Andrew Gorman-Murray

Rethinking queer migration through the body

Discussions of the intranational migration of sexual dissidents have focused on rural-to-urban movement, and have largely conceptualized ‘queer migration’ through a symbolic rural–urban binary, consequently normalizing rural-to-urban displacement while eliding the real diversity of queer relocations. There is also a strong suggestion of teleological and ontological finality in the normalization of rural-to-urban relocation narratives, intimating a once-and-for-all emergence from the rural ‘closet’. To elicit greater complexity, I suggest that the explanatory scale of queer migration should be downsized from fixed rural–urban contrasts to the actual movement of the queer body through space. To this end I rethink ‘queer migration’ as an ‘embodied queer identity quest’, suggesting that while ‘coming out’ often underpins relocation decisions, the personal, embodied and individualistic nature of this experience generates movement on a variety of paths and scales. Arguably most important among these are peripatetic migrations, which most tellingly counter the teleology of rural-to-urban models. Moreover, in evoking embodied displacements predicated on ‘coming out’, I seek to contemplate the possible affects of bodily sexual desires in shaping the contours of queer migration.

Queering the family home: narratives from gay, lesbian and bisexual youth coming out in supportive family homes in Australia

Geographical literature has predominantly presented the heterosexual nuclear family home as an oppressive environment for gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) youth, reporting that homophobic abuse, violence and expulsion are not uncommon outcomes of coming out at home. While not denying the widespread reality of these experiences, little consideration has been given to GLB youth whose disclosure at home is affirmed by parents and siblings, nor the reasons for and consequences of this acceptance and support. This article begins to fill this gap, contributing to geographies of sexuality, home and family. Through a critical reading of autobiographical coming out narratives from Australia, I reconsider the experience of the nuclear family home for well-supported GLB youth, arguing against the normalization of the homophobic nuclear family home. Through the support of parents and siblings, family homes can become sites of resistance to wider practices of heterosexism, and support for GLB youth. Heterosexual identity does not ‘essentially’ generate heterosexist reactions and attitudes: some heterosexual parents and siblings welcome and nourish sexual difference, and this provides fissures in overarching structures of heteronormativity which allow for the generation of non-heterosexual subjectivities and desires. I contend that this actually ‘queers’ the family home, providing a space for the fluorescence of non-heterosexuality within an apparently heteronormative site.

Masculinity and the Home: a critical review and conceptual framework

Abstract There is growing interest in home and domesticity across geography and related disciplines. A key consideration of this work is the relationship between home, domesticity, and various identity categories, including gender, race, class, age, disability and sexuality. What is little developed, however, is knowledge of the shifting relationship(s) between masculinity and the home. In this paper, I critically review a small body of multi-disciplinary research on the intersections of masculinity and domesticity, offering some conceptual pointers for understanding and making further inquiries into the complex relationships between masculinity and the home. I argue that masculinity and domesticity are interrelational and co-constitutive. On this foundation I review literature on masculinity and the home across three interrelationships: hetero-masculine, bachelor and gay domesticities. This theoretically informed critical review thus provides conceptual insights both into the spatiality of masculine identity work and shifting meanings of home.

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

Abstract 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, Australias 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 councils 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.

'The guys in there just expect to be laid': Embodied and gendered socio-spatial practices of a 'night out' in Wollongong, Australia

This article investigates intersections of sexuality, sex, femininities, and alcohol. The concept of spatially-situated subjectivity is deployed to examine how women negotiate their femininities and sexualities in and through spaces of a ‘night out’. A mixed methods approach was deployed with young, single, white women in Wollongong, Australia. Drawing on narrative analysis, our research suggests the paradoxical qualities of pub spaces. We argue that where and why women drink is an outcome of negotiations, transgressions and accommodations as they reconcile a sense of self with(in) the gendered and heterosexed socio-spatial practice of particular pubs. In practical terms, corporeal femininities provide effective advice for ameliorating risks of regular intoxication.

