Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.

113-122, 1995
Copyright ~) 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd
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Queer country:
Rural Lesbian and Gay Lives
David Bell and Gill Valentine
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Winter Street, Sheffield S10
2TN, U.K.

Abstract - - Studies of rural life and lifestyles have yet to seriously address issues of
sexuality. This paper outlines some of the experiences of lesbians and gay men who
live in the countryside. It begins by tracing the history of the relationship between
homosexuality and rurality in fiction and film, paying particular attention to the
role of rural utopias in the lesbian and gay imagination. The paper then goes on to
consider the structural difficulties experienced by those gay men and women who
are born and raised in rural areas, and the lifestyles of those who choose to move to
country locations in an attempt to create alternative communes. The paper ends
with discussion of the ethics of researching 'rural others'.

Studies of rural life and lifestyles are only just
beginning to seriously address issues of sexuality,
and have yet to move far beyond merely including it
in lists of sociocultural variables (along with gender,
class, ethnicity, disability and so on) mentioned as
commonly overlooked by rural research (Cloke,
1994; Cloke and Thrift, 1994). That said, there is a
growing awareness of and commitment to broaden-
ing the social remit of rural studies to include
'neglected others' (Philo, 1992). At the same time
much work on sexual identities and communities
remains firmly located in the urban - - especially the
metropolitan (e.g. Adler and Brenner, 1992; Binnie,
1995; Knopp, 1992; Weightman, 1981) - - and has
only comparatively recently migrated to the suburbs
(Lynch, 1987; Mendelsohn, 1995), never mind the
countryside, despite the fact that many sexual
dissidents (especially perhaps gay men) do try to find
a home outside the city. Maybe this almost exclusive
focus on the urban should not seem surprising, given
that many social constructionist arguments about the
development of gay identity I suggest that this is
predicated upon the opportunities offered by city life
- - by anonymity and heterogeneity, as well as by
sheer population size (Bech, 1993; Knopp, 1995;
Stein, 1992). But there a r e lesbians and gay men who
live in the countryside, and further there are those
who visit it and make use of the various resources it
has to offer. This paper aims to look at these people
and their lives and lifestyles, by surveying firstly the
place of the rural within gay cultural products
(novels, poetry, film), then the lives of lesbians and
gay men born and raised in rural areas, and lastly
rural communal living experiments and recreational
uses of the countryside by sexual dissidents. Each of
these sections mobilizes a different (though over-
lapping) conception of 'the rural' - - either as an
imagined, idyllic setting for same-sex love and sex
(for both utopian communes and cultural projects),
or as a space that structures social opportunities and
life-chances (either positively - - for commune-
dwellers - - or negatively, for those struggling to find
identity and community in claustrophobic, xeno-
phobic and homophobic rural communities). As
rural studies becomes sensitive to the many mean-
ings of the rural, research into aspects of 'queer
country' can add to this broadening conception of
the rural as both an imaginative and a social
resource.
R u r a l i t y in t h e g a y i m a g i n a t i o n

lit should be pointed out here that using terms such as
'gay' or 'lesbian' is deeply problematic, since they are
identities to which not everyone who might engage in
same-sex sexual acts (or have fantasies about, or what-
ever) would wish to subscribe', see later in the paper for
more on this.
We can trace a history of the perceived relationship
between homosexuality and rurality which runs, to a
point, hand-in-hand with the changing position of
the rural in the popular imagination, and more
especially with its romanticisation from the V i c -

113
114 David Bell and Gill Valentine
torian era onwards (Marsh, 1982). Examining the
biographies of key figures such as Edward Carpenter
(Tsuzuki, 1980; Weeks, 1977) and works of fiction
which use rural setting and/or landscape metaphors
to discuss (homo)sexual themes affords us a window
into this imagination, and grounds our study histor-
ically within key changes in society. Byrne Fone
(1983), in his pioneering study of Arcadia and gay
male literature, suggests that the role of this mythic,
Edenic place in the gay imaginary is as safe space for
same-sex desire, to serve as metaphor for homo-
sexual themes otherwise undisclosed, and to estab-
lish a spiritual and, he says, divine sanction for
homosexuality as a 'means to an understanding of
the good and the beautiful' (Fone, 1983, p. 13).
Fone quotes, among others, Joseph and His Friend,
written by the American novelist Bayard Taylor in
1869. Taylor's Arcadia is:
a great valley, bounded by hundreds of miles of snowy
p e a k s . . . [with] a perfect climate, where it is bliss
enough to breathe, and [where there is] freedom from
the distorted laws of men, for none are near enough to
enforce them (Taylor, 1869; quoted by Fone, 1983, p.
