ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that queer could usefully re-orientate itself to a more empirically-grounded focus on material impossibilities. It draws upon a research on lesbian and gay parents from working and middle-class backgrounds to situate the complexities, complications, and important intersections emerging from absences in queer agendas. The chapter aims to point towards some of the dangers of ignoring class in queer methodologies; empirical data is presented in order to best illuminate presences and absences, interrogating 'who gets to talk', who and what is rendered (in)visible in sexualities studies. It also aims to situate intersections of class and sexuality within the interview encounters and narratives themselves; this is where positionality can be politically situated, rather than personally repeated in situating alone. The reluctance to acknowledge the significance of social class to sexual lives hides inequalities in experiences, practices and meanings of everyday lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) lives.
