I have worked as a car mechanic, an over-the-road truck driver, an English Professor, and a writer. Living both blue-collar and white-collar lives has taught me volumes, especially about the possibilities of being gay in twenty-first-century America. 

People of all races, classes, religions, and abilities are gay, but it’s easy to slide back into the belief that progress for our tribe can be measured by the progress of middle-class, white, urbanites.  Too often they get to define who “we” are and what “we” want.  My life and work challenge that assumption.

My first book, Steel Closets, tells the stories of lesbian, gay and transgender steelworkers: stories of humor, courage, sex, and pain. These people’s stories matter because these people matter.

These people’s stories also matter because they unsettle scholarly and popular assumptions about what it means to be queer.  Out there in the mills, queers find routes to pleasure, identity, and meaning that shake up everything I thought I knew about danger and desire.

The hardest part was finding people to interview.  Gay and lesbian steelworkers are hiding – they choose invisibility over harassment and possible dismissal, so I had to track them down and gain their trust.  Typically, I did this by hanging out in bars and getting familiar with the community.  Steelworkers are often good storytellers, so once they started talking, I just sat back and listened.  They became my heroes, and often my friends. 

Lesbians typically have an easier time than gay men do. As blue-collar women, they are accustomed to harassment and respond physically and effectively. They enjoy the work culture, which is full of sexual banter, practical jokes, and generous comradeship. Their challenges keep the work interesting, and the stories coming.  One steelworker described a disliked “white hat” (supervisor) whom she soldered into his office one night. When he finally got out and came for her, she denied any knowledge of the soldering. Though he could tell she was responsible by the structure of her welds, he couldn’t prove she was the perpetrator. 

For gay men, the teamwork and toughness of the work bring rewards, but usually in exchange for silence about their sexuality. There’s no shortage of male-male sex in the mills, it just fits within a context of gay-bashing and general hostility. This enforced silence has its own costs, of course.  Still, the queer folks who experience the most harassment in the mill are trans people, simply because they are the most visible.

As I begin my second book, I’m tracking down truckers who do sex differently – who feel queerly – who break the rules.  Because truck drivers are constantly on the move, their sexual and gender behavior seems fluid and expansive. If you know of any queers, t-girls, lesbians, or wild women who drive trucks, ask them to shoot me an email at annegbalay@gmail.com

Publisher’s Description
Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers by Anne Balay

Even as substantial legal and social victories are being celebrated within the gay rights movement, much of working-class America still exists outside the current narratives of gay liberation.

In Steel Closets, Anne Balay draws on oral history interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers, mostly living in northwestern Indiana, to give voice to this previously silent and invisible population.

She presents powerful stories of the intersections of work, class, gender, and sexual identity in the dangerous industrial setting of the steel mill. 

The voices and stories captured by Balay--by turns alarming, heroic, funny, and devastating--challenge contemporary understandings of what it means to be queer and shed light on the incredible homophobia and violence faced by many: nearly all of Balay's narrators remain closeted at work, and many have experienced harassment, violence, or rape.

Through the powerful voices of queer steelworkers themselves, Steel Closets provides rich insight into an understudied part of the LGBT population, contributing to a growing body of scholarship that aims to reveal and analyze a broader range of gay life in America.

Awards
2014 Sara A. Whaley Prize, National Women's Studies Association

2015 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

2015 Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, Lambda Literary

Reviews
"Their stories challenge our convenient stereotypes of what it means to be queer and how that has changed through time."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"[A] well-wrought contribution to LGBT studies."
--Library Journal

“An eye-opening read; you won’t forget these interviews.”
--Lavender

"Balay’s life-changing book is a compelling 192-page study exploring how sexuality and gender overlap in the sprawling steel mills of Northwest Indiana. . . . Groundbreaking."
--Chicago Post-Tribune

“[This] original, insightful, well-written, and concise story of class, gender, sexuality, and sometimes race is at turns harrowing and exciting. . . . Highly recommended.”
--Choice

“Anne Balay has produced an astonishing work of ethnography. As a testament to the sheer magnitude of suffering, resourcefulness, and perseverance of our queer sisters and brothers in steel, she has written a labor of love.”
--Women’s Review of Books

TAGS: Blue-collar, work, working class

About the Author
Anne Balay, a PhD in English, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College, is seeking a permanent academic job.

University of North Carolina Press

Cloth

ISBN  978-1-4696-1400-7

Published: April 2014

Paper

ISBN  978-1-4696-2723-6

Available: Available for ordering December 2015

http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/12108.html

TAGS: working class