Introduction

Abstract

This book has grown out of a study of the identities of lesbian and gay youth in the North East of England, carried out between 2006 and 2010. That study was concerned with changing narratives of lesbian and gay life, and how they were being reshaped by broader social transformations. In the UK in 2008, an emphasis on equality and inclusion in political rhetoric, and efforts to address legal inequalities around sexuality made it a seeming golden age for lesbian and gay rights. In the academy there were lively debates around sexual and intimate citizenship (Weeks, 1998; Richardson, 2000; Plummer, 2003a), and a focus on the cultural shifts transforming the lives of lesbians and gay men in the Western world, who were increasingly living their lives ‘beyond the closet’ in what were seen as more tolerant societies (Seidman, 2002; Weeks, 2007). How this moment was being experienced was a question the study sought to explore, and it did so by listening to the voices of young lesbians and gay men. Whilst the book is primarily about the stories the young people were telling, and how they relate to the making of lesbian and gay identities as historical narratives, it nevertheless looks beyond that. It uses the accounts of the young people to explore questions of identity: how we fashion it through the stories we tell, and how we come to be the people we are at particular historical moments.