16).
Works such as Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar,
E.M. Forster's Maurice and Nial Kent's The Divided
Path also offers images of secret seclusion where
men can escape law's prying eyes, and be united in
love. Similarly, poets such as Walt Whitman, W.H.
Auden and Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of 'manly
love' in wilderness and rural settings. In his book
Articulate Flesh (1987), Greg Woods reviews the use
of body-landscape metaphors in homoerotic verse - -
hair is like grass (or, in the case of Genet's
description of Querelle, pine needles), the pectorals
a mountain range - - Auden, surveying a man from
the vantage-point of being beneath him, between his
legs, looks 'through the forest of pubic hair/To the
range of the chest, rising lofty and wide' (quoted in
Woods, 1987, p. 39).
In addition to these poetic and prose works using
landscape imagery, there is a particularly strong
tradition of utopian fiction which uses fantastic rural
settings. Feminist and/or lesbian novels from
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) to Sally
Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground: Stories of the
Hill Women (1985) use rural utopianism and a kind
of ecofeminist critique of masculinist techno-
urbanism to write fables of women reunited with
nature (and thereby rediscovering lost strengths and
powers), free from men and male tyranny, and
developing their own loving, caring communities. In
her essay on Rebecca West and Sylvia Townsend
Warner, Jane Marcus (1984, p. 136) notes that 'in
modern British fantasy novels, an imaginary mytho-
logical wild space is sought by women as a source of
creativity and selfhood in response to the phallo-
centric city', and that part of this plight involves the
rejection of heterosexuality. In the same volume,
Sherrill Grace (1984) looks at the deployment of
rural and urban codes as symbols of female and
male, respectively: Margaret Atwood's poem
'Marrying the Hangman' encapsulates this (quoted
in Grace, 1984, p. 204):
'He said: foot, boot, order, city, fist, roads, time, knife.
She said: water, night, willow, rope hair, earth belly,
cave, meat, shroud, open, blood'.
Utopian representations in the gay imaginary do not
solely deploy rural settings, of course. The
metropolis is also widely depicted as the ideal arena
for sexual outsiders, with the already-mentioned mix
of anonymity and increased opportunity supple-
mented by the possibilities afforded by distinctly
urban pastimes such as flanerie or the d~rive
(Hallam, 1993; Munt, 1995) and the fetishizing of
particular urban landscape forms, such as (post)-
industrial derelection (Binnie, 1992). Lisa Doyle
(1995), in her discussion of utopia in lesbian film for
example, saw the Chicago portrayed in Go Fish as
positively as the Nevada of Desert Hearts.
Other film representations such as Salmonberries
and The Garden have also deployed rural and/or
wilderness settings as stages upon which to enact
(homo)sexual dramas (see Allen, 1995; Jarman,
1992). Within lesbian and gay pornography there is
likewise a strong association between untamed
landscapes and erotic play (Woods, 1995), a fact
reflected in the eroticisation of rural settings for
episodic sexual encounters (Lieshout, 1992; see also
work by the artist Tom of Finland). Outdoors sex in
general and sex in the countryside in particular have
a long history and a wide geography. From juvenile
sexual games at boy scout camp (Crew, 1977) to
lesbian cruising on Riis Park beach in New York
(Nestle, 1987), sexual encounters are ascribed a
special 'feel' if they occur in the right setting
(Ingram, 1993; Jarman, 1992). In this way, too, the
rural has become an intensely fetishized locale in gay
culture - - one popular gay bar in the West End of
London calls itself Village Soho, its adverts in the
gay press showing two London boys before an
unmistakably Batsford-esque rural landscape. The
following two ethnographic extracts embody this
fetishization perfectly:
My best memory of outdoor sex was a bit of mutual
(safe) buggery, just in boots, in the middle of day in late
summer, with the sun glinting through the leaves of the
forest. We ran naked through the trees, rubbing against
the bark, and rolled in the leaves... ('Jon', in National
Lesbian and Gay Survey, 1993, p. 116).
 Queer Country
Woodland in the dark has a promise of adventure.
Perhaps it is the combination of fear and expectation.
Behind each tree you may expect something or someone
frightening or tempting or both. For me it is very erotic
scenery . . . I also like other settings, but leathersex and
a scenery like these woods belong to each other
('Richard', in Lieshout, 1992, p. 16).
