Nicola Field - Over the Rainbow: Money, Class and Homophobia

PRAISE FOR OVER THE RAINBOW: MONEY, CLASS AND HOMOPHOBIA

An extraordinary and original attack on homophobia and an assertion of working-class unity in the struggle for sexual emancipation the book, to my mind, remains unparalleled.

Leo Zeilig, author of Philosopher of Third World Liberation: Frantz Fanon, Eddie the Kid

We all have a couple of key books in our lives that have really made us sit up and think. This was one of mine. It helped shape the way I thought about LGBT politics and my own sexuality. It is needed today even more than ever. I will also have to buy the new version because I gave away my battered, highlighted copy to a young, gay South African in 2003.

Dr Peter Dwyer, author of African Struggles Today and tutor in economics, Ruskin College, Oxford

One of a few contemporary scholars going against the grain, continuing the groundbreaking effort to develop an understanding of how sexual identity features in and is shaped by capitalism.

Rosemary Hennessey in Profit and Pleasure.

This important book addresses issues seldom discussed elsewhere. LGBT people have made great advances, but there are also real limitations. In particular, the commercial scene imposes values all too similar to those of their straight equivalentsthe need to have the right body, wear the right clothes and so on. And thats much easier to achieve if you have the money. Field calls into question the simple assumption that we are all part of a community with the same interests.

Colin Wilson, author of Gay Liberation and Socialism

I honestly cannot recommend this book enough I believe that our movementsfeminism, anti-racism, and environmentalism etcneed to be linked to a more comprehensive movement to transform society at its very roots. Nicola Field articulates that vision. She provides a long-awaited analysis of the intersections of sexual and gender identity with class, as well as giving a superb immanent critique of the mainstream LGBT movement, which is dominated by bourgeois perspectives. Im dismayed, but not particularly surprised, that this book is so obscure. I am doing what I can to popularise it.

Gregory Esteven, Editor, Monthly Review

What a fantastic book! Brilliant.

Marven Scott, Marxist Internet Archive

I absolutely loved this one-woman tour de force exploring some elements of the facile politics at the centre of the LGBT movement in the 1980s and1990s. As someone who is not LGBT, feminist or Marxist I thought this book might not be for me but I didnt feel that for one minute. Nicola Fields main thesis is that much of the movement ignores the history of social struggle This separation from wider social issues creates a shallowness in the ability of the LGBT movement to give solidarity to others who are being systemically oppressed in other ways. Nicola Fields book is a broad and compelling theoretical observation It speaks from the voice and body of someone who is getting their hands dirty. I admire her courage to confront huge, unholy cows of the movement This book is passionate, extremely intelligent and a delightful polemic of personal and political energy.

Chris Hart

I am a teenage girl in South Carolina, in an ultra-conservative, predominantly republican-Fox News-watching area. Im real into riot grrl music, and Ive been sexually harassed verbally a lot The other day I went into this used-book store, and wanted to read up on the gay movement, I came across your book and bought it, along with a Hole CD It has touched my heart. I feel less alone as I read your book. Knowing that there are beautiful people like you makes me so happy. I picked up Over the Rainbow at just the right time. Today my aunts friend was over, and she kept shoving her shit down my throat, so afterwards I came into my room and read a few sections of your book. It calmed me down. Thank you so much for your work.

Christy

OVER THE RAINBOW

MONEY, CLASS AND HOMOPHOBIA

NICOLA FIELD

FOREWORDS BY
ELLY BARNES, JONATHAN BLAKE AND GETHIN ROBERTS

SECOND EDITION

Nicola Field, 1995 & 2016

Forewords Elly Barnes, Jonathan Blake and Gethin Roberts, 2016

No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied, in print or in any other form, except for the purposes of review and criticism, without the publishers prior written consent.

Published by

Dog Horn Publishing

45 Monk Ings, Birstall, Batley WF17 9HU

United Kingdom

doghornpublishing.com

Print ISBN: 978-1-907133-94-7

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-907133-96-1

MOBI ISBN: 978-1-907133-97-8

Cover design by

Ben Windsor

Typesetting by

Jonathan Penton

FOREWORDS

As a huge fan of the film Pride and the unifying work of LGSM, I was absolutely thrilled to be asked by Nicola Field to recommend Over the Rainbow in its new edition, especially as her class-based analysis of LGBT+ oppression is reminiscent of the political dimension in which, ten years ago, I first plucked up the courage at a meeting to express my concerns about LGBT+ kids and teachers experiences in school. It is this socialist perspective that remains fundamental to my approach with Educate & Celebrate in encouraging all schools and workplaces to join us on the journey to inclusion.

Nicola writes with astonishing clarity and focuses on issues which remain terrifyingly relevant in 2016, such as continuing LGBT+phobia, womens oppression, the imposed moral agenda from government and the media, the housing crisis, ideological attacks on state education and rising mental health concerns. Since Over the Rainbow was first published in 1995, Thatchers Section 28 (which prohibited local authorities from promoting or publishing homosexual material) has been repealed. This should have given teachers in the UK the freedom to engage students in an LGBT+ inclusive curriculum. However, even with the subsequent arrival of LGBT History Month in 2005, the Equality Act of 2010, new government guidelines for schools, and marriage for everyone, we still, daily, have to change hearts and minds.

We are comfortable teaching about the struggle of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in schools. However when I ask delegates what did you learn about the LGBT+ struggle when you were at school? the answer is always nothing: and we wonder why there are high levels of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia? It is this level of invisibility that we must and can change through education to ensure all are treated equally and fairly by encouraging and modelling a more intersectional approach in the classroom. This would allow everyone to go forward with the knowledge but also the understanding required to play an active role in this ever-growing neoliberal climate, where state schools are forced to become free schools and academies, potentially giving way to private interests that take precedence over our social needs.

Children begin to discriminate by the age of seven, which is why I advocate an LGBT+ inclusive curriculum as soon as young people enter the education system through childrens centres and nurseries. One deputy head, for instance, asserted that a lot of the parents comments say they consider age-appropriate to be Key Stage 2 [seven+]. This contradicts my research, which showed that reception and Key Stage 1-age pupils are more accepting and less affected by the use of terminology than we give them credit for. Therefore, we must start in Early Years Education to prevent future discrimination.

One key preventative method is to explore different family models, helping us to dispel the mythical and idealised heterosexual nuclear family, with its somewhat outdated gender roles and expectations, in order to give young people permission to recognise themselves and their own family units as special and unique. As a Year 6 class I worked with in 2015 said: