Beyond heteronormativity? Gay cruising,closeted experiences and self-disciplining subject in People’s Park,Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I examine relationships between public space, gay people’s cruising and construction of gay subjectivity in People’s Park, Guangzhou, China. In particular, I interrogate the complex dynamics between the performance of homosexual identity and the dominant heteronormative ideologies in China’s cultural–political sphere. I articulate how public cruising can be mobilized as a space of alternative socio-spatial ordering and simultaneously a closeted space to experience and reassert hegemonic divides of public/private, normal/abnormal. This paper employs an analysis of self-disciplining and the production of docile bodies to examine how gay cruisers construct gayness as deviant identity and thus attempt to reconcile gay subjects with dominant norms and values. The production of self-disciplining subjects is centered on the discursive formulation that gay men in public need to act in self-regulated and “low-profile” ways. This paper intends to enrich our understanding of the intrinsically dialectical relationships between public space and sexual subjectivity in concrete time spaces.     

A Queer Country? A case study of the politics of gay/lesbian belonging in an Australian country town

The present paper examines the complex politics of gay/lesbian belonging through a case study of Daylesford, Victoria, an Australian country town. It contributes to two research bodies: gay/lesbian rural geographies and the politics of belonging. Daylesford hosts ChillOut, Australia's largest rural gay/lesbian festival, which provides a telling context for investigating gay/lesbian belonging in rural Australia. We use qualitative data from the 2006 ChillOut Festival, including interviews with local residents, newspaper commentaries, and visitors’ surveys, to explore how Daylesford has been constructed, imagined, and experienced as a ‘unique’ site of gay/lesbian belonging in rural Australia. We find that ChillOut crucially contributes to its wider reputation as a gay-friendly country town, but also, we argue, to the contested nature of gay/lesbian belonging. This was most powerfully demonstrated by the local council's refusal to fly the gay-identified rainbow flag on the Town Hall during the 2006 Festival and its subsequent banning of the display of all festival flags from that key public building. Because ChillOut was the catalyst for this protocol, the resolution was viewed as homophobic. Indeed, the homophobic and heterosexist rhetoric that ensued in the Letters to the Editor section of the local newspaper revealed some residents’ underlying antagonism towards ChillOut and the local gay/lesbian community. Moreover, appealing to a shared ‘Australian identity’ and associated normative ‘family values’, these letter writers deployed a multi-scalar politics of belonging, where a sense of gay/lesbian belonging to Daylesford at the local scale was contested by the assertion of a ‘more meaningful’ national scale of allegiance fashioned by heteronormativity.     

Australian ‘gayborhoods’ and ‘lesborhoods’: a new method for estimating the number and prevalence of adult gay men and lesbian women living in each Australian postcode

ABSTRACT

Gay men and lesbian women often demonstrate unique settlement patterns, forming what have been referred to as ‘gayborhoods’. This study sought to provide the first postcode-level estimates of population size and prevalence of gay and lesbian people in Australia. Data on same-gender-partnered households from the Australian Census were combined with information from six different surveys conducted from 2011 to 2017. We estimated that in 2016 there were 132,203 gay men (1.5% of adult males; 95% CI: 1.4–1.6) and 79,931 lesbian women (0.9% of adult females; 95% CI: 0.8–1.0) in Australia. While many postcodes were sparsely populated by gay and lesbian people (40.1% had prevalences of <0.1%), 24.6% were moderately populated (prevalences in the 50-95th percentile) and 2.7% were highly populated (95th percentile). By jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory had the highest prevalences of gay men (2.1%; 95% CI: 2.0–2.2) and lesbian women (1.5%; 95% CI: 1.4–1.6). Although the majority of highly populated postcodes were found in major cities (83.7%), some were also found in regional and remote area (16.3%). This method can be applied in other countries to enhance populate estimates. The accompanying dataset can be used to guide service delivery, conduct geographically contextualised research and develop policies relevant to gay men and lesbian women in Australia.     

The Migration of Partnered Gays and Lesbians between 1995 and 2000

This research investigates the interregional migration of partnered gays and lesbians between 1995 and 2000 as the first attempt at understanding the determinants of gay and lesbian migration using data from the Public Use Microdata Sample of the 2000 U.S. Census. Briefly, the findings are as follows. Both partnered gays and lesbians are regionally distributed throughout the United States consistent with the geographical distribution of the entire U.S. population. However, the shifting location of the partnered gay and lesbian population between 1995 and 2000 demonstrates significant variability. The general conclusion to be reached from models of the net migration of the partnered gay and lesbian population in that period is as follows: Partnered gay migration is directed toward moderate‐sized urban regions rich in natural amenities without regard for tolerance toward gay lifestyles or the absolute or relative size of the partnered gay community. Partnered lesbian migration is focused on less‐populous regions with a large, existing, partnered lesbian population. The role of natural amenities, the tolerance for lesbian lifestyles, and population density are not significant in determining partnered lesbian migration. The only trait partnered gay and lesbian migrations have in common is in their move toward less populous regions.     

