Abstract

This essay examines the influence of labor on US queer history. It argues that economic systems governing people’s labor have fundamentally shaped queer history. The kinds of labor people have had access to have both helped and hindered people’s ability to pursue sex with members of the same sex, identify as gay, bisexual or lesbian, and to be openly transgender and gender non-conforming. It further argues that the movements for queer liberation in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the emergence of a queer labor movement in the 1970s that is still gaining traction today.