Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography by Andrew Gorman-Murray

Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography
Edited by Andrew Gorman-Murray,

Barbara Pini, and Lia Bryant
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Sexuality, rurality, and geography / [edited by] Andrew Gorman-Murray, Barbara Pini, and Lia
Bryant.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-6936-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-6937-7 (electronic)
1. Sex. 2. Sexual minorities. 3. Country life. 4. Rural population. 5. Sociology, Rural. I. Gorman-
Murray, Andrew, editor. II. Pini, Barbara, editor. III. Bryant, Lia, editor.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Geographies of Ruralities and Sexualities 1
Andrew Gorman-Murray, Barbara Pini, and Lia Bryant
1: Intimacies and Institutions

1 Respectable Country Girls 21
Richard Phillips
2 Rural Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans Equalities: English
Legislative Equalities in an Era of Austerity 35
Kath Browne and Nick McGlynn
3 Heterosexual Marriage, Intimacy, and Farming 51
Lia Bryant
2: Communities
4 Rural Men in Nordic Television Programs 67
Hanna-Mari Ikonen and Samu Pehkonen
5 Queering the Hollow: Space, Place, and Rural Queerness 81
Mathias Detamore
6 Documenting Lesbian and Gay Lives in Rural Australia 95
Andrew Gorman-Murray
7 Space, Place, and Identity in Conversation: Queer Black
Women Living in the Rural U.S. South 111
LaToya E. Eaves
3: Mobilities
8 Conceptual and Spatial Migrations: Rural Gay Men’s Quest
for Identity 129
Alexis Annes and Meredith Redlin
9 “It Doesn’t Even Feel Like It’s Being Processed by Your
Head”: Lesbian Affective Home Journeys to and within
Townsville, Queensland, Australia 143
Gordon Waitt and Lynda Johnston
v
vi Contents
10 Coming Out, Coming In: Geographies of Lesbian Existence

in Contemporary Swedish Youth Novels 159
Jenny Björklund
4: Production and Consumption

11 Screwing with Animals: Industrial Agriculture and the
Management of Animal Sexuality 175
Claire E. Rasmussen
12 Gender, Sexuality, and Rurality in the Mining Industry 187
Barbara Pini and Robyn Mayes
13 The Global Cowboy: Rural Masculinities and Sexualities 199
Chris Gibson
Conclusion: Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography 219

Barbara Pini, Lia Bryant, and Andrew Gorman-Murray
References 229
Index 253
About the Contributors 265
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the individuals and organizations that

have provided support for the publication of this collection. Helen Late-
more provided editorial assistance with the text. Andrew would like to
thank colleagues at the University of Western Sydney and the University
of Wollongong for their encouragement during the preparation of this
volume, and dedicates the volume to Rohan Tate for creating a suppor-
tive and loving home. Barbara dedicates this volume to her friend Martin
Hammelswang, whose generous spirit and good humor have enriched
her life. Lia would like to thank her colleagues at the University of South
Australia, and dedicates this volume to Tim and Katerina Bryant for their
ongoing support and encouragement.
vii
Introduction
Geographies of Ruralities and Sexualities
Andrew Gorman-Murray, Barbara Pini,

and Lia Bryant
In both academic and popular literature, “rurality” is recognized as a set

of both material spaces and symbolic imaginaries that converse with each
other (Bell 2003, 2006a; Short 2006; Woods 2007). Rurality is also often
juxtaposed with urbanity, cities, and metropolitan registers, albeit in dif-
ferent relational frames in various regions, nations, and cultures. More-
over, just like cities and urban imaginaries, these interlinked rural spaces
are, in the West, sites of a broad range of social and cultural differences
(Cloke and Little 1997). In recent years, this complexity has been increas-
ingly recognized and interrogated by scholars in geography, sociology,
cultural studies, rural studies, gender studies, and related fields of in-
quiry. One of the most productive and provocative themes, we argue, is
the rapidly growing interest in the intersections between sexuality and
rurality, and particularly the spatial contingencies of these relationships
(Bell and Valentine 1995a; Phillips, Watt, and Shuttleton 2000; Gorman-
Murray, Waitt, and Gibson 2008; Bryant and Pini 2011). Sexuality is
multifaceted, and encompasses interpersonal relationships, emotional
embodiment and desires, and disciplinary social and political structures.
Rurality, too, is diverse, in terms of its composite physical and human
geographies that come together in multiple ways to form imbricated
landscapes of settlement, belonging, production, consumption, and con-
servation. This volume seeks to scrutinize the diverse and multifarious
connections between sexuality and rurality within the organizing context
of geographical imperatives and relations.
The chapters in this volume pick up and critically discuss an array of
connections between sexuality, rurality, and geography. As a taste of
what’s to come, this range includes: heterosexual marriage, family, and
intimacy in farming, mining, and other rural communities; lesbian and
gay identities and same-sex relationships in small towns, farmscapes, and
wilderness; the mobility of heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and queer folk to,
from, and around rural spaces; masculine and feminine embodiments in
rural communities; animal sexualities and the relationships between hu-
1
2 Andrew Gorman-Murray, Barbara Pini, and Lia Bryant
mans and non-humans in rural areas and industries; and experiences of

institutional and social inequalities. The authors hail from a range of
disciplines and national spaces, drawing on ethnographic, media, and
discursive sources to provide insights into rural sexualities in the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Aus-
tralia, as well as the mobile spaces of the global countryside. Admittedly,
the focus is largely on Western ruralities and sexualities. In this introduc-
tory chapter we aim to set the framework and the tone for understanding
this diverse work on geographies of ruralities and sexualities. We intro-
duce the antecedent scholarship of this bourgeoning field by providing
an overview of existing literature.
This chapter will thus be a critical and conceptually-informed litera-
ture review of research on rural sexualities. We have identified three
broad thematic frames of work in this area:
• Gay, lesbian, and queer experiences of rural spaces and imaginar-
ies;
• Heterosexuality in rural spaces and imaginaries; and
• Animal and non-human sexualities in rural spaces and imaginaries.
The following discussion is consequently arranged into these three
themes. This conceptual overview will be followed by an introduction to
the chapters in this volume and the thematic sections into which we have
organized them. In doing so, we suggest where and how they respond to
and/or advance existing work on gay, lesbian, and queer rural experi-
ences, rural heterosexualities, and animal sexualities.
GAY, LESBIAN, AND QUEER EXPERIENCES OF THE RURAL
We begin with gay, lesbian, and queer (GLQ) experiences of rural spaces.
Gay men are primarily sexually attracted to, and form relationships with,
men; lesbians are women who are primarily sexually attracted to, and
form relationships with, other women; queer is a term that challenges the
binary neatness of gender identity and same-sex and opposite-sex attrac-
tion, and signifies both the multiplicity and fluidity of sexual desires and
relations. While we deploy the acronym GLQ rather than LGBTIQ (les-
bian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer), we stress that GLQ should be
read as inclusive of bisexual, trans, and intersex people. In fact, we sub-
mit that there is very little work, if any, that explicitly and specifically
examines bisexual, trans, or intersex experiences of the rural—this is a
lacuna that must be addressed in future scholarship.
We start with GLQ experiences of rurality because, within the small
but growing body of work on rural sexualities, GLQ studies are arguably
the oldest and most developed. For instance, newer work on rural hetero-
sexualities often notes that extant work on rurality and sexuality has
Introduction 3
tended to draw attention to “non-heterosexual” identities, lives, and