基于女性主义地理学视角的家庭暴力研究进展——超越公私二分法

人文地理学者通过家透视生活空间中的社会现象,西方人文地理学文化转向与女性主义研究兴起后,家庭暴力成为学者们关注的对象。在女性主义社会批判特征和地理学空间视角的双重影响下,女性主义地理学家着眼女性的空间经历及情感体验,聚焦女性在家庭中的暴力问题。论文首先介绍“家庭暴力”的概念和公私二分法,指出其中的空间隐蔽性,据此引入女性主义地理学的研究路径,通过分析家庭空间的意义建构,以及容忍家庭暴力存在的更广泛的地理环境,超越空间的公私二分法探讨家庭暴力。基于对国外相关研究的梳理,归纳出家庭、社区/邻里、国家和全球3种尺度分析家庭暴力的地理研究。通过物质、功能、象征维度的家庭空间性分析揭示性别权力在空间上对女性的控制和压迫;运用物质决定论逻辑和社会-文化逻辑2种视角解读家庭暴力存续的社区环境特征及其内在对女性的政策和制度排斥;分析家庭暴力与恐怖主义、军事战争的联系,将家庭暴力议题推向政治地理领域。     

(Hetero)sexing Space: Gay Men and “Straight” Space in Adelaide,South Australia

This paper examines gay men's perceptions and experiences of everyday places in Adelaide, South Australia. It illustrates the nature of social space as a heterosexual artifact. The paper also outlines ways in which gay men may contribute to the heterosexualization of space. Many gay men monitor the public and private roles they play for fear of the consequences of “discovery,” and through self-policing and restricted behaviors they may contribute to the spatial supremacy of heterosexuality. Acts of nondisclosure and the adoption of straight sexual facades constrain gay men's social and spatial lives.     

Lesbian and Queer Sustainable Farmer Networks in the Midwest

Heteropatriarchy underpins contemporary U.S. agriculture, even within the alternative sector. This paper builds on the legacies of women farmers and farmers of color creating peer networks to circumvent heteropatriarchal hurdles by investigating how lesbian, bisexual, trans, and queer (LBTQ) sustainable farmers access human resources. If and how did the farmers encounter or resist heteropatriarchy in this process? Drawing on four years of ethnographic research with 40 LBTQ Midwest sustainable farmers, I argue that resources through government agencies, neighborhood farmers, and like-minded practitioners did not necessarily align with LBTQ farmers’ sustainable practices or queer identities. LBTQ farmers convened with others at the intersections of their queerness and sustainable practices formally, informally, and through the labor market to access human resources removed from heteropatriarchal domination. I conclude that LBTQ farmer networks bolster human resources in sustainable agriculture and conservation practices.     

(Hetero)sexing Space: Gay Men and “Straight” Space in Adelaide,South Australia

This paper examines gay men's perceptions and experiences of everyday places in Adelaide, South Australia. It illustrates the nature of social space as a heterosexual artifact. The paper also outlines ways in which gay men may contribute to the heterosexualization of space. Many gay men monitor the public and private roles they play for fear of the consequences of “discovery,” and through self-policing and restricted behaviors they may contribute to the spatial supremacy of heterosexuality. Acts of nondisclosure and the adoption of straight sexual facades constrain gay men's social and spatial lives.     

Size Matters to Lesbians,Too: Queer Feminist Interventions into the Scale of Big Data

How can we recognize those whose lives and data become attached to the far-from-groundbreaking framework of “small data”? Specifically, how can marginalized people who do not have the resources to produce, self-categorize, analyze, or store “big data” claim their place in the big data debates? I examine the place of lesbians and queer women in the big data debates through the Lesbian Herstory Archive's not “big” enough lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) organizing history data set—perhaps the largest data set known to exist on LGBTQ activist history—as one such alternative. In a contribution to critical data studies, I take a queer feminist approach to the scale of big data by reading for the imbricated scales and situated knowledge of data.     