Further, to counter the urban bias of much reporting
in the gay media, articles have recently been run in
major gay magazines and newspapers proclaiming
the glories of, for example, Cumbria (Wilcox, 1994),
while gay Cornwell has produced its own tourist
guide (ICT, 1994). The pink press also regularly
carries advertisements for gay or gay-friendly
holiday accommodation in the countryside. In
addition, the continued influx of rural lesbians and
gays to big cities has become sexualised (for
example, the 'innocence' as well as the enthusiasm
of country boys is clearly fetishized in the Terrence
Higgins Trust safer sex leaflet Hick From The
Sticks).
Of course, rurality has many other sexual conno-
tations which get played out in popular cultural
forms, 'from the erotic to the boisterous', as Dave
Matless (1994, p. 40) describes them, listing, among
others, novels by H . E . Bates and D.H. Lawrence.
Recent televisual and fllmic portrayals, including
adaptations of classic rural novels, have also
depicted widely different forms of rural sexuality,
from the innocent sauciness of ITV's The Darling
Buds of May to the self-consciously raunchy Lady
Chatterley's Lover, and from repressed homo-
sexuality, integenerational sex and murderous rape
in The Reflecting Skin to religious abstention and
self-imposed isolation (rocked by the arrival of an
urban cop) in Witness. 2 Even the buccolic British
soap opera Emmerdale has latterly got sex (and
sexuality), with an ad campaign showing characters
in raptuous clinches and with its first lesbian
storyline.
2Interestingly, a recent episode of the American drama
serial The X Files, about FBI investigation of unexplained
phenomena (UFOs, mutants, etc.), used a rural religious
separatist community very like Witness's Amish as the
setting for a story about the ultimate in polymorphous
perversity - - the community members were actually
shape-shifting and sex-changing aliens with overpowering
sex hormones, who killed their human sexual partners
during intercourse with a kind of lethal lust. Their sudden
departure (on discovery by the FBI agents) by UFO also
left crop circles in the fields they had previously tended.
3This song, one of the Country and Western's all-time
greats, has been heavily ironicized of late - - recorded by
laconic (male) 'New Country' star Lyle Lovett, it was used
at the end of the movie The Crying Game, about a gay
transvestite and the ('straight') man who falls for him/her.
The song had already become a kitsch standard, played
(and sung along with) lovingly by countless lesbian
Country music fans (see Ainley and Cooper, 1994).
115
Perhaps most widespread as popular ideas about
rural sex lives, and with tremendous currency in
comedic representations, are images of particular
forms of rural depravation, most notably of
incestuous 'in-breeding' (see for example the
'Farmer Palmer' strip in U.K. 'adult comic' Viz) and
of zoophilia or 'bestiality' (see Dekkers, 1994) - - in
English slang, rural dwellers are pejoratively
referred to as 'sheep shaggers', while (too) many
comedy sketches have traded on the in-bred 'village
idiot'. In a more scholarly vein, the twin-volume
Kinsey reports catalogue 'animal contacts' in both
men and women, noting their higher frequency in
rural areas, where close to 20% of males had sexual
contact with an animal to the point of orgasm (the
most common animals involved in sex with the
'human male' were farm stock rather than the
household pets favoured by the 'human female') - -
they also note that for the 'city boy', animal sex is
more common' when he visits a farm during the
vacation period' (Kinsey et al., 1948, p. 674; for
material on women's animal contacts, see Kinsey et
al., 1953).
However, in reality rural areas may best be rep-
resented as settings for traditional (and not especi-
ally enlightened) moral (including sexual) standards
(on the broader 'moral economy' of the countryside,
see Mahar, 1991). In its cosiest forms, rurality
conflates with 'simple life', with hegemonic sexual-
ities (church weddings, monogamy, heterosexual-
ity); although even here 'modernisation' o c c u r s -
British radio soap The Archers has storylines involv-
ing adultery and abortion (though continuing to
deny homosexuality, except in its listeners' fantasies;
see Howes, 1992). Similar depictions of simplicity
and safety exude from tv shows such as Heartbeat or
All Creatures Great and Small, where the only
potentially counterhegemonic displays of sexuality
are of the cheeky 'love-among-the-haystacks'
variety, easily absorbed and rarely mentioned - - just
as T a m m y Wynette sings in the Country and
Western classic 'Stand By Your Man', even if your
husband has an affair, 'If you love him, you'll forgive
him . . . For, after all, he's just a man'. :~ In such an
unreconstructed, essentialized environment, what
place can there be for sexual dissidents?
