagined to be on a quest in search for ‘the one’ monogamous, ever-​lasting, committed relationship which (hopefully) results in (queer) marriage. But the point here is less to establish a binary between the ‘normal’ and the ‘queer’, nor to say that the promises of inclusion as they unfolded in the field were not normalizing. Rather, what this ethnographic engagement revealed is that the operation of homonormativity seemed to be built less upon a binary between norms and deviances, between normativity and anti-​normativity defined by identity categories and desires for assimilation into ‘straight culture’, and more in terms of what Winnubst (2012) has termed ‘the social rationality of success’ (p86). While this form of politics harnesses the transgressive impulse of anti-​ normativity, it remains deeply homonormative in shape and form, not only because it privileges a remarkably narrow understanding of social, political and economic change as driven in the corporate world, but also because the forms of corporate queer capitalism it promotes are likely to remain extremely unfriendly towards certain kinds of queers and queerness that cannot be turned into profitable resources for corporations. This includes those queers who, for whatever reason, cannot afford to perform their queerness in extra-​ordinarily anti-​normative ways (Fuck Theory, 2018; Quick, 2021). Moreover, contemporary iterations of homonormativity are likely to slip and translate into homonationalism (Puar, 2007). This applies to Lesbians Who Tech, whose speakers often include queer and lesbian women working in the military–​industrial complex and (neo)liberal imperialists such as Hillary Clinton, who was a summit keynote speaker in 2018.

Lesbian tech CEOs as queer role models ‘Lesbian tech CEO, all the ceilings, crashed’16 exclaims Leanne, introducing Hayley Sudbury to the audience of the summit. She is referring to Hayley’s breaking down of heterosexist barriers –​often referred to as the glass or pink ceilings –​by climbing to the top of the corporate world and becoming CEO of her own tech start-​up. ‘This woman created a start-​up to fight for our rights!’ exclaims Leanne to the room as the cheers get louder. Hayley Sudbury, a white woman in her 40s, begins talking and I immediately note that she is an incredibly charismatic speaker. She is funny, engaging, confident, and swears a lot. In my fieldnotes I record being seduced by her lifestyle and her stories of partying with influential people, taking impulsive trips to exotic locations, dining in fashionable restaurants. ‘I consider myself to be a high achiever’,17 she explains to the room. She came across as successful and self-​assured: truly extra-​ordinary. Lesbian tech CEOs such as Leanne Pittsford and Hayley Sudbury have in recent years been celebrated with notable fervour by media outlets such as 58

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The Guardian (Young-P ​ owell, 2018), Vogue (Heller, 2017), CNN (Eugenios, 2015), Buzzfeed (Cushing, 2015), The Huffington Post (L. E. Dunn, 2017) and Forbes (Restauri, 2014). Lesbian tech CEOs are emblematic figures of a politics of extra-​ordinary homonormativity: confident, successful, ‘out and proud’ queer women that embrace their ‘lesbian-​ness’ as a benefit and key asset to their professional career. Both these women’s extra-​ordinariness seems somewhat compounded by the fact that they lead companies that have an explicitly social mission: to improve the lives of lesbian and queer women and other minorities in corporations and, ultimately, in the world at large. Lesbian tech CEOs represent a new brand of corporate diversity politics that is indicative of the current shape and direction of queer political activism in a neoliberal era. One of Leanne Pittsford’s keynotes at the 2016 summit in San Francisco, a recording of which is on YouTube, gives us an indication of the character of this new politics. Entitled ‘Take a F@!#ing risk: How your badass leadership betters the world’, the video opens with a montage of news media segments talking about the lack of diversity in corporations. A screeching vinyl sound cuts to a black screen. We hear Leanne’s voice: ‘blah blah blah, anyone else tired of hearing about these numbers? Let Lesbians Who Tech show you how it’s done’. Accompanied by inspirational instrumental music, we are then catapulted into the world of Lesbians Who Tech. Leanne’s voice, explaining the rationale and mission of the network, overlays images and recordings taken from the summits depicting people having fun, high-​fiving, clapping, smiling. This ‘feel good’ collection of snapshots then fades, making way for Leanne’s presentation. In the presentation itself, Leanne explains her vision of the world to an auditorium of ‘1,600 lesbians’. She explains that this a world free from discrimination, where women make more than men, where trans women of colour are not murdered every day, and where there is a Black lesbian president. The announcement of each of these elements is met with expansive cheers from the audience. She explains that, to get to this world, the ‘world we all want to see’, we need to ‘stop staying at home’ and ‘show up’ for our community. That is the ethos of Lesbians Who Tech. It is only through this kind of work, she explains, that we will change the fact that there are ‘more white, straight, cis men in power’. Flattening out histories and present realities of violence embedded in struggles for liberation, Leanne cites the victories of gay marriage and civil rights to ask us: ‘what are you going to do to create the world you want to see?’ Lesbian tech CEOs invite us to invest in the corporate world the powers of salvation and redemption, as a place in which queers can organize not just professionally, but socially and politically. This was reflected in extant media coverage of the summit. Writing for Autostraddle, a popular US-​based online magazine for lesbian and queer women, Osworth (2015) explains how the fact that one of the summit’s speakers brought up a slide reading 59

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‘Black Trans Lives Matter’ made them challenge their assumption that ‘social justice and technology [are] diametric opposite’ (n/​p). Emerging as cyborgian–​entrepreneurial neoliberal subjects (Haraway, 1991) –​part lesbians, part tech CEOs/​machines –​lesbian tech CEOs synthesize this new prosthetic relationship between social justice and corporations to present tech companies as saviours and allies in the creation of the ‘world we all want to see’ (also see Evans and Meza, 2022). Lesbian tech CEOs are also increasingly celebrated as role models. Collected in Top 100 lists produced by the likes of OUTstanding, or showcased in Stonewall’s annual WEI, LGBTQ+​role models are constructed as figures who provide others with an aspirational journey, who show others (presumably closeted, inauthentic, invisible and/​or unsuccessful and/​or ordinary) LGBTQ+​employees that all things are possible. Hayley Sudbury and Leanne Pittsford were some of many LGBTQ+​people I encountered in the field who describe themselves –​and are described by others –​as role models. I was indeed often taken aback by the frequency and affective rhetoric with which LGBTQ+​role models were posited as agents of inclusion in the field, as crucial contributors to the making of more socially just and inclusive worlds, as LGBTQ+​subjects whose visible emergence seemed to be in itself a sign that progress has been made, or at least that it is possible now. Again, it was the business benefits of becoming an LGBTQ+​role model that were emphasized. Oftentimes participants discussed these in terms of exposure, meeting leaders and offering important networking opportunities. One participant, who sat on the panel of the Norton Rose Fulbright LGBTQ+​network event I attended in January 2017, described her becoming an LGBTQ+​role model as ‘one of the best experiences I’ve had’ and something that ‘massively contributed to my professional success’. In an interview18 with someone whose job is to create LGBTQ+​role models lists for a large professional LGBTQ+​organization, she also confirmed that young LGBTQ+​employees are increasingly using the role models lists she compiles to their advantage as a promotional opportunity and as a platform to move ahead. LGBTQ+​role models are enacted as diversity success stories, the living embodiment of the promises of inclusion: they show others that success is possible, that you can be successful not simply despite, but because of, your diversity. While LGBTQ+​role models clearly embody the promise of inclusion from a professional perspective, they also serve a wider political purpose. In particular, their emergence seems to represent a reorganization of the meaning of queerness in relation to the political itself, reorienting the spaces of LGBTQ+​politics not simply towards domesticity (the homonormativity critique) but towards the boardroom, delivering a neoliberal version of inclusion in which progress simply entails climbing the corporate ladder. 60

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Hayley Sudbury is, too, a strong believer that role models are the key to not only changing corporate cultures but also key to making social, political and economic change. Hayley’s story begins when she realizes that the fact that she is a lesbian is not irrelevant to her career, but actually a core part of her professional cache. As she explains in an interview with The Guardian (Young-​Powell, 2017, n/​p), while initially she did not think her sexuality had anything to do with her professional life, a change of industry –​from finance to hospitality –​created ‘a big change … not in organization but in my head’. By connecting with different kinds of people, she starts recognizing that the idea that ‘work didn’t involve who I was in a relationship with’ was ‘a flawed theory’. She thus decides to embrace her lesbian-​ness as ‘a benefit’ and gets involved in ‘things around unlocking one’s potential by understanding who they are and creating that dream job for them’. For this purpose, she develops an app designed to foster connections between more junior lesbian and bisexual women in technology and more senior lesbian and bisexual role models. In April 2017 I attended the launch event of the app at WeWork London. During her presentation, Hayley explains that the app serves a professional purpose: to create ‘meaningful connections’, opportunities for professional development, to ‘get a seat at the table’ and to ‘increase visibility at senior levels’. But what struck me most about Hayley’s impassionate speech about why the app should revolutionize our thinking around LGBTQ+​inclusion was the explicitly political dimensions of its stated mission, or, indeed, the ways in which the app’s professional purpose was so deeply tied to its political one. As she explains: ‘everything is driven in the corporate world, and in doing that we can create big change, it’s about what culture exists, who is visible, that is the thing that will shift the dialogue, this is nothing short of political, of creating and reaching the world that we perceive you want’. Much like Leanne’s call for us to create ‘the world we want to see’, the versions of the (queer) world on offer here resonates especially powerfully with all those employees disillusioned with the old corporate world dominated by white, cis, straight men. This was reflected in interviews I conducted with more junior attendees at these corporate LGBTQ+​networking events, who often described these CEOs as inspiring role models, explaining that it was ‘so empowering’ to see such displays of ‘powerful lesbian leadership’. I suggest that the seductive power of these lesbian tech CEOs lay not in the offer of a ‘good (queer) life’ (Berlant, 2011) of normality and sameness, but rather in the offer of a cool life of challenging norms, doing what you love, being your true self and, in the process, to top it all off, achieving not only professional success but actually ‘making history’ (Osworth, 2015). As Sarah Jaffe (2021) warns us, this current emphasis on loving and feeling empowered through one’s work can actually keep us exploited, exhausted and alone. I posit that promises of inclusion play here a similar role for LGBTQ+​ 61

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employees, working to keep them motivated, affectively attached to the corporation and the promise of a good life of authenticity, productivity and success. The dangers of this might be especially pronounced in the corporate sector, where unionization efforts have been met with particular hostility and resistance (De Vynck, Tiku and Green, 2021). Indeed, while lesbian CEOs emerge as celebrated role models and bastions of progress, we know that the realities of work in the corporate sector can be just as oppressive as the kind of heterosexist workplace cultures that these CEOs claim to contest. Lurking behind the seemingly cool and transgressive approach to work in which employees are encouraged to express their queerness and become role models lies the sad reality of a life –​its aspirations, dreams and stirring desires –​endlessly colonized by the demands of capital. This applies both to the lesbian CEOs who enjoy its spoils (and for whom it is thus harder to feel empathy for), and those (straight and queer) employees for whom such a (supposedly) emancipative approach to work has in fact translated into longer working hours and deteriorating working conditions. While tech companies proclaim their commitment to diversity and inclusion, the labour required to run them and that makes them profitable–​from servicing their customers, stocking their warehouses and cleaning their offices –​reproduces exclusionary dynamics that disproportionately affect women, working-​class people, people with disabilities and people of colour in the North and across the global South who perform the bulk of this labour. Having a lesbian tech CEO or encouraging the expression of a queer kind of (extraordinary) homonormativity is unlikely to change that. Moreover, despite the lesbian tech CEO fantasy that technology will solve the world’s problems, technology spawns its own forms of authoritarianism (Turner, 2019). From facial-​recognition software used by law enforcement and militaries to cloud services employed by immigration detention agencies, to the fast and unfettered spread of far-​r ight views, data mining, bots and artificial intelligence technologies that reproduce racist privileges, technology and its corporate masters have been propping up new forms of anti-​democratic surveillance that ultimately contradict and undermine their supposedly progressive appeal.

The CEO-​ization of queer activism Rallying queer people’s aspirations in capitalist economies, lesbian tech CEOs and the corporate LGBTQ+​networking events that spawn them should be read as part of broader CEO-​ization of everyday life in which corporations have emerged as ‘the model form of organizing beyond compare’ (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018, p19). CEO-​ization extends to queer organizing and the LGBTQ+​movement, whose interests have become increasingly aligned with those of corporations. Reconfiguring the boundary between queer 62

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political activism, life and corporations, CEO-​ization does not simply entail the reorganization of social life according to corporate management practices but the application of the values, aspirations and dispositions associated with CEOs to every dimension of social, political and cultural life, including queer life (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018). Here LGBTQ+​CEOs are cast as ‘the ultimate problem solvers, economic visionaries who can successfully cure all of society’s ills’ (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018, p222), as obvious social winners whose upwardly-​mobile aspirations, entrepreneurial qualities and neoliberal lifestyles need to be emulated and admired. Corporate LGBTQ+​networking events fuel CEO-​ization by reorganizing the spaces and places of queer activism away from the streets and into the privatized spaces of corporations. CEO-​ization goes in hand in hand with a broader process of professionalization which, as Richardson (2005) has noted, has heralded privileged middle-​class professionals as the leaders and public faces of the LGBTQ+​movement (also see Ward, 2008a). The emergence of this new brand of corporate diversity politics signifies at once the breakdown of historical forms of heteronormativity but also the homonormative reconfiguration of inclusion as the mere ability to secure professional opportunities in private corporations and spaces from which LGBTQ+​subjects have been historically excluded. Here the emphasis is on individuals opening doors and crashing ceilings in pursuit of a trickle-​down version of inclusion, which, much like neoliberal feminism, focuses on the achievements of individuals as opposed to meaningful systemic change. The goal of such a politics is not to overturn structures of inequality but to celebrate those who can and have mastered the ability to, as a sceptical participant I met at an LGBTQ+​role model training programme puts it, ‘inhabit a fundamentally really shitty space’.19 The CEO-​ization of queer activism raises some important questions for queer leftists and critiques of homonormativity and rainbow capitalism. While activists and scholars have offered anti-​normativity as a way to counter the assimilationist tendencies of queer activism, I have suggested in this chapter that we should avoid assuming that anti-​normativity exists outside of normative logics, including those of capitalism. As an extreme, accentuated and intensified version of homonormativity, corporate celebrations of difference can actually start to approximate anti-​normativity itself. Here the idea that queerness and anti-​normativity have a prior subversive value is upended in favour of an understanding of norms as ‘more dynamic and more politically engaging than queer critique has usually allowed’ (Wiegman and Wilson, 2015, p2). In reinscribing the boundary between queer and normativity, extant critiques of queer normality are unable to fully capture the trajectories of queer capitalist incorporation engendered by the CEO-​ization of queer activism. Indeed, while critiques of rainbow capitalism have argued that a 63

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politics of homonormativity works to expunge the ‘distinctiveness of queer life’ (Rumens, 2018), the very ‘distinctiveness’ that queer scholars argue is needed for queers to organize politically, this new brand of corporate diversity politics is characterized by the emergence of a noticeably political and queer form of extra-​ordinary homonormativity that denotes not a desire for sameness but indeed the accentuation of a distinctly lesbian and queer sexuality that intensifies rather than assimilates queerness. The productive power of capitalism to co-​opt the language, temperament, dispositions and commitments of queer anti-​normativity thus puts into question one of the very operating principles upon which queer political activism has been built. A queer anti-​capitalist political activism must thus not only consider the limits of the various (homo)norms which organize our lives, but also the conceptual specificity of anti-​normativity as it travels, and how this is taken up and/​or co-​opted by the very normative capitalist structures it is intended to contest. While mobilizing the language and temperament of queerness, the corporate politics of diversity ultimately works against a socially progressive queer politics. Indeed, the world that lesbian tech CEO role models imagine as inclusive is a world in which professional success is not only a barometer for a ‘good life’ (Berlant, 2011), but also what counts as ‘good politics’: a world in which progress is measured in terms of individual LGBTQ+​subjects’ desires for extra-​ordinariness, a world in which the promise of being able to be one’s true self, as successfully as possible, is ‘framed as the ultimate freedom’ (Ludwig, 2016, p421). These are versions of the world that actually approximate those proposed by contemporary iterations of queer anti-​normativity, particularly in their emphasis on the need to challenge norms. In this sense lesbian tech CEOs effectively collapse the distinction between rainbow capitalism and queer liberation to turn queer activism into a productive corporate activity (also see Conway, 2022). On the one hand, qualities, values, aspirations, lifestyles and styles of leadership traditionally associated with corporations become forms of queer liberation, which we are encouraged to participate in by coming out, becoming role models, investing in ourselves, taking risks, signing up for the networking app, launching our own tech start-​up, showing up for our community, being visible and attending Lesbians Who Tech. On the other hand, the accentuation and celebration of queerness via an extreme, intensified corporate queer politics of extra-​ordinary homonormativity ostensibly reconfigures anti-​normativity as rainbow capitalism’s latest permutation. In sum, it appears that the co-​ optation of queerness and of the various social justice discourses that used to underpin initial investments in diversity discourses have become the centre-​pieces for this new brand of corporate culture. What might all this mean for the shape and direction of queer politics and inclusion, given that these privatized sites seem to have become the central 64

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locations of queer activism –​as evidenced, for example, by Stonewall’s symbiotic relationship with many of these corporate actors? I suggest that the danger of such CEO-​ization is not only the neoliberal extolling of successes of lesbian tech CEOs but ultimately the fact that these celebrations undermine alternative economic queer visions and solidarities. Indeed, as noted by Rahul Rao (2015), conceptualizing inclusion in such privatized terms enables corporations to construct homophobia as ‘merely cultural’ (Butler, 1997), that is, as something that can be redressed by simply changing mindsets and cultures. In so doing, the broader economic, political and social structures through which some expressions of gender/​sexuality are rendered abject are upheld. Moreover, shifting the very grounds upon which queer socio-​political life unfolds towards the corporation, CEO-​ization undermines the democratic accountability mechanisms that regulate public life more broadly. While, as scholars of organizations have argued, corporations can indeed serve as important sites for queer political organizing and as contexts that can provide support and intimacy to previously disenfranchised employees, the forms of support, intimacy and ultimately solidarity these spaces provide can only extend to those who have access to these spaces (Rumens, 2018). While those who embody such neoliberal conceptions of freedom are invited to come out, become successful LGBTQ+​leaders and role models, others continue to be ‘fenced out of these extremely private and privatized domains’ (Manalansan, 2005, p151).

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Diversity Work and Queer Value: Putting Queer Differences to Work in the LGBTQ-​friendly Corporation Scholars have used the notion of diversity work to describe the work that employees do within an organization to create more diversity and/​or to advance inclusion in the workplace (also see Ahmed, 2012; Brewis, 2019; David, 2016; Kirton and Greene, 2010; Mor Barak, 2015 Spaaj et al., 2018; Wasser, 2016). Problematizing the discursive uses of diversity in organizational life, Sara Ahmed (2008) argues that diversity work broadly entails making diversity into something that an organization does. But as Ahmed explains, we might not know what form the politics of diversity might take in advance of its circulation in organizations. At times this may require showing the organization that they should engage in diversity for ‘pragmatic, financial, business reasons’ (Litvin, 2006, p75) and/​or mobilizing the ‘good feelings’ which accompany celebrations of diversity to posit differences as unthreatening to the organization (also see Swan, 2010). At other times, however, it may mean foregrounding its social justice dimensions. While diversity work may be strategic and rewarding, it can also feel like hitting your head against brick walls, require diversity workers to become blockage points and/​or killjoys within the organization (Ahmed, 2012). Indeed, while engaging diversity work may be valuable for employees by creating a more inclusive workplace culture, it is also fundamentally valuable for the organization. Diversity work can often sustain corporate diversity programmes whose aim is to support the company’s human resources capabilities, promoting satisfaction, unity, productivity, and efficiency among employees in pursuit of financial goals (also see Ward, 2008a). There are also many benefits for organizations who become recognized as ‘inclusive employers’. These might include greater productivity, as outlined by the business case, but also the ‘good feelings’ that often accompany celebrations 66

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of diversity and inclusivity and which organizations can in turn harness to market themselves as progressive. Turning diversity into something that has value for the organization is one of the ways in which diversity work is done. Diversity work has mostly been used to describe the work of advancing diversity on the workplace. Yet, in a world in which differences are themselves increasingly being ‘turned into something like the new raw material of capital’ (Wasser, 2016, p59), the notion of diversity work should be extended to describe all those forms of material and affective labour that diverse subjects perform in order to convert their differences into valuable organizational resources. In 2018 I attended an event organized by Amazon’s global LGBTQ+​Staff Network, Glamazon, to celebrate Trans Visibility Day. Held in the new HQ of Amazon UK in Shoreditch, the event was organized around a panel of trans and non-​binary leaders, role models and experts on trans inclusion. The panel discussion itself followed a familiar script. However, a comment made by a trans man, a diversity consultant, unlocked an ethnographically remarkable insight pertaining to the contemporary implication of diversity in relation to work. As he explains to an audience of around 50 people in one of the meeting rooms of Amazon’s offices, ‘lots of businesses are talking about change and innovation, and trans people are the most obvious experts on change and transformation, of course, so if companies want to have change-​oriented behaviour they would just look at trans talent’.1 Repackaging those forms of self-​knowledge and expertise which accrue from being queer as valuable corporate resources is one way in which differences are currently becoming included in inclusive workplace contexts. It is through the redeployment of these as talents –​which, in the case above, emerge from trans experiences of change and transformation –​that diverse subjects become incorporated in neoliberal processes of capital accumulation, reconfigured as viable and valuable corporate subjects. This kind of repackaging seems to be one of the defining feature of the corporate turn to inclusivity, where differences become an increasingly ‘integrated part of new labour regimes’ (Wasser, 2016, p58). Expanding our understanding of diversity work to describe the ways in which queer subjects repackage their diversity in organizationally valuable ways reveals that diversity is not just a goal, something that an organization aspires to become, something that someone is, nor an inherently valuable good. Rather, diversity is something that needs to be constantly harnessed, performed and ‘put to work’, so to speak, in the inclusive corporation in specific ways in order to unlock its value (also see David, 2016). In this chapter I contribute to ongoing debates about capital investments in queer differences by considering the specific ways in which diversity is ‘put to work’ in supposedly LGBTQ+​inclusive corporations, asking when this labour turns into a direct resource for labourers and/​or for the corporation, 67

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and how and when it does not (also see David, 2015, 2016; Irving, 2008; Wasser, 2016). I build my arguments by drawing from ethnographic interview encounters with employees engaging in diversity work in inclusive workplace contexts. Of those diversity workers who were interviewed, a total of 25 across a period of two years, seven are presented here as ethnographic case studies.