Gay and Lesbian Couples at Home: Identity Work in Domestic Space

ABSTRACT Social research into gay/lesbian experiences of home has tended to posit domestic environments as alienating for gay/lesbian subjects, silencing their sexual identities. Meanwhile, work on the spatiality of sexual identity more broadly has largely focused on individuals or communities, not couples or households. In this context, this article aims to recover the importance of home for gay/lesbian couples. I explore how cohabiting gay/lesbian couples generate shared identities through domestic space, examining various ways in which these couples use homes to establish and consolidate their partnerships. Empirical data is drawn from twenty-three in-depth interviews with gay/lesbian Australians who are cohabiting, or have cohabited, with a long-term partner. The sample is largely limited to white, educated, middle-class gay men and lesbians living in urban Australia, providing an ethnographic window into the domestic identity-formation of a particular community of practice. Four key themes regarding “coupled identities” at home emerged from the interviews: (i) the importance of privacy and control at home for enabling gay/lesbian partnerships; (ii) the negotiated creation and use of shared domestic spaces; (iii) the accumulation and arrangement of household objects in those domestic spaces; and (iv) the importance of maintaining separate “personal” spaces for each partner for the well-being of the relationship.

Contesting Domestic Ideals: queering the Australian home

Abstract 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.

LGBT Neighbourhoods and ‘New Mobilities’: Towards Understanding Transformations in Sexual and Gendered Urban Landscapes

In this article we apply insights from ‘new mobilities’ approaches to understand the shifting sexual and gendered landscapes of major cities in the global North. The empirical context is the purported ‘demise’ of traditional gay villages in Toronto, Canada and Sydney, Australia, and the emergence of ‘LGBT neighbourhoods’ elsewhere in the inner city. We reinterpret the historical geography of twentieth century LGBT lives and the associated ‘rise and fall’ of gay enclaves through the lens of the ‘politics of mobility’. In this reading, it is apparent that multifaceted movements — migration, physical and social mobility, and motility — underpin the formation of gay enclaves and recent transformations in sexual and gendered landscapes. After the second world war, LGBT communities in the global North were embedded in specific historical geographies of mobility and we trace these in the Canadian and Australian contexts. The ‘great gay migration’ from the 1960s to the 1980s has been joined by new LGBT constellations of mobility in the 2000s, and these have imprinted upon the sexual and gendered landscapes of Toronto and Sydney.

Reconfiguring Domestic Values: Meanings of Home for Gay Men and Lesbians

In contemporary western society, the idea of home is commonly associated with the site of the house. But the meaning of home is not reducible to the physical space of the house. For a house to become a home, it must be imbued with a range of meanings, feelings and experiences by its occupants. While some researchers have uncovered universal, normative meanings of home, such as privacy, identity and family, others have demonstrated that these meanings can also vary across social groups according to gender, race, class, age, disability and sexuality. This paper contributes to this body of work through a case study that explores the meanings of home for middle‐class gay men and lesbians living in urban Australia. Drawing on data from 37 in‐depth interviews, the paper contends that gay/lesbian meanings of home are both congruent with, but also challenge, normative meanings of home. The respondents emphasize a range of ideal meanings, but reinterpret these through the experience of being gay or lesbian in contemporary society. In the process, normative homely values are employed to resist the idealization of the heterosexual family home, and instead generate homes that affirm sexual difference.

Queering disasters: On the need to account for LGBTI experiences in natural disaster contexts

This article seeks a queering of research and policy in relation to natural disasters, their human impacts, management and response. The human impacts of natural disasters vary across different social groups. We contend that one group largely absent from scholarly and policy agendas is sexual and gender minorities, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) populations. To demonstrate that these minorities have particular experiences that need to be addressed, we critically review five case studies that comprise the limited scholarly and policy research on LGBTI populations in disasters to date. Building on this, we offer some specific ways forward for queer disaster research that accounts for the vulnerabilities, needs and resilient capacities of LGBTI populations. In doing so, we recognise and urge researchers, policy-makers and aid agencies to acknowledge that LGBTI populations are not homogeneous and have different needs wrought by intersections of socio-economic resources, gender, race/ethnicity, age and regional or national location.