(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.     

Tolerance and Rejection: The Vote on Colorado's Amendment Two

Coloradoapos;s 1992 vote on Amendment Two was the first meaningful, broad-based test of attitudes on gay rights within the United States. Analysis of voting results distinguishes places of tolerance from places of rejection. Social differences separating these places reflect typical contrasts between “traditionalists” and “modernizers” found in cultural conflicts at the national level. Places showing support for gay rights are recreational-based mountain communities, urban areas, and university communities. Those showing opposition are rural, agriculturally based communities. Suburban areas produced a more ambivalent vote.     

Contesting Domestic Ideals: queering the Australian home

The Australian home is a crucial site for both normalising and contesting acceptable modes of sexual identity, desire and behaviour. Social norms and government policies have imbricated the detached suburban dwelling with the heterosexual nuclear family form, consequently heterosexualising the ideal Australian home. But this discourse is simultaneously challenged by the domestic practices of gay men and lesbians, who use their homes to consolidate gay/lesbian identities, relationships and communities. As such, they unsettle the normative heterosexuality underpinning dominant, ideal conceptions of home. In this paper I present four vignettes which illustrate how some gay men and lesbians queer the ideal Australian home, generating domestic spaces which affirm sexual difference. In doing so, I highlight two key ways in which this process of ‘queering home’ works. First, through certain uses of home—activities taking place within domestic space. Second, through changes to the materiality of domestic space itself wrought by some homemaking practices, effectively embedding gay/lesbian identities and relationships within the physical environment of the home.     

(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.     

Together,but separate: neighborhood-scale patterns and correlates of spatial segregation between male and female same-sex couples in Melbourne and Sydney

Considerable research has examined the relationships between queer communities and the city, particularly within a qualitative, North American context. This paper provides the first quantitative treatment of the spatial patterning of male and female same-sex couples in Australia’s two largest urban centers, examining differences between the two groups and their potential drivers. Male and female same-sex couples are shown to concentrate in distinct regions of Melbourne and Sydney that are segregated from each other, but nonetheless geographically close: together, but separate. Spatial regression analyses provided an incomplete explanation of these patterns. A number of factors were identified, endogenous and exogenous to the same-sex couple community, which provide a potential explanatory framework for explaining the aggregation of these groups. Very little emerges from this analysis which explains segregation for these groups. The ultimate etiology of segregation between male and female same-sex couples in Melbourne and Sydney remains elusive.     

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.     

Geographic Polarization,Partisan Voting,And The Battle Over Same‐Sex Marriage Within The Culture War

Geographic polarization arises when partisan, or like‐minded, voters live in enclaves separate from voters of differing partisan behavior. Research studies at multiple scales of analysis suggest that geographic polarization most typically occurs regarding partisan voting behavior; however, few studies have analyzed polarization with a focus on policy preferences. This research examines same‐sex marriage policy through two statewide issues that shared the presidential election ballot in 2004. The results of that presidential election and these two ballot initiatives are examined in Cincinnati, Ohio, and counties in its surrounding Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in both Ohio and Kentucky. A geographically polarized relationship was found between partisan results and same‐sex marriage results. In addition, the findings suggest that despite a close link between partisan voting and issue voting on same‐sex marriage, spatial clustering (geographic polarization) was identified of those who voted differently from their fellow partisans.     

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.