Queer value in the LGBTQ-​friendly corporation LGBTQ-​friendly corporations are petitioned as welcoming places in which queer​people are not simply tolerated but free to come out of the closet, express their true self and be proud of their difference. Earlier understandings focused on the presence of inclusive structures, heralding the existence of active LGBTQ+​staff networks, inclusive employee policies and LGBTQ-​ friendly marketing strategies as evidence of LGBTQ-​friendliness in the workplace. More recently, however, mirroring broader dislocating shifts in the ontology of organization, emphasis has shifted away from corporate structures and towards more individualized markers. These shifts are reflected in the Stonewall WEI, which places particular emphasis on the presence of workplace role models as examples of inclusion and inclusiveness. While the new openings promised by inclusivity might enable some queer subjects to become included, we should approach these trajectories with caution. Indeed, as queer perspectives have pointed out, a change in the stance towards LGBTQ+​people –​from hostility and/​or indifference to friendliness –​ does not necessarily change how corporations regulate and/​or privilege certain expressions and performances of gender/​sexuality (Benozzo et al., 2015; Rumens and Broomfield, 2014). It might thus be unhelpful to understand inclusive corporations simply as emancipative places simply because they allow LGBTQ+​employees to be themselves. Indeed, the repackaging of diversity as a valuable corporate resource raises questions of corporate control. This seems to occur less through outright exclusion and more via the normalization and regulation of certain expressions of difference over others at work. Our focus should be thus redirected towards understanding the shifting nature of gender/​sexual norms in the workplace and in relation to workplace cultures and to the financial imperatives of capitalist organizations. Critical management scholars have read the turn to inclusivity as a form of corporate control in which the emphasis on ‘authenticity’ and ‘being your true self ’ is effectively used as a ‘diversion tactic’ that takes attention away from more pressing redistributive workplace class struggles, buttressing unequal and exploitative labour relations (Fleming, 2007; Fleming and Sturdy, 2011). Thus, rather than being liberating or emancipative, the corporate turn to inclusivity could be seen as inextricably linked to traditional forms 68

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of bureaucratic surveillance and ‘the enhancement of [capitalist] control and domination’ (Fleming and Sturdy, 2011, p192). Perspectives which link the turn to inclusivity to forms of managerial control and to the mechanisms have much to offer to extant critical approaches to LGBTQ+​inclusion. In particular, they allow us to consider how the normalization of certain performances of diversity is related not simply to matters of organizational culture, but organizational bottom lines, labour relations and desires to extract and maximize the productive value of the labour force. Yet, while this scholarship is useful in shedding light on the ways in which diversity work might buttress managerial demands and forms of workplace inequality, underpinning these arguments is what Spivak (1985) calls a ‘romantic, anti-​capitalist tendency’ to interpret efforts to include diverse subjects in corporations as mere forms of recognition that take attention away from more pressing redistributive concerns. Reading inclusion in these terms establishes a separation between cultural (recognition) and economic (redistributive) matters, and places gender/​sexuality on the former side of the equation (Butler, 1997; Rao, 2015). The result is an analysis which accounts for economic inequalities but fails to do justice to the lived experiences of (seemingly) cultural matters of gender/​sexuality. Moreover, work in this area tends to not pay enough attention to the actual lived experiences and the labour performed by these subjects themselves in order to become included in LGBTQ-​friendly workplaces. Indeed, while the process of conversion by which queer differences are turned into valuable corporate resources is often understood as a remarkably smooth phenomena in which the demands of capital seamlessly incorporate those queer subjects who are able and willing to embody desirable performances of diversity, ‘doing diversity’ actually requires work. Like Marxist perspectives, queer perspectives have questioned whether the arrival of LGBTQ-​friendliness signals more welcoming and open gender/​ sexual scenarios in the contemporary world of work (Bendl, Fleischmann and Walenta, 2008; Benozzo et al., 2015; Fleming and Sturdy, 2011; Giuffre, Dellinger and Williams, 2008; Hearn, 2014; Rumens, 2015, 2018; Williams, Giuffre and Dellinger, 2009). However, queer perspectives have also paid careful attention to how gender/​sexuality are performed, lived and laboured in complex ways. In particular, a queer emphasis on the performativity of gender/​sexuality enables us to read control beyond (merely repressive) managerial domination to explore how these are (productively) regulated and disciplined through gender/​sexual categories, normativities and the intricacies of everyday life (Bendl, Fleischmann and Walenta, 2008; Priola et al., 2018; Valocchi, 2005). Here control operates not so much by ‘distracting’ employees from structural relations of labour inequality but rather through the continuous work involved in reproducing ourselves as socially legible, normative gender/​sexual subjects according to limited social 69

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scripts. A queer approach thus contributes to our understanding of corporate control by shedding light on the importance of looking at the performance of gender/​sexuality as an empirical question in its own right rather than simply as a category of difference. While a queer approach offers useful preliminary insights into control and inclusion, it has often retreated from an analysis of how the changing organization of gender/​sexuality in the workplace is linked to capitalist relations to production (David, 2015, 2016; Hennessy, 2000). Wesling’s (2012) work on queer value enables us to make room for a more ‘materialist reading of sexuality’ (p107). In ‘Queer value’, Wesling (2012) is specifically interested in addressing ‘the historical specificity of capital’s investment’ (p107) in gender/​sexuality. She does so by tracing the reproduction of value that accrues from specific performances of gender/​sexuality in Gilpin’s and Bernaza’s film Mariposas en el Andamio (1996), a documentary about a community of drag performers in Havana, Cuba. As she explains, the contribution of the notion of ‘queer value’ is not simply to shed light on ‘how queers work’ (p108), but on the productive value of queer labour, and specifically, on how Marxist readings of labour and value might be adapted to account for the reproduction of normative and disciplined gender/​ sexual subjects. The crux of Wesling’s argument revolves around understanding the performance of gender/​sexuality as a ‘ritualised, disciplined, and highly invested’ (p107) form of labour. That is, while gender/​sexuality are often seen to be authentic truths of individuals, in Wesling’s understanding their performance is not ‘natural’ but entails and requires work. Here Wesling draws upon Marxist distinctions between (alienated, profit-​orientated) labour and (socially meaningful, non-​profit-​orientated) work yet revises these by reading work not as ‘the antithesis to labour’ (p111) but rather as a performance that accrues affective and material value ‘even when (or precisely because) that performance is asserted to be natural’ (p108). Labour emerges here not simply in socially necessary terms, that is, in terms of the ‘minimal necessary requirements needed for the worker to reproduce himself or herself ’ (Wesling, 2012, p108), but also in affective terms, which includes ‘those activities that work towards the aims of the body’s comfort, pleasure, and the satisfaction of desire’ (p108). Extending the notion of drag to all social performances of gender/​sexuality, Wesling ultimately reads these laboured performances of gender/​sexuality as integral components of the (re)production of socially legible gender/​sexual subjects (2021, p108). The chapter builds upon these insights and avenues to ask how diversity is put to work or laboured in the supposedly inclusive corporation. Exploring the complicity between cultural normativities and economic questions of value, the chapter sheds light on how managerial control in the LGBTQ-​friendly organization operates through the laboured performance 70

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of difference: through the expectations and normativities concerning how differences are supposed to be ‘put to work’ in the reproduction of queer value and through the mechanisms by which the organization extracts the ‘productive value of queer labour’ (Wesling, 2012, p108).

Putting diversity to work I meet Kostas, a white gay man who is head of sales, at the HQ of the bank for which he works. The bank is a consistent ‘top performer’ in Stonewall’s annual WEI and invests considerable energy and resources in promoting diversity and inclusion inside and outside the workplace. It is one of London Pride’s major sponsors. Kostas is both actively involved in the diversity work required to sustain such initiatives, and supportive of these discourses, lauding the bank as an inclusive employer that ‘recognizes the value of diversity’. Kostas also acts as co-​chair of the LGBTQ+​staff network and is listed in OUTstanding’s top 50 LGBTQ+​Future Leaders list (in 2017 and 2018), which showcases ‘inspirational future leaders’ who have made a ‘significant contribution to LGBTQ+​inclusion’. As we make our way up from the lobby, Kostas leads me into the small glass room located in the centre of the floor which he has booked for our interview. We begin the interview and immediately I note in my fieldnotes that I am impressed by his professional accomplishments. At only 28, he manages around 50 employees and has made his way onto the senior leadership team. ‘The youngest one after me is 42’, he explains, proudly. Intrigued by his success story, I ask him why and how he thinks he has made it this far up in the corporate ladder. His response revealed a remarkable level of self-​conscious, strategic and ‘highly invested’ (Wesling, 2012) form of labour performed to use his ‘gayness’ and to stylize, repackage and promote himself as ‘the right kinda gay guy’. In Kostas’ own words, it is all about ‘using what you’ve got’. He explains that he started getting involved in LGBTQ+​inclusion when he first joined the bank, because he’s ‘a white guy’ and ‘a man in a corporate environment’. He recognizes these things as ‘assets’ but concludes that they are ‘nothing special’ and that, ultimately, they do not make him ‘stand out’. After a ‘really bad year’ at work, he reaches the ‘painful realization’ that you cannot always be a ‘high performer’. To this end, Kostas decides to shift the focus to himself: ‘I was the white, immigrant, gay guy in a pretty inclusive firm, so I was that guy and I started working on that’. He describes how he ‘started toning it down in some places, started learning how to speak, slower, controlling my emotions, just being the right kinda gay guy you know?’. But, as Kostas specifies, this performance also ‘needs to look natural’. What emerges from this interaction is that being gay in an inclusive corporate environment can be a good thing, but only if you know how to use 71

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it. Kostas’ gender/​sexuality emerge here not as authentic attributes of the self but as products of labour. This labour is at once intentional and ‘affectively necessary’ (Wesling, 2012, p108), to navigate the demands of contemporary work practices organized around networking and individualized career development programmes. Marketing the (gender/​sexual) self as a product or asset in this case works to compensate for a bad year at work. But it also works to reproduce a socially legible and normative subject: the ‘right kinda gay guy’. Here control operates through the performance of diversity and the labour he self-​consciously performs in order to package and use his difference in entrepreneurial and ‘acceptable’ ways (for example, not ‘emotional’). This labour reproduces, at once, not only ‘a corporeal and desiring subject’ (Wasser, 2016, p58), the ‘right kinda gay guy’, but also queer value. The queer value that accrues from Kostas’ performance of diversity takes many forms. On the one hand, it reproduces affective value for Kostas himself as he copes with the realities of the market, the unpredictability of his performance, and the realities of the corporate workplace more broadly. On the other hand, ‘if you know how to use it’, and especially, as Wesling (2012) too explains, if it ‘looks natural’, this form of labour also reproduces material value. Indeed, as Kostas’ interview continued, he also explained that he laboriously deploys his diversity on the senior leadership team as a form of normalization and to keep his employees entertained and motivated. As he explains, on the senior leadership team, he sometimes ‘overdoes’ his gayness and his campness so that others will also be ‘comfortable being themselves’. He continues by adding that ‘if people on the floor see that this is a benchmark of what gay means, and somebody else has something more normal, they’ll actually see … that the other person is normal’. This is not just a strategy for normalizing gayness in the workplace. Kostas explains that this also ‘entertains’ other employees, which is a useful managerial strategy because ‘it can get pretty boring around here’. Here Kostas performs an excessive or overdone version of gayness at work to elevate the ‘benchmark of what gay means’ and to thus enable other ‘more normal’ employees to be more comfortable ‘being themselves’. In some ways this is reminiscent of discussion of the ways in which some queer employees in gay-​friendly contexts are faced with a choice: ‘being so-​called normal … or being visible’ (Williams, Giuffre and Dellinger, 2009, p42). Yet Kostas’ laboured performances are not forced, but intentional, self-​ reflexive and strategic. Indeed, he is highly aware that this adds queer value both for other LGBTQ+​employees and also for the corporation itself by performing a task that is central to discussions and constructions of inclusive corporations as places in which LGBTQ+​employees feel comfortable being authentic. Reminiscent of Emmanuel David’s (2015) discussion of ‘purple collar labour’, Kostas’ laboured performance of stereotypical expectations akin to those necessitated in other, less professionalized, forms of gender/​ 72

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sexual labour –​such as drag, for ­example –​produces queer value for the corporation by cutting through the boredom of banking life, buttressing his managerial role with campness, and helping to keep his team entertained and thus (perhaps) even motivated. Ultimately, then, it is by engaging in various laboured performances of gender/​sexuality that Kostas puts to use his diversity in the reproduction of queer value and in order to become included in the LGBTQ-​friendly corporation. Yet, arguably Kostas’ campness is at least partly enabled by his whiteness, which somewhat immunizes him from the most trenchant forms of misogyny. As Jane Ward (2015) argues in Not Gay, heteromasculinity is often buttressed and reinforced by whiteness in ways which not only render gayness safe, but which also embody forms of homosociality which, rather than breaking down existing forms of white heteronormativity, actually reinforce them. In particular, Kostas’ detailing of the interactions he had with his boss, such as, for example, when he told me about complimenting the size of his boss’s penis in one of the office changing rooms and using such an interaction as evidence of his boss’s friendliness towards his performances of gender/​ sexuality, are reminiscent of locker room talk and white forms of masculinity such as the ‘frat boy’ (Ward, 2015). This suggests that campness in this case might actually reinforce rather than challenge (his boss’s) heterosexuality and status. What emerges from the interview encounter is that, in the LGBTQ-​ friendly corporation, Kostas put his diversity to work in order to reproduce queer value for himself, for other LGBTQ+​ employees, and for the corporation. He does so by performing the right version of gayness, that is, a version of gayness that is, in his view, valuable because it is normalizing. The ‘right kinda gay guy’ is herein performed in terms of a particularly upwardly mobile and entrepreneurial version of difference, that is at once challenging of workplace norms (through camp or excessive performances of gay identity), yet ultimately works to reinscribe these norms by erecting new normativities or benchmarks for other LGBTQ+​employees and reinforcing (rather than challenging) heterosexuality. Managerial control herein operates through the performance of diversity, unfolding first, through the labour Kostas dedicates to this task, which reveals a remarkable level of self-​control (of his emotions, his speech, of the version of gayness he brings to work) required in order to perform gender/​sexuality in a way which is deemed valuable for the corporation, and which enable him to affectively and professionally navigate the contemporary world of work. And, second, through the deployment of this performance of gayness to improve efficiency and buttress his managerial role, which he effectively uses to control other employees. In both these examples, corporate control operates in terms of the expectations internalized by Kostas in order to become included and reproduce queer value, and the labour required in 73

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order to be yourself in the ‘right’ way. This exposes some of the paradoxes of the current emphasis on ‘authenticity’ as a marker of ‘inclusivity’ on the workplace. Indeed, what emerges from this example is that doing ‘authenticity’ requires labour and that thus there might be nothing ‘authentic’ or ‘natural’ about its performance after all.

Day jobs and gay jobs The performance of this kind of diversity work led some participants to refer to the existence of a ‘gay job’ alongside their ‘day job’.2 ‘I have my day job. And then I have my gay job’, explains Eli, a white gay man, public affairs executive, chair of a professional LGBTQ+​network and co-​chair of the workplace staff LGBTQ+​network. I met Eli at one of the events he organized through the professional LGBTQ+​network and subsequently arranged to meet him in a café for an interview. During the interview Eli explains that ‘a day job is obviously what you get paid to do, the work you do for the organization’ whereas ‘the gay one is everything that I do on top of that, all the stuff with diversity and inclusion’. For Eli, this includes being ‘co-​chair of [the professional LGBTQ+​staff network] and of the workplace LGBTQ+​network’. For the professional network, this involves having ‘meetings, organizing events and panel discussions’. For the staff network within the corporation, it involves ‘sometimes talking to senior management and HR and sometimes even the CEO, and the Stonewall [WEI] submission of course’. Eli admits that this work is ‘not easy’. It is also unpaid. But he quickly follows this by saying that he does it nevertheless because he ‘loves it’ and has a ‘passion for it’. But in order to fully understand what motivates queer employees to engage in this kind of unpaid labour, we must once again return to the question of queer value. Indeed, alongside his love and passion for LGBTQ+​diversity and inclusion, what motivates Eli to perform his gay job is that he believes that this also adds value to his day job. As he explains, while he speaks of diversity work as a gay job, to separate this from his day job would be ‘obviously ludicrous because the skills and the passion I have for the work I do outside of work clearly benefits for me as a person, the organization, and my day job’. He particularly comments on how ‘having media exposure and being in touch with different departments’ through his gay job ultimately benefitted his day job. Eli comments on the interrelatedness of his day and gay job and the personal and the professional in the sense that the skills and forms of expertise nurtured through his gay job ultimately add value to his day job. This is, at once, affective and material value, and benefits him both personally and professionally. This is also the rationale and mode of compensation with which he encourages and remunerates other LGBTQ+​employees to get involved. Indeed, Eli ultimately uses these supposed added benefits to get 74

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other people to join the network, because ‘it’s the only thing you can offer someone when they get involved’ because you ‘can’t pay them’. David, a white, gay, senior project manager and co-​chair of the LGBTQ+​ staff network featured in the OUTstanding Top 50 LGBT+​Future Leaders list (2017), also explains that the performance of his gay job also ‘adds value to … [him] personally’, through ‘endorphin release, or feeling good’. He also, interestingly, establishes a distinction between just being out and authentic, and performing another kind of more active labour, that of participating and contributing ‘from a diversity standpoint’. He is not sure ‘that simply coming out adds value to your day job; it probably just levels you out with everybody else’. David explains that contributing through the LGBTQ+​staff network, on the other hand, that is ‘where that added value comes in’. He details how this process works, explaining that ‘first you need to get everybody comfortable, then you need to have some people there who are role-​modelling and adding value in turn to make it truly inclusive’. He is also aware that while people ‘with other commitments’ may see this kind of diversity work as a ‘tick-​box exercise’, he does not see it like that. ‘I literally live in that building over there’, he explains, pointing to a building outside the window. ‘That’s what drives me to want to make a change and ultimately what adds the most value … you’re not going to find someone more committed than that’, he continues. David takes immense pride in the labour he performs to ‘make a change’ in the corporation. So much so that he wilfully tries to reduce the physical space between ‘work’ and ‘home’ by living in close proximity to work, using this as evidence of his commitment to diversity work. Moreover, David assigns diversity work more value when it is, or, at least, when it is seen to be performed authentically, not as a tick-​box exercise for the corporation, but naturally and voluntarily. Yet, while it might ‘feel good’, the performance of this labour also comes at a cost. As David continues, in his current role he ‘doesn’t see a distinction’ between his gay job and his day job. For example, he explains that he was on a call as part of his gay job this morning for 30 minutes. However, that means he will have to work longer hours for his day job. ‘I was in at quarter past 7 this morning, and I won’t leave till 6 o’clock this evening, and that I will pick up stuff for the weekend’, he continues. He explains that this is ‘his choice’. Yet, while David’s boss would ‘never ask him to’ come in so early and leave so late, it is nevertheless clear that this is what is expected and required of him in order to perform his gay job in a way in which does not interfere with his day job. ‘As long as my boss is happy and my boss’s boss is happy, they let me’, he explains. However, this is not always easy, and if his day job ever started to interfere with his day job David believes he would have to get ‘more protective of [his] day to make sure [he’s] adding value to my day job’. He concludes by saying that he does not ‘know how 75

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long [he] can continue coming in so early and leaving so late’ and that he is concerned that in ‘trying to do it all, eventually [his] head will pop off’. The blurring of the boundary between the personal and the professional allows LGBTQ+​employees to integrate some aspects of their gender/​ sexuality into their day jobs. This accrues queer value both to queer employees themselves, who feel both rewarded and perceive diversity work to benefit their day jobs. Yet, it also produces value for the corporation that ultimately extracts the productivity dividends of inclusivity and reaps the benefits of the labour that its employees perform in creating an environment in which others can ‘be themselves’. However, the performance of this labour also comes at a cost. Indeed, the blurring of the boundary between the personal and the professional does not necessarily entail greater freedom, autonomy, or emancipation. In reality, this flexibilization of work time and space and the harnessing of diversity as a new raw material of capital has its limitations and seems to usher in multiple, competing and exhausting expectations through which the LGBTQ+​subject are required to accurately (self-​)manage their diversity in the reproduction of queer value. While some internalize these expectations because they ‘feel good’ and/​or because performing one’s gay job is interpreted as ‘doing good’ –​for the organization, for other LGBTQ+​employees –​others are more reluctant in performing this kind of diversity work. Take, for example, some of the comments made to me by Kaneila, director of professional services in an insurance company and co-​chair of her workplace LGBTQ+​network. Kaneila is featured on the Pride Power List (2018)3 and is an active participant of LBQWomen, a professional network for queer women working in corporations. It is at one of their events that we first meet. Six months after our first meeting, we arrange to meet for an interview. What emerges from our conversation is that, unlike Kostas, Eli and David, who seem to perform diversity work passionately and deliberately, Kaneila’s involvement was neither straightforwardly deliberate nor very passionate. She explains that her coming out was not exactly ‘deliberate’, she simply ‘wanted to be a better role model’ for one of her colleagues, whom she knew was gay but was too afraid to come out. She was then persuaded by the co-​chair of the LGBTQ+​network, a woman who was ‘having a terrible time … trying to get women to turn up to things’, to come to an event. Kaneila attends the networking event in Canary Wharf and, to her surprise, out of 200 people there, only ‘four of them were women’. It was partly this realization that women were drastically underrepresented in diversity work that motivates her to get more involved, marking the ‘start of [her] journey’ into her gay job. Moreover, while, like others, Kaneila gets involved in diversity work because she wants to make a change in the workplace and become a ‘better role model’, the language she ultimately adopts to describe her involvement 76

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is decidedly more negative, using words such as ‘tragic’, ‘hideous’ and ‘terrible’ to describe her initial engagement with inclusion. Ultimately, she explains that she ‘never made plans to out … [herself] at work’, which partly explains her surprise, and reluctance, in becoming chair of the LGBTQ+​ staff network. ‘I didn’t ask to become chair of the network’, she explains. But because there are ‘so few out women in senior management roles in corporates’, she thinks that by coming out she ‘inadvertently became the chair of the network and somebody who people are always depending on to do stuff and make stuff happen, listen to their LGBTQ+​problems, advise them’. She explains that because she is ‘not an expert on LGBTQ+​issues in any shape or form’, this leaves her no choice but to ‘talk about [her] own personal experience’ because that is ‘the only value [she can] bring’. She expresses a sense of discomfort both at having to ‘be happy to share [her] deeply intimate personal experiences’ and having to act as a ‘therapist’ for others. Kaneila ‘feel[s]‌responsible’ for doing this kind of work and is irritated that ‘no one else will step up’. She ultimately concludes, shrugging her shoulders, that this kind of work makes her feel ‘so unprepared’, ‘ambivalent’ and, ultimately, ‘exhausted’. Kaneila’s story of how she gets involved in diversity work harks back both at the inspirational narratives about lesbian CEOs explored in the previous chapter in which becoming your authentic self at work is marked by an entrepreneurial desire to become more successful, and at conceptualizations of LGBTQ+​voice, participation and representation in corporations as desirable and automatically inclusive organizational goals. Indeed, while she initially decides to get involved to become a better role model, ultimately her involvement stems less from an entrepreneurial spirit to use her diversity to create queer value, nor a passion for inclusion, than a sense of responsibility and irritation with the current status quo.4 On the one hand this sense of responsibility is undeniably symptomatic of neoliberal forms of self-​regulatory governance which rest upon individuals’ internalization of normativities through self-​discipline and responsibility (Richardson, 2005; Rumens, 2018). Yet, Kaneila does not passionately embrace responsibility, nor does she seem to enjoy the commitments and burdens it entails. She is thus an ambivalent, inadvertent, unprepared and reluctant queer neoliberal subject who is ultimately resistant to, although involved in, the very forms of expertise and self-​knowledge required by such neoliberal formulations of diversity work.

Failed laboured performances of diversity While knowing how to put diversity to work in supposedly inclusive contexts, although exhausting, can reproduce queer value both for queer employees and the corporation, diversity can also be performed in the ‘wrong’ 77

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way, causing one to feel ‘stuck’. Take for example Anita, a white trans woman, business manager and co-​chair of the LGBTQ+​staff network in a large investment bank that is credited as an inclusive employer in Stonewall’s WEI. I contacted Anita in early 2017 under the auspices of another participant. A few months later we met for an interview in the HQ of the bank in which she works. During the interview, Anita explains that her initial experience of coming out as trans at work was ‘amazing’ because the bank not only encouraged her, but actually bent over backwards to accommodate her. She is aware that, in her own words, the ‘ruthless investment bank’ is partly interested in accommodating her needs due to fear that she would ‘make a fuss’. Yet, ultimately, she does not seem to have a problem with the fact that the corporation was ‘fundamentally supportive because it’s good for money’. So, she changes the way she dresses at work, changes her ID card to reflect her gender, and ends up accepting a role as co-​chair of the LGBTQ+​staff network. Anita describes her work for the staff network as ‘immensely valuable’. While, of course, she has (conscious and unconscious) vested interests in portraying herself as engaging in valuable work, these comments are confirmed by her listing in the OUTstanding 50 LGBT+​Future Leaders List (in 2017 and 2018), in which she is lauded for her valuable contribution to the making of a more inclusive workplace culture at the bank. This includes delivering gender-​neutral toilets, Transgender 101 classes to other employees and managers, and more inclusive gender self-​identification options for monitoring purposes (all of which are indicators of inclusivity in Stonewall’s WEI and have become especially prized in light of recent developments in the field of trans inclusion). Yet, as Anita becomes more involved in diversity work, and after the ‘real high … about being yourself ’ wears off –​and, perhaps, after the fear she would make a fuss does, too –​her perceptions change. ‘You don’t imagine the number of brick walls I’ve come up against in actually trying to help them understand how to create a more inclusive environment for LGBTQ+​ people but particularly for trans people’, she explains. Anita’s change of stance also seems to have stemmed from disagreements with other members of the network. Nevertheless, her comments should not be taken in isolation, but rather situated amid broader observations made by critical diversity and inclusion scholars about the non-​performativity of diversity and the ways in which organizational commitments to diversity and inclusion may in fact make it more difficult for those interested in actually trying to change things, that is, in trying to actually render the organization more inclusive and not simply friendly (Ahmed, 2012). Anita thinks these brick walls are erected ‘particularly for trans people’. Ultimately, these brick walls prevent her from doing the very diversity work that she was initially entrusted to perform as chair of the LGBTQ+​staff network. 78

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Moreover, notwithstanding but also perhaps because of the corporation’s support for inclusivity (under the guise of which Anita is encouraged to come out), and despite the supposed desirability of being your ‘true self ’, Anita’s (failed) laboured performances of diversity lead her to experience inclusion as a sign of immobility. Anita explains that the year she came out she ‘was on a year-​long training course that prepares you for promotion’. Yet after coming out, she ‘wasn’t put up for promotion [and] actually had a lot of [her] responsibilities … gradually removed’. While Anita is cautious in her tone, entertaining the possibility that this might all just be a coincidence, she nevertheless draws connections between her transition and the removal of her responsibilities and her chances of promotion. She explains that she feels demoted, stuck and ‘straight-​jacketed from a career progression perspective’. She compares her story to those of other trans people who say that after coming out they became the ‘spokesperson for all trans people’. But for Anita, the opposite seems true: ‘I don’t get asked to do anything anymore, they just think “oh it’s her again, the shouty one” ’. Needless to say, there is a remarkable disjuncture between the corporation’s image as inclusive and Anita’s experiences at work. Indeed, it seems that the very performance of diversity work, which involves helping the organization ‘understand how to create a more inclusive environment’, is what leads to her failure. Here failure is expressed not in the sense that she fails to perform diversity work altogether, or that it does not accrue value for the organization (in fact, it does), but in the sense that this labour fails her because it is performed in the ‘wrong’ (read: shouty) kind of way. Managerial control here operates through the laboured performances of diversity Anita is required to adopt in order to become valuable to the corporation, in order to become included. Indeed, while initially Anita is embraced, once she becomes too threatening, the corporation tries to manage, contain and ultimately immobilize her activism. They do this to compensate for her distance from organizationally endorsed and approved forms of inclusivity, to compensate for her distance from practices of inclusion that are considered organizationally valuable (toilets, Transgender 101 classes) and proximity to forms of LGBTQ+​activism that are deemed ‘too threatening’. This exposes the existence of two competing understandings of inclusion: on the one hand, a friendly form of inclusion which is valuable to the corporation in terms of Stonewall’s WEI, yet arguably superficial; on the other hand, a deeper (and perhaps more meaningful and radical) kind of inclusion, which is that endorsed and considered more valuable by Anita yet is dismissed by the corporation. Interestingly, at the end of the interview, Anita relates her ‘shoutiness’ to the fact that she ‘used to be a communist, involved in student politics, fighting “the class war” and all that jazz … before joining [the bank], back in the 90s’. Anita acknowledges that she is ‘not that person anymore’. Yet she 79

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explains that becoming involved in workplace activism around the issue of trans inclusion ‘somewhat reminded me of that … there’s something in my unconscious that must have been reactivated from that experience’. Anita’s comments thus also suggest that her failure to reproduce queer value might also be read through a class perspective: that perhaps, in ‘reactivating’ her class consciousness (also explicit in her naming of the investment bank as ‘ruthless’ in the beginning of the interview), her diversity work was read as too threatening to the organization. Indeed, as she concludes, if the bank knew about her ‘background … they’d get rid of [her] in an instant’. A similar experience is retold by Emad, a South Asian man who identifies as cis and straight. At first sight, Emad’s and Anita’s positionality in relation to the discourse of LGBTQ+​inclusion seems to be remarkably dissimilar. Indeed, Emad is principally involved in diversity work as a straight ally.5 At the same time, Emad’s engagement with diversity work reveals very similar dynamics. Emad is an innovation manager and diversity champion6 at a law firm that is listed as an inclusive employer in Stonewall’s WEI. Emad’s story begins when he is approached by his HR team to be the firm’s nominee as Stonewall Ally of the Year award. ‘They just needed to fill out that section of the [WEI] application’, he explains.7 ‘I never thought I was going to win it, because that would be shameful; all I ever did was organize a picnic for the network’, he continues. Nevertheless, to Emad’s surprise, he wins the award. And, like Anita, who (cautiously yet also affirmatively) blames her involvement with diversity work for her demotion, he believes that winning the award and becoming more involved in the ‘work … for LGBTQ+​inclusion’ has put him ‘in a position where he hasn’t got a job as a lawyer anymore’. He explains how during a performance evaluation a few months after he won the award, he was told he had too many ‘interests outside [his] core job’. While the removal of his responsibilities was ‘never linked back to the work [he does] for LGBTQ+​ inclusion’, Emad believes that engaging in diversity work made people think of him as not ‘a firm man’ and not having ‘the type of character that rises to a leadership position’. Emad further describes the ‘dissonance’ between the corporation’s stated commitment to inclusion and the reality of his experiences by pointing out that the person who sent the email to the rest of the office congratulating him for the award is the very same person who removed his responsibilities on the basis of his ideas being a bit ‘radical and dangerous’. Engaging in diversity work makes Emad ‘dangerous’, perhaps a bit too dangerous for promotion. The dissonance described by Emad reflects that documented by others between the values of diversity and inclusion officially espoused, celebrated and turned into profitable resources by corporations, and the ways in which these are not simply implemented on the ground, but also literally used to block and obstruct the very subjects, queer and/​or straight allies, entrusted to 80

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further them (Ahmed, 2012; Rumens, 2018). It thus appears that while, in some cases, engaging in diversity work adds value to one’s day job and makes one appear to be skilled and passionate, at others it makes you flighty, dangerous and radical. The line between passionate and dangerous seems be determined, firstly, by the content of the work of inclusion. Comments Emad made later in relation to ‘the combination of LGBTQ+​and business development’ and how this ‘limits the value of diversity work by limiting what you can say’ reveal where the danger might lie. Indeed, as he explains, ‘you become dangerous if you are critical of the organisation … sharing warmth stories is okay –​but criticising the organization in front of others is problematic’. Secondly, this line also seems to be determined by Emad’s racialized performances of gender/​sexuality. Indeed, as it emerges, Emad directly links the fact that he is read as dangerous and radical to his racialized embodiment by explaining that ‘the guys are so confused by me, a straight brown feminine guy … they just don’t know what to do with me’. ‘The guys’ Emad is referring to are primarily white straight and gay men. Relating these comments back to our previous discussion about Kostas’ mobilization of campness on the senior leadership team, Emad’s femininity is too much: he is not able to draw from white privilege to insulate himself from misogyny. Indeed, we could also argue that it is Emad’s identification as straight that is even more confusing to his colleagues: while Kostas reproduces queer value by becoming ‘the right kinda gay’, Emad does not identify as gay and thus cannot be ‘the right kinda gay’. He is thus penalized for failing to perform his gender/​sexuality in intelligibly heteronormative ways and for engaging in (diversity) work that is gendered feminine in a masculinist organization in which heterosexuals are expected to be masculine, and homosexuals, in cases in which whiteness and class status are not challenged, permitted and even expected to be feminine and camp.