communities, particularly those of lesbians and gay men. While acknowl-
edging this relative depth of scholarship on GLQ experiences of the rural,
there is nevertheless still much work to be done on this theme, with an
aim to challenge gender, sexuality, and queer studies as well as rural
studies. Notably, there is still a tendency to center urban communities in
work on GLQ lives, often suggesting it is hard to locate rural participants
(and perhaps ethically awkward). At the same time, it is important to
have an understanding of existing literature as a foundation for new
work and advances—such as the chapters in this volume. So how can we
understand and critically organize the current scholarship on GLQ rural
experiences?
Work across a range of disciplines has considered how rurality has
been invoked as a spatial imaginary for GLQ communities and cultures
in the West. This includes work from geography (Bell and Valentine
1995a; Bell 2000a, 2003) and literary and cultural studies (Fone 1983; Hal-
perin 1983; Shuttleton 2000), which draws attention to the rural as a space
of both belonging and alienation for sexual minorities. On the one hand,
scholars have highlighted the idea of the rural as a site of belonging in
certain GLQ literature, film, and cultural ideals—a particular version of
the rural idyll for sexual minorities, denoted by such terms as “gay pasto-
ral” (Shuttleton 2000) and “rural Arcadia” (Fone 1983). One of the first to
note this idyll was Fone (1983, 13), who asserted the rural as “a place
where it is safe to be gay . . . where homosexuality can be revealed and
spoken of without reprisal, and where homosexual love can be consum-
mated without concern for the punishment or scorn of the world.” The
scope of this imaginary has been given further nuance in scholarship by
Shuttleton (2000), Bell and Valentine (1995a), and Bell (2000a, 2003). Bell’s
(2000a, 2003) insightful idea of the “homosexual rural” suggests a site of
belonging—for male-to-male sexual activities and relations, in particu-
lar—assembled through intersecting lenses of nature, eroticism, mascu-
linity, and rural “innocence.” On the other hand, scholars have also noted
the paradoxical view in GLQ cultural imaginaries circulating in the Unit-
ed States and the United Kingdom that rural places are exclusionary,
where sexual minorities are imagined as silenced, closeted, and hidden in
rural communities (Bell and Valentine 1995a; Mortimer-Sandilands and
Erickson 2010a). Moreover, the standard narrative of GLQ identity for-
mation is predicated on rural-to-urban migration, in which the city is
seen to enable sexual identity (through existing communities or urban
anonymity) (Bell and Valentine 1995a; Weston 1995; Knopp and Brown
2003). Here the rural and urban are juxtaposed in GLQ ideas of migra-
tion, space, and belonging: “the gay imaginary is not just a dream of
freedom to ‘be gay’ that requires an urban location, but a symbolic space
that configures gayness itself by elaborating an opposition between rural
and urban life,” so that the city is naturalized as “a beacon of tolerance
and gay community, the country a locus of persecution and gay absence”
(Weston 1995, 255, 262).
Both notions—those of alienation and of belonging—have been mani-
fest in the “actual” rural experiences of sexual minorities. Here, it is im-
perative to note, as Bell (2003) and Knopp and Brown (2003) so eloquent-
ly contend, that it is somewhat artificial to separate the “real” and “repre-
sentational,” since they intersect, with lived experiences and spatial ideas
mutually sculpting each other. Acknowledging this, the experiences of
GLQ people within rural spaces both reflect and inform spatial imaginar-
ies of rural life. “Alienating” experiences of oppression, discrimination,
and self-closeting have been particularly highlighted, not surprisingly,
given the impact a lack of social interaction may have on mental health.
Most prominent has been scholarship from the United States on Massa-
chusetts and New England (Bonfitto 1997; Cody and Welch 1997; Forsyth
1997a, 1997b; Kirkey and Forsyth 2001), North Dakota (Kramer 1995),
Wyoming (Loffreda 2000), Kentucky (Gray 2009), the Midwest (Fellows
1996; Wilson 2000), and the South (Herring 2010). This work shows there
is a lack of rural GLQ community spaces and resources, necessitating
alternative forms of meeting and relating. It also outlines the need for
“coping strategies” to maintain the line between sexual practices, coming
out, and staying in—the daily calculation about violence, fear, and the
cost of openness, so tragically realized in the murder of Matt Shepard
(Loffreda 2000). Research in Australia—in Victoria (Gottschalk and New-
ton 2003, 2009; Gorman-Murray and Waitt 2009; Gorman-Murray, Waitt,
and Gibson 2008; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2008, 2011a), and Queens-
land (Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2007, 2011b, 2011c)—has also discussed
the tangible significance of questions of in/out and safety/violence, and
how rural GLQ people cope.
At this point, then, it is also important to realize that there are at least
two rural GLQ groups to consider, whose actions differ: those country-
born-and-bred, and those who choose to move to rural areas. Scholar-
ship, as above, suggests country-born-and-bred folk have to consider the
choice between either “moving out” or “staying put,” as the spatial equa-
tion is sometimes starkly presented. Work from the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Australia indicates that many do choose to move
out—usually to “the city”—to engage with visible GLQ communities and
openly enact sexual relationships and identities (Rubin 1984; D’Emilio
1993; Weston 1995; Cant 1997; Maddison 2002; Gottschalk and Newton
2003). While some stay in the city, others return to their hometowns (or
other rural communities). Waitt and Gorman-Murray (2011b, 2011c)
found this in research on GLQ folk living in Townsville, Queensland,
Australia, as did Annes and Redlin (2012) in comparative work on rural
gay men’s migration patterns in the United States and France (also see
Oswald 2002). It is important to acknowledge, then, that the rural-to-
urban migration narrative in GLQ imaginaries is complicated in “real
Introduction 5
life” experience by return and peripatetic migration paths (Knopp and