Rural gay life
There has been a general neglect of rural gay men
and lesbians in the growing number of life history
volumes published in recent years (but see selected
entries in National Lesbian and Gay Survey, 1993)
which must, in part at least, reflect problems of
access for researchers, as well as continued metro-
centrism in work on homosexuality. This paucity of
116 David Bell and Gill Valentine
empirical material means that discussion of rural gay
life as lived cannot, unfortunately, be that extensive
at this time.
Those studies which have been conducted reveal,
not surprisingly, tales of isolation, unsupportive
social environments and a chronic lack of structural
services and facilities - - leading to eventual or
projected emigration to larger (urban) settlements
which offer better opportunities for living out the
'gay life' (D'Augelli and Hart, 1987; Kramer, 1995).
Louie Crew's autobiographical account of 'growing
up gay in Dixie' (1977) tells exactly this kind of
story, with the threat of being cast out making denial
and invisibility the only option - - but, as he says, 28
years of sexual abstinence was a high price to pay for
'fitting in'; his decision to come out, however, has
caused just as many problems, including discrimin-
ation by realtors and employers, not to mention the
Anglican bishop who wrote in their local newspaper
that Louie and his partner Ernest's 'lifestyle' has
brought forth the wrath of God in the shape of a
tornado that ripped through their home town.
A significant part of the problem of rural gay life, as
mentioned, is the lack of facilities and services - - as
one respondent in Georgina Gowan's (1995) study
of lesbian life in smalltown Salisbury put it, 'It must
be exciting to be heterosexual' - - because at least
then you have places to socialise freely. A regional
survey of publicised gay facilities in Britain clearly
maps their uneven distribution, with regions such as
the North and South West underserviced by gay
institutions (Nocton, 1983). As Tony D'Augelli and
Mary Hart (1987, p. 82) note in one of the very few
studies to discuss (US) rural lesbian and gay lives in
any detail:
In most rural areas the gay community is invisible. This
invisibility is a result of justifiable fear and discomfort
about others' reactions to disclosure of affectional
orientation. Many rural gays fear discovery and possible
rejection, worrying that any gay behavior will lead to
exposure. Contacts with known gay people may be
avoided due to fears of others' reactions.
In the 'age of AIDS', this lack of any graspable
4There is neither room nor sufficient empirical material
available to say anything much about the relationship
between bisexuality (in its current, politicised sense,
rather than in its Freudian undifferentiated sense) and the
rural. AnecdotaUy, the 'bisexual movement' in the 1990s
seems to embrace alliances with assorted oppositional
politics stances - - with green issues, paganism, a kind of
'hippie' mentality - - which could mean strong links with
rurality; however, as with the contemporary lesbian and
gay communities, it exists in a similarly tense relationship
with both the positive and negative aspects of rural and
urban life (see Weise, 1992).
'community' makes health promotion in rural areas
especially difficult. Kathleen Rounds (1988) suggests
that this issue is of great importance since a person
with AIDS may return to their family in a rural
setting to be cared for, meeting head-on the
prejudices about AIDS and about homosexuality
from which they fled to the city in the first place.
And, as Poull~rd and D'Augelli (1989, p. 35) note in
their study of rural-based health promotion pro-
grams in the U.S.A., those services which do exist
may be tinged by rural attitudes - - a quarter of the
volunteers on rural health promotion programs they
questioned said that gay men should do everything
they can to 'overcome' their homosexual feelings,
and 20% thought male homosexuals 'disgusting'.
However, studies of rural gays and lesbians also
show the extent to which informal support networks
have evolved, facilitating the creation of spatially
disparate but strongly interwoven 'communities
without propinquity' in remote and rural areas (see
also D'Augelli, 1989; D'Augelli, Collins and Hart,
1987; Gowans, 1995; Kramer, 1995; Krieger, 1983).
Of great importance here is the presence of tele-
phone helplines, chatlines and sexlines, which can
transend problems of isolation, fears of discovery
(lines are anonymous) and so on, while imparting
vital information and support (Brown, 1995; Moses
and Buckner, 1980).
A further issue that must be discussed here is that of
identity and identification. Autobiographical
accounts such as Crew's, and work such as Kramer's,
show that many people who feel attracted to others
of the same sex, and many who act on those feelings,
often actively deny the label 'homosexual', let alone
'gay' or 'lesbian'. In fact, due to the intense
heteronormative pressures of rural life, many are
married, or have long-term partners of the opposite
sex (though this does not necessarily make them
'bisexual' or mean that they would lay claim to
'bisexuality' as an identity). 4 HIV prevention work
has been sensitized to these issues, attempting to
target what it calls 'men who have sex with men'
through peer education programs in public toilets
and on cruising grounds, which may be the only
possible sites for those seeking same-sex contact (on
these issues, see Bell, 1995; Woodhead, 1995). The
issue of women's use of such sites remains problem-
atic, with informal social gatherings often cited as
performing a similar function for rural women
(Gowans, 1995). However, for some men and
women, any kind of acknowledgement of their own
same-sex activities, fantasies or attractions is un-
thinkable, rendering even the most sensitive pro-
gram or helpline useless (and, of course, these
people rarely if ever show up on any kind of surveys
into sexual behaviour).