Queer failure While failure to perform diversity in the right way can cause some to get stuck, at times failure can also become a form of resistance. From queer theory’s celebration of ‘no futures’ and ‘death drives’ (Edelman, 2004), to feminist celebrations of the figure of the ‘kill-​joy’ (Ahmed, 2008, 2010b; Swan, 2017), critical scholars have invested a considerable amount of energy in positing failure –​to be productive, to reproduce, to be happy, to succeed –​ as a crucial site of resistance. After all, failing is not only ‘something queers do and have always done exceptionally well’ (Halberstam, 2011, p1). But also, in light of neoliberal narratives of inclusion which posit success as an attainable and desirable goal for queer subjects, failing –​to be successful, to participate, to be included, to reproduce queer value –​could be read as a highly disruptive and troublesome practice. 81

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Take for example, Andrea, a white trans woman who works for a financial services corporation also listed as an inclusive employer in Stonewall’s WEI. I first met Andrea at an LGBTQ+​workplace role model training programme run by Stonewall. The training programme was held in the London offices of a large insurance company and explicitly targeted at LGBTQ+​employees with the stated aim of increasing their motivation and confidence to step up as visible and authentic workplace LGBTQ+​role models and become ambassadors for diversity in the workplace. While what it actually means to be a ‘workplace role model’ remained a matter of great confusion throughout the day, a resource guide distributed to participants before the start of the programme defined LGBTQ+​workplace role models as individuals who make a ‘point to colleagues … about the value and importance of being open about our difference … [and that], being who you are, more often and as effectively as possible, is a good thing’. Throughout the day, authenticity was enshrined as an integral component of the (queer) value of diversity work. Of course, being visibly authentic may be of value to other LGBTQ+​employees who feel ‘inspired’ and ‘motivated’ by such visible expressions of queerness in the workplace. But it also seemed to be a key component of the value that queer people bring to the market itself. One of the programme facilitators outlines the value of authenticity in this latter sense with reference to MI5, explaining that ‘the ability of LGBTQ+​people to assess and understands risks and different context stems from the self-​awareness’ that queer people presumably develop through learning how to manage the experience of living inauthentically, in the closet. Positing queer people as curiously well-​suited for the task of authenticity, he explains that this is a clear ‘business benefit for a spy in MI5’, and that straight people often lack this quality because they do not know what it is like to be inauthentic: they ‘often struggle to think of times when they were not being themselves’. Comments like these were common throughout the day, working to reconfigure histories and realities of exclusion –​and the skills which accrue from learning how to self-​manage these experiences –​in terms of brighter futures in which some LGBTQ+​subjects emerge as diversity success stories. Many of the sessions within the programme were designed to train participants to narrate their ‘authenticity story’ in coherent and positive terms. Overall, I felt that the main purpose of the programme was to effectively encourage participants to reframe their experiences and stories of inauthenticity in positive and valuable ways and, in so doing, become workplace role models: examples of authenticity that can work to inspire others –​LGBTQ+​and/​or straight –​to also bring their whole selves to the workplace. At the programme, Andrea and I were often put in the same breakout group, bonding over our scepticism at the notion of authenticity –​ mine anthropological, Andrea’s mostly stemming from a resistance to the 82

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very practice and/​or concept of role modelling. A few months after the programme, I arranged to meet Andrea for an interview at a restaurant in Canary Wharf, where she works. Nine months before the training programme, Andrea came out as trans at work. Andrea explains that her company has generally been supportive of her transition. However, she also explains that while they have been supportive, ‘they have some expectations’ in relation to how to ‘do’ transgender in the workplace. While these are not written expectations, they nevertheless require Andrea to align herself with managerial understandings of diversity and do things which do not necessarily align with her own desires. For example, she explains that while the corporation officially says that they will go at her pace and do whatever she wants, they also say that they ‘need a name for people to call [her], [they] need [her] to decide what pronouns [she] wants to use’. While she understands why they might be interested in these things, they are not things that Andrea was ‘initially interested in’. The tensions between Andrea’s understandings of authenticity and corporate expectations concerning how the category of transgender is to be put to work also emerge in relation to the role modelling labour she is expected to perform after attending the training programme. Andrea reads her having been sent to the programme as a sign of her employer trying to become more ‘inclusive’. Yet she is also expected to give something back. This labour mostly took the form of workshops, organized by her manager, in which Andrea is expected to share what she has learnt from the programme as well as provide feedback on how the corporation can become more trans inclusive. Andrea explains that the workshops, in which she is expected to narrate her story authentically, coherently and emphatically (we learnt how to do this at the training programme), actually ended up raising even more questions for her: ‘Why did I do this? Why did I do that? Is it really me? Did I do that?’. While she affirms that her confusion does not arise from having received ‘any weird questions’ (which could be read as a sign of intolerance), it is her very being in the room which causes her to feel uncomfortable and ultimately to question herself. This leads her to confess that she is ‘a bit annoyed at this role model thing … sorry if I’m going against your thing [my research] … [but] I don’t feel I fit the thing’. As we explore what this feels and means from her perspective, Andrea explains that ‘not fitting in’ stems from the fact that, according to her, being a role model means ‘knowing where you are and where you are going’. Andrea’s ‘problem’ is that she does not ‘know where [she] wants to go’. Andrea understands the diversity work she is now expected to perform in terms of becoming orientated and/​or aligned both with corporate expectations about how to ‘do’ transgender and with the training programme’s understanding of a workplace role model. Her comments are reminiscent of Sara Ahmed’s (2006a, 2006b) work on straight lines. Indeed, becoming 83

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a role model seems to rest on one’s ability to adjust one’s position to face the ‘right’ direction. Orientation is here not simply a spatial and physical condition but also a metaphysical one, whereby one also orients oneself ‘towards objects of thought, feelings, and judgement, as well as objects in the sense of aims, aspirations, and objectives’ (Ahmed, 2006b, p56). Andrea understands her failure to become a role model in terms of her inability to face and become orientated towards, as well as to follow, this line: she is off-​line, disorientated or, as she puts it later, ‘one of the exceptions’. But it is what Andrea says next that ultimately reveals the direction of this (failed) line and orientation: ‘I don’t feel that I am a “role model” in a sense that … I have a shitty career … I have a shitty life … I’m miserable … I hate everything in life … I’ve never been married, [and] more or less never been in love’. We could argue that becoming a workplace role model involves becoming straight and a straightening-​up and reorienting of what was previously queer, slantwise, inauthentic, dis-​orientated, ‘shitty’ and ‘miserable’. Straightness is here to be understood not merely as in heterosexual but in its wider definitional usage to refer to a conventional or respectable person who has a nice career, a nice life, is happy, married and in love, whereby ‘straightness’ indeed ‘gets attached to other values, including decent, conventional, direct and honest’ (Ahmed, 2006b, p70). Engaging in this kind of straightening labour allows the subject to perform the diversity work a role model is intended and expected to do: to embody the promise of inclusion, to reproduce queer value for the corporation, to be held up as an example of authentic success, to be lauded and emulated by those also seeking to be included. But clearly not everyone is able and/​or willing to successfully perform this kind of work. For Andrea, disorientation and disappointment at the figure of the role model means she becomes alienated, she is ‘not happy in proximity to objects that are attributed as being good’ (Ahmed, 2010a, p4), she is an ‘affect alien’ (Ahmed, 2010a, p16), so to speak, who turns away from the cluster of promises of the inclusive corporation and, ultimately, dedicates herself to (unsuccessfully) trying ‘to close the gap between an expectation and a feeling’ (Ahmed, 2010a, p16). This leads her to become disappointed not only in the role model training programme, wondering whether this is actually ‘helping employees be more themselves’ or just ‘a made up thing … from a commercial point of view’, but ultimately at herself and at her ‘inability to overcome … [her] disappointment’ (Ahmed, 2010a, p16). While initially from a queer perspective we might be tempted to read this moment of disorientation, failure and disappointment as a productive site of resistance to the normalizing tendencies of inclusivity, Andrea’s reflections, offered towards the end of our two-​hour interview, challenge critical scholars’ allegiance to failure, anti-​normativity and ultimately, perhaps, to resistance itself. Indeed, while Andrea is initially ‘annoyed’ that 84

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her (queer) desires (to not choose a pronoun, to not be a role model) are not accommodated, wondering whether investments in inclusivity may simply be a capitalist subterfuge designed to extract more value for the corporation, she ultimately concludes that attending the role model training programme was ‘not necessarily a bad thing’: Andrea still views the training programme in positive terms, explaining that this is because the programme and the trainers ‘will try to … help [her] to know where [she can] fit and what counts as normal behaviour’. ‘And sometimes I say, maybe I need this in order to move on’, she concludes. Here the queer critical scholar of inclusion might say ‘how dare they say what counts as normal behaviour!’. But clearly this reading would simplistically accuse Andrea of giving into normativity rather than acknowledging the seductive appeals of inclusion. Indeed, while we might be tempted to read this moment of disorientation and failure as a productive site of resistance, Andrea’s story also exposes the risks we run if we leave unaccounted the pleasure and necessity of simply fitting in. After our interview I note in my fieldnotes that I was moved by the clarity with which Andrea posed the problem of inclusion: that no matter how unintelligible our desires may be, and no matter how violent, unjust and problematic the expectations which accompany the turn to inclusivity might be, life would (probably) be easier if we could just fit, if we could just move on. This reveals the extent to which these expectations are entangled with workers’ subjectivities, whereby in submitting to them to perform her trans-​ness in valuable ways, Andrea is ultimately provided with another form of freedom: the freedom to move on. Andrea’s remarks are reminiscent of Melissa Tyler’s (2018) comments regarding ‘the risks associated with questioning inclusion’ (p62). As Tyler (2018) notes, these risks may be not simply ‘political or tactical, but ontological’ in the sense that they threaten the well-​being of the subject. Challenging inclusion may indeed perpetuate what is likely to be an already precarious, outsider status; saying, ‘I don’t recognize the terms on which you are offering to recognize me’ is a very difficult position to be in, or to ask others to adopt, particularly when our livelihoods or even our very lives might be at stake. (2018, p63) Read in light of these comments, my encounter with Andrea should invite us to reconsider, or at least problematize, our allegiance to queer celebrations of failure. Certainly, given the narratives of success around which LGBTQ+​ inclusion is organized, failing to straighten up the slant of (some of) our desires might offer critical scholars fertile ground from which to theorize resistance to corporate attempts to extract the productive value of difference. In this context, failing to join in, to enthusiastically engage in diversity work, 85

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to become productive and to reproduce queer value for the corporation becomes a subtle act of subversion. At the same time, resistance is always polysemic, shifting and unstable. In some cases, therefore, ‘what appears to be willing compliance … may itself be a form of resistance, a saying “no” to resistance’ (Harding, Ford and Lee, 2017, p1211). This seems to be the case in Andrea’s story, where failure to know where to fit accrues considerable costs, and where, ultimately, saying no to failure could itself be read as an act of resistance to the various forms of exclusion which Andrea experiences in the corporation.

The queer value of diversity work For queer subjects, the promise of future returns has entailed having to manage or invest in their diversity as efficiently as possible and in ways that will unlock its valuable potential. This kind of self-​managerialism lies at the heart of the promise of inclusion as a form of self-​responsibilization of queer subjects ‘to make the “right” choices’ (Rumens, 2018, p13) about where to work, the kind of career they want to have, and therefore the kinds of investments in the future they should be making. Through the deferred promise of futural returns, differences are turned into resources and projects that have value and have to be managed in self-​advancing ways. While this might certainly feel good, the process of self-​management through which queerness is converted into a valuable resource ends up re-​organizing (and ultimately limiting) what it means to be a ‘diverse’ gender/​sexual subject, and, ultimately, what it means to do queer politics. LGBTQ+​employees are invited to invest in the promises of inclusion under the illusion of future returns. It is this (perpetually suspended, constantly deferred) future that keeps queer subjects hooked, so to speak, to the fantasy that they will find in inclusion a kind of acceptance, a form of belonging and recognition that has long been denied (Rottenberg, 2017). This fantasy is also, inevitably, one of material reward, often in the form of a more successful career and/​or greater productivity. But it would be a mistake to deny its strong affective dimensions, or the ways in which these promises become part of one’s own life projects and aspirations. Ultimately, the fantasy is powerful precisely because it is experienced in deeply affective ways. In shedding light on the laboured performances of difference and the queer value reproduced by diversity work, this chapter speaks to both managerial and critical readings of corporate inclusivity. On the one hand, focusing on the ways in which diversity work is affectively experienced, negotiated and engaged, I problematized managerial readings of inclusivity by showing how doing diversity work comes with expectations about how differences are supposed to be laboriously performed and put to work in ways which are valuable to the corporation. Thus, while inclusive workplace environments 86

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may indeed open up ‘new possibilities for recognition and social validation’ (David, 2015, p190), these seem to be dependent upon the reproduction of queer value. This accrues both to the corporation and to queer employees. For the former in the form of increased productivity and traction on the discourse of inclusion and the various advantages this entails. For the latter through the aspirational career trajectories of some queer subjects, who repackage their difference into a highly strategic professional resource and through the added value this labour is (supposedly) thought to engender for others, presumably closeted and inauthentic, LGBTQ+​employees. A more meaningful approach to workplace inclusivity is thus unlocked by critically interrogating the labour it requires: how this is performed and experienced by the subjects for whom inclusion is intended, and at what cost. On the other hand, I have also attempted to problematize critical readings of inclusivity by arguing that queer subjects are not merely ‘subordinate … [and] subjected to essentialist discourses’ (Benozzo et al., 2015, p302, emphasis added) but rather actively, creatively, strategically, exhaustingly and reluctantly engaging with these discourses and practices in order to become included. Foregrounding gender/​sexuality as forms of labour illuminates how managerial control in inclusive contexts operates through the performance of this affectively necessary and self-​conscious form of labour, not as a distraction from it. Here distinctions between the cultural recognition of diverse gender/​sexual subjects (inclusion) and economic matters of workplace redistribution (labour relations) are collapsed. This exposes how managerial control in inclusive contexts is at once cultural and economic, operating through the labour involved in reproducing queer value and a normative gender/​sexual subject. Diversity work thus emerges as a form of managerial control that is enshrined in workers’ subjectivities and internalized in ways which blur distinctions between ‘the controllers’ (managers) and ‘the controlled’ (employees) (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). To make this point is not, as Immanuel David (2016) points out, to ‘cast blame on those responding to market mechanisms far beyond their control’ (p401). Indeed, relating to the self as a business is an increasingly necessary form of survival in contemporary neoliberal societies. Nor does it imply that the antitheses between workers/​management or social justice/​business –​whose study and exposure lies at the centre of the critical management project –​has been seamlessly resolved. Indeed, while these promises are highly seductive, living life as if it were an enterprise is not an easy feat: performing this labour also accrues considerable costs. These costs accrue to both those who fail to perform this labour altogether –​and who get ‘stuck’ and/​or feel like a ‘failure’ –​as well as those who engage in it successfully –​who feel exhausted and/​or irritated. Moreover, as diversity work becomes increasingly mediated through the individualized labour of some queer employees, this individualizes 87

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both the value and the costs of this labour, replacing more collectivized action. Some (resourceful, entrepreneurial and energetic) queer employees who embody such neoliberal conceptions of freedom are invited to come out, become authentic and successful role models, and to take advantage of these individualized mechanisms to benefit both their professional aspirations and the inclusive corporation. Yet not everyone benefits from these newfound opportunities to be authentic and visible at work: those who fail to (successfully) engage in this form of labour also bear the brunt of this failure as individuals. Ultimately, this has important consequences beyond the corporate world. Indeed, while corporations provide the blueprint for harnessing diversity to meet financial goals, as discussed in the next chapter, this instrumental approach to difference extends into public realms as well. Moreover, while the attainment of ‘a good life’ (Berlant, 2011) of authenticity, productivity and career enhancement appear to be just around the corner, neoliberalism systematically threatens the conditions that the vast majority of people need in order to survive. Indeed, while diversity gains traction, the various economic insecurities engendered by corporations and austerity policies in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis have participated in the creation of inhospitable climates for all those who stand in the way of neoliberal processes of capital accumulation. In particular, those who do not inhabit these corporate spaces have not only not benefitted from such corporate diversity politics but have actually experienced extant celebrations of diversity and inclusion through a number of (discursive, physical, and political) closures engendered by gentrification. Doing inclusion in the context of austerity might indeed prove to be ultimately problematic for forms of difference that cannot be converted into queer value and reconciled with such corporate-​ driven understandings of differences beyond the corporate world of diversity.

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4

The Straightening Tendencies of Inclusion: The Friends of the Joiners Arms and the Normativities of Gentrification The Friends of the Joiners Arms is a community campaign established in 2014 to fight the closure of the Joiners Arms. The pub had operated for 18 years as a gay bar and a staple of east London’s queer nightlife before closing its doors in 2015. It was due to be demolished to make way for office spaces and luxury flats as part of a redevelopment project managed by property developers Regal Homes. Campaigners held their first meeting in the pub one month before the closure. While the campaign was initially formed to oppose the closure, it is now raising money to open London’s first community-​owned, community-​run queer pub (discussed in Chapter 5). In its first few years, the group established important connections and solidarities with other pubs and spaces affected by closure in London. This included the campaign organized to reopen the Black Cap in Camden, another queer pub that was forced to close its doors to make space for a redevelopment project. Campaigners refer to these as their ‘sister campaigns’, inviting us to read the closure of the Joiners Arms as part of a larger complex of interrelated struggles against the closure of community spaces in London, such as struggles to save the Latin Villages in Seven Sisters and Elephant and Castle, as well as more recent efforts against the Truman Brewery redevelopment in Tower Hamlets. At the time of research, the group had over 6,000 likes on their Facebook page. However, the vast majority of its day-​to-​day activities were run by a group of around ten people, most of whom lived in east London. Some of the campaigners met at the Joiners Arms and were friends with David, the owner, with whom they shared a passion for left-​wing politics and storytelling. Others were former patrons, but did not know the other campaigners. Others still joined the campaign having never even been to the pub. I started frequenting the Joiners Arms in 2012, the year I moved to 89

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London. I ended up going back to the pub a few times over the following years until its closure in 2015. I was invited to my first campaign meeting by friend and activist Dan Glass, who assured me I would find it ‘stimulating’. I quickly became involved as an active member of the campaign, and now sit on the Management Committee of the Friends of the Joiners Arms Community Benefit Society. I attended my first meeting in May 2017 in the basement of the London Action Resource Center (LARC), an anarchist self-​managed space in Whitechapel, just over the river from Canary Wharf. This specific part of Whitechapel has thus far remained outside of the purview of redevelopment projects happening elsewhere in Tower Hamlets. The buildings here –​a mixture of residential homes, family-​run cafes and curry houses –​stand in stark contrast not only to the steel towers of Canary Wharf but also the more austere brick and glass design of the new redevelopment projects in Shoreditch. The room in the anarchist centre was small, with two couches, a few chairs, a kitchenette and a piano. Its walls are covered in graffiti and posters bearing anti-​capitalist slogans. There, six people, members of the campaign, made tea, rolled cigarettes, cracked open cans of beer and tore away at the snacks on the kitchenette counter. After the introductions and some small talk, the meeting began. At the time, I was involved in a number of other queer activist groups in London and was familiar with the campaign. For example, I knew that the campaigners had been holding meetings and protest vigils outside the pub on weekends, collecting signatures for an open letter calling on the council to halt the redevelopment and reopen the venue, as well as going to another pub down the road to share stories of the Joiners Arms’ heyday. I also knew that, up until that point, the council had not taken much interest in the campaign nor the closure, and that the campaigners’ encounter with the property developers had been limited to two (off-​the-​record) meetings in which the developers had mostly attempted to persuade the campaigners to get onboard with the redevelopment. Apart from that, nothing much happened for the two years spanning the closure of the pub in January 2015 and that warm evening in May. But that afternoon, I learnt, something had happened. I learnt from Amy, who started the meeting by providing an update, that the council had recently contacted the campaign to announce that it was going to establish a planning obligation clause which would ensure that a ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’ would be included in the redevelopment as a condition for the project’s approval. This was explicitly framed as a way to mitigate against the impact of the redevelopment on the LGBTQ+​community. The agreement would be negotiated with the property developers. While campaigners would be consulted, the council could not assure their demands would be accommodated. A draft of the agreement would be sent to the campaigners in the coming weeks. The agreement came after a long year of public discussions about the closure of LGBTQ+​spaces and its effect on London’s aspirations as a global 90

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city that values diversity and inclusion. The agreement became part and parcel of Sadiq Khan’s plans to protect LGBTQ+​venues from closure in the city. It was largely celebrated by the council and framed as a creative way of addressing the effects of redevelopment on the city’s LGBTQ+​venues and ensuring planning and redevelopment can be made more ‘inclusive’. Meanwhile in the media, the agreement was celebrated as the first time in UK history that the ‘the sexuality of people using a space’ (Abraham, 2017) was used as a planning condition that had to be met in order for a redevelopment project to be granted approval. Despite the promise of reinclusion, the campaigners nevertheless remained sceptical and opposed to the redevelopment, arguing that the forms of queerness the agreement catered for marked a departure from the ‘joyful sin’ which once characterized the Joiners Arms. For the next five years, campaigners would struggle to articulate this form of queerness amid the celebratory rhetoric of LGBTQ+​inclusion, revealing the class politics of inclusion as well as some of the limits of doing inclusion within a broader context of gentrification. Ultimately, while narrated as a sign of institutional and corporate LGBTQ-​friendliness, an ethnographic exploration of the organization of this promise of inclusion –​its intentionality, orientation, the normativities it reproduced and the kinds of futures and spaces it ultimately materialized and for whom –​reveals a far more complex story.