Brown 2003; Gorman-Murray 2007a)—even moving through rural towns
and bypassing the city altogether. Others, of course, don’t move at all, but
are repulsed by the city and choose to stay put and make do (Wilson
2000; Green 2004; Hogan 2010; Kennedy 2010). Some create their own
rural GLQ communities in-place, as evidenced in work by Forsyth and
Kirkey, together and separately, on Northampton in the Massachusetts
Valley, United States (Forsyth 1997a, 1997b; Kirkey and Forsyth 2001).
Then there are others—often city-born—who move to different rural
areas for various personal and political reasons. Most famous are “back-
to-the-land” lesbian separatist communities, noted in scholarship on the
United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, where feminist and
eco-feminist politics are deeply embedded in the construction of “lesbian
lands” (Ion 1997; Valentine 1997; Sandilands 2002; Anahita 2009; Unger
2010; Browne 2011). Here, women-only rural living space is configured as
a rejection of heteropatriarchal power structures, urban consumption,
and man-made cities, which are collectively understood as threats to both
women’s self-actualization and survival of “the natural environment”
(Valentine 1997; Unger 2010). Simultaneously, due to their radical politi-
cal goals, these communities are often also quite separate from surround-
ing rural towns (Ion 1997). Similarly, semi-separatist communities of gay
men—called radical faeries—have sought to establish alternative lives in
rural spaces (Bell 2000a, 2003; Morgensen 2009a, 2009b; Herring 2010;
Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010a). Bell (2000a, 554; 2003) notes
that, parallel to lesbian separatists, the faeries are driven by desires to
reject heteropatriarchal urban life, to eschew the urban “gay scene” as an
inauthentic space of male-to-male sexual relationality, “and to look for
spiritual and sexual renewal through self-reliance and contact with raw
nature.” “Nature-based” spirituality, as a conduit of self-renewal, often
suffuses the “back-to-the-land” politics of both lesbian separatists and
radical faeries (Anahita 2009; Bell 2000a, 2003; Morgensen 2009a, 2009b;
Valentine 1997; Unger 2010).
Other GLQ rural immigrants, though, simply choose to move to ac-
cepting and welcoming country towns and connect with existing commu-
nity there. These migrants demonstrate that the rural is differentiated,
and there is belonging as well as alienation in rural communities. There
are a number of examples of such processes in scholarship, drawn from
the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. These include:
Newton’s (1993) extensive history of Cherry Grove as America’s first
GLQ town; Forsyth’s (1997a, 57; 1997b) work on Massachusetts’s North-
ampton which, for lesbians, is “‘out’ territory in terms of visibility, com-
munity activity and organization”; Smith and Holt’s (2005, 318) study of
lesbian migration to Hebden Bridge, in the United Kingdom, where les-
bian identities and relationships are “openly performed in publicly vis-
ible ways” and “widely accepted and embraced” by the community; Fai-
man-Silva’s (2009) comprehensive ethnography of the historical social

geography of Provincetown, Massachusetts, which has long welcomed
and embraced GLQ folk as both permanent residents and annual tourists;
and Gorman-Murray, Waitt, and Gibson’s (2008, 2012) research on Day-
lesford, Victoria, which has one of the highest concentrations of GLQ
residents in rural Australia, is sometimes described by both heterosexual
and GLQ locals as a “uniquely diverse country town” and the “gay capi-
tal of rural Australia,” and hosts ChillOut—the largest annual GLQ festi-
val in rural Australia—with support from the local council, businesses,
organizations, and heterosexual residents (see also Gorman-Murray
2009a; Gorman-Murray and Waitt 2009; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2008,
2011a).
The towns described above are not without their problems of ongoing
heterosexist and homophobic discrimination from some residents, of
course, as all the authors cited indicate in their writings. Nevertheless,
these are examples of where there has been a measure of GLQ incorpora-
tion and acceptance in existing rural communities. It is important to ac-
knowledge, however, that this integration is often tied not only to themes
of sexuality, community and anti-urban stances, but class, consumption,
rural gentrification, and “mainstreaming” of GLQ identities, relation-
ships, and communities. Newton (1993) notes that some lesbians and gay
men were heavily involved in gentrifying Cherry Grove, Faiman-Silva
(2009) makes similar observations for Provincetown, and Smith and Holt
(2005) indicate likewise for lesbian participation in gentrification in Heb-
den Bridge. Meanwhile, Waitt and Gorman-Murray (2008, 2011a) under-
score that Daylesford is a gentrifying country town based on a cosmopol-
itan-rustic tourism of pastoral landscapes, spa resorts, and gastronomic
tours, and this has aided the embrace of sexual minorities as part of the
“business elite” and “cashed-up market”—perhaps in a manner not pos-
sible in many other farming and mining communities in rural Australia,
where economies are based on agricultural or resource extraction rather
than heritage and rural tourism. This raises the links between tourism
and GLQ rural experiences, where GLQ rural spaces are not just fabricat-
ed by permanent immigrants or those country-born-and-bred, but by
tourists visiting and indulging in the rural, often inspired by notions of
the “gay pastoral” and “rural Arcadia” (Bell and Valentine 1995a; Waitt
and Markwell 2006; Browne 2008, 2009a, 2011; Faiman-Silva 2009; Mor-
timer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010a).
The newest area of work on GLQ experiences of the rural concerns
sexual citizenship in rural spaces, which is a critical issue for permanent
residents (rather than the tourists noted above). The key social and politi-
cal question in contemporary times is about the political visibility of GLQ
folk and how sexual minorities live day-to-day in the tension between
belonging and alienation, enacted in both “on-the-street” encounters and
in legislation, policy, and planning about social inclusion (Gray 2009;
Introduction 7
Hogan 2010; Holman and Oswald 2011). These inquiries are interested in
relationships between individuals and society, and different layers of
structural discipline—legal, political, as well as shifting social and cultu-
ral norms. Recent work here includes: Rasmussen’s (2006) interrogation
of the campaign for and enactment of Nebraska’s Defense of Marriage
Act in the United States, and the way these social, legal, and political
processes were deeply reliant on and embedded in idealized rural mores
of the hetero-nuclear family; Gorman-Murray, Waitt, and Gibson’s (2008)
investigation of the multiscalar politics of belonging in Daylesford, where
appeals to “the normal family” at the national scale were used to unsettle
the normalization of “non-traditional families” at the local scale; and Gor-
man-Murray’s (2011) assessment of “inclusive” social planning for LGBT
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) minorities in regional and metropolitan
New South Wales, where explicit recognition for LGBT folk in social
plans is recommended by the state government, but its operation is left to
the discretion of local councils that vary in their stance (see also Gorman-
Murray et al. 2010; Gorman-Murray and Brennan-Horley 2011). More
needs to be done to understand how sexual citizenship articulates with
the urban/rural binary, for heterosexuals as well as GLQ folk and fami-
lies. We now turn to work on heterosexuality and rurality.
HETEROSEXUALITY AND THE RURAL
To date, it has been rare for geographers to give explicit attention to the
question of the interconnection between rurality and heterosexuality. In
much work, particularly that of feminist rural geographers, heterosexual-
ity has often been an invisible presence, central to discussions on subjects
such as the gendered division of work in rural communities or the patri-
lineal line of inheritance on family farms, but not named or critiqued
(e.g., Sachs 1983; Poiner 1990; Shortall 1999). At the same time, it has been
work on gender in rural social science which has been instrumental in
opening up the study of rural heterosexualities, highlighting the claim of
feminist theorists that heterosexuality presupposes a focus on gender and
vice versa (Jackson 1996). For example, it was in the exploration of rural
masculinities in military sources and in right-wing militia groups, by
Woodward (2000) and Kimmel and Ferber (2000) respectively, that
heterosexuality emerged as a key theme. What was demonstrated from
this scholarship is that the discourses of rurality which are commonly
deployed to inscribe national identity in countries such as the United
Kingdom and United States are not only gendered but
(hetero)sexualized. As Kimmel and Ferber (2000, 596–97) explain, the
“True, Right America” imagined in the militia movement propaganda is
a land of “Christianity, traditional history, heterosexuality, male domina-
tion, white racial superiority and power, individualism (and) meritocra-
cy.” Thus, it seems that despite notable disruptions to the mythologizing

