An intimacy field framework: Class,habitus and capital in gay relationships

Field, habitus and capital

Theories of late modernity and individualisation have argued that intimacy has evolved into a democratised state free of constraints imposed by wider structures and social fabrics (Beck, 1992; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1992). Some scholars have argued that accounts of the flexible, autonomous nature of intimacy are overly sanguine (Gross, 2005; Jamieson, 1999). Intimate relationships can be sites where class is practised and reproduced (Milton & Qureshi, 2021). To examine how social class affects the practice of intimacy, we borrowed from Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital. A field can be defined as a typological space of social positions or a configuration of social relations in which agents are embedded. Fields are socially differentiated and analytically autonomous (Bourdieu, 1979/1984; Wacquant, 1989). In other words, each field exhibits distinctive ideologies, beliefs and rules. As with a game, every field involves goals and a particular set of legitimate and coherent principles (Bourdieu, 1982/1991). These rules are imposed upon all agents and objects entering the field. Actors in a field agree tacitly on the rules or what is at stake (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). To succeed or win, actors use the rules to make sense of the social world and direct their actions according to how the field is structured.

Within each field, the rules of the game are coordinated by the habitus of actors (Bourdieu, 1990). Habitus is defined as a system of dispositions that actors bring into the field to play the game. It orients them to behave in a way that they feel familiar or comfortable with and supplies them with a cognitive framework to interpret the rules and others’ actions (Bourdieu, 1979/1984; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The process is unconscious; actors have no active mastery of habitus. More importantly, habitus is closely tied to actors’ class position. How they interpret rules or actions depends on their position in the social space.

Habitus is acquired and internalised through socialisation. As actors from different social positions have different experiences of the latter, they tend to develop a different feel for the game and an idea of what kind of actions are more possible. Through constant everyday-life practice, habitus reproduces the dominant structure in the field. The social location that one belongs to also shapes the volume and composition of capital (economic, cultural and social) the actors inherit and bring into a field (Lareau, 2015).

This does not mean, however, that individuals always respond predictably and inflexibly within a field (Wacquant, 2016). It is possible to engage in a game in more than one way. The dominant social groups in a field tend to have stable worldviews and legitimise the rules to advance their own interests and gain an advantage. But actors from subordinated groups can upset the legitimacy of the rules imposed by the dominant groups. As Bourdieu (1982/1991) explained, there may be struggles over the legitimate definition of principles operating in the field. As we shall show later, gay men in cross-class relationships may invent meanings associated with class to redefine their ideals of intimacy.

Bourdieusian concepts of fields, habitus and capital were adopted by scholars such as Green (2008), who developed his sexual field framework to examine urban erotic worlds. He used the sexual field framework to examine how the valuation and unequal distributions of erotic capital (sexual attractiveness reflecting specific physical and affective characteristics) structure desires in collective sexual lives (e.g. in clone subculture and Manhattan’s gay downtown). In comparison, our intimacy field does not prioritise erotic capital over other forms of capital in the practice of intimate relationships. This is because, as Green (2008) recognised, short-term sexual partnerships such as hook-ups and long-term relationships (which are often considered intimate) may have different logics. As we will demonstrate, the participants in the present study often considered cultural, social and financial capital compatibility when forming and maintaining relationships.

Although much of Bourdieu’s oeuvre was based on the Algerian and French society, the concepts of field, habitus and capital have been widely applied across cultural contexts (for examples on the Chinese context, see Mu & Pang, 2019; Sheng, 2014; Tian & Chuang, 2022). Bourdieu’s theoretical concern is on the underlying structure of social reproduction. His theory focuses on the process through which inequality is reproduced rather than the ‘substantive results’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 77). ¹ This makes his concepts an effective and sensitising tool to understand class-differentiated ideals and practices of intimacy across different socio-cultural contexts.

Class inequality and intimate relationships

Abundant research on class inequality and relationships has suggested that social class persistently shapes outcomes in personal life (Heaphy, 2011; McDermott, 2011). This includes class effects on individuals’ ideas concerning partner compatibility (Milton & Qureshi, 2021); access to opportunities for meeting potential partners (McClendon et al., 2014); and couples’ transition into marriage (Kuo & Raley, 2016). Moreover, class acts as a source of knowledge for the evaluation of sexual attractiveness in urban gay spaces alongside principles such as race, ethnicity and age (Green, 2008). Financial capacity can be important as well. Higher income and more financial resources are associated with higher relationship quality and a lower likelihood of dissolution amongst couples (Conger et al., 2010).