A sufficiently gay replacement venue In planning terms, the agreement fell under what is commonly referred to as a section 106, a planning obligation clause which restricts or determines the redevelopment or use of a land in a specified way, acting as ‘a mechanism [for making] a development proposal acceptable in planning terms, that would not otherwise be acceptable’ (Town and Country Planning Act, 1990). A draft of the agreement detailed the criteria and process through which a replacement LGBTQ+​venue would be established, stating that ‘a lease granted to an Interested Party shall include a covenant requiring the Public House to be operated as a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender-​ focused venue for the duration of the Lease’. The promise of reproviding a replacement LGBTQ+​venue was here organized around two key claims. The first was that which specifically defined the interested party as an LGBTQ+​operator, that is, ‘any organization which proposes operating a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender-​focused venue’. The way this was going to be achieved was by offering LGBTQ+​operators a right of first refusal: a contractual right to claim the lease for the venue before any other (non-​LGBTQ+​) third party sought to take up the unit. The second is that which defined an LGBTQ-​focused venue as ‘a venue which adopts the LGBT+​Venues Charter published by the Greater London Authority’. 91

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The LGBT+​Venues Charter –​hereafter referred to as ‘the Charter’ –​is a toolkit designed by the GLA in response to the decline in LGBTQ+​ spaces in the capital. The Charter outlines a number of criteria for what ‘counts’ as an LGBTQ+​venue. First, the Charter tells us that an LGBTQ+​ venue is a venue that has a visible rainbow flag displayed on the outside of its premises. Cast as ‘a universal symbol of the LGBTQ+​community’, the rainbow flag stands to indicate the venue’s LGBTQ+​character or its ‘orientation’ towards LGBTQ+​people. Second, the venue should be explicitly ‘marketed’ as an LGBTQ+​venue and ‘cater’ to the LGBTQ+​ community. Finally, an LGBTQ+​venue must abide by existing equality legislation, welcoming anyone regardless of background or identity, religion, race/​ethnicity, gender identity or expression, disability, age or sexual orientation. A number of organizations were consulted in drafting the Charter, including Stonewall and the Raze Collective. The Charter was endorsed by the Night Tsar, Amy Lamé, who made it a central part of her efforts to curtail the closure of LGBTQ+​spaces in the city. Since its establishment, a number of venues have signed up, including venues managed by two of London’s biggest pub companies, Greene King and Stonegate. However, signing up to the Charter is entirely voluntary. The Charter embodies some of the key tenets of LGBTQ+​political rights discourse in the UK and the global North more broadly. This is a political discourse which places great emphasis on rainbow visibility, market recognition and liberal values of tolerance, acceptance and equality. From a queer perspective, the emphasis on visibility, while empowering for some, might also introduce gender/​sexuality to other, perhaps more subtle, domains of power.1 Indeed, queer scholars and activists have been arguing in favour of an appreciation of the limits, the complexity and the trappings of the politics of visibility (Alabanza, 2017; Faye, 2018; Gossett, Stanley and Burton, 2017; Rose, 2016; Spade, 2011; van der Drift, Raha and Hunter, 2017). While visibility may offer queer people opportunities for empowerment and protection, for others these may be double-​edged swords’ (Rose, 2016; Faye, 2018), ‘half-​opened doors’ (David, 2015), ‘trap doors’ (Gossett, Stanley and Burton, 2017; Spade, 2011): remarkably fraught affairs, riddled with the (paradoxical, perhaps) safety offered by invisibility. Moreover, visibility must also be considered critically in relation to the making of signs of LGBT-​ friendliness (for example, the rainbow flag) into commodities for selling goods on the marketplace, as in customary of corporations, from Burger King to Absolut Vodka, during Pride month celebrations. The Charter echoes some of these commercialized versions of rainbow politics by framing and promoting LGBTQ+​venues with the specific understanding that these are not simply good for the community, but are, perhaps above all, businesses that are good for the economy. 92

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The Friends of the Joiners Arms were not part of the consultations establishing the criteria for defining what ‘counts’ as an LGBTQ+​venue, leading one of the campaigners to wonder ‘if [the agreement] was solely for the purpose of ensuring LGBTQ-​ness and protecting the Joiners Arms, how did they not consult us?’2 Moreover, given the nature of the pub the agreement was supposedly intended to protect –​a mostly working-​class pub in a working-​class area of London with a haggard and barely visible rainbow flag –​it is unsurprising that the campaigners were taken aback by the terms and conditions of this promise. The irony is thus that, while framed as an effort to save the Joiners Arms, I doubt whether the pub itself would have ever made the cut in such an administering of LGBTQ-​ness. Indeed, as one campaigner wrote in an email sent to the group, while the agreement promised to guarantee an LGBTQ+​future for the venue, ‘the Joiners Arms had not such guarantees despite having operated as such for nearly 20 years’.3 As explained by an informant who was consulted for its design, the Charter was never intended for activists but for property developers and pub operators who, after purchasing land or property which included an LGBTQ+​venue, would like to maintain the venue’s use as LGBTQ-​ focused. I suggest that the story of the Joiners Arms ultimately proves this to be the case, actually lubricating processes of gentrification rather than curtailing the closure of queer spaces. Amidst the arguable arbitrariness of some of these designations for what counts as an LGBTQ+​venue, it was even rumoured that an inspector from City Hall would come in to check the venue was ‘sufficiently gay’. The remark was apparently made by a lower-​level GLA employee who was questioned by a reporter about how the selection process would actually be conducted. It was subsequently retracted. Yet, the moniker ‘sufficient gayness’ lingered in the field and was often used by the campaigners to mock the agreements’ definition of an LGBTQ+​venue. The notion of ‘sufficient gayness’ echoes inclusive corporations’ understandings of diversity as something that can and should be visible so long as it is contained. Indeed, bestowing the promise of inclusion in terms of ‘sufficient gayness’ not only rendered the pub’s queerness’ unintelligible. But it also worked to side-​line the obviously classed dimensions of the pub, which provided a space and time for those queer subjects who ‘live[d]‌outside the logic of capital accumulation’ (Halberstam, 2005, p10). Ultimately, the agreement and the Charter more broadly worked to make ‘gayness’ into a legitimate object and target of (diversity) management: something that could be measured, legislated, and maintained through the use of rainbow flags and marketing strategies. I suggest that this ultimately resulted in its de-​radicalization, working to effectively fold the Joiners Arms into the very processes of commercialization the pub had always stood against. 93

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Various understandings of diversity were mobilized in the field to make the case for the (re)provision of an LGBTQ+​venue. Firstly, diversity was constructed as something to be celebrated and as something that added value to the redevelopment project and to the wider area. In a press release issued to The Guardian after the agreement was made public (Neate, 2017a), the property developers claimed that they were ‘committed’ to keeping the space within the redevelopment as an LGBTQ+​venue and that they were excited to deliver a development that has ‘a place for everyone’. The developers included the replacement LGBTQ+​venue in their marketing material (now removed), and often stated that they supported providing an LGBTQ+​venue because this would add value to the redevelopment.4 While framing the replacement LGBTQ+​venue as something that added value to the new development is certainly a way of making developers materially invested in the venue’s future, this might be problematic for it seems that ‘as in most marketing strategies, money, not liberation, is the bottom line’ (Hennessy, 2000, p34). The promise to reprovide an LGBTQ+​venue was also used by the council to sell itself as inclusive and diverse. The mayor of Tower Hamlets at the time, John Biggs, released a statement of support of the agreement, saying that ‘Tower Hamlets Council is committed to celebrating our great diversity, which includes serving the needs of our LGBTQ+​community’ (Eloise, 2017). Reminiscent of corporate understandings of diversity as an asset, here diversity is de-​linked from histories of discrimination and struggle and rendered instead into something to be celebrated (also see Ahmed and Swan, 2006). Mobilizing the language and the rhetoric of this happy version of diversity, the agreement appealed to positive feelings and worked to give the redevelopment project a harmless and generous appeal. This sells a particular version of difference according to market-​driven understandings. While this depiction surely feels good, it can also function to conceal inequalities from view, operating as a ‘strategy of containment’ (Swan, 2010, p93) in which the happiness of diversity can be used to (non-​)performatively silence opposition (see Ahmed, 2012). Finally, in all these discussions, diversity was understood according to fixed notions of identity. For example, the agreement was often discussed in the media with reference to ‘the sexual orientation of a venue’s customers’ (Neate, 2017a). Diversity is here understood according to the modern idea that people have a sexual orientation, which, as queer scholars have argued, works to conceal the ways in which sexuality is produced through discourse and ultimately reproduces the idea of ‘the normal’ (Ahmed, 2006b; Foucault, 1978). I suggest that the strong identitarian impulses underpinning the agreement and the Charter more broadly are particularly problematic in the context of the Joiners Arms. The Joiners Arms was mostly a gay pub, but it was 94

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also understood by many as a queer space. While through the agreement the pub emerged as an LGBTQ+​venue, the pub never really defined its clientele along identitarian lines. As one of the pub’s patrons, who then became an active member of the campaign, explains: ‘David never called it an LGBTQ+​pub, no one ever called it an LGBTQ+​pub –​it was just a pub for everyone’.5 The pub’s slogan –​‘gay or straight but never narrow minded’ also foregrounds this non-​identitarian impulse. Now, without limiting the (theoretical and political) potential of queer by nostalgically and unproblematically attributing it to a fixed time or place, the pub nevertheless did seem to embody forms of queerness which, as Halberstam (2005) suggests, have less to do with non-​heterosexuality itself than with ways of existing and living ‘(deliberately, accidentally, or out of necessity) during the hours when others sleep and in the spaces (physical, metaphysical, and economic) that others have abandoned’ (p9). Halberstam’s (2005) work in particular enables us to reconcile sexuality to its classed dimensions by understanding ‘queerness’ as a way of inhabiting time and space beyond normative spatio-​temporal logics ‘that have been established for the purposes of protecting the rich from everyone else’ (p. 10). From this perspective, hetero-​and homo-​normativity are upheld by middle-​class logics and forms of capital accumulation (such as gentrification) which privilege certain (re)productive, ‘safe’ and ‘privatized’ understandings at the expense of working-​class and/​or queer uses of space and time. Queerness understood in this way entails inhabiting space and time in ways that fundamentally challenge the spatio-​temporal logics of capital accumulation that define the ‘rhythms’ of the city. While the development was sold as something which would provide a place for ‘everyone’, the ‘everyone’ implied by the property developers was drastically different from that denoted by the campaigner quoted previously. While in both cases the pub is imagined as a space ‘for everyone’, two very different understandings of community and space underpin these mobilizations: in the former, a space that simply tolerates gender/​sexual Others while reifying class hierarchies and inequalities and thus delivering a space in which actual diversity is virtually impossible, in the latter, a space which values and promotes queerness through interclass contact and by catering to those who inhabit space and time outside of the normative logics of capital accumulation. The agreement ultimately mobilized diversity as something not simply compatible with, but that actually legitimated and justified the process of redevelopment. In an article published in the Local Government Chronicle (2017), Gareth Gwynne, the planning officer, explains that the council ‘does not normally concern itself with the character of a pub or who uses it’. In this sense, as he continues, the agreement presented the council with ‘an interesting link between conventional planning considerations and 95

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the council’s equalities duty’. The agreement is here posited as enacting a win–​win situation in which both the interests of the property developers and those of the LGBTQ+​community could be accommodated within a common framework. In so doing the agreement served to reconcile the council’s (legally enforced) equalities duty with the process of gentrification by making the redevelopment project acceptable and (thus) approvable by including LGBTQ+​subjects within its folds. This worked to ultimately de-​ politicize extant conversations about the deleterious effects of gentrification on the social fabric of London’s gender/​sexual communities and subcultural life by aligning the interests of gentrifiers with those of people trying to fight for more LGBTQ+​spaces in the city. Indeed, while the agreement certainly represented a radical departure from heterosexist planning operations and, in particular, the infamous days of section 28, which stipulated, from 1988 until its repeal in 2003, that local government abstain from ‘intentionally promoting homosexuality’ (Doan and Higgins, 2011), making diversity palatable and compatible with the process of redevelopment in this way may ultimately prove to be problematic for the inclusion of forms of difference that are incompatible with processes of capital accumulation. While, like the Charter, the agreement could surely be read as a commendable effort to ensure that LGBTQ+​venues are not simply closed as a result of gentrification and could be potentially used as a tangible tool by LGBTQ+​activists to influence planning, the production of knowledge about what ‘counts’ as an LGBTQ+​venue ultimately helped to make some worlds (and not others) visible, effectively curtailing the campaigners’ own understandings of queerness.

Wholehearted massive queerness In the weeks following the establishment of the agreement, the campaigners held a number of meetings. These were held in pubs, the campaigners’ living rooms and the anarchist space in Whitechapel. Over pints and crisps, the campaigners drew from pro bono legal advice and from their own reading of planning legislation and the agreement to discuss the terms of inclusion and to draft a formal response to the council. Indeed, the redevelopment application would be discussed in the following September, and the campaigners had to decide whether to oppose the application –​and risk losing any vestige of an LGBTQ+​venue altogether as the area might not be redeveloped while the property developers would still be its legal owners –​or support the application and thus accept the proposed terms of inclusion. What emerged from the meetings was that, despite the promise of inclusion, the campaigners were going to remain opposed to the redevelopment. Campaigners might remember the period spanning May 2017 to September 2017 as the most eventful since the campaign’s establishment. 96

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Meetings were held more than once a week, at times on consecutive evenings depending on the insistence of the tasks at hand and lasted various hours. A foreboding sense of imminent disaster interchanged with a hopeful optimism seeped into the rooms in which we met as we ploughed our way through heaps of documentation, architectural floor plans and planning legislation. I attended most of the meetings in which the agreement was discussed, engaging both as a campaigner –​and thus performing my portion of labour –​and a researcher, taking detailed fieldnotes of the proceedings. The notes often served as minutes for the meetings, and helped campaigners write an objection letter which contained the main points of opposition. The campaigners’ key points of opposition revolved around a number of issues pertaining to the agreement’s limited understanding of what counts as an LGBTQ+​venue. Firstly, the campaigners challenged the supposedly inclusive nature of the redevelopment by questioning the kinds of diverse gender/​sexual subjects that would be included within its folds. During one of the first meetings organized in response to the agreement, held in the anarchist space in early August, campaigners claimed that ‘the terms are crap’6 and challenged the agreement’s definition of an LGBTQ+​venue by saying that ‘the new venue runs the risk of just becoming a venue with LGBTQ+​programming, it runs the risk of becoming just another white gay pub, it doesn’t serve the LGBTQI community, you could deny a community group like this for a fucking capitalist pig like Anthony Michaels’.7 Indeed, although the argument which underpinned the agreement was that the redevelopment would now serve the interests of the LGBTQ+​community, the campaigners challenged this assumption by establishing a distinction between two ways of operating the space, as a community or as a ‘fucking capitalist pig like Anthony Michaels’. In so doing, the campaigners suggested that the agreement would privilege commercially-​orientated as opposed to community-​orientated venues, given that no space was actually devoted in the agreement to discussing the community function played by LGBTQ+​ venues beyond their existence as spaces of consumption. Moreover, campaigners also queried the process through which the LGBTQ+​operator would be chosen. Indeed, the agreement posited the GLA as a ‘secondary party’ which would be welcome to ‘provide comments on the Selection Criteria of the Owner [Regal Homes], without any specification as to who within the GLA this applies to and what obligations they are under to consult with or consider the interests of the LGBTQI community’.8 The agreement thus left ample room to disregard ‘specific and important feedback on their selection criteria or decisions as to who should be granted the lease’. In particular, there were fears that ‘the future usage of the venue will [not] serve all sections of the community to anywhere near the extent to which the Joiners Arms did’. These fears were compounded by the fact that in the (legally required) equalities assessment which accompanies 97

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all planning applications, planning offers included ‘nothing specific about the trans community’,9 who are both woefully underserved and often marginalized by many so-​called LGBTQ+​venues (also see Campkin and Marshall, 2017). Relatedly, there were also concerns that the agreement did not account for the open market rent which the property developers would charge to use the space. Campaigners argued that this did ‘not take account of the nature of the venue and the community benefit it will bring’ and, ultimately, that ‘under existing proposals it would be run as a prohibitively expensive daytime pub that would ultimately have to cater to non-​LGBTQI markets to survive, thus undermining the impetus to serve the LGBTQI community’. In both these cases, it seems that enshrining the property developers as the legal owners of the venue and offering a form of recognition which failed to address pressing redistributive issues emerging from the process of privatization, the agreement would, yes, deliver an LGBTQ+​venue, but that this would probably exclude the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+​ community and, ultimately, the working-​class and queer subjects which once populated the Joiners Arms. From this perspective, the agreement could thus be read as embodying the politics of homonormativity in that it reinscribed and reproduced the (social, economic, political, racial, classed and gendered) privileges that some LGBTQ+​subjects enjoy at the expense of more marginalized members of the community. In constructing their opposition, the campaigners highlighted the incongruity between the kind of LGBTQ+​ venue promised by the agreement and the venue which it was supposedly intended to replace or protect. This incongruity was also manifest at an aesthetic level. As part of the agreement, the property developers produced a computer-​generated image of what the future LGBTQ+​venue would look like after regeneration. The image depicted a clean and well-​lit space with large floor-​to-​ceiling windows and an impressively noticeable rainbow flag hoisted above its entrance. I watched as the campaigners opened the image on their laptops during a meeting, visibly cringing at its sight. ‘We don’t want a fucking gastro-​pub’,10 responded Amy after seeing the image. ‘Rainbow flags, that’s a secondary thing, that’s not going to make the space’, she continued. Indeed, I too noted in my fieldnotes the contrast between the image provided by the property developers and the Joiners Arms, whose ‘haggard rainbow flag’ (Andersson, 2009, p65) and ‘almost invisible entrance’ (Andersson, 2009, p65) is precisely what distinguished the pub from both Shoreditch’s and Soho’s more sanitized and commercialized bar scenes. Ultimately, the campaigners’ opposition challenged the very premising of inclusion as ‘sufficient gayness’. ‘We don’t want “sufficient gayness” –​we want wholehearted massive queerness’, Dan tells me at one of the meetings, in his living room, the night before the Development Planning Committee 98

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meeting in which the plans that would see the Joiners Arms demolished and replaced by a new LGBTQ+​venue are due to be discussed. The Joiners Arms is the first item on the agenda. The second is the refurbishment of a local swimming pool. After a late-​night strategizing and making protest banners in his living room, Dan pulls out a pen and a cardboard sign and writes: ‘Is the swimming pool sufficiently gay?’ He wonders whether the councillors will ‘get it’. We might wonder what exactly Dan means by ‘wholehearted queerness’. Yet, queerness may not only be something that resists definition, but also something that acquires its meaning in opposition to the normative. Pitting ‘queerness’ against ‘sufficient gayness’, and, ironically, against a ‘sufficiently gay swimming pool’, Dan criticizes both the very idea of ‘sufficient gayness’, that is, the notion that ‘gayness’ is something that can be established through the use of charters, and the rendering of ‘queerness’ into something static and tangible. Here Dan understands ‘queerness’ as something that cannot be legislated or measured in the way that ‘sufficient gayness’ can, something that cannot be brought under the purview of state promotion in the same way that an LGBTQ+​venue can, something that cannot be rendered intelligible and thus include-​able according to the terms around which inclusion in the redevelopment was organized. This raises serious questions about the Charter’s ability to actually reconcile socio-​economic injustices and understandings of queerness which foreground its economic dimensions within the framework of recognition.

Early to bed, early to rise One of the most serious points of opposition articulated by the campaigners was the agreement’s failure to (re)provision a late licence for the replacement venue. Indeed, while the Joiners Arms had operated for 18 years as a late licence venue, the promised LGBTQ+​venue had no such guarantees. As highlighted by Dan at one of the meetings in which the issue of the late licence was most vehemently discussed, the presence of a late licence ‘provided so much of the benefit to the community’.11 Indeed, the campaigners argued that the pub had catered for a wide range of sexual subjects and workers –​those involved in alternative economic temporal practices beyond a 9–​5, ‘early to bed, early to rise’ (Halberstam, 2005, p5) logic (such as bartenders and sex workers, for example) –​precisely because it would stay open late. As Amy explains to a reporter from The Guardian ahead of the Development Planning Committee meeting in which the application was due to be discussed, ‘with a recommendation from the officers that [the venue] closes early 7 days a week, we cannot possible hope to have a space resembling or replacing the important role the Joiners Arms played in our community’.12 The campaigners thus understood the late licence was 99

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an integral component of the pub’s queerness, that is, its ability to cater to those queer and working-​class ways of being that deviate from middle-​class spatio-​temporal norms (Halberstam, 2005). The reprovisioning of a late licence was not only absent from the agreement, but there also seemed to be an active resistance towards its inclusion in any revised arrangement. The resistance seemed to stem from the increasingly gentrified character of the area itself, as the luxury flats that would now occupy the space above it would require a limitation on the sound levels and operating hours. I attended a roundtable discussion, facilitated by the council, with the property developers and the campaigners. The meeting was held in the Tower Hamlets town hall on a late Monday evening in September and would be an opportunity for the developers to respond to the campaigners’ concerns. Indeed, much to the dismay of the developers, their application was deferred at the first Development Planning Committee by two councillors who had not been convinced that the campaigners’ concerns had been given adequate attention. The meeting began with an impassionate speech by Paul Eden, CEO of Regal Homes, explaining to the campaigners that they ‘are committed to diversity and to the LGBTQ+​community’.13 Yet, during the meeting, it emerged that while the property developers were willing to accommodate some of the campaigners’ considerations –​such as, for example, offering a year’s free rent for the future venue and contributing £130,000 towards fit-​out costs in order to encourage bids from community-​orientated LGBTQ+​operators –​the issue of the late licence was non-​negotiable. During the meeting Paul Eden explained that he did not ‘want a pub till 4 in the morning’ because this was going to ‘disturb the residents’ of the new development. He justified such a stance by appealing to the supposed benefits of the redevelopment, claiming: ‘If you think about it, over the past few years there’s been nothing opposite there but a derelict car wash and derelict factories, and now you’ve got a built-​up community, there’ll be people living in flats, lights in the flats, you know, the whole thing’s changing, so it is a slightly different feel to what you’ve been used to, in a better way from a security aspect.’14 Here the built-​up community enabled by the redevelopment is petitioned as more desirable than the dereliction which had previously afflicted the area. Yet, paradoxically, it is this very built-​up community that is cited as a reason for failing to (re)provide a late licence. Conflicting understandings of safety were mobilized by the property developers and the campaigners. On the one hand, the property developers deemed the changing character of the area as providing more safety than the ‘dereliction’ and abandonment which previously characterized Hackney Road. On the other, this 100

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dereliction, representative of the area’s marginality vis-​à-​vis processes of capital accumulation, provided a safe space for those queer subjects who were unable and/​or unwilling to live according to middle-​class spatio-​temporal logics (Halberstam, 2005). It is not uncommon for neoliberal gentrification and privatization efforts that attempt to ‘face-​lift’ areas to be framed in terms of public safety (Delany, 1999; Halberstam, 2005; Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2014). The paradox here is that ‘the public’ to which this definition of safety applies is constructed in relation to white and middle-​class ways of inhabiting space and time. These normative logics of spatio-​temporality work to privilege the imagined new inhabitants of the area at the expense of its original queer and working-​class inhabitants. In a de-​brief meeting after the roundtable discussion, held at the Marquis of Landsdowne,15 Amy, too, links the lack of the reprovision of a late licence to the changing character of the area by saying: ‘They don’t like the late licence [because] they want us to entertain people in the office, they want some swanky little bar’.16 Her comments are here reminiscent of Bell and Binnie’s (2004) observations of the ways in which changing neoliberal regimes of urban governance produce LGBTQ+​spaces as ‘spectacles for straight observers’ (p1816), where difference is included but only on the basis that it does not disrupt the normal rhythms of work and play in the city (Stockton, 2011). Yet while Bell and Binnie understand straight as synonymous with heterosexual, Amy’s ‘straight observers’ are the ‘people in the office’. In so doing, she detaches straightness from heterosexuality and instead reads it as a specifically middle-​class and homonormative way of inhabiting a space and a time, in the office, that abides to and reproduces capitalist logics. Thus, in contrast to work on urban planning and LGBTQ+​populations, what emerges here is that gentrification need not entail the ‘de-​gaying’ of space (Doan and Higgins, 2011; Ruting, 2008). Rather, LGBTQ-​ness can be preserved through –​and even reconciled with –​the process of redevelopment. Yet, gentrification imposes severe limits on the kinds of diversity that can be(come) included, casting doubt on whether the council’s stated equalities duty can indeed be meaningfully reconciled with business interests. Rendering the redevelopment approvable by including LGBTQ+​subjects within its folds, the agreement ultimately rendered (un)intelligible those queer and working-​ class ways of being which challenge the spatio-​temporal logics of capitalist normativity, excluding the very subjects it was supposedly intended to protect.