of nation and citizenship as imbued with heterosexuality, as new histori-
cal (re)readings of the American West and new cultural texts such as film
and artworks have queered imaginings of the frontier and cowboy (Pack-
ard 2006; Le Coney and Trodd 2009), 1 discourses of normative heterosex-
uality, masculinity, and rurality continue to be significant in shaping
understandings of nationhood and national belonging.
Alongside the militia and military, scholars have also examined more
mundane sites for constituting rural male heterosexualities such as agri-
cultural organizations (Pini 2008) and country pubs (Campbell and Phil-
lips 1995). In doing so they have described rural spaces as heteronorma-
tive, asserting that heterosexuality is hegemonic and naturalized to the
point of invisibility in the rural with deviations policed and marginal-
ized. Such a premise was starkly illustrated in a study of rural youth
undertaken by Hillier, Harrison, and Bowditch (1999, 74) where all but
two of the 511 involved in the research defined sex “as a solely heterosex-
ual activity.” Bryant (2006, 67) noted a similar silence about “non-hetero-
sexual masculinities and femininities” in focus groups about gender rela-
tions with young people at an Australian agricultural college.
In the above research, heteronormativity is not looked at in isolation
but as an oppressive regulatory device intersecting with patriarchy.
Bryant (2006, 70), for example, reports that the young men engage a
discourse she labels “raw heterosexual masculinity” which must be
“publicly observable,” manifested in boasting of heterosexual activity,
the objectification of women, and excessive drinking; young women re-
port the need to limit drinking and their involvement in heterosex if they
are to be afforded “respect” by other male and female students. She
argues that as a result—and as other literature has reinforced—young
women’s sexuality and gender renders them spatially contained and
marginalized in many rural communities (e.g. Jones 1992). Moreover,
such surveillance and disciplining of rural women’s gendered and sexu-
alized bodies does not necessarily cease once they leave college life be-
hind. A study of the everyday experience of marriage for young farming
couples by Bryant and Pini (2011) in Australia revealed that with in-laws
living in close proximity and sharing ownership of the farm (with their
son/s), young farming women’s gendered and heterosexual futures are
closely monitored. Such is the hegemony of patriarchal heteronormative
relations in the rural that the types of gendered and heterosexual expecta-
tions in-laws and husbands imagined for the young women farmers ex-
tends beyond the farm gate to incorporate broader community roles and
activities.
Additional feminist literature on gender and heterosexualities in the
rural has been important in demonstrating that gendered and sexualized
identities are mediated by other social categories such as race and class.
Such work has grown in urgency as rural spaces, including agricultural
Introduction 9
structures and practices, are dramatically reshaped by globalization with

potentially negative implications for particular racialized and classed
groups. There is still much to be done in this regard, but the detailed
ethnographic work on migrant Mexican women farmworkers in Canada
by Castaneda and Zavella (2003) and Preibisch and Encalada Grez (2010)
provides a strong foundation. Until recently, the identity of “good farm
worker” of the global North’s temporary agricultural visa program was
male, but this is changing as Mexican women are seen as useful to corpo-
rate agriculture for embodying a range of essentialized feminine traits
such as dexterity, responsibility, productivity, and patience. However,
the workplace of corporate agriculture is a hostile one for migrant wom-
en who face sexual harassment and abuse from male workers and em-
ployers. Because employers can choose workers on the basis of gender
and nationality, and work permits are only valid with a single designated
employer, the women’s options for redress are extremely limited. Further
to this is that the women’s sexuality is subject to ongoing disciplinary
mechanisms with employers circumscribing social connections (e.g., re-
stricting visitors) and creating barriers to social networks (e.g., separating
male and female employees, separating employees of the same national-
ity). There is no respite from their home communities or from other mi-
grant men as the migrant farm women are positioned as sexually avail-
able, promiscuous, and inappropriate mothers.
It is the “ubiquitous uncontested nature of heterosexuality” within
rural communities which is the focus of work undertaken by Little (2003,
406) in an analysis of three campaigns—“The Farmer Wants a Wife” con-
ducted by the British magazine Country Living, a “Singles’ Ball” held in
the rural New Zealand community of Middlemarch, and a 2004 Austra-
lian television program titled Desperately Seeking Sheila (Little 2003, 2006,
2007, Little and Panelli 2007). The impetus for these campaigns across
disparate national stages is “the problem” of bachelor farmers, and that
the collective “solution” is young women and the nuclear family. This
starkly testifies to the normalization of heterosexuality in the rural. In
short, the popular argument is that in these rural communities heterosex-
uality is the natural choice for farming men but they are lacking women
to fulfill this choice.
While the rich analysis of the bachelor farmer campaigns offers much
in terms of understandings of heterosexuality and rurality, two key
themes deserve particular emphasis. First is that the type of rural/agricul-
tural heterosexual masculinity circulated in the campaigns is unthreaten-
ing, somewhat inept, and passive. It may be, as Little (2006) explains, that
the message is that this masculine self can change with the assistance of a
woman. However, what is of particular interest is that the representation
stands in stark contrast to the dominant constructions of rural/agricultu-
ral heterosexual masculinities reviewed in this chapter (e.g., Liepins 1998;
Bryant 2006), and thus highlights the theoretical imperative to engage
with a “pluralistic notion of heterosexualities” (Hockey, Meah, and Rob-