Class resources have become salient in enabling or establishing relationships because intimacy has been increasingly coupled with neoliberal ideals. Skeggs (2011) argued that, through value accrual, individuals actively mobilise their capital to craft themselves into proper and worthy people. Efforts to upgrade oneself range from bodily transformations and looking for lifestyle advice to attending workshops to acquire interpersonal skills. Such efforts increase one’s desirability in the dating scene (O’Neill, 2018) but presuppose the possession of an adequate volume of economic and cultural capital (Gill, 2008).

Researchers have also highlighted the significance of class values in attempts to establish long-term stable relationships. The capacity to imagine the future and the associated aspirations differ widely according to class. Scholars have observed that middle-class ideologies are often associated with actions designed to develop a desirable future through education, work and consumption (Reay, 2009). By contrast, working-class people often lack the confidence and resources to realise their future (Ball, 2003). Resource inequalities can also shape an individual’s ability to maintain intimate relationships. Commitment is often signified by marriage, but couples often regard financial stability and the ability to purchase a marital home as prerequisites (Sassler & Miller, 2011). Couples with higher earnings are also significantly less likely to become divorced (Conger et al., 2010).

Although some scholars have claimed that same-sex intimacy is organised around the principles of individuality and flexibility (Orne, 2017), there is evidence that same-sex partners also value and prioritise long-term commitment. They look for relationship models that sustain couple bonding and ultimately a committed monogamous relationship (Heaphy & Hodgson, 2021). However, as is shown below, the capacity to form and maintain a long-term stable same-sex union varies between classes because of class-based differences in capital and transnational mobility (Choi, 2022; Kam, 2019).

Working-class participants

The majority of the working-class participants preferred to have relationships with working-class men. Yeung, a customer service desk worker who earned HKD13,000 monthly had dated two working-class men. For him, it was important to look for someone with similar consumption patterns:

I’m a frugal person. Picking restaurants or eating out every week isn’t really my thing. Spending a few hundred dollars for a meal every time, [or] a meal of HKD20 from cha caan teng (the local tea house) is all the same to me. A rice dish of HKD20 or a HKD30 meal from McDonald’s is my daily diet. How many guys would put up with this? (Yeung, 31, customer service desk worker, single)

Yeung felt that it would be difficult to find a partner because very few gay men shared the same parsimonious lifestyle. He felt that he had a limited choice. It is important to note that most of the working-class participants relied on their wages as their only legitimate financial source, which explained why they deliberately avoided consumption discrepancies and economic dependence. Most practised a split finance model in their relationships, seldom relying on their partners for daily or leisure expenses. Wong, a performer at a theme park, said that he would never spend his partner’s money to meet his personal needs:

It’s not great if he [a prospective partner] earns a lot more than I do. Say I earn HKD15,000 (a month) and he earns HKD50,000 or HKD70,000. It would damage my self-confidence. . . Of course, we can both live a very luxurious life and dress smartly every day. But it’s not okay if using his money is the only way to do it. It’s only okay if I do so with my own hands. (Wong, 25, performer, partnered)

Work and income-generating capacity have long been the foundation of self-worth and masculinity in Chinese societies (Choi, 2018; Choi & Peng, 2016; Lin, 2016). Like Wong, the other working-class participants did not want to be economically dependent on their partners because it would be degrading and threaten their identity as men. They stressed the importance of yau sau yau goek (i.e. that they had hands and feet) and that they were able to live by their own means. Financial independence gave them a sense of pride. Moreover, their definition of personal worth rested on morality rather than income or educational attainment. For example, Wong said that his prospective partners’ educational attainment was never an issue:

That is not really a concern for me. Even if he has only attended primary school, as long as he knows the human language, that’s fine. I don’t need him to be a university graduate. I don’t need someone very intelligent or somebody doing a professional job. I, myself, am not a smart person or someone with a great education anyway. Also, a high level of education doesn’t mean he is a good person. Morality is a key criterion for me.

In addition to stressing the importance of morality, the working-class participants sought a partner whom they considered to be tip dei (down-to-earth). Mark (29, part-time clerk, single), who made HKD4,000 a month, described his ideal partner thus:

At least someone who will not say something that doesn’t make sense, or things that I don’t understand. How should I put this. . . For example, not someone who goes to boat parties, eats luxurious food, buying clothes that cost a thousand dollars.