A Trojan Horse draped in a rainbow flag Trojan Horse (noun) 1. (In Greek mythology) the huge wooden hollow figure of a horse left outside Troy by the Greeks when they feigned retreat 101

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and dragged inside by the Trojans. The men concealed inside it opened the city to the final Greek assault (Collins, n/​d). 2. a trap intended to undermine an enemy 3. (In computing) a bug inserted into a program or system designed to be activated after a certain time or a certain number of operations ‘It’s a Trojan Horse draped in a rainbow flag’.17 This is how campaigners ultimately settled to understand the promise of inclusion in the field. The moniker emerged after a long meeting, held in Amy’s living room. During this meeting campaigners reviewed independent advice received from the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA), a consumer organization which promotes pubs across the UK as ‘social centres and part of the UKs cultural heritage’.18 What this revealed was that agreements similar to the one drafted to ‘save’ the Joiners Arms were often used by property developers to render redevelopment projects acceptable in planning terms, by securing approval from the council, but which often deliver unusable spaces: spaces which, as Peter put it, ‘could never be realistically used as pubs’.19 For example, in one specific case cited by the organization, former operators were offered a ‘replacement venue’, only to find out this had no storage space, effectively rendering it ‘unviable’ as a pub. In this case, labelling the agreement a ‘Trojan Horse draped in a rainbow flag’ exposed that ‘inclusion’ and ‘LGBT-​friendliness’ were, too, being used as a tactic by the developers to get their application approved, but which would deliver a space which did not, and could not, resemble the ‘queerness’ remembered, envisioned and intentioned by the campaigners. Conceptualizing the promise of inclusion as a ‘Trojan Horse draped in a rainbow flag’ offers a useful entry point from which to reflect on the kinds of futures and spaces ‘LGBTQ-​friendliness’ is ‘opening up’ and for whom. In particular, this conceptualization is reminiscent of Sara Ahmed’s (2012) observations on the non-​performativity of diversity or, indeed, how diversity is often done in ways that ‘do not bring into effect that which they name’ (Ahmed, 2012, p119). Ahmed’s (2012) investigation indeed alerts us to some of the dangers of diversity (and inclusion) discourses, whereby commitments to these can be used to block action, to conceal ‘exclusion’ and to silence resistance. The metaphor of ‘The Trojan Horse draped in a rainbow flag’ exposes the ways in which a commitment to ‘LGBTQ-​friendliness’, embodied here by the spectre of the ‘rainbow flag’, while appearing as a ‘benevolent’, ‘benign’ and ‘friendly’ effort to ‘protect’ an LGBTQ+​venue from closure, may enshrine remarkably ‘unfriendly’ dynamics. Indeed, unfolding in tandem with processes of gentrification, it appears that the promise of inclusion ultimately resulted in the closure and demolition of a previously ‘queer’ space. Here a commitment to inclusion is not simply used to silence resistance but also to render gender/​sexuality palatable, ‘safe’, to empty 102

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gender/​sexuality and space of its ‘queerness’ and, ultimately, to act as a way through which the imperatives of business can be accomplished. Thus, while Rhodes (2017) claims that ‘the business case’ for diversity and inclusion can become a ‘Trojan Horse’ by acting as ‘a means through which justice can be achieved’ (p542; also see Jones and Stablein, 2006), the opposite seems to hold true in this case: that social justice was used as a means through which business interests were be realized. Dhawan, Castro Varela and Hochschule (2016) are thus partly right in pointing out that doing diversity ‘within the historical and economic landscape of neoliberal pluralism and global capitalism … consumes difference as an alibi so that it does not make a difference’ (p6). At the same time, we might extend this by speculating on the difference that this ‘Trojan Horse’ might have made: whether the application would have nevertheless been approved without it (no difference), or whether, as previously explored, its emergence was precisely how the council succeeded in ‘reconciling’ its (legally required) commitments to ‘diversity and equality’ with the redevelopment, and the redevelopers in making a previously ‘unacceptable’ application approvable. The experience of fieldwork seems to suggest that the latter is the case, and that doing inclusion in tandem with processes of capital accumulation may not simply fall short of its stated goals and outcomes but may actually exacerbate exclusion by participating in the closure of queer spaces and the erasure (or ‘straightening’, as explored in the next section) of the queer forms of life which these enabled. This alerts us to some of the limits of inclusion. In particular, the experience of fieldwork revealed that while inclusion may surely be ‘compelling’ (Tyler, 2018, p49), it may also involve a merely ‘instrumental recognition of difference on organizational terms’ (Tyler, 2018, p55). I would argue that this is particularly evident if inclusion is situated in relation to neoliberal processes of capital accumulation and the ‘unfriendly’ dynamics engendered by privatization (not ‘our space’20) and gentrification. Thus, while some critical scholars of inclusion are devoting attention to ‘making inclusion work’ (Katila, Meriläinen and Tienari, 2010) and/​or expanding the ‘inclusionary potential’ (Dobusch, 2017) of diversity, I suggest that a more convincing approach to inclusion should seek to reconcile a critique of inclusion with anti-​capitalist projects: that is, commitments to inclusion cannot simply be about recognizing and incorporating diverse sexual identities but need to consider –​and problematize –​the intricate imbrication of queerness in the institutions of capitalist modernity.

Inclusion as a straightening device I am sitting in the Glory, an LGBTQ+​pub in Hackney, with Dan, waiting for a reporter from the BBC to interview him for a segment on the agreement. 103

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Dan recognizes one of the bartenders as a former patron and bartender of the Joiners. He leans over to talk to her; she recognizes him and they start talking, reminiscing, about the pub. ‘What did you like about the Joiners?’ asks Dan. ‘I don’t know’, she responds. ‘It was wonky … and there’s nowhere wonky left to go’. Thinking about ‘wonkiness’ and its relationship to ‘straightness’ offers a way in which to think about some of the limits of doing inclusion in the context of gentrification. In particular, thinking about promises of LGBTQ+​ inclusion as ‘straightening devices’ (Ahmed, 2006a, 2006b) enables us to think about the specific ways in which gender/​sexuality becomes implicated in neoliberal processes of capital accumulation and expand the critical potential of queer theory by thinking about the costs of making gender/​sexual diversity knowable, manageable and include-​able according to the normative regimes. In Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed (2006b) thinks of queerness as a form of wonkiness that is rendered unintelligible by the straightness of normativity. Normativity is herein conceptualized in terms of straight lines or, rather, in ‘terms of the requirement to follow a straight line, whereby straightness gets attached to other values including decent, conventional, direct and honest’ (2006b, p70). Thinking of straightness in these terms detaches gender/​ sexuality from identity. Indeed, straightness here is not synonymous with heterosexuality, but rather an effect of things lining up with the straight line. Wonkiness, on the other hand, is seen as an effect of things coming ‘out of line’ with the ‘straight line’: one is ‘wonky’ when one is ‘oblique’ (Ahmed, 2006a, p565) and/​or ‘off-​line’ (Ahmed, 2006a, p565). Thinking of ‘queerness’ as a form of ‘wonkiness’ enables us to think through the specific ways in which inclusion takes place by reading queer desire in such a way that ‘bring[s]‌such desire back into line’ (Ahmed, 2006b, p72). Indeed, crucial to this understanding is that the ‘straight line’ is not merely given. Alignment in fact depends on what Ahmed calls ‘straightening devices’, which keep things in line by rereading the slant of queer desire, by lining up and by correcting, queer or wonky moments. In Ahmed’s words (2006b) straightening devices are forms of reading that ‘follow the straight line or even “can only see straight”, given how they conflate this line with what is right, good, or normal. The straight reading, in other words, “corrects” the slantwise direction of queer desire’ (p72). In a remarkably powerful ethnographic moment, the interaction documented between Dan and the bartender exposes the costs of doing inclusion according to straight norms. Indeed, the bartender remembers the Joiners Arms as wonky: a space that did and does not fit into the (rather straight) acronym LGBTQ+, an unpredictable, oblique space of infinite possibilities beyond the neat confines of identity politics. We could thus read the promise of inclusion as a straightening device in as much as it worked to ‘correct’ the wonkiness/​ queerness of the Joiners Arms. Here previously queer ways of extending and 104

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inhabiting space and time are not only made intelligible and manageable from within the logic of (diversity) management, given a form and a name as a ‘sufficiently gay venue’. But also, these were brought back into line with the normative logics of gentrification and capital accumulation. The wonkiness of the Joiners Arms encapsulated in the ethnographic vignette above is thus straightened up to fit a celebratory and market-​driven narrative of diversity and LGBTQ-​ness. As Ahmed (2006b) would argue, ‘[t]o read queer desire in these terms is to bring what is “slantwise” back into line’ (p79). Ultimately, it is only by becoming straight and thus foregoing its wonkiness that the Joiners Arms can be(come) included in the redevelopment. Such a reading exposes how inclusion is thus not simply exclusionary by omission. Rather, it is through inclusion that the queer potential of ‘wonkiness’ is disciplined and straightened up in pursuit of profit. Here we see the importance of considering the politics of LGBTQ+​ inclusion in relation to a broader critique of political economy and in the context of gentrification. On the one hand, gentrification was one of the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the Joiners Arms as a target for the promise of inclusion. As Bell and Binnie (2004) note, queer spaces have ‘historically grown “organically” … located in parts of the city that were seen as beyond the control and active policy-​making reach of the state … policed and subject to planning controls … in a negative sense’ (p1815). Through inclusion, these spaces are rendered intelligible, becoming targets of active and positive state promotion and protection. Yet, gentrification also imposes severe limits on the kind of diversity that can be(come) included and intelligible. Indeed, inclusion according to market-​ driven understandings of diversity and reconciling this with the business logics driving redevelopment ultimately limited its queerness. Indeed, as the example of the late licence demonstrates, queerness is rendered unintelligible in terms of the normative regimes imposed by the redevelopment, as an extension of gentrification and thus of the logics of neoliberal capital. This emptied the area of queer ways of being which, as others have shown, are deemed too unsafe and disruptive to be reconciled with the resurgent forms of LGBTQ-​friendly middle-​class forms of consumption engendered by gentrification (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004; Rushbrook, 2002; Ward, 2008a). Thus, while Doan and Higgins (2011) suggest that one way of countering the demise of queer space might be for planners to more readily include and ‘recognize the existence of [the LGBTQ+​community]’ (p21), I suggest that this might not be enough to counter the reproduction of classed inequalities and exclusions in the context of gentrification. Indeed, the promise of inclusion is here not simply exclusionary, it does not simply promote some lifestyles over others. Rather, it entails the active disciplining of gender/​sexuality and space in ‘an attempt to engineer specific urban outcomes’ (Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2014, pp3–​4). Thinking of inclusion 105

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in these terms invites us to consider at what expense and for what purpose is inclusion used, and ultimately commit to a wonkier and anti-​capitalist model of inclusion which troubles the straightness and predictability with which narratives of inclusion demand we give a (‘sufficiently gay’) name and a label to our (wonky) desires and spaces.

The class politics of inclusion Class and its politics have to date remained a remarkably under-​explored area of research in organization studies. Many argue that this is symptomatic of the largely corporate nature of inclusion initiatives (Berrey, 2014), the fact that organizations are not simply inscribed in, but actually reproduce, capitalist regimes, or ‘the more general demise of class as an explanatory category in the social sciences’ (Zanoni, 2011, p107). A similar neglect is apparent in queer approaches both within organization studies and beyond, which have, too, often ‘retreat[ed] from class analysis’ (Hennessy, 2000, p49) and pursued a cultural and discursive ‘critique of institutionalized or compulsory heterosexuality and the gender binary rather than political economy and social class’ (Seidman, 2011, p37; see also: Taylor, 2011). In particular, there has been a lack of understanding of the mutually constitutive nature of ‘sexuality’ and ‘the economy’ (Seidman, 2011, p38). The mutually constitutive politics of class and sexuality clearly demand more attention and theorization in studies of inclusion, sexuality and organization. This chapter has sought to trace the class politics of diversity and the consequences of inclusion for those queers who are unable and/​or unwilling to abide by its terms (Halberstam, 2005; Rao, 2015). In particular, the chapter has foregrounded the role that diversity discourses play in bringing previously ‘derelict’ urban areas into an entrepreneurial, neoliberal frame. Indeed, while the increasing recognition of the value of LGBTQ+​diversity suggests that urban planning is becoming more inclusive, the experiences of the campaign reveal that a breakdown in heterosexual norms does not necessarily entail more inclusive experiences of urban space. Of course, we could argue that even an assimilatory form of inclusion may offer opportunities for (some) LGBTQ+​subjects to be(come) included, visible and live ordinary lives. As Gavin Brown (2012) has argued in his trenchant critique of the concept of homonormativity, queer scholars must be careful not to underestimate the importance of being ‘normal’, and the seductive allure of these market-​mediated and consumer-​driven narratives. Moreover, it is fair to say that not everyone enjoyed or remembered the Joiners Arms as fondly as the campaigners did. For some, a working-​class pub experience may be far from desirable, synonymous with whiteness, excessive drinking, and/​or threatening forms of masculinity (Ward, 2008b).21

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At the same time, the story narrated in this chapter nevertheless reveals that inclusion in the context of redevelopment was done not simply by including some homonormative subjects over others. Rather, inclusion was done by literally emptying gender/​sexuality and space of its ‘undesirable’ or ‘queer unwanted’ (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004) dimensions. An engagement with the question of resistance to and complicity with neoliberal forms of inclusion thus exposes, as Dhawan, Castro Varela and Hochschule (2016) eloquently put it, the need ‘to confront the paradox that whenever categories are listed … this itemization risks concealing certain moments of oppression that are not adequately reflected by these inventories’ (p35). Key to navigating this paradox is, I argue, following Dhawan, Castro Varela and Hochschule’s (2016) own suggestion, a degree of ‘deconstructive vigilance’ not only with regards to the categories used in efforts at ‘protecting’ diversity, but also towards the multiple compromises and complicities that we must enact in order to subvert, reorder, re-​organize, and reassemble (non-​performative) practices of knowledge production to serve our needs. Here, the queer goal of deconstruction becomes a form of doing class politics that challenges the ways in which planning practice takes the messiness and complexity of places in an attempt to convert them into spaces that are ripe for investment, whatever the wider impact on marginalized communities. The story of the Joiners Arms shows how inclusion can involve a merely instrumental recognition of difference which pre-​determines the forms queer lives ‘must take in order to count as lives worth living’ (Ahmed, 2006b, p84). This shows that it is not only questionable whether and how far inclusion may actually dismantle homonormativity, but also that, as Tyler (2019) argues, inclusion comes with ‘normative conditions attached to it’ (p50) that determine, and limit, who and/​or what can be(come) included according to capitalist logics. Posited in these terms, the goal of critical inclusion scholars should be troubling inclusion not by fighting for the recognition of a wider range of diverse LGBTQ+​identities, but by becoming committed to a twisted or wonky path of unexpected possibilities and potentialities. As Judith Butler explains in her essay ‘Critically queer’, if ‘queer’ is to become a site of collective contestation, the point of departure for a set of historical reflections and futural imaginings, it will have to remain that which is … never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes. (1993a, pp19–​20) We can extend these theoretical ruminations to the term ‘inclusion’ and argue in favour of a ‘critically queer’ conceptualization of inclusion that would involve ‘collective transforming (in ways that cannot necessarily be 107

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predicted in advance) the substantive uses’ (Davis, 2013, p403) of inclusion and insist that such a system is never as good as it gets whereby the task becomes to imagine ‘bodies and desires otherwise’ (Davis, 2013, p403). The forms of queer activism considered here emphasize the need to trouble the terms of inclusion and reconcile our critical endeavours with a critique of political economy in order to explore the manifold ways in which ‘capital produces [normative gender/​sexual] subjects accommodated to its own needs’ (Wesling, 2012, p107). Indeed, despite the promise to reinclude an LGBTQ+​ venue in the redevelopment, the pub remains closed to this day and is even more derelict than it was when the property developers first approached the site. I often cycle past it on my way home. Its doors and windows are boarded up and covered in posters and graffiti. Its insides were gutted a few months after the closure, a tactic often used by property developers to ensure the space will not be squatted. Opposite the road, Regal Homes’ other developments –​ also office spaces and luxury flats –​have been taking shape, replacing the rows of dilapidated buildings which used to flank the street. It is now been almost a decade since the campaigners held their first meeting in the pub, and the prospect of reopening and ‘saving’ the original pub is a distant hope. The sight of the pub is a constant reminder of the ghosts that lie behind the happy promises of diversity and the limits of the fantasy that one will find in these corporate-​friendly commitments to diversity, a kind of recognition that has not been found elsewhere. The reality is that Regal Homes took away one of the few places in which many of the people I talked to over the last seven years have ever felt at home, and corporate commitments to inclusion, rainbow flags and celebrations of diversity are unlikely to change that unless they address the broader context of gentrification and privatization.

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As Soon as this Pub Closes: The Temporalities of Gentrification and Other Queer Utopias ‘The night we met David at the Joiners, I don’t remember when it was it was, either late 2013 or early 2014, like a year or so before the Joiners closed, we ended up staying in after the doors closed and it was just me, Dan and David, it was a Wednesday night, and we were just having a drink and a chat, and then David just sang us this song.’1 The song Amy is referring to is Alex Glasgow’s working-​class anthem ‘As Soon as this Pub Closes’. Alex Glasgow was a northern working-​class singer-​ songwriter who became famous for developing his own style of Geordie folk, writing songs in support of socialism and trade unions (Plater, 2001). The satirical song is a first-​person account of someone in a pub explaining how they will ‘create a fine democracy that’s truly working-​class’, ‘shoot the aristocracy and confiscate their brass’, ‘fight the nasty racialists and the colour bar’ and ‘all fascist dictatorships and every commissar’ as soon as the pub closes for the evening. The song’s chorus announces, in a thick Geordie accent: ‘as soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts’. In the recorded version of the song, Glasgow slurs his speech towards the end of the song, implying that the person singing is getting progressively drunker. The song’s final chorus is changed from ‘as soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts’ to ‘as soon as this pub closes … I think I’m going to be sick’. Gesturing towards a delayed time for the revolution –​I was going to ‘do’ the revolution but then I had too much to drink –​the song has been read as a critique of working-​class drinking and pub culture, and of the pub in general as a site for ‘revolution’ (Green Leaf, 2015). But Amy does not see it this way. I ask her whether she agrees with this reading and whether she thinks drinking in the pub takes time away from the revolution. 109

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‘I don’t think so’, she replies. ‘Wait, let me read you the lyrics’. She opens a tab on her computer, searches for the lyrics, and reads the song’s opening line: ‘I could have done it yesterday if I hadn’t had a cold, but since I’ve put this pint away, I’ve never felt so bold’. ‘See? I think it’s more about actually being empowered in the pub, like you’ve got all these big ideas, but you’re actually just having a pint, you know what I mean?’, she explains. ‘Do you think David knew’, I ask her. ‘Knew what?’, she responds. ‘That the pub was closing down’, I explain. ‘Oh –​I’ve never thought about it that way, I think the song is more about the pub closing for the night, not being shut down by property developers … but I like to think that he did, and that he played it for that reason’. In the previous chapter I traced the campaigners’ opposition to the promise to include a ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’ on the site of the former pub. In this chapter I mostly draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted after the redevelopment project’s ultimate approval to think about the temporalities of inclusion and gentrification, and the revolutionary potential of pubs as sites for the making of alternative (queer) futures. The first version of this ­chapter –​which I wrote for my PhD –​reflected on what can be gained by engaging with promises of inclusion to expand their terms, affirmatively sabotage them from within, and more broadly on how to use commitments to inclusion to fight for queer(er) uses of space and time. Yet, just as promises of inclusion can be made, they can also be broken. The redevelopment application was initially rejected at the first Development Planning Committee in September 2017 on the grounds that the concerns of the LGBTQ+​community had not been adequately addressed. The project was ultimately approved at the second committee meeting in October 2017, with a requirement that the redevelopment include a ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’. At this second meeting, campaigners were able to secure some significant wins, expanding the terms of the agreement to include an extended lease on the venue, the recommendation (although not the assurance) that the new venue should be granted similar opening hours, a requirement for the developers to contribute £130,000 towards fit-​out costs, as well as an extension of the floor space. Yet, developers are yet to start building on the site. Delays were caused by the submission of a new application to change the land use of the redevelopment: the project would now include a hotel as opposed to luxury flats and office space. The pub had now been closed for five years and, after pressure from the council and the campaigners, the developers agreed to pay £100,000 in compensation to fund a temporary replacement LGBTQ+​venue. The money was going to be paid to the campaigners via the council once the demolition started. Yet, while the new application was approved in late 2020, the developers are yet to start working on the site. Initially it appeared that building work was delayed by the pandemic. But now it looks like the project might not 110

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happen after all, or at least not for some time, given that the flats above the pub are being rented to private tenants. Meanwhile, the Joiners Arms remains closed. Its doors covered in graffiti and posters advertising nights out elsewhere. One reason for the potential termination and/​or delayal of the project might be that the redevelopment is no longer economically viable. In this scenario, too much time and money have been spent on securing planning permissions to make the redevelopment profitable. Perhaps while developers agreed to the terms of inclusion in order to get the project approved, they never intended to actually fulfil its conditions. Thus, while we are told that pushing for developers to engage with queer communities is one way in which planning can be made more ‘inclusive’, the financial considerations which ultimately drive neoliberal urban planning worked against the reprovision of the very LGBTQ+​venue they were intended to save and/​or protect. While promises of inclusion are thus a way of ‘mak[ing] the future into an object’ (Ahmed, 2010, p29), these futures can also be endlessly deferred, delayed and/​or terminated according to the logics of capital, casting serious doubt on the emancipative potential of actually reconciling the goals of LGBTQ+​politics with those of private corporations. As I write this chapter almost five years after the redevelopment was first approved, the question of temporality –​not only of the kinds of futures that promises of inclusion open up, but ultimately the kinds of temporal investment these promises require us to make, and how these might work to both sustain and/​ or undercut dominant social relations –​thus appeared inevitable. If time is the phenomenon of becoming, temporality can be understood as ‘the interpretation of [that] becoming’ (Iparaguirre in Fent and Kojola, 2020, p821). Taking the future as its object, planning is almost by definition a temporal field, concerned, as Abram and Weszkalnys (2011) explain, with ‘improvements … transformation through time’ and with ‘the possibilities that time offers space’ (p3). In this sense, planning ‘always includes some element of moral obligation that ties present to future’ (p3) and works to make certain futures possible while closing others down. In this chapter I mobilize temporality as a conceptual framework to understand ‘the production of social meaning and culture, processes of capital accumulation, and political strategies … [and] the myriad ways that time is experienced, apprehended, and mobilized toward certain ends’ (Fent and Kojola, 2020, p821). I focus in particular on the active construction of multiple temporalities and the political work these do in (un)tying the past, present and future of the pub both in the service of the normalization of dominant social relations, but ultimately also enabling the counter-​hegemonic struggles to resist them. Against accounts which see queer spaces as relics of an exclusionary past that must be left behind in our embrace of inclusion, I suggest that the pub can indeed function as a site of queer revolutionary potential in the present. 111

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Queer activists should thus care about the disappearance of these spaces not from a place of nostalgia, but because these spaces of queer interclass and intergenerational contact enable the making of alternative queer utopias and are thus precisely what is most needed to counter the contemporary violences of neoliberalism and gentrification.

The happy futures of gentrification Gentrification invites us to partake in the regenerating qualities of redevelopment (Addie and Fraser, 2019; Kelly, Maller and Farahani, 2022). Diversity plays a specific role in these futural figurations of an imagined and happy(ier) future. In the context of the fieldwork, the happy futures sold by gentrification took specific form through their reliance on temporalities and worldings which invited us to invest in diversity. Marketing the redevelopment project as ‘inclusive’, such temporal figurations are in line with broader global city discourses that imagine London as a modern and progressive city. Take, for example, the way in which Regal Homes’ developments are portrayed on their website. The property developers assure us that their redevelopments are intended to ‘reflect the diversity, vibrancy and eminence of one of the most inspiring cities in the world’. CGI images of the redevelopment project on Hackney Road illustrate this fantasy, depicting clean roads and pristine buildings in which people sit happily in one of the new coffee shops and bars on offer in an area of the city previously associated with dereliction and urban decay. The kind of futural fantasies being sold here include a life regenerated and renewed, a better life of consumption which includes, of course, a dream (or Regal) home (also see Conway, 2021). The problem with this kind of fantasy is that it washes over the violence of gentrification and the fact that these renewed and regenerated spaces are in fact extremely unwelcoming for all those who are not able and/​or willing to inhabit such gentrified spaces of consumption. Indeed, despite the veneer of inclusiveness, gentrified spaces remain heavily sanitized spaces in which diversity is but a packaging for what is a fundamentally homogenous product (Schulman, 2012). Thus, while gentrification invites us to partake in the regenerating qualities of redevelopment, these happy futures serve to actually legitimate dominant social relations in the service of capital accumulation. Such gentrified futural imaginings further intersect with narratives of queer progress and inclusion in which queer people can have access to gentrified spaces of consumption and no longer need to be confined to marginalized areas. An example of the temporalities underpinning such depictions of queer inclusion and gentrification is contained in the narrative script which underpins a BBC news segment on the campaign. The week before the first Development Planning Committee meeting, campaigners met up with 112

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a reporter from the BBC who was interested in running a segment on the campaign in the evening news. The campaigners agreed to take part and were especially keen to get their point across, after several articles published in the media the week prior failed to mention that, despite the promise to provide a ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’, the campaigners were still opposing the redevelopment. On a warm August day, I follow Amy and Dan around east London and observe them as they explain to the reporter, with passion, clarity and composure, their concerns about the agreement. ‘I think it went well!’ exclaims Dan as I walk him home. I agreed. That same evening, I sit alongside four campaigners in Dan’s flat, eating pizza, drinking beer and watching the news, waiting for the segment to air. As the news presenters announces the next segment will be about the campaign, a visible level of excitement emanates from the campaigners, who adjust their seats and tell others to quiet down. The segment opens by showing footage from inside the Joiners Arms from back in 2012. A swift transition then catapults the viewer outside the closed pub, where Dan and Amy were interviewed by the reporter. A wooden plank now seals what used to be the ‘almost invisible’ (Andersson, 2009) entrance. The reporter continues: ‘two years ago this sight was sold and, like much of our city, it will soon be flats. But, says the council, it must also be home for a new club for the LGBTQ+​community. An inspector will even check if it’s gay enough’. I look around as campaigners’ collectively ‘eye-​roll’. ‘Not this gay inspector thing again’, exclaims Peter. The reporter then asks two customers sat in Dalston Superstore, a popular LGBTQ+​bar in east London, what they think that means. The first confesses that they ‘honestly don’t know’, while the second responds by saying ‘cultural things, like the music, the décor, stuff like that … a nod to the sort of people that go there’. The remainder of the segment follows a familiar script, one that I have heard and seen campaigners emotionally wrestle with many times throughout the course of fieldwork. This script recognizes the value of LGBTQ+​ spaces and that their closure is something that should be taken seriously. However, rather than acknowledging the wider socio-​economic and political context of the closures, the story explains that ‘going out in LGBTQ+​ London has changed’2 and that ‘people don’t meet in pubs or clubs; they use apps instead’.3 To sustain this argument, the segment features footage of John Sizzle, drag artist and owner of the east London gay pub the Glory, performing at the Southbank Centre, using this as an example of gay culture becoming ‘mainstream’. This presumably confirms that queers are more included than ever and that there is no longer a need for queer venues. When interviewed in the segment, John Sizzle commendably explained that, while for people who ‘look like him’ –​cis, white and straight-​passing –​the streets of London have become relatively safer, for other members of the queer community this is not necessarily the case. 113