 Q u e e r Country
In rural and urban areas alike, of course, it is not
only those in search of sex who like to frequent
cruising grounds and public toilets - - both gay
bashers and police officers have their reasons for
being there, too. In a rural area 'unfamiliar' with
gays, policing may be even more punitive, as the
arrest of 38 men at a leather party in the Yorkshire
village of Hoylandswaine in March 1993 shows.
David Smith, writing in Gay Times (1993, p. 7),
reports arresting officers as 'clueless' when con-
fronted with leather clothing and bondage gear. Two
years later, the Hoylandswaine men are being paid a
total of £40,000 in damages for wrongful arrest (Pink
Paper, 1995). Anti-gay violence remains a dominant
fear for rural lesbians and gay men, however, further
restricting the opportunities for social, political and
sexual liaison (Gowans, 1995).
Not all lesbians and gay men living in rural areas are
willing to tolerate homophobic policing, social
prejudice and violence, and nor do they decide that
the only option left is to move away. Some have
started to fight back. A recent report on Welsh gay
groups clearly shows a radical strand of activism
informed by Q u e e r politics in a seemingly unlikely
coalition with Welsh-language activism. Two
groups, Cylch and Dicllon (the latter a kind of Welsh
OutRage!) have been engaged in Welsh-speaking
campaigns for lesbian and gay rights, first picketting
and then being allowed a stand at the Eisteddfod
(Nobbs, 1994). Meanwhile in Norfolk, gay activists
have begun to protest at the annual Walsingham
pilgrimage, in part highlighting the hypocrisy of a
church which undoubtedly contains many gays,
lesbians and bisexuals, but which continues a policy
of publicly condemning homosexual sex (Otton,
1994).
O f course, there are two very different groups of gay
rural dwellers: first, there are those gay men and
lesbians born and raised in rural areas; and second,
there are those who choose to move to a country
location. It is the first group which follows the
stereotyped life-path which includes relocation away
from the oppression of country life in one of the
larger regional urban population centres. Even
within this group, however, there are contradictions.
Empirical findings from the first Kinsey Report
(1948) suggested high levels of same-sex sexual
activity between rural men precisely because of
isolation and conservatism which, when coupled
with the rigours of hard physical work and the
homosocial bonds of male-only occupations such as
5That public toilets are referred to in U.K. gay slang as
'cottages', with visiting them for sex known as 'cottaging',
adds a further rural connotation which cannot go
unremarked.
117
prospecting, cattle-running and lumberjacking,
might overcome moral codes against same-sex desire
and sexual activity (for a similar situation occurring
in South African mining communities, see Elder,
1995). As the Kinsey Report (1948, p. 457) puts it:
These men who have faced the rigors of nature in the
wild. They live on realities and on a minimum of theory.
Such a background breeds the attitude that sex is sex,
irrespective of the nature of the partner with whom the
relation is had.
It is no wonder, then, that the cowboy (or 'cowgay')
has become one of the most eroticised of macho gay
stereotypes (again, see work by Tom of Finland
here).
Kinsey's comment about these men living on a
'minimum of theory' is especially resonant for rural
lesbian and gay lives, which are often not exposed to
the political and social progress made by urban
lesbian and gay movements. Lack of availability of
even the most basic resources such as gay news-
papers and books makes access to up-to-date and
unbiased information difficult (although perhaps this
is becoming less so gay issues appear more
frequently in the mainstream media and as the
possibilities of global communications through cable
and satellite tv and electronic mail, not to mention
the more homely gay phone-lines, open up at least
virtual communities in remote areas). However, for
those not cognisant with new technologies - - and
not able to filter tabloid sensationalism and bigotry
- - even the most basic issues of gay politics and
identity might be beyond reach. For such 'bachelor
farmers and spinsters', as Jerry Lee Kramer (1995)
calls them, the only openings for expressing their
sexuality might come from episodic encounters in
public toilets or highway rest areas (Corzine and
Kirby, 1977), or from infrequent trips to neigh-
bouring towns' adult bookstores and porn cinemas
(D'Augelli and Hart, 1987; Kramer, 1995). The
formation of any sense of identity or community
beyond the most clandestine is clearly not feasible in
such an environment, although any fixed locus of
'gay' activity, even if no more than a public toilet by
the side of a road, can at least offer an alternative to
solitude and self-loathing, and so may represent a
very valuable first step in individual (and maybe
collective) identity-formation (see Kramer, 1995).
