The changeable history of LGBTQ+ people and the welfare state

In the UK February is LGBTQ+ history month. In our previous post for February 2023 we highlighted the historic injustices and discrimination experienced by LGBTQ+ people faced, and how we were interested in the long-term legacy this might have had on people. Of course, over time the welfare state, and social security within that, changes a great deal as well.

The history of trans men within the early British social security system, as explored by Adrian Kane-Galbraith in their fascinating (open access) book chapter on Male breadwinners of ‘doubtful sex’, is a great example of this. Due to quite wonderfully daft reasons that sexist medics came up with in the 1930s, the British system of 1948 was set-up so that women retired with their state pension at 60 and men retired at 65. It was also assumed, at the time, that men would be the male breadwinner, with wages and welfare support to keep their female wife at home doing domestic work.

As Galbraith identifies, trans men very quickly bumped into this oddly gendered system. The response of the system though was absolutely wonderful – basically because men worked and retired later, they paid more in National Insurance and retired later, so cost the system less overall. Because of this, civil servants initially just welcomed trans men in the system. It was not until the medicalisation and pathologisation of trans identities in the late 1960s that the Chief Medical Officer deemed trans people to be a problem within the social security system.

Delivering training associated with this project recently, I realised there’d been similar changes for lesbians, gays and bisexuals recorded within our participants’ stories. One gay man described how, in the early 2000s, him and his male partner were told by a DWP member of staff to pretend to just be living together so they could claim as two single adults, maximising their claim. A woe betide the lesbian or gay man who was living with someone of the opposite gender, as reported by Amanda:

I remember getting a letter from the JSA when I lived with someone and it asked me if we were living together as man and wife. They were checking up to see if I was living with a partner, you see. … But it’s just the most horrible question to be asked, to ask you…You might both be raving benders but you might not be a couple.

Now the system has become more inclusive of LGB identities, recent claimants did not report such stories from managing their Universal Credit claims. Rather, the design of Universal Credit around a couple (assumed to be heterosexual) living together with their biological children, means that more queer relationships – such as polyamorous households – have to go through a degrading checklist with the DWP to discern who is the “real” couple.

These histories leave us in an ambiguous position. It is good that the social security system recognises same-gender couples on an equal basis to opposite-gender couples, but this is within a very circumscribed, heteronormative model, and it means claimants receive less money. Similarly, the bizarre gendered differences in pension provision have been removed from our social security system, yet the trans people who spoke to us described a highly gendered system they struggled to fit into to claim their entitlements.

Yet, this history also points to ways forward – pragmatic, inclusive acts can often deliver social justice and reduce the costs of the system by truly treating everyone the same.

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