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Nevertheless, the segment concludes by asking us –​ queers, the campaigners –​to be happy, hopeful and to take pride in the fact that the council and city hall are ‘committed to celebrating our great diversity’ and are coming up with ‘innovative ways’ to fight the closures. The agreement that seeks to provide ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’ on the new site of the development is lauded as one of these positive interventions, something we are encouraged to accept or settle for because gay bars are being replaced by dating apps, and this is possibly the best-​case scenario to emerge from the situation. The temporal horizon toward which this story compels us thus is a happy future in which inclusion is just around the corner. This story is narrated as one in which everyone is on the same side, orientated and working towards a common good, a shared future. The campaigners’ critique (of gentrification, of the failure to reprovide a late licence, of normative uses of space and time, of hiking rent prices and inaccessibility, of developers and development) is minimized and reduced to a comment on how ‘what can’t be promised … is the quality of any party’. After the end of the segment, I sit in silence with the campaigners’ visible disappointment. Dan eventually breaks the silence with a ‘fucking rubbish’. The narrative that the Joiners had been ‘saved’ from closure enacts a particular kind of temporal politics of diversity. Here, despite the closure, we are invited to invest in the promise of inclusion, to deposit hopes and feelings of happiness in this promise, and to believe that this (now) boarded-​up venue will become home to a new venue for the LGBTQ+​community. Campaigners are invited to invest in these affective futural economies through which diversity and inclusion circulate and emerge as desirable and achievable goals, to invest in a future in which ‘things get better’, to accept the futures offered by gentrification. The temporal scripts through which inclusion is narrated can work to realign opposition with ‘feel good’ stories of commitments to, and celebrations of, diversity. These scripts also emerge if we consider how this story was narrated after the redevelopment project’s ultimate approval. The morning after the second Development Planning Committee meeting in October 2017, when the redevelopment project was actually approved, I woke up to a Hackney Citizen article (2017) which read: ‘Joiners Arms campaigners celebrate “landmark” ruling for iconic LGBT pub’. The article detailed the revised terms of the agreement, hailing the council’s ruling as a ‘victory’ not only for ‘the LGBT community … in Tower Hamlets, but across the whole of London’. At the top of the page, a colour photograph depicted the cheerful campaigners holding placards and wearing ‘Long Live Queer Spaces’ t-​shirts outside the town hall, triumphant, inviting the reader to partake in their delight. The article was the first of many published that week hailing the council’s decision to grant approval to the redevelopment as a ‘landmark’ or ‘key’ victory. The decision was elsewhere understood as an ‘unprecedented 114

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intervention’ (Neate, 2017b) which demonstrated that the council, as Tower Hamlets mayor John Biggs attests, was ‘leading the way in reversing the decline in LGBTQ+​venue’ (Neate, 2017b). Portrayed by the media, the council and, ultimately, by the campaigners themselves as a story ‘about standing up for LGBT rights in a city that seems indifferent to anything except capital’ (Abraham, 2017), the story emerged as a successful example of how the Joiners arms was ‘saved’ from closure and how ‘it is always worth fighting for the things that are important to you’ (Planet Nation, 2017). While campaigners were pleased about having forced developers to cede some ground on the terms of inclusion at the second committee, merely a week after the application’s approval, reality began to creep its way back in. I sat next to one of the campaigners at an event on LGBTQ+​spaces in late October 2017, where someone who had been marginally involved in helping the campaign deal with the property developers claimed to have ‘saved the Joiners from closure’ by ‘keeping its site LGBT’. The statement was met by a loud cheer from a crowd of mostly academics and planning officers. I watched the campaigner recoil, and asked him how that made him feel: ‘How do you think it feels? The Joiners has not been saved’. Knowing what we know now –​that, eight years after the closure, and five years after the first planning application was approved, the Joiners is indeed still closed –​such premature celebratory statements appear to be even more disingenuous. Indeed, from the perspective of the campaigners, it was hard to feel ‘happy’ with the futural promise of inclusion: diversity is a present, everyday and complex reality. ‘I don’t feel like we can stand up here and take a bow and say “well done, aren’t we wonderful” … We’re currently in a situation where the development has now been approved and the developers are going to be able to bulldoze the Joiners’, explains Amy (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). The campaigners thus did not feel happiness in proximity to what Sara Ahmed (2011) calls ‘promissory objects’ (p165), a condition which demanded they ‘correct their feelings’ (Ahmed, 2010b, p581). Queer scholars have indeed pointed out how temporal investments in the future can produce normativity by reinscribing the idea of a ‘normal’ into the very fabric of our lives (Edelman, 2004; Freeman, 2010; Halberstam, 2005; Stockton, 2011). The campaigners’ rejection of the logic of political hope by refusing to be moved by the hopeful promises of the redevelopment and by refusing to invest in the hope of a regenerated future can be read as a form of resistance to the normative futures promised by gentrification. As Lee Edelman (2004) explains in No Future, normativity betrays a distinctly temporal orientation towards the future, which Edelman reads through the figure of the child. Against such teleological temporal investments in the logics of reproductive futurism, ‘the queer comes to figure the bar to every realization of futurity, the resistance, internal to the social, to every social structure or form’ (p5). 115

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Edelman (2004) thus locates in queer the radical potential of turning against ‘the future’ and embracing a nonteleological negativity ‘that refuses the leavening of piety and with it the dollop of sweetness afforded by messianic hope’ (Dinshaw et al., 2007, p195). However, rather than simply turning against the future, campaigners engaged in emotional forms of labour performed to inhabit and navigate the gap between a promised happy future of inclusion and a merely nostalgic orientation towards a past long gone. Campaigners often had to tone down their negative feelings and become aligned with these happy gentrification stories in order not to alienate powerful institutional actors upon whom the future of the venue ultimately depended. This kind of labour is of a qualitatively different nature to that performed to challenge homophobia because it requires investment in the ‘good feelings’ which accompany such future-​orientated celebrations of inclusion. As others have showed, commitments to inclusion can actually mean that exclusion ‘becomes impossible to name’ (Dhawan Castro Varela and Hochschule, 2016, p6), and its practices ‘invisible and … all the more difficult to contest’ (Dhawan Castro Varela and Hochschule, 2016, p6). In this sense, the happy gentrified future of inclusion we are invited to invest in can also act as a form of governmentality that brings back into line those who are moved by such happy futures. These happy gentrified stories buttress neoliberal forms of self-​governance because they rest upon the ability of the subjects of inclusion themselves to self-​manage their affects and their relationships in entrepreneurial ways, and to make strategic investments in the hope of future returns. Yet, the affective dissonance between the happy future promised by gentrification and the reality in which ‘we still don’t have a space’ often led campaigners to feel ‘emotionally burnt out’4 and ‘emotionally exhausted’.5 Overall, it was hard for the campaigners to feel happy with the futural promises of gentrification: for the campaigners, it was largely the past –​in the memories of the Joiners, in the feelings of kinship created during its heyday and in the aftermath of its closure –​and an alternative future not yet known, that held the greatest potential for queerness. Thus, unlike Edelman (2004), who ultimately embraces queerness’s negativity as a death-​driven dis-​engagement with the future, queer temporalities can and do also open up opportunities for political action in the present.

Keeping up with planning While the Joiners was celebrated as ‘saved’, the approval of the redevelopment project marked a painful realization: [I]‌t’s so ridiculous that it took three years of unpaid labour from a group of people to get a Council to realize that what we were saying 116

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at the very beginning was true: that this space was vital, this space was important, and it shouldn’t have been taken away from us. (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018) Indeed, below the exciting surface of the story about how a group of inexperienced activists stood up to property developers lies a much more difficult, exhausting, and even ‘boring’6 everyday reality. From writing objection letters and emails to councillors, to reviewing and commenting on the planning application, multiple versions of the agreement and the architectural drawings of the ‘replacement venue’, to publishing blog and weekly email updates and detailed meeting notes, this is what the work required to actually run the campaign entailed. It was not always like this. Campaigners remember the early days as a mixture of ‘drinking and shouting’7 outside the now closed Joiners Arms. But soon enough they realized that ‘established paths weren’t going to get us anywhere very quickly’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). So campaigners changed their course of action and started to ‘put in objections, we had meetings with the developers and the council, we must have sent thousands of emails and Facebook messages between ourselves, closed down Facebook messenger groups over and over again, and then reopened them’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). Resisting gentrification thus also produces its own temporalities. For example, after promising to include a ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’ on the site of the former pub, campaigners were often expected to comment, often with minimal notice and/​or turnaround time, on multiple drafts of the agreement, provide detailed written feedback on the mounted opposition to the redevelopment and check for any ‘legal safeguards’8 or ‘loopholes’9 in the agreement. While the first three years of the campaign were marked by the slow and unruly temporalities of ‘drinking and shouting’, the advent of an engagement with the planning system catapulted the campaigners into accelerated time. Raco, Durrant and Livingstone (2018) explain how, since the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government has sought to speed up the planning process in order to boost competitiveness. Fast delivery of redevelopment projects is here equated with the efficiency and market flexibility that developers supposedly need in order to keep up with ever-​ changing market opportunities and demands. Planning controls, community engagement and consultations that force redevelopment to slow down are seen as things that ‘add financial costs and prevent experts from “getting on with the job” of delivering urban programmes and meeting social and economic needs’ (Raco, Durrant and Livingstone, 2018, p1177). Yet, engagement with ordinary people –​through deliberation, consultations and other forms of political engagement with planning –​takes time, especially when performed by activists who have limited experience of the planning system and/​or have full-​time jobs. 117

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Campaigners often struggled to keep up with the speed with which they were required to engage with planning. Take for example Peter, who was always one of the first to read and comment on all new planning documentation, chase up councillors and property developers, and was also in charge of the campaign’s weekly email updates. As we sit over a pint in March 2018, Peter says they he is struggling to ‘keep up this level of boring admin work’. But he also says that the fact that he is ‘not capable of relaxing and being peaceful’ has been ‘quite handy’ because he ‘can always just find something to do’. As he explains, ‘it’s been a case of “what else am I going to do with my spare time?” ’. Restlessness is what enables him to ‘keep up’ with the speed of planning. But Peter is also adamant in reminding us that it is not just about that: ‘I also have a roof over my head, and the time and the money to spend my free time doing this kind of stuff … it’s a massive luxury not everyone has’. Thinking about the temporalities of what it takes to resist gentrification and of who and/​or what can afford the time to engage with the planning system, I am reminded of Jane Ward’s (2008a) work on the ways in which diversity politics reproduces privilege across and within activist organizations. Drawing on ethnographic work conducted with three LGBTQ+​organizations in Los Angeles, Ward finds that diversity politics privileges those who embody professionalized versions of difference. Professionalism establishes classed distinctions between a diversity politics of ‘respectability’ (Ward, 2008a, 2008b) and a queer ‘politics of vulgarity’ (Rupp and Taylor, 2003) in which ‘brash sexuality and the refusal to be professional and appropriate challenge norms within both heterosexual and mainstream lesbian and gay culture’ (Ward, 2008a, p60). Professionalization played a crucial role in enabling campaigners to ‘keep up’ with planning. ‘We’ve lucked out with having QCs and barristers and architects on our side’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018), explains one of the campaigners. Over the course of the years, the campaign established a network of contacts with professionals to provide feedback, advice on next steps, or things to look out for in the agreement. This work was often performed pro bono, alleviating some of the pressures the campaigners faced in having to perform campaign work alongside their day jobs. While the campaigner attributes the forming of these valuable networks and connections to ‘luck’, it also represents a degree of class privilege converted into activist capital. Campaigners, most of whom were university-​educated and in professional jobs, were often able to draw from privileged ‘social networks, professional skills, and ways of thinking’ (Ward, 2008a, p52) that conferred them with certain social and political advantages in making their claims. Yet, professionalization did not completely alleviate the burden on the campaigners and at times, ‘keeping up’ with planning threatened to become a source of tension between the campaigners themselves. ‘I have to try to temper my assumption that everyone has the spare time and the anger to 118

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keep up a level of boring admin work’, explains one of the campaigners at a meeting. ‘I know that at times it has strained relations in the group’, they continued. It also, of course, contributed to exhaustion and burnout, especially for those campaigners who were in fact able to ‘keep up’ with the work, often to the detriment of their day jobs and/​or their mental health. ‘We don’t get paid to do this and have to take time off work, it can be totally exhausting’,10 explains Amy. Trying to ascertain who or what might have gotten lost in trying to ‘keep up’ with planning may be a matter of mere speculation. But it follows that those who could not take ‘take off work’ and/​or ‘keep up’ with the (now accelerated) temporalities of the campaign during its engagement with the planning system might have been left behind. Ultimately, therefore, while the campaign succeeded in getting the property developers to cede ground on the terms of inclusion, campaigners believe that ‘it shouldn’t come down to that, it shouldn’t rely on someone giving up ten to twenty hours a week just to try and put a stop to the proposed development, why does it take this much effort of individuals against the power of these huge corporations?’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). This sentiment was echoed in a conversation between three members of the campaign, Jon, Peter and Amy, at an event on queer spaces organized by the UCL Urban Lab and held at the Museum of London after the approval of the redevelopment. In the conversation –​recorded in the Urban Pamphleteer #7 entitled ‘LGBTQ+​Night-​time Spaces: Past, Present & Future’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018) –​Jon, Amy and Peter reflected on the ways in which the promise to include a ‘replacement LGBTQ+​venue’ only feels like a ‘sort of victory’. As Jon explains: ‘What we’ve achieved is a landmark but it’s also so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We still don’t have any power. The best thing we can hope to be is a thorn in Regal Homes’ side. They have time and they have money, they have more resources than we have.’ The accelerated time of planning ultimately seems to be stacked in favour of property developers, who have the time, the money and the resources to try and ‘speed up’ the process of redevelopment, while campaigners resisting gentrification are left scrambling to find the time to ‘keep up’. As Amy continues, ‘it’s almost as if planning isn’t set up for members of the community to get involved and definitely not for a group of queers’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). Yet, while it took a lot of effort, and thousands of hours of (unpaid) labour, the campaign somehow kept up with planning. A week or so after the redevelopment was approved, I met with a campaigner in their local pub. I asked them what they felt about the ‘sort of victory’ and what they think the long-​term effect will be. They reply: 119

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‘I hope it’s going to have long-​lasting effects, in that developers will be aware that if they try to bulldoze a space used by a minority group they might have a PR disaster on their hands, or it’s going to cost them a lot more time and money to get things approved.’ They continue: ‘The developers’ plan has been to say they’ll run out of steam, they have day jobs and they’re a bunch of queers who haven’t got a clue and who maybe drink too much, which we do, and sometimes we haven’t [got a clue], but at the end of the day, we were more competent than they thought.’11 The irony is that it now looks like it is the developers who might be running out of steam, or out of time, or money: in slowing things down, resistance to gentrification made the development too costly to be worth their time. Is this a (sort of) victory? Perhaps, if the goal was to stop the redevelopment, this might constitute a win. At the same time, if the goal was to ‘save’ the Joiners Arms –​or even just to reopen an LGBTQ+​venue –​it is clear that the promise of reinclusion failed precisely because it failed to overturn the power dynamics embedded in the temporalities of planning, in which it is ultimately the developer who ‘gets to decide what gets given priority within a neighbourhood or geographic space’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). As Raco, Durrant and Livingstone (2018) explain, while calls for planning to ‘slow down’ to engage with local communities might seem like an obvious response to the unchecked speed of redevelopment, slowing down may also give greater flexibility to property developers to ‘reduce, or sometimes even withdraw from, commitments to provide social and community obligations’ (p1178), using ‘the uncertainties generated by [the] relatively slow pace of [the] planning process’ (p1178) to claim ‘compensation’ for lost time and, therefore, for a loss on their investment. Ultimately, as the pub sits closed in limbo –​not saved, not replaced and not even in the process of being redeveloped –​it is the campaigners who would rather things just sped up, and that they would ‘just get on with it’.12 This sense of impatience and powerlessness is partly what motivated them to start looking to open their own space independent from the redevelopment, on their terms and at their pace.

Long live queer spaces The inexorable orientation towards a regenerated future worked to erase the present reality of closure and lived experiences of diversity. The accelerated temporalities of planning also required campaigners to professionalize and leave behind perhaps slower and unruly ways of organizing in order to 120

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‘keep up’ with planning in seeking to resist gentrification. We could indeed argue that the temporalities of gentrification and the happy futures promised through planning, and the queerness it sought to incorporate and protect, are produced on two different, opposing, timescales: the community and the forms of queerness which congealed around the Joiners Arms developed organically, over a time much longer than those planned and artificial social and economic timescales used in defining the character of ‘an LGBTQ+​ venue’. To echo some of the comments often made by campaigners in response to stories about the Joiners Arms being ‘saved’: you cannot ‘save’ a queer space once its closed; that is, and as I have argued in Chapter 4, the forms of life this space enabled, the kinds of communities that spatio-​ temporally inhabited this marginal world, have themselves been displaced and gentrified through the process of redevelopment. At the same time, as Abrams (2014) writes, it ‘is in the encounter with “ordinary people” –​residents, protesters, participants –​who bring an unruly past back into the planning process, that planning’s selective technologies of moving through time are unsettled’ (p130). Against the hegemonic power of gentrification to normalize, de-​historicize and generalize its own temporalities in the selling of a happy future of inclusion, campaigners sought to bring the ‘unruly past’ back in to create and reclaim their own temporalities. Campaign meetings were often interspersed with people sharing memories of the space, stories about David, or memorable nights at the venue. The sharing of these memories acted as a reminder of what we had lost and what we were fighting for: not just an LGBTQ+​venue but a specific kind of queer space that offered something different from other, more commercialized, establishments. Remembering foregrounded not only a sense of loss –​the loss of a space, of a community –​but also the reincarnation and reintegration of that loss into the fabric of the campaign in its name –​the Friends of the Joiners Arms –​and in its logo –​a black and white heart designed by Jess, one of campaigners –​with the words ‘Life, Love, Liberty’ taken from the large wall-​to-​ceiling mural in the pub. The mural was painted by artist David Shenton in the style of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and covered the main wall facing the bar, behind a set of peeling leather couches. The mural depicted David and the bar staff with some of their ‘heroes’, including Marlene Dietrich, Quentin Crisp, and Kermit the frog. Gentrification often tries to contain and/​or thwart the ‘unruly’ potential of this past, sometimes by exhorting us to leave it behind in favour of a regenerated future, sometimes by literally effacing its traces. A few months after the closure the campaigners asked if they could visit the space. There was a vague idea to also see if the mural could be saved and stored in a queer archive as a record of the pub’s history. However, to their surprise, they found not only that the entire venue had been gutted but that the mural had also 121

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been completely destroyed. I recall campaigners being quite emotionally affected by the news because it felt like a wholly unnecessary and quite personal attack directed towards the pub’s history and everything it had represented for generations of queers who spent their weekends socializing next to the mural and its ‘characters’. At the same time, alternative temporalities and ‘unruly pasts’ are effective precisely because they are not merely orientated towards the past but can act as a form of political action in the present. For example, one of the first steps the campaign took, as early as 2015, was to apply for an asset of community value (ACV) status for the venue. The ACV status worked to enshrine the past onto the built environment, giving the campaign a sense of ownership over the physical site of the Joiners Arms, and establishing the Friends of the Joiners Arms as the community to which that site was not only valuable, but connected to, through time. The fact that the site on which the developers wanted to build was granted ACV status was not simply symbolically meaningful, but, in planning terms, afforded it extra protections from development and, ultimately, would give the community the right to buy the site if it ever went for sale again. Drawing from the past also enabled the campaigners to situate the closure of the pub amid broader temporalities pertaining to the loss of queer spaces in the city. Research which sought to document the closure of LGBTQ+​spaces in London served the purpose of enabling political action by articulating a notion of community value in the present by drawing from the past. Research conducted by the UCL Urban Lab (first discussed in Chapter 1) found that the number of LGBTQ+​spaces in the city had fallen by 58% (from 123 to 53) between 2006 and 2017. The report also highlighted and distinguished the value of community-​orientated LGBTQ+​venues, distinguishing these from other, more commercialized, venues. Campaigners drew from the findings in the report to justify their demands. ‘We’ve lost 58% of our spaces over the past ten years. That’s why a community venue is so important, this is not just about us, it’s about the lives of all LGBT people in London’,13 explains Amy to the councillors at the roundtable discussion with the property developers. Efforts at documenting the loss of LGBTQ+​spaces by tracking their closure across time thus worked to imbue the present struggle to resist the closure of a community LGBTQ+​venue with a sense of urgency. At the same time, the presentist impulse underpinning efforts to trace the trajectory of closures across time also works to ‘fix’ the queerness in time and space. As explored in the previous chapter, this rendering of the Joiners Arms merely as an ‘LGBTQ+​venue’, as opposed to a queer space that enabled alternative spatio-​temporalities beyond the normative logics of capitalist production, rendered the pub into an object and a target of diversity (management). As anthropologists have pointed out, applying LGBTQ+​categories universally –​across space and time –​can wash over lived 122

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experiences and realities of queerness that might not be intelligible according to such identitarian formulations of gender/​sexuality (Boellstorff, 2006; Najmabadi, 2006; Valentine, 2007). Thus, while efforts at documenting the past in order to account for the loss of LGBTQ+​spaces can act as legitimizing mechanisms and enable entry into present public policy discourses, they can also work to limit the queerness that can become intelligible from the vantage point of such world-​making strategies. An orientation towards the past can serve as a springboard for political action in the present, but this does not reflect an objective or passive memory of that past. One limitation encountered in trying to record stories about the Joiners Arms is that, as pub regular Paul Flynn explains, ‘[m]‌ost people can’t remember what happened [because] [i]t was a genuinely bacchanal place’ (Neate, 2017a). The haziness which accompanies memories of the pub might open the door to unhelpful nostalgic interpretations and romantic yearnings or longings for a past before gentrification. As Atherton Lin writes in their recent book Gay Bar (2021), ‘gay is an identity of longing … and there is a wistfulness to beholding it in the form of a building, like how the sight of a theatre stirs the imagination’ (p25). In the book Lin asks what the disappearance of queer venues might mean for forms of queerness that were once defined in relation to them, ultimately suggesting that it might be time to let these go. However, I suggest that a more fruitful way of reading the relationship between these spaces and queerness is by thinking about the kinds of possibilities these open up in the future. For however transient the affectivities and relationships formed in these spaces might be, some do stick.

Friendship and nostalgia Aside from being a space of interclass contact (Chapter 4), the pub was also a space for radical, intergenerational friendship. The friendships formed between the pub’s younger crowd –​some of the early gentrifiers, including some of the campaigners, most of whom were in their 20s and 30s at the time –​and some of its older patrons –​including David and his friends, who were in their late 40s and 50s, mostly working-​class and had lived in the area for much longer –​were made over pints and especially after closure, when the music would be turned down and people would sit around the bar counter listening to David and his friends share stories, anecdotes and thoughts about life, revolution and politics. It was in one of these moments that David sang ‘As Soon as this Pub Closes’ to Amy. The affective bonds forged between some of the pub’s younger patrons and David and his friends ultimately stretched beyond the spatio-​temporal confines of the pub itself. Some of David’s friends joined the campaign, continuing to share stories of the Joiners, of David and of Hackney Road 123

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from a time long before any of the younger members had been there. This once again worked as a reminder not only of what we had lost, but also the kind of community-​orientated, bacchanal, and wonky space that we were fighting for. Moreover, some of the campaigners and the pub’s former manager, Giuliano, also took care of David in the last few months of his life, buying him groceries and keeping him company in his flat in east London. The friendships formed at the pub were also thus the basis for the formation of alternative networks of care which, as Alva Gotby (2022) explains, makes friendship a particularly fruitful site from which to rethink our relationship to capitalism. As she explains, this is because the kinds of relations established in friendships ‘do not matter much in the normative story of a good life –​a story based on career progression, romance, marriage, property ownership, and childbirth … [they] become superfluous in this future-​oriented narrative of what a life should look like’ (p114). Moreover, friendship has always been an important component of alternative forms of queer world-​making (Weston, 1991). Indeed, it was ultimately David who exhorted the pub’s patrons to ‘start a campaign, although I won’t be involved’,14 to fight the closure during a meeting held in the pub a month before closure. These kind of relationships of care form ‘part of a politics that dares to imagine beyond capitalism’ (Gotby, 2022, p112) and the nuclear family as the key site through which we are supposed to make investments in the future. They also foregrounded pleasurable interactions in the present, going against the increasingly impossible squeeze of our time between precarious employment, domestic labour and caring responsibilities, as the state retreats from the provision of public goods. This reading of queer spaces as spaces of friendship goes against established narratives in which queer venues are simply seen as spaces to hook up with others in your 20s, until you find a partner and retreat home, forever. This narrative is also discernible in contemporary assessments of the loss of queer spaces, which recognize the value of these places yet remain firmly grounded in a heteronormative logic even as they try to reject it by ultimately accepting their declining significance to queer older life (for example, Abraham, 2020; Smith, 2016a). At the same time, it is important not to let nostalgia erase these space’s complicity in histories of exclusion. ‘The Joiners Arms wasn’t actually that great’, explains Jon, ‘it was good, and maybe it was all we had back then, but it was super white, full of white gay men’. Campaigners resisted the urge to let the Joiners off the hook easily just for having been a lifesaving haven for some at a particular time and place, recognizing and acknowledging what the space afforded, but also what it lacked. For this reason, campaigners were adamant in reminding others that the goal was not to replicate the Joiners. As Amy explains in an interview at the Museum of London, ‘what was brilliant about the start of the campaign, was that we were, from the offset, 124

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talking about and dreaming about what this community-​owned queer space could be’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). The forms of queerness enabled by the pub can thus themselves not be contained by linear temporal trajectories of capitalism nor identitarian categories but rather live on in a much more radical, perhaps ambitious, goal not of ‘saving’ queer spaces nor of ‘protecting’ them but of recreating their power and purpose, even if we might not know in advance the shape and form these may take in the future. This is the spirit encapsulated in the campaign’s slogan: ‘long live queer spaces’, where the emphasis is on the creation of alternative queer futures beyond both the superficial inclusivity of gentrification and the nostalgic and/​or romantic attachment to spaces that were radical but were nevertheless undercut by their own exclusionary dynamics (for example, whiteness). Thus, while the production of temporalities orientated towards a past before the closure, before gentrification, before redevelopment, served as inspiration and a springboard for political action in the present, the goal was something different: the goal was a different kind of queer future. It was this desire to create something new that ultimately drew other people, new people, into the campaign itself, people who had never ever been to the Joiners, at times who did not even know where it was. In this way, the campaign became not only a struggle to oppose the closure, to save the Joiners Arms or to reopen it but also to ‘create a new space for the next generation’ (Campkin, Marshall and Ross, 2018). Perhaps one of the most moving aspects of the campaign was its ability to see beyond both the nostalgia of the past and the immediacy of the present to imagine and dream a (queerer) future. After all, in utopia, ‘[t]‌he future is queerness’s domain’ (Muñoz, 2009, p1).