But the 'community of the cottage', 5 like the
'community of the closet', is a fragile foundation
upon which to construct anything more concrete or
lasting (public toilets used for sex are routinely
raided and closed down - - as well as being a clear
focus for homophobic attacks - - so that the
geography of opportunities for sex is constantly
changing, and the risks involved in cottaging are
always high).
118 David Bell and Gill Valentine
Country living 6
For those lesbians and gay men who actively choose
to live in rural settings, the immense structural and
attitudinal difficulties outlined above must be offset
by other benefits. One attraction of the countryside
is the space it is perceived to offer those lesbians and
gay men who wish to create communes and alter-
native lifestyles. The rural is particularly appealing
because it offers freedom from many of the undesir-
able sides of modern life. For lesbian feminists a
return to nature, a break from the nuclear family,
and freedom from men could all best be realised on
farms and ranches. As one member of a U.S. lesbian
commune explains:
We view our maintaining lesbian space and protecting
these acres from the rape of man and his chemicals as a
political act of active resistance. Struggling with each
other to work through our patriarchal conditioning, and
attempting to work and live together in harmony with
each other and nature, is a revolutionary act (quoted in
Cheney, 1985, p. 135).
In the 1970s, a whole circuit of women-only farms
developed in the U.S., where lesbians could travel
from place to place, staying to work awhile with
their fellow country women, as they called them-
selves (Faderman, 1991). The proliferation of these
lesbian ranches across the whole country made them
a significant rural phenomenon. A lesbian country
magazine was even established, entitled Maize. In
the U.K. during the same period there were similar
attempts to create rural communes, albeit on a
smaller scale. Some, including one set up by a group
of radical lesbian feminists who moved from London
to settle in the Pennines, are still in existence two
decades later.
Many of these North American and British com-
munes were founded on philosophies of lesbian
separatism, which whilst not exclusively anti-urban,
could perhaps best be enacted away from man-made
cities (Lee, 1990). In particular, radical lesbian
feminism has been strongly influenced by essentialist
ideas about women's affinity with nature. There is a
long tradition within Western thought of arguing
that women are closer to nature than men because of
their biology (menstrual cycle and child rearing)
and of devaluing nature (female) in relation to
science and culture, the creation of 'rational' men
(Nesmith and Radcliffe, 1993). Yet whilst arguments
about women's 'uncontrollability' and 'irrationality'
6While there might still exist considerable squeamishness
over the word 'cunt', its currency within the lesbian
feminist circles discussed in Lesbian Land (which includes,
among other things, an illustrated plan for planting a 'cunt
garden') makes its use here appropriate.
and so on have been used throughout history to deny
women everything from education to employment
(Merchant, 1980; Sayers, 1982), lesbian feminist
philosophy has at times positively embraced a belief
in women's 'natural femininity', relationship with
'mother earth' and so on. Although these discourses
around femininity and nature have been subject to
feminist critiques (see for example Nesmith and
Radcliffe, 1993), this philosophy has been at the
heart of many lesbian separatist attempts to establish
women-only rural communes. In particular, there
are strong spiritual dimensions to some of these
communities, with women worshipping earth
goddesses, renaming themselves after plants (e.g.
'Buckwheat', 'Willow', 'Clove', 'Weed'), and
holding meditations and festivals celebrating
menstruation.
The strong spiritual dimension of some of these
communities is captured in Joyce Cheney's definitive
anthology Lesbian Land (1985). This collection of
writings by women on farms and ranches across the
U.S. gives the women from these communes a
chance to describe their experiences - - except for
the community which did not respond to her enquiry
as they had rejected all technology, including the
written word. From the practicalities of land law to
the spiritual experience of union with Nature, the
stories in Lesbian Land offer a richly textured
portrait of a little-known social movement.
For example one woman describes her time
'travelling in dykeland':
We had a stable small community of about 13 dykes and
one boychild, living in tents, trailers, tipis, c a r s . . . We
celebrated winter solstice, candlemas, international
wimmins day, and spring equinox, with campfires,
circling, singing. One new moon, we had a day of
silence. We talked a lot about herbs, healing, astrology,
nuclear power/actions and food . . . I enjoy[ed] being
part of a sharing tribe: creating wimmin culture, new
ways of living based on our needs, with respect for the
land, each other, the plant world, the animal world,
living in harmony (quoted in Cheney, 1985, pp. 166-
167).
