Food Rules and Rituals - Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2023 - Mark McWilliams
Regarding the Lesbian Potluck
Food Rules and Rituals - Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2023 - Mark McWilliams
Kate Thomas [+]
Bryn Mawr College
Description
The potluck meal is a ritual central to modern lesbian life, loved and loathed in equal measure. ‘Potlucks were community glue for lesbians,’ observes one political scientist. Other scholars agree that this form of dining was about social and political togetherness; ‘The potluck epitomizes the idea of how much more you can have when you grow together.’ The communal meal was a way for lesbians to make a place at a table, have a say about what’s on the menu, and then use that space to accommodate or adjudicate differences of diet, health and ethics. My paper will understand the potluck as an affordable, reiterative community ritual, establishing a relationship between dining and sexual orientation that enacts utopian visions of community and creates belonging in the face of erasure, censure and the daily threat of despair.