inson 2007, 162). While the provisional and shifting nature of heterosexu-
ality emerges in Bryant and Pini’s (2011) study of young farming couples
as they distinguish their own heterosexual relationships from that of their
older farming parents/in-laws, there is still little in the literature which
gives a sense of “a multiplicity of heterosexualities rather than a mono-
lithic heterosexuality” (Hubbard 2008, 645).
A second key theme in the critique by Little (2003, 2006, 2007) and
Little and Panelli (2007) concerns the depiction of nature in the cam-
paigns, and the multifaceted connections between nature and heterosex-
uality. Also demonstrating the import of the “moral contours of hetero-
sexuality” (Hubbard 2000, 191) in the rural is Bryant and Pini’s (2011)
critique of the award-winning Australian documentary With this Ring
(2003), which recounts the life for a young woman farmer, Gayle, and her
husband Mac after an on-farm accident left Gayle disabled. The title it-
self, of course, frames the story as one of romance. It is, moreover, a story
of a heterosexual romance, and one of morality and stability that is real
and lasting and peculiar to the rural. Images play a crucial role in convey-
ing this message. We see Mac expertly working with horses, capably
riding through a paddock and competently drafting cattle, demonstrat-
ing his simplicity, tenacity, and industry. The couple’s remoteness from
the outside world is also emphasized through visual devices such as
aerial shots of the property and panning shots of paddocks that seeming-
ly go on forever. Much is made, as well, of the restorative and fertile
power of nature as images of lushness and abundance fill the screen, and
Mac recalls that, “The rain came about four weeks ago, and it’s amazing
what a bit of Mother Nature can do.”
The subject of nature and heterosexuality is also examined by John-
ston (2006) in a nuanced study of New Zealand wedding tourism. The
research draws on brochures, websites, and a documentary to enumerate
the dialogic relationship between representations of the New Zealand
landscape and tourist weddings as unsullied, pure, and sacred, and the
way this imbues heterosexuality with morality. Johnston’s (2006) work is
particularly useful for signaling the value of interrogating the practices,
motifs, and discourses of rural tourism for heteronormativity (see also
Gorman-Murray, Waitt, and Gibson 2008; Waitt and Gorman-Murray
2008). In a similar respect, Luke’s (1998) examination of hunting reveals
that considerable insights into heterosexuality and rurality can be gained
by subjecting rural leisure practices to critique. Again, hunting is a rural
activity which has been rightly subjected to a gender critique (e.g., Bye
2003), but in the hunting magazines and manuals reviewed by Luke
(1998) the practice is not just found to be important as an expression of
rural masculine identity, but of rural heterosexual masculine identity.
Throughout the texts, hunting is described and defended through com-
parisons with (phallocentric) heterosex.
Introduction 11
Despite the initial explorations into rurality and heterosexuality on

the subjects outlined above, one topic remains almost entirely unex-
plored: non-normative or “scary” rural heterosexuality (Hubbard 1999,
57). There is much more to be achieved if the literature on conventional
rural heterosexual identities and practices tied to the nuclear family is
contextualized against/with a literature on non-conventional rural
heterosexual identities and practices. One exception is Bell’s (2006b) over-
view of the heterosexual practice of “dogging,” which he explains largely
takes place in secluded sites on the urban fringe and in natural sur-
rounds. However, as his intent is to offer a preliminary discussion on the
topic, he understandably does not elaborate on the practice from the
specific perspective of rurality. Also of note is a study of twenty sex-
workers in rural Australia undertaken by Scott et al. (2006) in which
those interviewed challenge the popular (urban) positioning of sex-work-
ers as disempowered young victims. Participants are older women who
cite choice and emphasize the positives in their working lives compared
with their city counterparts, such as less competition and fewer drugs. In
another example, Nelson (2005) details life for single mothers in the rural
United States. She documents the challenges these non-metropolitan
women face in finding and pursuing romantic love as well as the prag-
matic attitude many display in explaining their exchange of sex with men
for needed goods and services.
In pursuing work on non-normative heterosexualities, scholars may
find inspiration from the newest area of scholarship on rural sexualities,
that is, animal sexualities in rural spaces. It is this body of work to which
we now turn.
ANIMAL SEXUALITIES AND THE RURAL
The newest area of scholarship on rural sexualities, which is rapidly

growing, concerns animal sexualities in rural spaces. In this work, the
rural spatial imaginary is quite often bound up with interrogatives of (the
meaning of) nature and the natural world, and the configurations of na-
ture/culture dualisms. Discussions sometimes stabilize, but more often
contest, the nature/culture binary—see, for example, Mortimer-Sandi-
lands and Erickson’s (2010b) Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire,
for a collection which profoundly and provocatively disrupts these cate-
gories. In fact, in both the literature on animal sexualities and broader
scholarship on animals (such as “animal geographies” and “animal eth-
ics”), animal subjectivities are increasingly being referred to as non-hu-
man, or even more-than-human, in an effort to recognize their agency
and co-equal role in relations with humans. The relationship between
human and non-human animals is thus seen as one of intersubjectivity,
not of human subjectivity and animal objectivity.
In terms of the range of work on non-human animal sexualities specif-