Another, Buckwheat, describes living in a woman's
place:
We gather in circles, usually outdoors, and generate
womanspirit. We chant and sometimes share the names
of our matrilineage. "I am Maryann, daughter of Mary,
daughter of Mamie, daughter of Mary Jane, daughter of
Mary" (quoted in Cheney, 1985, p. 21).
A third explains why she left the city:
The city has a way of making you feel t r a p p e d . . , when
I did come here and the vision began to unfold even
 Queer Country
more, I knew this was the place and I had not chosen it,
but She, my Mother Earth, had chosen me to come
h e r e . . . During the time I was there I became very
clear that the womyn that I used to be was behind me,
and the womyn-warrior that I was to be in future was
entering my body (quoted in Cheney, 1985, pp. 31-35).
But these utopian visions have not always survived
the reality of rural living. Many of these lesbian rural
communes in the U.S. and U.K. have folded as a
result of political disputes (for example over whether
'boy children' should be allowed in), personality
conflicts and relationship breakdowns. In other
communities, the idealism of the founders to reject
all the trappings of the man-made city, such as
electricity, central heating, carpets, cars, modern
medicines and so on has largely been modified as a
result of the hardships of this lifestyle, illness and the
daily grind of organising collective chores. Some of
these pains of communal rural life are described in
the detailed book-length record of the Womanshare
Collective from Oregan, published as Country
Lesbians (1976).
There are historical precedents for this kind of
communal life, too, although Muncy (1973, p. 13)
rather acidly notes in his study Sex and Marriage in
Utopian Communities that nineteenth-century
American utopian communes were unanimously
heterosexual, even if they espoused free love and
sexual experimentation (just as histories of 1960s
hippie live-ins tend to deny homosexual activity). In
turn of the century Britain, Edward Carpenter lived
out a kind of gay communal farm life at Millthorpe
(Carpenter, 1984; Tsuzuki, 1980; for a dramatisation
of Carpenter's life, see Greig, 1979). In fact, one of
the U.K.'s current gay rural groups, founded in
1980, calls itself the Edward Carpenter Community.
Although it has now shelved plans to establish a full
rural gay men's community (see Woolaston, 1991 for
their original plans), the group continues to run
events for gay men who want to get out into the
country. The most prominent of these are Gay
Men's Weeks, a kind of spiritual retreat to
Laurieston Hall in Scotland.
The activities offered by the ECC's Gay Men's
Weeks - - circle-dancing, drama, therapy and self-
healing, discussions of desires and sexualities - - also
reveal links with the contemporary men's movement
which, like ecofeminist and lesbian-feminist philos-
ophies, embraces the spirituality of nature, the
dignity of labour, and the liberatory healing effects
of alternative (non-urban, non-industrial, non-
consumerist) lifestyles (though it should be noted
that many of the so-called mytho-poetic men's
groups are hostile towards homosexuality, wary that
it will somehow challenge the 'safety' of their
masculine homosocial intimacy; see Bonnett, 1995).
119
The Edward Carpenter Community's 'Beyond
Barriers' weekend is billed as having its emphasis on
'personal growth and adventures in the Outdoors',
while a Gay Men's Week at Laurieston in June 1994
was described thus:
There'il be faeries, there'll be magic; there'll be fear and
trepidation; there'll be the highlights and the lowlights
and challenging exploration. With hidden things to show
and share and other things to get to know, this life
enhancing, sense enchanting place will warm your
soul.
In a similar style, Mark Thompson (1987, p. 292)
writes of the 'dance of the fairies' at a U.S. gay
men's wilderness gathering:
We build a fire near the sweatlodge, in a field above the
bubbling springs, and form a circle around it . . . We
evoke the elements, the four directions... Slowly,
some men begin to sing, or join with others in a low,
rumbling chant. We draw instinctively closer as the
sound grows in intensity and men, young and old
together, begin to move. Some break from the circle
and dance to shaking rattles and the voice of automatic
tongues.
While not all lesbians and gay men who move to the
country end up in rural communes, there is an
unmistakable thread of green utopianism within
both lesbian and gay communities. For example, in
Sandra Anlin's study of lesbian housing needs
(1991), some respondents located their 'fantasy
home' in a rural setting. For many gays and lesbians,
however, the only option (as with much of the
population of western urban-industrial nations) is to
use the countryside recreationally.