Mark did not have the financial capital to engage in such activities, but they were also part of a lifestyle he did not feel at ease with. His distaste may be interpreted as reflecting his habitus and related dispositions (Bourdieu, 1979/1984; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), though it was not shaped by his class alone: he had been in a failed inter-class relationship. His former partner was a professional dancer who was earning much more. The experience had taken him to ‘a different world’:

. . . He has a very clear direction career-wise. I’m like someone walking by. . . watching his world from afar. He wants to get into my world, but it’s like mixing water with oil. His world is superior to mine. . . the people he knows all have well-established careers. They are artists, dancers, commentators. And I’m just at the starting point [of a career]. . . I’m like a hatchling still learning how to fly.

The ‘different world’ that Mark described was a different field in the Bourdieusian sense: a social space with configurations of social relations and rules and actors with which Mark was not familiar and that he found alienating. For example, he felt embarrassed when his boyfriend introduced him to his middle-class friends. Mark found it difficult to start a conversation with them because he lacked the knowledge, vocabulary or cultural capital. His lifestyle, recreational activities, friendship networks and work were very different.

Four of the working-class participants had been in relationships with middle-class men. However, income and financial inequalities often meant that they struggled to match their lifestyles and consumption patterns. Differences in habitus, financial, cultural and social capital made them uncomfortable and caused them to question whether their partners were right for them.

Middle-class participants

Most of the middle-class participants also sought homophily in their relationships because they did not like entering an unfamiliar intimacy field with unfamiliar actors and rules. Howard (32, lawyer, single) had experiences of both homophilous and heterophilous relationships. His previous partner was a working-class man who worked in retail. The relationship lasted around a year. Howard recalled that he often felt embarrassed when he met his partner’s friends:

Most of my friends are in the same kind of work. They are usually lawyers, accountants, civil servants, or academics. I feel we can communicate better. It might be because our topics of interest are similar. But his friends were usually. . . I’m not trying to discriminate against anyone because of their job. But most of his friends were similar to him [working in retail], frontline staff, or cabin crew. Most of his friends did this type of work. There wasn’t much to chat about between me and them. . . We [Howard and his middle-class friends] like to talk about things more relevant to current social affairs or projects that we’ve been working on, like IPOs [when a company issues shares to the public]. They [his boyfriend and his working-class peers] would immediately be silent. Dead air. It was pretty awkward. Everyone was aware of that.

Just as Mark had felt he lacked the vocabulary to communicate with his professional-dancer boyfriend’s acquaintances, Howard thought that he lacked the conversational material to engage with his boyfriend’s working-class peers. By framing the issue as a matter of mismatch in conversational resources, he deflected class inequalities towards cultural issues. Howard’s experience suggested the importance of class-related cultural and social capital during gay partner selection.

One distinctive feature of the middle-class participants’ dating ideal seems to be related to whether they had the potential for a stable long-term partnership. Dexter (38, senior marketing manager, single), told us his mating criteria:

The idea is not to find the other half, but a serious other half. Getting someone serious is difficult. Someone who cares not only about where to get dinner tonight or where to get drunk but also about the next steps. Where to move onto, what would happen 10 or 20 years later, who will pass away first? This is life development. He should plan his next steps as we go along. Life development is also about whether we share common goals.

Dexter’s emphasis on a prospective partner’s readiness to take the relationship to the next level resonated amongst the other middle-class participants. While searching for a mate, they actively evaluated their prospective partners’ future projections relative to their own life goals. Outlining common life goals was perhaps a sign that proved a partner’s commitment to a relationship. The middle-class participants also looked for mutual nourishment and highlighted the importance of synchronised growth. Brian (31, marketing manager, partnered), who had dated five men up until the point when he was interviewed, was having a relationship with a start-up founder at the time. He told us that it was important for a prospective partner to make themself ‘a better person’:

Many things motivate me to keep up with him. He is very into sports, including triathlons. He graduated from a prestigious school. He reads a lot and has a breadth of knowledge about the world. He’s a positive person. Somehow this makes me want to read more and understand more what’s going on in the world too.

By outlining the characteristics of a good partner that has motivated him to keep up, Brian also underscored the importance of class-based resources in both the formation of a middle-class self and how this particular version of a positive, active and cultural capital rich lifestyle is sought after in the middle-class dating scene. For example, entrance into prestigious schools is often related to the possession of economic, social and cultural capital, that is, class-based resources.

However, not all the middle-class participants preferred homophilous relationships. Seven of them had had cross-class relationships at the time of the study. Simon, a 37-year-old partnered university lecturer, was a case in point. He had been with a middle-class man for 3 years before his current relationship. He was very similar to his former boyfriend: they both had postgraduate degrees, they worked in education, and they had studied the same major as undergraduates. However, tensions started to flare up when Simon realised that they had different consumption patterns:

He flies for like five to six trips every year (and I did not want to spend so much money on travelling). Once I proposed Taiwan but he rejected it right away. He kept on arguing with me about the destination. He wanted [to visit] Sri Lanka! I was so annoyed [because it was so much more expensive].