Queer utopias The future has always been a site of contention for queers attuned to the exclusionary dynamics engendered by normative investments in its reproduction. As explored, investment in the hope of a future of inclusion can work to ‘reward conformity’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p275) and those ‘who endorse domination and call it freedom’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p275). In a conversation with José Esteban Muñoz, Lisa Duggan expresses her scepticism towards hope and hopeful investments in the future for the ways in which they buttress neoliberal fantasies of progress, upward social mobility and privatization. As she explains, ‘[w]‌hen I think about hope, I set it alongside happiness and optimism, which I immediately associate with race and class privilege, with imperial hubris, with gender and sexual conventions, with maldistributed forms of security both national and personal’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p275). But, echoing Duggan, does hope have to be made of these things? Or rather, ‘[i]f happiness and optimism appear too often as 125

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individual, psychological, overbearing and annoying to those excluded from their complacent joys, doesn’t hope [also] sometimes arrive in collective, political and insurgent forms?’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p275). Queer utopia has often been described as a form of ‘educated hope’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p279) which gestures towards the creation of alternative future realities (Colmon, 2017; Freeman, 2010; Jones, 2013; Muñoz, 2009; Telmissany, 2014). Moving away from some of the more negative or ‘anti-​social’ dispositions of queer theory (for example, Edelman, 2004), queer utopia rejects the idea that investments in the future need be fundamentally normative and instead embodies a desire to ‘want something else, to want beside and beyond the matrix of social controls that is our life in late Capitalism … to participate in … other form[s]‌of desiring … [to] desire for a new world despite an emotional/​world situation that attempts to render such desiring impossible’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p278). Thus, unlike queer failure and anti-​normativity more broadly, queer utopia involves more than simply a (sometimes hopeless) rejection of norms: it is not bounded by the constraints of the present, but rather is future-​orientated, radically anticipative, and energetically invested in thinking of gender/​sexual scenarios beyond mere ‘inclusion’. Firstly, with regards the straightening tendencies of inclusion, practising queer utopia entails locating possibilities for resistance not in fighting for the inclusion of ways of being a gender/​sexual subject that already exist, but in fighting for those that are yet to be imagined. For example, when I asked Amy about what the organization’s ultimate goals and strategies were with regard to the redevelopment, she answered by saying: ‘Pushing the limits … we weren’t doing it for our own goals … [we were] just pushing for the queerest space’.15 Comments like this embody a utopian understanding of (not merely LGBTQ-​friendly but queerest) inclusion as fighting for a space that is not yet defined, and cannot be defined, within the political framing engendered by the politics of (LGBTQ+​) identity and recognition. It is by pursuing the wonky and unexpected path of ‘pushing the limits’, a path that defies the straightness and predictability with which narratives of inclusion demand we give a name and a label to our desires, that we can offer a glimpse of a queer-​and not simply LGBTQ-​friendly future. Queer utopia is here underpinned by collective desires for an alternative, for a life beyond ‘the moribund institutions’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p279) of LGBTQ-​friendliness and the normative desires these engender. Queer utopia thus moves beyond the cynicism of failure ‘into a generatively energetic revolutionary force’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p279). At the same time, underpinning this queer utopian political imaginary is also a desire to extend beyond and bypass what Jose Esteban Muñoz (2009) would call the ‘quagmire of the present’. Indeed, I first began reflecting on utopia after having a conversation with Peter, in which we realized that due 126

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to the delays in the redevelopment a ‘replacement venue’ would not actually be open for (at least) another four years, or maybe not at all. ‘We might not even ever be here for that’, explains Peter, over a pint on a sunny September afternoon, after a campaign meeting. He continues: ‘We might all have moved to the suburbs by then [laughs], and come back and walk past there and there will be a bunch of queers partying into the night, we’ll be going to sleep then, I’m old [laughs], and that will be because of us and what we did –​how weird is that? Or there might not be any of that, there might be a bunch of wankers in suits working away in the office, or a Sainsbury’s, I don’t know.’ Taken aback by the prospect that all of this could have all been for nothing, I ask him, probably projecting my own sense of discomfort onto him, whether this ‘not knowing’ unsettled him, not knowing who might be in there in the future, not knowing whether the space will be a wonky place of queer joy, simply another commercialized LGBTQ+​venue, or, worse even, neither, whether this made him feel uneasy. He replies: ‘Maybe a little, but not really. As you know, I actually hate partying [laughs], no but really, I don’t think it matters … I guess the idea of uncertainty and unpredictability is what excites me, that we’re opening some doors into the future, that none of us might even ever walk through them … that is not the point … the point is that this is a chance not just to replace a gay bar, but to create something led by the community, for the community, whatever that community is and looks like.’16 It is in the realm of uncertainty that queer utopian imaginaries unfold. Unpredictability here becomes exciting, embodying ‘a refusal to settle the form of the future and yet a commitment to one anyway’ (Freeman, 2010, p173). Marxists have often distanced themselves from the seemingly abstract work of utopia, opting in favour of a supposedly more ‘grounded’ approach set on elucidating the social conditions for economic reproduction. In The Principle of Hope (1995), Ernst Bloch refers to this strand of Marxist as the ‘cold stream’, that is grounded in historical materialist analysis as scientific study of the struggle and opposition against ideologies that work to conceal fundamental conditions of exploitation that are always economic (also see Levitas, 2010). Bloch’s own work has been fundamental in rehabilitating the concept of utopia in Marxist thought, showing that utopian tendencies –​ understood as a ‘hope for a better world or a better way of being in it, they are expressions of utopia’ (Levitas, 1989, p27) –​are fundamentally at the heart 127

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of the Marxist project. But Bloch also strives to formulate a ‘warmer’ kind of Marxism that ‘excites political passions, which makes one enthusiastic for liberation, which causes us to hope and have faith in a cause’ (Boer, 2016, p13). To this warmer stream of Marxist, as Bloch (1995) explains, ‘belong liberating intention and materialistically humane, humanely materialistic real tendency, towards whose goal all these disenchantments are undertaken’ (p209). It is in the dialectic between the cold and the warm stream, and the making of concrete utopias driven by analysis, and more abstract utopias driven by hope, passion for the cause, and anticipation for the future, that Bloch ultimately locates the emancipative potential of Marxism in the making of more liveable futures. The experience of the campaign foregrounds both these elements of utopia. On the one hand, daring to imagine alternative forms of living and dreaming into what an alternatively queer, and not simply inclusive, space may look like. The driving force for this more abstract form of engagement is located in a commitment to wonkiness and in the realm of uncertainty about the future. On the other hand, the ‘modes of expansive sociality’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p279) generated through collective organizing and a sense of collectivity –​even when this collectivity may not be known in advance –​ also open the door to the making of concrete utopia. As Amy explains, the end of the planning process once the redevelopment project eventually got approved ‘left [us] with the future’.17 Opposition to the closure and the redevelopment is what originally brought the campaign together. Engaging with planning and trying to ‘keep up’ with its rhythms by ‘working on the present … dealing with documents and objection letters’ initially foreclosed the creation of alternative futures. But the approval of the redevelopment marked the beginning of a new phase: no longer simply ‘working on the present’, campaigners could now shift their focus to ‘thinking about utopian things other than practical steps –​but also the practical steps to the utopia’.18 This involved, as Amy explains, ‘seeing actually what we’re made of in terms of not just opposing things, but creating things, what we’re made of in terms of not just opposing a development, opposing gentrification, but actually right now, ok this is what we want a space to look like, this is what we would like to see, and this is what should be done, and this is the kinds of people we want involved, and the kind of organization we want to be.’19 That is, while gentrification and closure of the pub ultimately threatened the community with loss, isolation and death –​even the death of its owner –​all of which were ghostly reminders of the partiality of narratives of LGBTQ+​ progress, the partiality of life itself, these forces also ‘lay the basis for a sideways 128

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step into political engagement in a disappointing world, via the educated hope, the concrete utopia’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p280). The Friends of the Joiners Arms registered as a Community Benefit Society with the aim of opening a queer space. The first step towards the making of this more concrete utopia was to organize events that platform non-​binary and drag kings of colour who are most marginalized from mainstream drag spaces that prioritize white cis men. Named Lèse Majesté, a French term describing an act of offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign and/​or state, the events embody the wonky power of the Joiners in its foregrounding of radical forms of queer sociality that go beyond those on offer at commercialized LGBTQ+​venues. At the same time, they also mark an explicit move away from the predominance of gay white men that used to populate the Joiners Arms. As Ghaziani and Stillwagon (2019) note, these queer ‘pop-​up’ nights can ‘provide a temporary third space … for queer people who construct them in contrast to existing spaces, many of which they perceive as inaccessible, unaffordable, exclusive, and sometimes discriminatory’ (p877). The fleeting-​ness of the pop-​up format can work to actually queer otherwise straight and/​or commercial spaces, just as it provides a temporary solution to the loss of queer venues by offering queers with opportunities to socialize, organize, work and develop networks of care, even if just for one or two nights a month. At the same time, these spaces are ultimately dependent on the character of the host venue itself, where problems of accessibility, safety and work practices –​including venues not paying decent wages to their staff –​might be unresolved. Therefore, while these nights are unquestionably sites of activism that provide space for queer people often excluded from mainstream queer life in the city, they do little to change structural conditions of dispossession or broader processes of gentrification and privatization which shape the spatio-​temporal rhythms of the city in favour of the straight and rich. For this reason, in the summer of 2022, the Friends of the Joiners Arms launched a share offer to raise the money to open a fully accessible, community-​owned, community-​run queer venue (Neate, 2022). The aim is to run the space under a collective ownership model, with all profits reinvested into the space itself and with workers becoming co-​owners and/​ or members of the management committee. Shares are set at £25, which renders them relatively accessible. All shareholders are given one vote to elect members of the management committee, regardless of how many shares they bought. This also incentivizes shareholders who can afford multiple shares to ‘pay them forward’ so those who cannot afford them can become shareholders and co-​owners. This will be the first venue of its kind in London, and the first one that caters specifically to queer communities in the UK. The collective ownership 129

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model offers a more democratic vision of queer venues not only as for-​profit businesses but as spaces of collective decision-​making and radical organizing. It also enacts queers not only as customers in a marketplace of services catered to LGBTQ+​people, but as co-​owners, workers and organizers in and of a space by the community, for the community. While it is yet to be seen, ethnographically-​speaking, what the community ownership model contributes to extant discussions about the closure of queer spaces in London, and what the space will actually look like, what it will feel like (which in itself could be the topic of a whole other book, maybe the next one), I suggest that this experiment in queer utopia offers a vision for the future in which the gay bar –​or queer pub –​need not be necessarily ‘doomed’, as commentators across the political spectrum have suggested. Perhaps, as many have argued, the gay bar cannot survive in its present form –​be it because of cultural shifts in attitudes towards queer people, although probably mostly due to gentrification and an increasingly de-​radicalized understanding of queerness itself, of which diversity politics is complicit. But the popularity of the drag king nights and the fact that the campaign actually managed to raise over £100,000 in over 2,000 individual shareholder purchases in the space of just over two months suggests that queer venues are still as important as ever, at least for those queers who do not see the possibility of getting married as a reason to stop going out, or those who cannot and/​or do not want to inhabit the increasingly straight(ened) spaces of inclusion. These two brief examples of queer utopia expose the kinds of openings that can indeed emerge from a situation of closure. Indeed, against the striking and ‘intense political conservatism’ (Halberstam, Muñoz and Eng, 2005, p5) which lurks behind the celebratory rhetoric of inclusivity, queer utopia offers the most convincing way of resisting inclusion by fighting for the inclusion of genders/​sexualities that are yet to be imagined, which is committed to a future whose form remains uncertain, which redeploys the pain of loss, death and isolation towards ‘expansive innovating socialities [which] produce energy for alternative, cooperative economies and participatory politics’ (Duggan and Muñoz, 2009, p279), and which ultimately rejects the temporality of the ‘here and now’ (Muñoz, 2009, p1) by insisting on ‘potentiality for another world’ (Muñoz, 2009, p1) and providing ‘glimpses of what is on the horizon’ (Jones, 2013, p3). Such a politics distinguishes itself from LGBTQ+​pragmatism and the focus on goals such as gay marriage, serving in the military or becoming CEO of a bank through which, as Muñoz (2009) and others have argued, the queer community has lost sight of the utopian aspirations that inspired activists of the 1960s and 1970s. For queer scholars the aim of queer politics need not be a focus on inclusion but nothing less than the achievement of a world beyond normativity, white supremacy and capitalism itself. Some proponents and critics of LGBTQ+​inclusion alike may hide their 130

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accommodations behind various forms of ‘pragmatism’ or even ‘realism’, arguing that, of course, queer utopia sounds great, but we need concrete details to realize these projects, we need to work incrementally, we need to first settle, then we can start to dream. But who is to say that queer utopia is any less pragmatic? Or rather, are not the underwhelming promises of inclusion also fantasies? Perhaps the creation of ‘queer counterhistories of space and time, alternative narratives of development’ (Halberstam, Muñoz and Eng, 2005, p5) is indeed a central component of pragmatism itself, of the ways in which we rid ourselves of the cruel optimism which inflects our obsessions and attachments to fantasies of ‘the good life’ and the aspirations dictated by neoliberal capitalist visions (or hallucinations) of procuring prosperity and becoming somebody (Conclusion). The task for queer Marxism in this current moment of crisis, dispossession, grief and loss might be precisely that of rescuing the utopian potential from ‘cold’ historical materialist critique, to show that investments in queer utopia are integral to the making of alternative worlds, and that dreaming about a revolution as soon as this (queer) pub closes is one of the key steps through which the abstract becomes concrete. As explored, promises of inclusion requires us to invest in a specific version of the future under the illusion of future returns (Rottenberg, 2017; Rao, 2020). This (perpetually deferred) future promise of a ‘good life’ keeps queer subjects hooked to a version of the present that might actually prevent them from flourishing (Berlant, 2011). In this sense, promises of inclusion can work to foreclose alternative visions of the future by requiring people to invest in specific, and often underwhelming, versions of the future that are restricted by the logics of the market and/​or confined to market-​friendly configurations of difference. At the same time, the kinds of socialities, relationships and friendships developed in trying to survive the present can lead to the creation of alternative queer utopias. Openings can thus emerge from situations of closure –​the revolution might indeed ‘start’ from the closure of this pub. These do not emerge from seeking inclusion within the dominant institutions and processes of capital accumulation, but from daring to imagine a queer future that overcomes both some of the limits of the past and the ‘intense political conservatism’ (Halberstam, Muñoz and Eng, 2005, p5) which lurks behind the celebratory rhetoric of inclusion. My hope in this chapter was to sketch some of the conditions of possibilities for these alternative queer futures beyond the straightening logics of neoliberal inclusion.

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Conclusion Over the past few years, London has lost over half of its LGBTQ+​venues. Discussions about the disappearance of these spaces have mostly blamed dating apps and cultural shifts that have ‘brought gay culture into the mainstream’ (Greenhalgh, 2015). As Jeremy Atherton Lin (2021) points out: ‘In Britain, the steep decline [in gay bars] came not long after civil partnerships were introduced in 2005’ (p9). Similarly, author June Thomas wonders whether ‘as gay rights move forward, the gay bar –​the place where it all began –​may get left behind’ (Thomas, 2011b). While their loss might be sad, LGBTQ+​venues are often seen to be relics of a past that queer people are in the process of leaving behind. Thomas herself, who has published an essay series on gay bar’s riotous past and uncertain future, acknowledges that while she ‘feel[s]‌bad about abandoning’ gay bars, she rarely goes to these spaces anymore, mostly because she has been in a relationship for 14 years (Thomas, 2011b) (as if that’s something that disqualifies you from going out) and because ‘they get going too late’ (Thomas, 2011b). As she explains, ‘[o]nce upon a time … gay bars were the only venues where gay people could let down their defences … [but] [n]ow, at least in urban centres, gay men and lesbians [sic] feel safe in scads of straight restaurants and bars’ (Thomas, 2011b). Thus, we are told that these spaces are important, or rather were important, at a time in which LGBTQ+​people were not accepted. Then, these spaces could serve as muster stations for queers to socialize, organize, exorcise their demons, be themselves, imagine a future. But now, these spaces are but remnants of a past: representative not of the promise for a future, but of a time that has come and gone, often for the better. These accounts often reproduce linear narratives of inclusion and progress in which acceptance ‘in the West’ has meant that, while the closure of these spaces might be upsetting to some, it actually ‘points to a larger, and overwhelmingly positive, trend’ (Smith, 2016a). This trend points to a future of inclusion, same-​sex marriage, kids, family, a job, and all the things that queer people have long been denied. The mere offer of such a future (for some) is taken as evidence of inclusion, while the existence of alternative (queer) futures beyond normativity is often erased. Resistance 132

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to this happy version of the future, in which inclusion is just around the corner, is often branded as unrealistic, nostalgic and backwards-​looking (Smith, 2016a). Even when rocketing rent prices and predatory property developers are acknowledged as one of the main drives for the closures (Greenhalgh, 2015), the focus quickly shifts on how to get LGBTQ+​ venues to become more successful businesses and make more money (Thomas, 2011a). Such critiques are not tied to a broader critique of the institutions of capitalist modernity that have made cities like London into playgrounds for the rich few while those who stand in the way of endless capitalist expansion must either struggle to survive or get out of the way. One of the aims of this book has been to show why queer activists should care about the disappearance of queer spaces, not simply as memories of a riotous past but as spaces of queerness and interclass contact for the future, rejecting claims that doing so is either backwards-​looking or mere nostalgia. Such reductive narratives –​present on both the left and right of the political spectrum –​reproduce the central racist and classist tenets of ‘queer liberalism’ (Eng, 2010) in their underlying assumption that inclusion has arrived, and that investments in its promises are not only worthwhile, but politically rational and desirable. The book has traced the various investments and dis-​investments that queer subjects make in neoliberal promises of inclusion across different contexts. Looking at how inclusion keeps queer subjects attached to hopes, longings, dreams and desires –​for belonging, for happiness, for success, for an (extra)ordinary life, for a ‘sufficiently gay’ venue –​that reproduce exclusionary logics, I have tried to offer an intimate account of the queer politics of diversity that reconciles economic questions of redistribution with queer subjects’ (cultural) lifeworlds. In so doing I do not seek to dismiss or denounce those who seek inclusion in capitalist institutions or who remain attached to their promises, but to understand the organization of the desire for recognition or, indeed, what moves people to become or remain attached to such objects of desire that might prevent them from flourishing, despite the labour, costs and the investments these promissory objects require. As I have argued, it is the constantly deferred promise of a better future –​ in the form of a better career, professional success, belonging, recognition or another queer pub to call home –​that sustains inclusion as a desirable and attainable goal. While the promise of future returns keeps queer subjects ‘hooked’ to neoliberal fantasies of the good life, there are also possibilities for these to be(come) ‘unhooked’. The chapters that have made up this book have traced a movement from the organization of inclusion to the various forms of attachment and detachment from its fantasies, nurturing ways of letting go of these fantasies and coming up with new ones in the creation of alternatively queer and anti-​capitalist futures. It is in these moments of ‘letting go’ that the contradictions and the limits of inclusion are made most 133

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visible. It is in these moments that the ‘cruelly optimistic’ (Berlant, 2006) relations around which desires for recognition are organized are revealed. In Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant (2011) is interested in making sense of the various contradictions underpinning such promises, reconciling the excitement and happiness that comes from the (constantly deferred) capacity for their attainment, and the overwhelming disappointment which ensues when these promises reveal themselves to be empty. Berlant encourages Marxists to take these fantasies and investments seriously, not because they are attainable, nor simply because they are ‘effects’ of the economic system, but because they are integral to the very maintenance and regeneration of ‘the system’ itself: their sustenance smooths over some of neoliberalism’s inherent contradictions. From this perspective, what Marxists understand as ‘class struggle’ unfolds not only through the exploitative relation between labour and capital, but at a more intimate level, through diverse queer struggles to live the liveable lives promised by neoliberalism, through efforts to be(come) recognized according to its normative logics, and through the various fantasies and forms of attachment that must be maintained in the fulfilment of these (often empty and cruel) promises. By paying attention to the interplay between promises of inclusion, the reproduction of queer value, and the gentrification of both space and queer politics, the book understands the politics of diversity as one of the key battlegrounds for various struggles unfolding in the city between straightened and more messy forms of queerness that cannot be reconciled with extant processes of capital accumulation. In particular, I have argued that diversity politics is underpinned by a process of queer incorporation which seeks to convert queerness into something that has value and which, in so doing, channels the otherwise radical ambitions of queer politics into the market. Against such straightened and gentrified versions of queerness, I have foregrounded the importance of thinking of queerness as a way of becoming and/​or inhabiting space and time outside –​ or at least at a slant in relation to –​capitalist logics of accumulation and the normativities they engender (for example, Halberstam, 2005). In so doing I have sought to offer an understanding of queer freedom and queer critique as intrinsically connected to various forms of anti-​capitalist struggle. One of the key contributions that this book makes to extant debates about the relationship between queer and anti-​capitalist struggle is to demonstrate the importance of economic questions to queer activists today, and the relevance of queer issues and understandings to Marxist critiques of capitalism. In the book, the struggle between sterile versions of queer diversity that have been accentuated in neoliberal ways and emptied of their unruly potential, and more messy versions of queer difference that cannot be turned into a resource for profit-​orientated endeavours, unfolds onto different sites 134

Conclusion

in the city’s queer landscapes. In the corporate world of LGBTQ+​inclusion, this struggle plays out through queer subject’s own forms of attachment to neoliberal promises of ‘the good life’, the specific ways in which queerness needs to be ‘put to work’ in the LGBTQ-​friendly corporation in order to unlock its queer value, and the ‘straightening labour’ that queers have to perform in order to align themselves with corporate fantasies of inclusion. In the story about the closure of the Joiners Arms, the struggle between a sterile diversity politics and more radical versions of queer difference unfolds through the promise to reinclude a replacement LGBTQ+​venue on the site of the former pub. As I argued, the promise was not only at odds with the forms of queerness the pub had catered for, but actually worked to lubricate the process of redevelopment by imbuing it with a progressive and friendly appeal, ‘straightening up’ the pub’s queerness by bringing it into a neoliberal frame, and ultimately by attempting to reconcile the goals of queer politics with those of the market. My central assertion in this book has been that neoliberal promises of LGBTQ+​inclusion engender forms of gentrification –​both of queer activism and of queer spaces –​that are ultimately at odds with a genuinely transformative vision for queer leftist politics. Though each of the case studies has told a different story about how queerness is effectively gentrified through inclusion, each has also revealed that the production of demands for recognition and for LGBTQ-​friendliness, however appealing and seductive, often sustains conditions of maldistribution, unfriendliness and exclusion. These conditions are certainly racialized, classed and gendered, but not always in predictable ways: the capitalist logics of this new brand of diversity politics harness and proliferate, as opposed to restrict and/​or assault, intersectional queer differences in order to shore up capital. I read diversity politics as the container of a broader class struggle in the city unfolding not simply between ‘owners exploiting labor or labor rebelling against managers … [but] between those who value interclass contact and work hard to maintain those arenas in which it can occur, and those who fear it and who work to create sterile spaces free of class mixing’ (Halberstam, 2005, p14; also see Schulman, 2012). In the second half of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Samuel Delany (1999) argues that ‘given the mode of capitalism under which we live, life is at its most rewarding, productive, and pleasant when large numbers of people understand, appreciate and seek out interclass contact and communication conducted in a mode of good will’ (p111). Tracing the destruction of New York City’s sexual subcultures as pleasurable zones of interclass contact, Delany argues that such zones of intimate, interclass contact are increasingly under attack. In their place, a fundamentally more competitive form of social encounter has emerged: networking. Although his aim is not to establish rigid boundaries between these two ways of relating to others in the city, Delany proposes a 135

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theory of social change and of queer politics that hinges upon these (more or less) distinct forms of urban encounter. For Delany, contact is the conversations one starts with the neighbour, with the person behind you in the line at the grocery counter, or perhaps with the good Samaritan who helps you after a traffic incident. Contact also includes intercourse or casual sex in public restrooms, parks and the toilets of pubs as well as apartments ‘from which nonsexual friendships and/​or acquaintances lasting for decades or a lifetime may spring’ (p123). Contact is the discussion you have with the person next to you at the bar, or on the bus, or the tube –​though us Londoners know those can be quite rare. Contact includes pleasant chats with strangers, but it can also yield information, or a job. Though not exclusively, these contact encounters mostly take place in public space. They may be rare, but ‘real’ (p125). Delany explains that some of his most rewarding relationships began as ‘cross-​class contacts in public space’ (p126). Such encounters are central to Delany’s vision of ‘the city at its healthiest’ (p126). While the worldliness of contact provides the kind of experience that makes life in the city ‘wonder-​filled and rich’ (p199), networking on the other hand retains that inescapably provincial and small-​town attitude that is terrified of cross-​class contact and driven by the notion that ‘the only “safe” friends we can ever have must be met through school, work, or preselected special interest groups’ (p199). As Delany explains, whereas contact appears to be more random, networking ‘tends to be professional and motive-​ driven’ (p129). Of course, contact is also not exactly random but rather the product of broader political decisions, commercial interests, planning decisions and migration patterns, to name but a few forces which affect the class make-​up of urban space. Nevertheless, for Delany, networking spaces and events, unlike contact spaces, are explicitly driven by a self-​interested desire to overcome the ‘paucity of socio-​material benefits everyone who attends them hopes to receive’ (p139). Whereas contact ‘regularly crosses class lines in those public spaces in which interclass encounters are at their most frequent’ (p129), networking ‘crosses class lines only in the most vigilant manner’ (p129). At its most basic level, contact is an ‘outdoor sport’ dependent on social institutions invested in and dependent on the promotion of a notion of the public. On the other hand, networking tends to happen indoors and is reliant on institutions –​such as big business –​that promote ‘safe’ experiences ‘where those with the requisite social skills can manoeuvre’ (p129), but where everyone else is left out. The prizes to be won through networking may at first appear quite seductive, even glamourous. As Delany himself notes, drawing from his experiences of such networking events, they can look quite ‘extraordinary’ (p130), promising to open up opportunities for self-​advancement, enabling proximity to people who have ‘made it’ and bestowing onto a lucky few the 136

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(albeit temporary) illusion that one has, too, been selected as the next big thing. But ultimately, for Delany, it is contact, not this kind of self-​interested and competitive social encounter, that is far more likely to provide the kinds of benefits and social safety nets that people need in order to not merely survive, but actually thrive in a city. Yet contact is becoming increasingly threatened by gentrification and austerity, which make people dependent on privatized social safety nets (and thus reduces the incentive for contact) and delivers spaces whose primary function is to ensure the semblance of ‘safety’ for middle-​class consumers. That is why, for Delany, the emergence of the privatized and safe notion of networking over more public, interclass and somewhat unruly forms of urban contact is a threat not only to the spaces in which such contact might occur (public parks, squares, pubs, clubs, gay porn movie theatres, public toilets and so on), but to the very fabric of social life in a truly ‘democratic metropolis’ (p127). I suggest that diversity politics, in its current neoliberal formulation, is similarly anti-​contact in its privileging of ‘safe’ interactions that mostly occur indoors under the generous auspices of inclusive corporations. As the ethnographic case studies considered in the book suggest, current investments in diversity have largely worked against spaces of queer interclass contact in favour of more sterile queer networking spaces. In these spaces queer subjects are increasingly being seduced by ‘the notion that capitalism now addresses us in our diversity and particularity’ (Joseph, 2002, p47) and are invited to invest in the promises of the market in the hope of future returns. Nevertheless, the stories of the participants featured in this project also reveal that queer subjects remain engaged in various struggles to create spaces of interclass contact, to make their lives more liveable and to acquire resources that enable both accommodation and resistance to the various norms and normativities underpinning promises of inclusion. At times these efforts, while successful, have made queer subjects available for exploitation. At other times, they have failed, revealing the precarious and fraught nature of inclusion itself. The ethnographic stories contained in this book are ultimately replete with examples in which such investments in the promises of inclusion are ultimately at odds with more expansive versions of queer freedom and democracy in the city, such as that articulated by Delany (1999). Indeed, while such cruelly optimistic investments and the gentrifying tendencies of diversity politics are part and parcel of the exclusionary logics of neoliberalism, they are not inevitable. In the chapters I have identified particular tensions and lines of contestations between gentrified and messy version of queerness, between corporate efforts to extract the productive value of queer differences and the lived messy realities by which queer people put their differences to work in supposedly inclusive workplace contexts, between the individualistic logic of privatization and community ownership, between the temporalities of capital accumulation and those of queer utopia. 137

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The process of queer incorporation is thus never final nor total. Rather, the possibility for resistance remains intrinsic to the straightening tendencies of inclusion as long as we appreciate the ways in which lived experiences of gender/​sexuality are always already queer: they are always incompletely or imperfectly contained by diversity discourses and their scholarly critiques. Herein lies the specific political contribution of the ethnographic work, which is to show, in the words of David Graeber (2007) –​whose thinking and approach has been foundational to my relationship to anthropology –​ that ‘most of what we assume to be immutable has been, in other times and places, arranged quite differently, and therefore, that human possibilities are in almost every way greater than we ordinarily imagine’ (p1). As the scenes of queer encounter with promises of inclusion in this book have shifted from the corporate spaces of LGBTQ+​networking to queer resistances to gentrification and the creation of alternative queer utopias, my hope is that this book has provided queer activists invested in the making of more liveable queer futures beyond the celebratory –​yet fundamentally conversative –​ neoliberal politics of diversity with the necessary tools to imagine a future of queer possibilities that is in almost every way greater than that promised by inclusion.