When the Light of the Home is Abroad: Unskilled Female Migration and the Filipino Family

The migration of women engaged in transnational domestic work reveals how the uneven impacts of globalisation have intruded into the micro‐world of families and households. In this age of globalisation and migration, family membership has become multisited or transnational, with members dispersed in space. The migration of workers and the separation this entails has raised challenges to notions and ideals of “being family”. Unlike other workers on the move, the migration of domestic workers has some distinctive characteristics. It can be framed in terms of women moving between families and households; workers whose departure from their family of origin and insertion into their family of employment reconstitute the structure and content of family relationships in both material and imagined ways. Drawing on in‐depth interviews conducted in the Philippines and Singapore, we explore how migrant women and their family members define and negotiate family ideals, gender identities and family relationships, given the family's transnational configuration. Our findings provide some support to the notion that individual members in transnational families resort to “relativising” in fashioning responses to their situation.     

The whiteness of gay urban belonging: criminalizing LGBTQ youth of color in queer spaces of care

Chicago’s gay village of Boystown has long been linked with whiteness, and in the past decade, tensions have flared between neighborhood residents and queer and transgender (trans) youth of color, often homeless, who come to Boystown for the many services provided by its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) nonprofit organizations, or queer spaces of care. While scholars have attended to community policing in Boystown through the Take Back Boystown movement, the role of LGBTQ nonprofits has yet to be examined in their role of criminalizing queer and trans youth of color in the neighborhood. Through an autoethnographic approach, this paper explores how several nonprofit organizations in Boystown have adopted policing strategies toward the queer and trans youth of color they serve. I argue that community policing has infiltrated these organizations to further defend and maintain an exclusive gay urban space informed by whiteness, which marks and regulates young, Black masculinities and trans femininities as deviant, untrustworthy, and criminal. Racism diminishes the ability for queer spaces of care to fulfill their mandates of supporting queer and trans youth of color, rendering the neighborhood a space of surveillance and furthering a White gay urban belonging that alienates and criminalizes these youth.     

Urban encounters and sexual health among gay and bisexual immigrant men: perspectives from the settlement and aids service sectors

Gay men's health researchers in North America have recently attended to sexual and mental health issues affecting ethnic minority men, many of whom are also immigrants. Most of this work is grounded in epidemiological models that focus on relationships between individual HIV risk and sexual behaviors. Consequently, they the frame the sexual health of gay and bisexual immigrants as the product of cultural issues (for example, family and religious homophobia, lack of health education) or gay community issues (prevalence of drug use and casual sex) that lead to self‐devaluation, depression, and unprotected sex with multiple partners. Few studies, however, examine these phenomena through the lens of migration and resettlement. Using the narratives from twelve in‐depth interviews with settlement and AIDS Service Organization (ASO) workers in Toronto, Ottawa, and London, Ontario, Canada, this article examines four types of post‐migration urban encounters that influence sexual health: negotiations of resettlement‐related stress, encounters with the urban gay community, encounters with the online gay community, and encounters with sexual health promotion itself. The findings suggest that these encounters are important intervening events that mediate the relationship between the attributes of the immigrant and his sexual health behaviors and outcomes.     

NOHO: UPSCALING MAIN STREET ON THE METROPOLITAN EDGE

This paper traces the relationships between downtown revitalization, housing markets, and a growing lesbian presence in the small city of Northampton, Massachusetts, located on the northern edge of the Springfield Metropolitan region. In Northampton, lately known as NoHo, a self-consciously “cosmopolitan” and urbane revitalized downtown has been created since the 1970s, drawing on a regional set of markets. The downtown also forms a core for lesbian businesses and services, and lesbians have contributed to cultural changes in the area. However, this group had little direct involvement in the booming commercial property market of the 1980s except as a market for rental space. Northampton's downtown residential neighborhoods also underwent cultural and demographic changes in the past decades, but these shifts were more complex than a simple economic upgrading. This paper lends support to studies finding diverse gentrification and revitalization processes.     

旅游商业化“家空间”的代际权力关系与领域构建——西双版纳傣族园案例

论文以西双版纳傣族园的旅游商业化“家空间”为分析样本,基于亲代和子代双重视角,构建家庭微观领域政治的分析框架,意在揭示代际权力关系和领域构建机制。研究发现,旅游商业化的“家空间”是整合多代家庭、促进代际资源交换和权力平衡的协商空间：① 第一代经营者在旅游经营中积累了经济资源、社会资源,掌握着家庭决策权和家务分工权,通过主导空间设置、强化空间排他性、分配家务劳动等领域行为,实现领域构建;② 第二代经营者通过接受教育和外出务工,提高劳动技能,在家庭经营中凸显人力资源优势,提高了家庭自主权,并通过居住空间区隔化、私人生活独立化、家庭经营自主化等空间“去领域化”和“再领域化”策略,重塑领域格局。该研究为理解适度旅游商业化“家空间”的“权力—空间关系”提供了一个分析框架,也是对领域化理论的补充,并为平衡代际权力关系、促进代际团结、推动乡村旅游小企业可持续发展提供了实践启示。     

'Eating and Earning Your Crust Under the Same Roof'

Telework (paid work performed at home using new communications technologies) is a research site where concerns about globalisation, flexible work, technology and gender relations coalesce. My research suggests that the permeability of the boundary between home and work leads to power struggles around the use of domestic space and is symbolic of the wider negotiation of the conflicted identities of worker, parent and partner.     