Although Simon was categorised as middle-class, he knew ‘the taste of being a poor person’ because of his working-class upbringing. His family had experienced years of abject poverty until Simon’s father found a secure job and they moved into public housing. Simon’s childhood seemed to have left a strong impression on him; it shaped his habitus, particularly his attitudes towards consumption and saving. He preferred to save rather than consume, whereas his former boyfriend preferred to do the opposite. A few months after the relationship ended, Simon met his current boyfriend (who was not college-educated) on a dating app. He was impressed by him:

He is a very simple person. He is from a working-class family. They live on a public estate. He does not crave a luxurious lifestyle. . . he has no goals regarding buying flats or earning a lot of money. He is easily satisfied. I still remember he was always in a plain black tee-shirt whenever we went out in the summer. He has no requirements, style- and clothing-wise. He doesn’t change his phone either. He was using iPhone 5s when other people were using 7+. His phone didn’t really work. It switched off automatically whenever you adjusted the brightness.

Simon appreciated his boyfriend’s frugality. He contrasted his lifestyle with those of his middle-class gay friends:

It’s the first time I had encountered a gay man who was this frugal. The friends or gay men I know. . . they must groom themselves nicely, they go to the gym, they go to clubs, and they hold home parties. Or go to Songkran in Thailand. They have to engage in many gay-related activities. But my boyfriend is just living like an ordinary guy.

The construction of gay visibility and desirability is increasingly dependent on consumption behaviours and socioeconomic resources (Hennessy, 2000); indeed, Simon suggested that his boyfriend’s ‘ordinariness’ was unusual within the gay population. Savage et al. (2001) proposed that both middle-class and working-class individuals often claim ordinariness as a defensive device to transcend class differences and resist the dominance of cultural capital. Instead of highlighting the salience of hierarchical forms of class difference, Simon viewed his boyfriend’s working-class origins and frugality as an alternative to the gay lifestyle. He redefined his ordinariness as a virtue to destabilise hierarchies of desirability, thus repositioning his partner as a mainstream individual within the mating pool.

Middle-class participants

Social class not only shaped the participants’ relationship ideals on an individual level, it also orientated them towards intimacy fields with different collective norms about desirability and different networks to develop a new relationship. In general, the middle-class participants searched for prospective partners in more exclusive and closed networks. They could then be selective when choosing a compatible partner and enjoy the prospect of developing a steady partnership. Some of the middle-class participants had disengaged from offline gay scenes such as bars and saunas.

Virtual communities and online dating have displaced traditional ways of offline courtship and facilitated the search for a partner. However, access to some gay networks is confined to people from a particular social class. Jay (28, social worker, single) was in a social media group set up solely for ‘professional‘ gay men:

You need a college degree to join. We’ve got medical doctors, lawyers in this group. On average your salary needs to be at least HKD40,000. Doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers. . . they join this group. On average the quality [of people] is high. People in this group tend to care about their health, they do sports, they invest in their future.

The application process is similar to that of a formal organisation. An interested gay man has to talk to the admin of the group who will ask him to provide details about his credentials, work status and salary. Only after admin approval is granted can the applicant access the group. Upon joining, the new member has to introduce himself by giving his name and saying what he does for a living. Members chat about matters such as investment, the stock market and travelling. They also organise regular social events, for example, food tours and boat parties. Such stringent class-specific boundaries maintain homogeneity within the network, and working-class men are barred. The members, therefore, reproduce and consolidate class boundaries through intimacy practices.

Interestingly, on dating apps, where information and cues about an individual were lacking, the middle-class participants concealed their middle-class status. They avoided putting their job titles on their profiles and refrained from mentioning them to new acquaintances. For example, the accountants or risk consultants in the study called themselves ‘office workers’, with all the ambiguity such a term entails. This tactic allowed them to avoid being considered egotistic and arrogant or being approached by people who they worried might want to take advantage of their economic status. In other words, they were aware of their class advantages and were anxious to protect them. They did so by concealing their class status in dating apps while constructing class boundaries by establishing class-exclusive online gay dating groups.

It is worth pointing out that although the middle-class participants used dating apps also for casual sexual encounters, they regarded this as distinct from their search for an intimate relationship. Some of them said that if they received nude pictures or erotic messages from another app user, they would not consider them as a possible future partner.