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Notes Introduction 1

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Drawing from queer perspectives which conceive of the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality as an empirical question in its own right, in the book I use the term ‘gender/​ sexuality’ as a way of pointing to the intimate imbrication of sex, gender and sexuality, and the political utility in refusing to separate these. Building on work by Dean Spade (2011) and Dylan Rodriguez (2004) on the ‘non-​profit industrial complex’, the term has been circulating, largely on Twitter and other online media outlets, as a way to effectively describe the process of privatization by which the previously ambitious goals of equality-​driven legislation and social justice community-​ organizing –​including anti-​racist, queer and feminist organizing –​are increasingly replaced by a watered-​down and an unthreatening form of diversity politics driven by EDI consultants and professionalized activists. In an essay on the anti-​racist movement in Britain, Paul Gilroy (2011) similarly argues that the emergence of Black political leaders that are selling their services as diversity consultants, managers and trainers to the army and to corporations has led to the privatization of the movement and the emergence of a ‘consultariat’ that actually buttresses structural inequalities by colluding with racist and capitalist institutions of power.

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Robert Milligan was also the owner of a large sugar plantation in Jamaica and of the West India Docks Company, a company which monopolized the import of sugar, rum and coffee into London for a period of two decades. A statue of Milligan was removed in 2020 from outside the Museum of the Docklands after pressure from anti-​racist activists following the toppling of fellow slaveowner Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol. Sudjic, 2021, n/​p. Also referred to as the ‘People’s Armada’, the ‘Docklands Armada’ or the ‘Thames Armada’ following a protest involving a flotilla of decorated boats which cruised up the Thames to the Houses of Parliament with the slogan ‘GIVE US BACK OUR LAND’ painted onto its sails. See The People’s Armada (1985) documentary, available from: https://​www2.bfi. org.uk/​films-​tv-​peo​ple/​4ce2b6​e4a9​90f. The interview was also translated into English and published in The Guardian (Rankin, 2015). An annual list of Britain’s most ‘inclusive’ and ‘LGBTQ-​friendly’ employers. Interview, March 2018. See the Focus E15 campaign against the demolition of the Carpenters Estate in Newham and the Sisters Uncut’s campaign against the demolition of the Marion Court Estate in Hackney. ‘Draft London Plan: LGBTQ+​community response’, 2 March 2018.

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Chapter 2 1 2 3

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Fieldnotes, March 2017; LBTQWomen event. Event brochure. LBTQWomen is a network created to inspire, inform, and celebrate success of lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer women. Fieldnotes, March 2017; LBTQWomen event. Fieldnotes, March 2017; LBTQWomen event. Fieldnotes, March 2017; LBTQWomen event. Fieldnotes, March 2017; LBTQWomen event. Fieldnotes, January 2017; Norton Rose Fulbright LGBTQ+​network event. Fieldnotes, January 2017; Norton Rose Fulbright LGBTQ+​network event. Fieldnotes, May 2017; OUTstanding ‘Board Readiness’ event. Proposition 8, also known informally as Prop 8, was a constitutional amendment that intended to ban same-​sex marriage in the state of California. ‘Interview with Leanne Pittsford of Lesbians Who Tech’, Model View Culture (2014). This is reflected in LWT’s status as both a registered not-​for-​profit and an LCC (limited liability company), meaning the company is at once a tax-​exempt charity and a profit-​ driven business with a corporate structure, a corporate brand and a CEO. Lesbians Who Tech summit event brochure. During the summit, queer/​lesbian entrepreneurs are invited to participate in a ‘pitch competition’ to raise capital for their start-​up. The winner gets a $5,000 cheque to invest in their business. Fieldnotes, November 2017; Lesbians Who Tech summit. Fieldnotes, November 2017; Lesbians Who Tech summit. Interview, February 2017. Interview, March 2017.

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Fieldnotes, March 2018; Glamazon event for trans visibility day. One participant also referred to the existence of a ‘T job’ alongside their ‘day job’, referring to the work she does as co-​founder and chair of a professional network for trans people in the UK (Fieldnotes, March 2018; Glamazon event for Trans Visibility Day). A list (published online) compiled with the purpose of ‘celebrating the achievements of influential LGBT people’. Of course, we could argue that, given that the fact that diversity work acquires even more value when it is perceived to be ‘natural’, the account provided may not be ‘truthful’ but an attempt to construct this labour as ‘voluntary’, that is, not self-​interested Yet, while this certainly might be true, here I am less interested in ascertaining the ‘validity’ of her claims than in shedding light on her own interpretations of this labour. Individuals who identify as heterosexual and who support LGBTQ+​inclusion on the workplace. Individuals (often volunteers) who are ‘committed … to making diversity work happen’ in organizations (for a critique of the ‘diversity champions approach’ to inclusion, see Spaaij et al., 2016). Straight allies, like role models, are key components of the ways in which Stonewall measures the degree of workplace LGBTQ-​friendliness.

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One night in October 2014 I went to the Joiners Arms and met a Haredi Jewish man wearing the traditional long black suit, a white shirt, and a spodik –​the hat worn by (married) Haredi Jewish men. He told me he mostly lived his life as a full-​time Haredi except for those two or three nights a month in which he would come to the Joiners. I asked him whether anyone in his community knew that he liked to frequent this particular pub, a queer pub. He said, ‘of course not, no one could know this pub is “gay”. There’s no rainbow flag outside’. Whilst this interaction occurred years before the start of this research project, it exemplifies the limits of visibility in relation to a pub like the Joiners Arms. Fieldnotes, August 2017, a campaign meeting at Amy’s house. Fieldnotes, August 2017, email correspondence between campaigners. Fieldnotes, September 2017, redevelopment marketing brochure. Fieldnotes, April 2018. Fieldnotes, August 2017, Peter during a campaign meeting. Ibid. Anthony Michaels (a pseudonym) ran a commercial LGBTQ+​nightclub in Soho. Objection letter written by the Friends of the Joiners Arms to the Council, August 2017. Ibid. Fieldnotes August 2017, Amy during a campaign meeting. Fieldnotes, August 2017, Dan during a campaign meeting. Press release from The Friends of the Joiners Arms, August 2017. Fieldnotes, September 2017, roundtable discussion with the property developers at the Tower Hamlets town hall. Ibid. Amy’s local (and run-​down) pub which too, like the Joiners Arms, offers spaces for ‘interclass contact’. Indeed, the pub is independent, a fact which distinguishes it from the Brew Dog opened across the street in 2016. Campaigners frequently met in this pub, citing its scruffy leather couches, cheap pints, unpretentious clientele and ‘sticky floors’ as motivations to keep returning. ‘It’s not the Joiners of course’, explained Coleen, ‘but it’s fun, cheap and it can get a bit messy’, she continued. This pub also closed in 2022. Fieldnotes, September 2017, Amy, during a campaign meeting at the Marquis of Landsdowne pub. Fieldnotes, August 2017, Amy outside the Tower Hamlets town hall. CAMRA website (https://​camra.org.uk/​). Fieldnotes, August 2017, Peter outside the Tower Hamlets town hall. Fieldnotes, September 2017, Coleen at the roundtable discussion with the property developers at the Tower Hamlets town hall. As Andersson (2009) points out, the area on Hackney Road in which the Joiners Arms was located was the site of a very serious assault, experienced by Jon Binnie and described in his doctoral thesis. Thus, while for some, living amid the ‘ruins of the urban landscape’ (Andersson, 2009, p63) may be a necessity –​perhaps even a desirable one –​for others it may be a remarkably dangerous feat.

Chapter 5 1 2 3 4 5 6

Interview with Amy, June 2022. Fieldnotes, August 2017, BBC news. Fieldnotes, August 2017, BBC news. Fieldnotes, November 2017, Peter, during a campaign meeting. Fieldnotes, October 2017, Amy, during a campaign meeting. Fieldnotes, March 2018, Peter, during a campaign meeting at the Marquis of Landsdowne.

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The Gentrification of Queer Activism 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

Fieldnotes, July 2017, Amy, during a campaign meeting. Fieldnotes, August 2017, email correspondence between the campaigners. Fieldnotes, August 2017, email correspondence between the campaigners. Fieldnotes, March 2018, Amy, during a campaign meeting at the Marquis of Landsdowne. Fieldnotes, October 2017, Amy, during a campaign meeting at Dalston Superstore. Fieldnotes, February 2020, Peter during a campaign meeting. Fieldnotes, August 2017, Amy, during the Development Planning Committee meeting at the Tower Hamlets town hall. Interview with Amy, June 2022. Fieldnotes, October 2017, Amy, during a campaign meeting at Dalston Superstore. Fieldnotes, September 2018, Peter, after a public campaign meeting at Hackney Showroom. Interview with Amy, June 2022. Interview with Amy, June 2022. Press release from The Friends of the Joiners Arms, October 2017.

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Index References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (231n3). A Abram, S.  36, 111, 121 ACV  see asset of community value affirmative action  28, 29 Ahmed, S.  66, 83, 102, 104, 105, 115 alternative queer utopias  23, 112, 131, 138 anarchist space  96, 97 Andersson, J.  39 anti-​capitalist struggle  8, 134 anti-​gentrification activism  45 anti-​gentrification campaigners  2, 37 anti-​normativity  52, 53, 57, 58, 63, 64, 84, 126 Arendt, H.  11 asset of community value (ACV)  122 assimilation  5, 8, 12, 17, 52, 53, 57, 58 austerity  27, 34, 35, 88, 137 policies  16, 21, 26, 34, 43, 44, 88 authentic engagement  31 authenticity  9, 12, 13, 46–​48, 50, 51, 62, 74, 82, 83, 88 productive value of  47–​51 Autostraddle  59 B Badgett, Lee  30 Bell, D.  101, 105 Berlant, L.  10, 11, 134 Binnie, J.  101, 105 Bloch, E.  127, 128 Bloom, P.  33 Boellstorff, T.  8 Brown, G.  106 business  22, 27–​33, 46, 47, 49–​51, 53, 65 BuzzFeed  56 C campaign meeting  19, 121, 127 campaigners  89–​91, 93, 96–​100, 110, 113–​119, 121, 122, 124 Campkin, B.  35 Canary Wharf  7, 18, 19, 21, 25–​27, 29, 34–​36, 76, 90

capital accumulation  4, 6, 7, 9, 15, 16, 36, 43, 95, 96, 103–​105, 111, 112 capitalism  3, 4, 13, 15, 27, 33, 34, 43, 44, 63, 64, 124, 125, 134, 135 capitalist crisis  30–​34 Castro Varela, M. do M.  103, 107 CEO-​ization  62, 63, 65 of queer activism  62–​65 of queer politics  46–​65 civil rights movement  29 class  8, 15, 44, 78, 79, 106 class politics  23, 91, 106, 107 commodified gayness  16 community spaces  34, 89 closure of  34, 89 community value  122 concrete utopia  128, 129 contemporary corporate investments  23, 27, 44 corporate business strategy  32 corporate control  28, 68, 70, 73 corporate diversity  25–​45 politics  22, 43, 47, 59, 63, 64, 88 corporate inclusivity  5, 6, 19, 22, 31, 86 corporate investments  2, 18, 19, 27, 33, 36, 43, 45, 46 in diversity  27–​30, 33, 43 in LGBTQ  7, 16, 21, 22, 26, 27, 33, 43 corporate leadership  31 corporate spaces  53, 55, 88, 138 corporate workplace  30, 72 corporate world  4, 5, 18–​20, 27, 28, 50, 53, 54, 57–​59, 61, 88 critical diversity  78 cross-​class contacts  136 Cruel Optimism  10, 134 cultural misrecognition  44 cultural politics  50 cultural recognition  43–​45 culture  28, 38, 41, 46, 50, 55, 61, 65, 111 Cushing, E.  56

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D David, E.  72 David, Immanuel  87 day jobs  74–​77, 81, 118–​120 Delany, S. R.  23, 44, 135, 137 de-​radicalization  3, 93 dereliction  100, 101, 112 Dhawan, N.  103, 107 diversity  2, 4, 13, 27, 29, 33, 47, 50, 66, 67, 72, 73, 77, 88, 94, 102, 105, 108, 112, 114 discourses  64, 106, 138 failed laboured performances of  77–​81 management  22 non-​performativity of  78, 102 performances of  69, 72, 73 politics  3, 4, 8, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 43–​45, 118, 134, 135, 137 rhetoric of  29, 38 understandings of  93, 94, 105 workers  19, 66, 68 diversity work  22, 66–​88 value of  81, 82 Doan, P. L.  105 Duggan, L.  44 Durrant. D.  117, 120 E East London  7, 18, 19, 21, 25–​45, 113 economic aspirations  35 economic doctrine  12 economic inequalities  30, 69 economic policies  12, 44 economic redistribution  43–​45 Edelman, L.  115, 116 Eden, Paul  100 emotional intelligence  27 equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) industrial complex  2 ethical rebranding  26 of corporations  28 ethnographic work  4, 19, 21, 118, 138 ethnography  7, 20 Expresso  27 extraordinary homonormativity  politics of  55–​58 F failed laboured performances  77–​81 fantasies  12, 13, 86, 108, 112, 131, 133, 134 financial sanctions  28 fiscal responsibility  33, 35 Florida, R.  39 Fraser, N.  44 free market  12, 33, 54 Friends of the Joiners Arms  89–​108 friendships  19, 23, 123–​125, 131 Fuck Theory  53

G Gay Bar  123 gay bars  1, 89, 114, 127, 130, 132 gay jobs  74–​77 gay replacement venue  91–​96 gayness  27, 71–​73, 93, 99 gender  2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 44, 54, 57, 65, 68–​70, 72–​73, 76, 78, 81, 102–​105 gender/​sexuality  14, 17, 44, 65, 68–​70, 73, 81, 102–​105 The Gentrification of the Mind  16 gentrified spaces  112 Ghaziani, A.  129 Gilroy, P.  139n3 Glasgow, Alex  109 The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good for Business  27 global capital  44 global competitiveness  29 global stock market  33 Gotby, A.  124 Graeber, D.  138 Greater London Council (GLC)  35 Gwynne, G.  95 H Hackney Citizen article  114 Halberstam, J.  16, 18, 95 Halperin, D. M.  52 happiness  17, 94, 114, 115, 125, 133, 134 Hennessy, R.  15 Higgins, H.  105 Hochschule, A. S.  103, 107 Holck, L.  29 homocapitalism  30, 32 homonormativity  51–​53, 55, 57–​60, 62–​64, 106, 107 homophobia  10, 30, 44, 65, 116 homosexuality  1, 31, 96 human capital  22, 50, 51 I identities  9, 11, 14, 48, 50–​53, 56, 57, 92, 94, 123, 126 immigrant communities  3, 7 inclusion  2, 6, 8, 10–​12, 16, 18, 23, 28, 85, 91, 102, 103, 105–​107, 116, 131, 133 class politics of  106–​108 initiatives  15, 30, 106 neoliberal politics of  25–​45 promise of  9–​11 queer political economy of  13–​15 as straightening device  103–​106 straightening tendencies of  89–​108 works  8, 14 inclusive corporations  22, 67, 68, 70, 72, 84, 88, 93, 137 inclusive workplace culture  66, 78 inclusiveness  9, 15, 68, 112

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inclusivity  3, 4, 6–​8, 18, 22, 27, 28, 34, 43, 67, 68, 79, 85 inhabiting space  9, 16, 18, 23, 95, 101, 105, 134 J Jaffe, S.  61 Joiners Arms  5–​7, 23, 38–​43, 89, 93, 94, 98, 99, 104, 105, 121, 122, 129 K Kerfoot, D.  20 L labour  22, 23, 35, 62, 69–​76, 87, 88, 116 laboured performances  70, 72, 79, 86 late licence  99–​101, 105, 114 lesbian  20–​22, 53–​61, 64, 91 lesbian tech CEOs  13, 22, 46–​65 queer role models  58–​62 Lesbians Who Tech  53–​55 LGBTQ  1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 17, 30, 32, 38, 42, 43, 49, 51, 60, 82, 92, 96–​98, 122 value of  106, 113 LGBTQ+​  6, 8, 9, 61, 67, 68, 71, 78, 92, 93, 126, 132 inclusion  3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 16, 20, 22, 30, 31, 33, 104, 105 movement  22, 62, 63 spaces  1, 16, 38, 39, 92, 101, 113 staff network  71, 75, 77, 78 LGBTQ-​friendly corporation  66–​88 queer value in  68–​71 Lin, J. A.  123, 132 Livingstone, N.  117, 120 local communities  25, 26, 35, 37, 41, 44, 120 London Dockland Development Corporation (LDDC)  26 London Living Wage (LLW)  40 London Plan  35, 41, 42 long live queer spaces  120, 125 M Mariposas en el Andamio  70 market rationality  12, 35 middle-​class gentrifiers  36 Milligan, R.  139n1 Moore, F.  26 multinational corporations  30 multi-​sited ethnography  19 multi-​sited field  18–​21 Muñoz, J. E.  126, 130 N Nelson, Zed  37 neoliberal capitalism  21, 45 neoliberal politics  of inclusion  25–​45

neoliberalism  3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 50, 53, 134, 137 gender/​sexual politics of  11–​13 neoliberalization  7, 34, 36 networking spaces  53, 136 night-​time economy  38, 41–​43 non-​profit industrial complex  139n2 normativities  89–​108 nostalgia  24, 112, 123–​125, 133 Not Gay  73 O office spaces  35, 36, 41, 89, 108, 110 Olesen, K.  36 ‘On queer privilege’  53 Osworth, A. E.  59 P Peck, J.  34 pensioner poverty  34 pinkwashing  30–​34, 43 critique  31, 32 planning system  117–​119 political action  116, 122, 123, 125 political activism  52, 59, 63, 64 political economy  3, 8, 9, 13, 15, 21, 105, 106, 108 Pollard, David  39 power  13, 28, 33, 42, 46, 48, 51, 53, 54, 59, 119, 125 privatization  6, 7, 15, 18, 33, 34, 37, 44, 98, 103, 108, 125, 129 professionalization  118 Profit and Pleasure  15 property developers  36, 37, 42, 43, 90, 93–​96, 98, 100, 108, 117–​119 Puar, J. K.  2 public spaces  136 Q queer  activists  2, 18, 19, 23, 31, 32, 44, 112, 133, 134, 138 anti-​capitalist activism  5 anti-​gentrification activists  6, 23 anti-​normativity  57, 64 approaches  13–​15, 70, 106 communities  7, 19, 27, 31, 42, 43, 111, 113, 129, 130 critique  21, 52, 63, 134 differences  8, 22, 47, 67, 69, 134, 135, 137 employees  30, 31, 72, 74, 76, 77, 87, 88 failure  81–​86 inclusion  4, 18, 19, 23, 30, 31, 112 incorporation, process of  5, 7, 134, 138 liberalism  1, 133 liberation  48, 52, 64 London  6, 7, 18, 20 Marxism  7, 44, 131

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ordinariness, cult of  51–​53 perspectives  15, 48, 68, 69, 84, 92 utopias  109–​131, 137 venues  5, 41–​43, 113, 123, 124, 129, 130 women  22, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 76 Queer Phenomenology  104 queer politics  7, 8, 16, 38, 44, 46, 130, 133–​136 CEO-​ization of  46–​65 queer spaces  7, 8, 27, 37–​39, 41–​43, 102, 103, 105, 121, 122, 124 closure of  19, 21, 25–​45, 93, 103, 130 long live queer spaces  120–​123 loss of  122, 124 queer value  66–​88 of diversity work  86–​88 in LGBTQ-​friendly corporation  68–​71 reproduction of  8, 71, 73, 76, 87, 134 queerness  8, 9, 16–​18, 21, 43, 44, 57, 58, 64, 95, 99, 103–​105, 121, 123, 134, 135 gentrification of  15–​18 mainstreaming of  51, 52 Quick, T.  53 R Raco, M.  117, 120 rainbow capitalism  52, 63, 64 rainbow debit card  32 rainbow flag  92, 93, 98, 101–​103, 108 Rao, R.  30, 45, 51, 53, 65 recognition  12–​15, 44, 45, 69, 86, 87, 98, 99, 107, 108, 133, 134 redevelopment  36, 37, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 100, 101, 105, 110–​112, 119, 120, 128 process of  42, 43, 95, 96, 101, 119, 121, 135 regeneration  17, 34–​36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 98, 134 efforts  35 reinclusion  91, 120 replacement LGBTQ  5, 91, 135 responsibilities  42, 77, 79, 80 revitalization  16, 36, 41 Rhodes, C.  103 Richardson, D.  63 Rodriguez, D.  139n2 Romani, L.  29 Rossdale, C.  32 Rumens, N.  9, 14, 20 S sanitization  15, 52 Schulman, S.  16, 17 self-​management  13, 51, 86 self-​managerialization  50 senior leadership team  71, 72, 81 sexuality  14, 17, 44, 65, 68–​70, 73, 81, 102–​105 Simões, Antonio  27, 28 social justice  22, 29, 31, 32, 51, 53, 60, 103 social life  47, 63, 137 social worlds  20, 23 social-​justice-​driven scholarship  29

socio-​economic transformations  38 Spade, D.  12, 139n2 Spivak, G. C.  69 staff networks  30, 68, 74, 75, 78 sterile queer networking spaces  23, 137 Stillwagon, R.  129 Stonewall  29, 78–​80, 82 stringent economic austerity  33 structural reform  33 summits  54–​59 T Tatchell, Peter  31 Tech summits  54, 55 technology  53–​55, 60–​62 temporal investments  111, 115 temporalities  9, 109–​131, 137 happy futures, gentrification  112–​116 Thatcher, Margaret  26 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue  135 trans inclusion  67, 78, 80 transgender  78, 79, 83 Trojan Horse  101–​103 Tyler, M.  15, 85, 107 U urban planning  3, 34, 36, 37, 101, 106, 111 neoliberalization  34–​38 regeneration  34–​38 urban spaces  38, 106, 136 V value  2, 33, 47, 63, 64, 67, 70, 71, 74–​76, 79, 80, 82, 94 venues  1, 41, 42, 91–​94, 96–​98, 110, 121, 122, 129, 132 W Ward, J.  73, 118 welfare retrenchment  34 Wesling, M.  70, 72 Weszkalnys, G.  36, 111 wholehearted massive queerness  96–​99 Winnubst, S.  58 wonkiness  104, 105, 128 work  7, 18, 23, 47–​49, 51, 61, 62, 66, 69–​75, 77, 78, 83 workers  4, 70, 85, 87, 99, 129, 130 working-​class communities  37, 44 workplace  2, 4, 29, 30, 47, 48, 66–​72, 82, 83 diversity  29 inclusivity  29, 87 role models  68, 82–​84 Workplace Equality Index (WEI)  29, 78–​80, 82 workshops  13, 83 World Bank  10, 29, 30 Z Zanoni, P.  29

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