There is a huge range of specifically homosexual
o u t d o o r recreational groups currently organising
events in the U.K. - - from the Hiking Dykes to the
Gay Naturist Group, and from gay potholers to
lesbian mountaineers. The largest and probably
best-known of these is the Gay Outdoor Club, estab-
lished 20 years ago and now with a membership of
over 900 spread between 20 local groups from the
Highlands to the Solent. The Club publishes its own
newsletter (the May 1994 edition was number 99),
and activities include swimming, canal boat holi-
days, walking and climbing, cycling and camping. Its
stated aims include helping gay men and women
"increase their knowledge and love of the country-
side through the development of skills".
As well as articles on everything from practical
hillwalking skills and how to clean a sleeping bag,
the lesbian walkers' newsletter The Dyke has a
broader agenda, documenting everything from
lesbian rural cultures to the history of women in the
country. Some lesbian groups writing in The Dyke
120 David Bell and Gill Valentine
include stories of local rural lesbian patois and
folklores. A group from D u n d e e write: " . . . a
folklore of Lilidot tales has emerged to keep up the
aching spirits. Lucky the blistered group who hear
about Helda and Griselda of Loch Lee, fighting off
marauders by pouring boiling massage oil on them
from the tower at the foot of the g l e n . . . " (The
D y k e , 1994, p. 3). Such a use (and enjoyment) of the
country could not be more different from the closed
and closeted rural gay lives discussed earlier.
Conclusion
From those born on the farm to those moving to the
commune, and from those out for a hike to those out
for a luck, the lives and lifestyles of lesbians and gay
men in rural locations embody a range of responses
to the rural from Edenic and utopian to dysfunc-
tional and oppressive. Both rural studies and lesbian
and gay studies stand to be enriched by the further
investigation of this queer country, and this paper
has only begun to show the complexities of the
interplay of 'the rural' with particular forms of
sexual dissidence. The tensions should now be clear:
as an imaginative resource, the rural can be a place
of fantasy and utopia, a place for living an idyllic
'gay' life; at the same time, the urban maintains a
position of equal (if different) appeal, both in
popular culture and in the life-courses of many
lesbians and gay men. For many with same-sex
feelings, however they deal with them, the country-
side offers nothing but isolation and loathing,
without the social networks or opportunities offered
by metropolitan and cosmopolitan life. For others, it
is a place of escape from the evils of the city, either
as an occasional recreational resource or as the
setting for a whole new way of life (communal, eco-
friendly, etc.). In common with an increasingly
contingent understanding of what the rural means in
contemporary culture and society (see Halfacree,
1993), the relationship between sexuality and rural-
ity has been shown to be ambivalent, contextual and
malleable.
T h e r e are, then, many complicated issues here that
would benefit from fuller discussion. Further
research will hopefully begin to unpick these, and
build up a much richer understanding of what rural
lesbian, gay and bisexual life entails. The position of
bisexuality, for example, has received scant atten-
tion here; explicit discussion of other sexual dissi-
dents (transgendered people, sadomasochists and
fetishists, for example) is similarly lacking (except
for mention of the Hoylandswaine raid, which is
framed here as a gay issue rather than an SM issue
per se, while discussion of zoophilia, intergener-
ational sex and so on is largely confined to rep-
resentations in popular culture). Fuller and more
nuanced work on sexuality and rurality must flesh
out all of these, where possible and appropriate.
This brings us on to a final crucial issue - - the ethics
of this kind of research. We must immediately
question the effects that academic exposure of rural
sex liv.es might have. Who will it benefit and who
might it harm? Is it better to leave hidden those who
wish to be invisible? As with any 'sensitive' social
research, justification cannot solely rest on the filling
of an empirical gap. Certainly, there are sound
reasons for wanting to bring to light the harsh
realities of rural life for many sexual dissidents, and
perhaps even to 'give voice' to that life, as an
ethnographic account such as Georgina Gowans'
(1995) does; at the same time, our understandings of
the rural are enhanced by including perspectives
from popular culture, including the kinds of gay-
themed (or gay-appropriated) cultural products dis-
cussed above. An awareness of the many axes of
'difference' may also suggest the need to 'think the
rural' in more fragmented, contingent and contested
ways than totalizing tropes have thus far enabled. In
short, we see such research as part of a response to
Chris Philo's (1992, p. 202) call to turn 'neglect into
engagement' in a way which enriches both rural
studies and lesbian and gay studies.
Acknowledgements - - We would like to thank those
people who commented on earlier drafts of this paper,
most notably John Ambrose and Chris Thomas, and those
people who responded to live performances of it at either
Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education
or the University of Oxford. The referees' comments were
also particularly insightful and helpful.
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