ically, one line of discussion focuses on their relations with each other,
with particular attention to non-heterosexual or “queer” sexual relations
taking place between non-human animals (e.g., Bagemihl 1999; Rough-
garden 2004; Halberstam 2008; Alaimo 2010; Sturgeon 2010; Bell 2010).
This “queer animality”—or same-sex activity between non-humans—
challenges the “naturalness” of heterosex, particularly reproductive
heterosex, in cultural constructions of “the natural order of things” by
human animals. The natural order is, instead, much queerer than popular
discourse often permits us to see! Work on queer animality also responds
to and reinforces a larger body of philosophy, partially triggered by Har-
away’s (2003) discussion of companion species, which contests the dis-
tinction between nature and culture altogether. In her discussion, Har-
away (2003) posited the idea of naturecultures, where nature and culture
are not separate, but intricately entwined and mutually constituting. This
entails game-changing arguments against “the natural order of things,”
which not just acknowledge that human animals’ idea of nature is a
cultural construct, but that non-human species also possess forms of
more-than-human culture, including the capacity for queer sexual rela-
tions (Bell 2010). Foregrounding the queerness of this natureculture lens
in a paper called “Queernaturecultures,” Bell (2010) contends that queer
animality is not simply a tool to argue for the “naturalness” of same-sex
relations in human culture, but exemplifies the culture of non-humans
and signals the interpenetration of culture and nature as indissoluble
worlds.
Now of course queernaturecultures are linked with urban as well as
rural spaces (and arguably help to disrupt this binary, too), but there is a
vibrant strand of this work focusing on non-human rural sexualities in
particular. This is arguably because of the strong discursive connections
between animals, nature, and rurality (Johnston and Longhurst 2010;
Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010b). In some cases, non-human
rural sexualities—specifically sexual activities among non-human ani-
mals—are an exhibitionist sport for human animals. Besio, Johnston, and
Longhurst (2008) investigated one such example: viewing and swimming
with dolphins, a popular and widespread nature tourism activity in
coastal areas of Aotearoa New Zealand. They found that “sex talk” domi-
nated promotional materials and tour guide commentaries, and dolphins
were presented as “sexy beasts.” Dolphins’ sexual activities were used as
a prime attraction for selling tours in this nature tourism market, and this
meant representing dolphins as “sexually polyamorous and promiscu-
ous,” “as sex crazed and engaging in same-sex behavior” as well as oppo-
site-sex encounters (Johnston and Longhurst 2010, 109). The queer ani-
mality and polymorphous perversion of dolphins is a neat illustration of
queernatureculture—and one which appeals to the exhibitionist desires
Introduction 13
of human animals and can thus be exploited by the profit agenda of the
rural tourist economy.
Complementing this rapidly growing work on non-human animal
sexual relations with each other, another prominent theme in literature
on non-human rural sexualities considers the role of animals in human
sexual passions and relations. One example canvassed in the previous
section on rural heterosexualities is the “manly” rural “sport” of hunting,
in which desire and arousal traffic across relations between hunter and
hunted: respect for “the beast,” love of “the hunt,” and lust “to kill”
intermingle. Moreover, Emel (1998) and MacKenzie (1987) suggest “hunt-
ing can be readily interpreted as sexual sublimation” (Emel 1998, 109),
evinced through stories of physical exertion and “the ecstasy of release
when the hunter prevails and stands over his kill” (MacKenzie 1987, 180).
Bestiality is a more explicit instance of human-animal sexual relations
that has long been associated with rural spaces, and particularly rural
boys (Dekkers 1994; Garber 1996; Bell 2000b). Rydström (2003) provides
an extensive study of both bestiality and homosexuality in Sweden from
1880 to 1950, the period of national transition from agrarian to urban
society. He contends that bestiality and male homosexuality were linked
in Swedish (and Western) notions of nationhood in this “modernizing”
period through legal and social discourses about sodomy. He found that
rural geography and lifestyle were critical to the prevalence of bestiality
among young male farmhands, whose regular proximity and daily inter-
action with farm animals stirred their sexual passions and drew them
into sexual relations with non-humans. Here, Rydström (2003) underlines
the agency of animals in human sexuality and in configuring human-
animal relations—and moreover, an animal agency particular to the af-
fordances of rural spaces, with their idiosyncratic patterns of relationality
between space, nature, and human and non-human animals.
Brown and Rasmussen (2010, 158) present a more recent case of “rural
bestiality” in the geographical literature, analyzing the aftermath of “a
bizarre sex panic from rural Washington State, USA.” On 2 July 2005, in
the small rural town of Enumclaw, a man died after being sexually pene-
trated by a stallion; inquiries from the county sheriff found that a local
farm provided a service, communicated via the internet, where people
could pay to have sex with animals. The farm’s owner could not be
charged with any form of sex crime because bestiality was not illegal in
Washington. This generated a legal panic, where the State legislature
quickly enacted legislation to make bestiality a crime. Public, media, and
political outrage and action were linked to assumptions about rural
spaces and mores. It was assumed—erroneously from the evidence actu-
ally presented about the event—that the farm was a “mecca” for out-of-
town and out-of-state urbanites who wanted to try animal sex, and that
laws were needed to protect Washington’s “chaste and pure rural com-
munities” from “sexually promiscuous urban dwellers” (Johnston and
Longhurst 2010, 111). Of course, such justifications, based as they are in

imaginaries of urban/rural difference, sidestep the fact that farmers have
long been involved in a mode of human-animal sex through husbandry
and selective breeding (Brown and Rasmussen 2010)—an issue picked up
by Claire Rasmussen in this volume. Indeed, we now outline the themes
and chapters in this collection.
THEMES OF THIS COLLECTION
We have arranged the subsequent chapters into four thematic sections:

Intimacies and Institutions; Communities; Mobilities; and Production
and Consumption. It is important to note that this is an organizing sche-
ma only, not a fixed categorization: many of the chapters reach beyond
their designated section, addressing two or more of these themes (and
others as well). Bearing this in mind, the thematic sections are designed
to guide the reader, highlighting and advancing particular prominent
lines of inquiry within the literature, which we have underscored in the
preceding critical review of geographies of ruralities and sexualities.
Within each section, we have attempted to draw together examples of
GLQ, heterosexual, and (where possible) animal and more-than-human
rural sexualities—if not non-human animals, then the enrollment of “nat-
ural” elements of the rural environment into the constitution of human
sexualities. These chapters thus speak to and enrich each other, both
within and between sections.
The first section is “Intimacies and Institutions.” Intimacy is arguably
a fundamental and definitive dimension of sexuality and sexual relations
(Valentine 2008). Intimate relationships can be sexual, platonic, or famil-
ial, and are both interpersonal and societal. While interpersonal intimacy
is often important for personal well-being, intimate relationships are also
governed by wider societal, discursive, and institutional structures: sexu-
al intimacy is personal, but it is also confirmed or regulated by social,
political, and legal structures of citizenship and belonging. For instance,
sexuality has been well policed by social and cultural norms of rural life
(albeit varying from region to region), requiring adherence to heteronor-
mative models of propriety and family. Moreover, given the convention-
al invisibility of sexual minorities in rural vis-à-vis urban areas, they have
been marginal in legal, political, and institutional frames of inclusion.
Consequently, concern with intimate relations, sexual citizenship, and
social inclusion in rural areas is emerging in scholarship. The three chap-
ters in this section bring these themes to the fore, extending this strand of
research.
Richard Phillips explores the meaning and experience of heterosexual
British women’s travel “within and between rural and provincial parts of
Britain and its Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,”
Introduction 15
(see page 21 in this book) with particular attention to how the Travellers’
Aid Society policed their sexual conduct to ensure adherence to notions
of feminine respectability. These expectations were informed by ideals of
rural innocence and purity. The potential for mobility to unhinge sexual
subjectivities was recognized, and steps were taken to limit such possibil-
ities. Shifting to the contemporary United Kingdom, Kath Browne and
Nick McGlynn investigate equalities landscapes in rural shires in Eng-
land, focusing on the complexities of public sector service provision for
GLQ constituents. In doing so, they consider wider constraints on equal-
ities provisions, wrought by the “new era of austerity” in Britain follow-
ing the Global Financial Crisis. Moving to Australia, Lia Bryant examines
rural heterosexuality through an empirical investigation of intimacy,
love, and care in farming families and agricultural communities. She ex-
amines how emotional work unfolds in rural spaces, including the ways
in which social and cultural mores regulate and (re)configure gender
norms, interpersonal relationships, and intimacy.
The second section is “Communities.” The four chapters explore how
sexual subjectivities and identities are socially-constructed and relation-
ally-performed in rural communities. The main focus is on the complex
interplay of belonging and alienation, inclusion and exclusion, for differ-
ent sexual subjects and communities within the rural. Hanna-Mari Iko-
nen and Samu Pehkonen analyze Finnish and Norwegian documentaries
and reality television to uncover how diverse masculinities are embodied
and sexualized in contemporary Nordic rural communities. They consid-
er patterns of work, community, and gender relations, and articulate con-
structions of hegemonic masculinity and rural homosociality. Moving to
the United States, Mathias Detamore “queers” rural notions of family and
community in Kentucky, exploring the role of kinship across sexual or-
ientation as a means of place-making that defies heterosexism and homo-
phobia in rural Appalachia. He shows that kinship is a spatial perfor-
mance that contests expectations of sexual subjectivity in rural areas, as
well as metronormative assumptions of GLQ belonging. Andrew Gor-
man-Murray investigates the complexity of lesbian and gay belonging
and alienation in rural Australia. He utilizes documentaries to examine
how junctures between rural life and sexual minorities are manifested in
diverse spatial relations—in “outback” communities, cross-cultural rela-
tions, farming life, return migration, and connections to the land, the
“natural” environment, and non-human animals—which all evince
meaningful connections, alongside experiences of exclusion or isolation,
for rural-dwelling lesbians and gay men. LaToya Eaves examines how
queer Black women sustain a sense of belonging to their homes in the
rural U.S. South, through online networks and community relationships.
She explores their intersecting notions of rurality and queerness. Both
Eaves and Gorman-Murray add key insights to studies of sexual minor-
ities in rural communities by considering the intersections of race, gen-

der, and sexuality for Black and Aboriginal lesbians.
The third section is “Mobilities.” The three chapters focus on various
experiences and ideas of movement or migration at different scales. The
authors highlight the connection between displacement and sexual sub-
jectivity formation that has been noted in work on queer migration (Cant
1997; Puar, Rushbrook, and Schein 2003; Knopp 2004) as well as feminist
migration studies (Silvey 2004; Blunt 2007). Alexis Annes and Meredith
Redlin examine the role of intra-national migration in the fabrication of
rural gay men’s sexual and masculine identities. Their study draws on
interview materials collected in the United States and France, enabling
telling insights into cross-national similarities and differences. Their find-
ings counter the assumption of linear rural-to-urban migration in gay
male identity work, and highlight the importance of return migration
and peripatetic movements between the rural and the urban for rural gay
men’s sexual identity work (Knopp and Brown 2003; Gorman-Murray
2007a). Also addressing counter-urban migration, but in a different set-
ting, Gordon Waitt and Lynda Johnston discuss one lesbian family’s ex-
periences of migration to, and homemaking in, Townsville, a provincial
center in Queensland, Australia. They consider how tropes of movement
and coming out, and memories of past times and places, inflect home,
identity, and belonging in Townsville, revealing a productive dialogue
between mobility and immobility in the provincial lifeworld of this les-
bian family. Jenny Björklund’s chapter complements and advances this
dialogue. She introduces the experiences of young lesbians in small-town
Sweden, utilizing rapidly growing literary work on this very theme.
Again countering assumed rural-to-urban displacement in coming out
narratives, most of the young small-town lesbians in these novels stay
put—their migration path is one that instead navigates hegemonic spaces
of teenage life, where their bodies encounter different spaces and bodies
in configuring their sexual subjectivities.
The fourth section is “Production and Consumption.” The rural is
often seen as a site of production, particularly of agricultural, pastoral,
forestry, and mineral products, which are destined for and consumed in
cities. But cities also consume images of the rural, notably through still
strong notions of the rural idyll. Moreover, the rural is also a site of
consumption, especially through heritage, pastoral, and natural tourism.
The three chapters in this section explore different elements of “rural
production,” “rural consumption,” and “consuming the rural” in relation
to sexualities. Claire Rasmussen focuses on animal bodies in industrial
agriculture—specifically, porcine bodies—and the way porcine sexual-
ities are intensely managed for consumer pleasure and commercial ends.
This is an important extension to critical queernatureculture studies of
non-human sexual relations, showing that animal-human sexual rela-
tions are basic to human commerce in rural production and urban con-
Introduction 17
sumption. Barbara Pini and Robyn Mayes provide another novel and
important discussion on rural-sexual intersections on a theme that is of-
ten overlooked: sexuality, especially heterosexuality, in relation to min-
ing communities in Australia. In this, they consider intersecting aspects
of production and consumption—mining as a rural industry with partic-
ular effects on sexuality, and sexual relations as a commodity and as part
of social reproduction. Reviewing a range of literature, they critically
discuss three vital themes about sexualities in mining communities: pros-
titution, workplace sexual harassment, and the impact of fly-in fly-out
mining on interpersonal relations and intimacies. Finally, Chris Gibson
interrogates the global and multiscalar reach of the sexualized masculine
cowboy motif—the various permutations and affiliations this has taken
over the last couple of centuries, and the way the “global cowboy” has
suffused with local cultural economies and gender performances. This
includes different articulations with heterosexualities, GLQ cultures,
masculinities, and femininities in urban and rural spaces.
We conclude the collection with a brief chapter that elicits some of the
themes not made explicit in the sectional organization of the book de-
scribed above, such as “the global countryside” (Woods 2007) and sexual-
ity. We also reflect on some of the methodological tendencies and occlu-
sions apparent in the collection. We trust that readers will find the fol-
lowing chapters rich and interesting, offering new or extended insights
into the intersections of rurality, sexuality, and geography.
NOTE
1. The most well known in recent times has been the film of Annie Proulx’s short
story, Brokeback Mountain directed by Ang Lee and produced by D. Ossana, L.
McMurtry, and J. Schamus and distributed via Focus Features. As well as questioning
the extent to which the film actually does unsettle dominant notions of heterosexuality
or replicates them in a further illustration of entrenched heteronormativity, the exten-
sive scholarly commentary on the film has also focused on the rural location and the
interplay between rurality and sexuality (Boucher and Pinto 2007; Sharrett 2005; Spoh-
rer 2009; Stacy 2007; Needham 2010).
1
Intimacies and Institutions