Spatial practices and imaginaries: Experiences of colonial officers and development professionals

This paper explores the spatiality of colonial and postcolonial power and discourse as produced, performed and imagined by former British colonial service officers and contemporary UK international development professionals. It focuses on two key aspects of spatial practices. The first addresses the spaces inhabited by these colonial officers and development professionals overseas and how their locatedness, embedded or enclavic, shapes relationships to others. The second explores this distinctive social and spatial distancing through their relationship to, and imagined geographies of, home and away and how these are embodied in their institutional and cultural capital. The paper examines the regularities and consistencies that stand out from numerous individual practices through which both former colonial officers and development professionals negotiate the situations in which they live and work. It also specifies how authoritative management, privilege and distance informs their spatial practices despite changing global contexts and a more diverse composition of those who articulate contemporary relationships between 'first' and 'third' worlds. Finally, the paper suggests that the cultures which travelled over colonial space through being performed by colonial officers have been reworked throughout the postcolonial period, belying epochal historical periodizations that conjure up a clear disjuncture between colonial and development eras.     

Queen(s‘) Street or Ponsonby Poofters? Embodied HERO Parade Sites

In this paper I highlight some spatial and body politics of the HERO parade, Aotearoa/New Zealand's biggest gay pride parade. The proposed site change of the HERO parade, from Queen Street to Ponsonby Road, was debated at length in local newspapers. This debate can be theorised as contingent on western hierarchical dualisms such as mind/body, public/ private, straight/gay. 1 offer an embodied geography through a focus on the constitutive relationship between bodies and places.     

‘How dare you say that about my friend’: negotiating disability and identity within Australian high schools

Australian education policies advocate equal opportunities and non-discrimination through legislation that people with disabilities willing to attend ‘main-stream’ schools must be accommodated for. In this paper, people with mobility disabilities talk about their high school experiences in New South Wales, Australia. We are particularly interested in how these men and women talk about the affirmation of bodily differences within various high school spaces. Adopting narrative analysis and a feminist approach we understand identity as constructed spatially. Our interpretation is focused upon how school spaces helped to shape participants’ sense of self and in turn how participants shaped school spaces. We present a series of vignettes which illustrate how participants with mobility disabilities negotiated their bodily differences in and through school space.     

Maximising efficiency,marginalising equity: a genealogy of Australian wheat export market deregulation and ‘the good farmer’

ABSTRACT

The Australian government deregulated the wheat export market in 2008, ending 60 years of statutory wheat marketing by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB). In this article, I explore the discursive shifts which contributed to this change. I adopt a genealogical approach to this research, by collecting and analysing policy documents produced between 1983 and 2012, to understand how truths—such as efficiency, competition and the ‘good farmer’—were constructed and reproduced to facilitate wheat export market deregulation in Australia. Through analysing the case of wheat export market deregulation, and the process by which this shift was made possible, this article contributes more broadly to research examining the neoliberalisation of Australian rural industries, and the discursive construction of norms, values and identities to facilitate these changes.     

Understanding Place as ‘Home’ and ‘Away’ through Practices of Bird-watching

Bird-watching is an increasingly popular leisure activity. Previous research has taken for granted the identity of people who watch birds, often categorised by their level of skilled practice as ‘dude’, ‘birder’ or ‘twitcher’. Feminist geographers encourage us to explore identity work as an outcome of the reciprocal relationships between practices and place. Our feminist approach illustrates that the practices of bird-watching are always much more than categorising birds as species. This paper illustrates how the practices of bird-watching are integral to the making and remaking of sense of place as ‘home’ and ‘away’, to sustain identities beyond accepted categories of ‘dude’, ‘birder’ and ‘twitcher’. The creation and application of different types of ‘bird-lists’ helps to explain the ways in which practices of bird-watching facilitate making sense of place as simultaneously ‘home’, ‘away’ and habitat, as well as the identity work of home-maker, citizen-scientist and tourist. Our insights into these leisure practices of bird-watching are drawn from analysis of data gathered from 21 people who actively bird-watch and reside on the South Coast, New South Wales, Australia by combining research methods of talking, walking, drawing and photography.