The middle-class participants’ choice of dining venue was also a manifestation of their expectations. Pun (26, risk consultant, single) would usually take his dates to the central business area for an HKD200–HKD400 meal if he wanted to embark on a serious relationship with them. By contrast, he would take one-off sexual acquaintances to a cheap Chinese restaurant after they had sex:

It’s a totally different story if it’s just someone to have fun with. You don’t need to go somewhere expensive. You just need to get something to fill your stomach after sex.

Pun thus drew a clear boundary between people whom he considered casual sex partners and those who might be long-term intimates. He was only willing to invest resources in the latter, for example, by taking them to more expensive dining venues in respectable areas. The above ‘rules of the game’ constituted the middle-class gay intimacy field, with its clear class boundaries and hierarchies.

Working-class participants

The working-class participants formed relationships in both offline and online spaces. Unlike the middle-class participants, who tended to decouple their search for casual sex partners from long-term romantic dates, the working-class participants used the same spatial resources to search for casual sexual encounters and intimate relationships, for example, bars, saunas and parties.

Online dating apps were less important than offline gay spaces. Chau (24, salesperson, single) said, ‘If I have to expand my social circle I can do it naturally. I can just go to a bar.’ For Chau, online dating was not the most comfortable way to search for relationships. It required additional effort to craft a desirable profile and look for potential matches. For some of the working-class participants, dating apps were difficult to navigate because they required a certain level of English proficiency. One participant had to rely on his friend to complete his dating app profile. Although mainstream gay dating apps in Hong Kong have a Chinese interface, working-class participants felt pressurised to communicate in English as they recognised this as a normative practice. An English dating app profile was considered normative and this implied a class hierarchy that privileged middle-class participants. The volume of cultural capital (including English proficiency) required for creating a cyber profile and maintaining conversations in cyberspace deterred working-class participants.

Yet, navigating offline gay spaces was sometimes equally challenging because they put a premium on class and age. Tsang (54, mail messenger, single) did not find going to gay bars rewarding. He lamented that the people there were unwelcoming:

I can always feel it. . . They talk about things like where to travel, what kind of cars to buy, how many trips to go in a year. I don’t really know what to chat about with them. You can’t enter their circle. They talk about skiing, but I haven’t tried it! It’s embarrassing when people ask about your job. There’s no way that I will tell them that I deliver stuff and hand out flyers on the street. I just keep my mouth shut.

Tsang’s feeling of being left out was typical of the working-class participants. They were marginalised in commercialised gay scenes and felt they lacked the appropriate cultural, social and financial capital to join in. Following the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1991, gay spaces in Hong Kong (such as bars, clubs, saunas and bathhouses) began to proliferate. While their emergence has presented new opportunities for gay men to pursue same-sex desires and intimacies, they privilege the prominent social identifiers of middle-class membership and youthfulness. As was noted above, gay identity is defined increasingly by a cosmopolitan outlook and conspicuous consumption behaviours (Binnie & Skeggs, 2004; Wei, 2009), and Hong Kong is no exception. The middle-class appurtenances of good looks and professional occupation are seen as the most desirable characteristics, allowing those who possess them to navigate class-demarcated fields of intimacy with ease.

Some of the working-class participants turned to less expensive gay spaces such as gay saunas and affordable gay bars to find a partner. Unlike the middle-class participants, who drew a clear line between casual sex and long-term partnerships, some of the working-class participants’ casual sexual encounters developed into romantic relationships. Kwok (50, supermarket worker, single) had dated three men previously. His second partner was the most memorable. They met in a gay sauna when they were looking for casual one-off sex. Kwok recalled what happened afterwards:

We exchanged phone numbers. . . The next day, I called him. It was a holiday but he had to work. I asked if we could have breakfast together. He said yes. I asked him if we could get together. He said yes.

Kwok tried to explain what made him decide to ask him out:

I had no idea, actually. He wasn’t very good-looking. But he seemed to be quite caring I guess. But to be honest, starting a relationship is one thing. It’s a different thing whether we can keep the relationship for a long time. To make the first step we need to at least have feelings for each other. I felt something. So we started seeing each other.

Kwok transitioned into this partnership relatively rapidly. It was not that the working-class participants had no ideas or preferences regarding their selection of partners, simply that they were hesitant about their capacity to forge long-term relationships. This led them to blur the boundaries between casual and non-casual sex partners; relationships could be experimental or explorative. Whether they could be successfully maintained was something the participants regarded as being beyond their control.