ONE
Respectable Country Girls
Richard Phillips
This chapter examines relationships between sex, space, and power

through the figure of the “respectable country girl”—an idealized figure
of innocence and purity. 1 It focuses on the work of the Travellers’ Aid
Society, an organization that worked to protect girls and women as they
travelled within and between rural and provincial parts of Britain and
Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The work of
this organization illustrates a broader set of reciprocal relationships be-
tween rurality and sexuality, in which young women were cast in the
image of idealized rural geographies, and vice versa.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
In the late 1990s I was teaching at the University of Aberystwyth, in a

distinctly rural corner of the British Isles. With Diane Watt and David
Shuttleton, two colleagues at the University, I convened a queer theory
reading group. We met on campus and usually ended up in a local pub.
Working through canonical and some new texts on sexuality and space,
we were often struck by the extent to which this literature revolved
around cities, particularly very large Western cities such as New York,
San Francisco, Sydney, and London. In mid-Wales, we felt that we had
been left “off the map” in the emerging subfield of sexual geography, so
we organized a conference, in which we tried to bring non-metropolitan
sexualities into focus. Papers presented at the conference and in some
cases reproduced in the edited book that followed—De-centring Sexual-
ities: Politics and Representations beyond the Metropolis (Phillips, Watt and
21
22 Richard Phillips
Shuttleton 2000)—described the sexual life of rural districts and provin-

cial towns. Building upon some valuable early work in this field (Bell and
Valentine 1995b; Fellows 1996), these papers and chapters challenged
assumptions and stereotypes about sexuality and space, above all the
notion that cities are generally sexier spaces. Rather, they showed, cities
are generally more overtly sexual. As two of the chapters illustrated, les-
bians in the American South and in rural Mexico may have been discreet
about the nature of their relationships, but they were still lesbians, and in
relationships (Willman 2000; Wilson 2000). Similarly, gay life in mid- to
late-twentieth-century Glasgow, remembered by Scottish poet Edwin
Morgan, was short on words but not sexual action (Morgan 2000). So we
may have succeeded in illuminating some of the silences and omissions
in the literature on sexuality and space, particularly through our atten-
tion to the lively sex lives of some gay men and lesbians in small towns
and villages. And, since the publication of De-centring Sexualities, this
contribution has been reinforced, as others have not only mapped sexual
life in rural areas and provincial towns, but have also taken forward and
opened up a wider set of debates about non-metropolitan sexualities. It
has been good to see this research broaden out, paying increased atten-
tion to heterosexuality, and to quieter and more discreet expressions of
sexuality, for example through the chapter in this volume by Lia Bryant
on “marriage, intimacy, and farming.”
While we were primarily concerned—in our reading group and in the
book that followed—with mapping rural sexualities, and with putting
the rural on the metaphorical maps of queer theory, we were conscious
that the rural was not just a neglected space. Rather, the rural as we knew
it was defined by and locked into a relationship with the urban or rather
the metropolitan. As a center of Welsh nationalism and a stronghold of
the Welsh language, Aberystwyth never let us forget the intersectionality
of sexual and other strands of identity, or the particularity of the rural,
nor the correlations between rural and imperial/colonial dynamics. Our
reading group was conducted in English, though some members were
primarily Welsh speakers, and we tried to redress this imbalance by pro-
viding simultaneous translation at the Non-Metropolitan Sexualities con-
ference. So I welcome the way in which the editors of this book have
framed and defined the rural: as a series of non-metropolitan spaces. In
their call for contributions, Andrew Gorman-Murray, Barbara Pini, and
Lia Bryant defined “the rural” as “as a broad set of spaces and imaginar-
ies that are non-metropolitan in character and form, and encompass mate-
rial settings such as country towns, wilderness, agricultural and pastoral
lands, mining communities, and provincial centers.” The “non-metropol-
itan” is not simply an eclectic geographical category. Rather, it is an anal-
ysis of spatial power relations, articulated as a dynamic between metro-
politan and non-metropolitan spaces, corresponding broadly to domi-
nant and subordinate, imperial and colonial geographies respectively.
Respectable Country Girls 23
Rural areas are not necessarily subordinate, any more than large cities are
necessarily dominant, but to the extent that the former are understood as
non-metropolitan, they can be seen as colonial, neo-colonial or quasi-
colonial, as some chapters in this book illustrate. For example, Barbara
Pini and Robyn Mayes paint a picture of heterosexuality in rural and
remote mining communities. Though contemporary, their study finds a
sexual culture prevalent in mining communities which reproduces his-
torical assumptions about “masculinity, heterosexuality and rurality,”
and has much in common with colonial frontier towns which were domi-
nated by assertively heterosexual, single male migrant workers. Chris
Gibson also underlines the colonial dimension of the rural, tracing a his-
tory of “cowboy masculinities” that reach through colonial frontiers in
Australia and the Americas, even though they encompass some decided-
ly post-colonial expressions, including contemporary Australian Aborigi-
nal appropriations and performances of these masculinities.
The non-metropolitan is of course an eclectic term, encompassing ru-
ral and provincial hinterlands of great cities within imperial nations, and
also referring to their colonial possessions and settlement frontiers. This
term is also used in different ways in different contexts. In the French
Empire, for example, the metropolitan referred to France, the non-metro-
politan to its colonial possessions, including their urban and rural dis-
tricts. Despite this, the non-metropolitan remains a productive term,
since it does more than classify places on the basis of characteristics such
as population density; it frames sexual geographies within a broader
analysis of spatial power.
This chapter examines relationships between sex, space, and power
through an organization that took a practical interest in girls and women
within and between a series of non-metropolitan geographies. The
Travellers’ Aid Society (TAS), formed in London in the 1880s and most
active between then and the Second World War, tried to prevent “coun-
try girls, as far as possible, from coming to London” (Balfour 1886, 56).
When this failed, it worked “to assist and chaperone young female travel-
lers on ships and trains, and in transit” (Balfour 1886, 57). Through this
work, the TAS mobilized an idealized sexual geography, which cast the
rural as a space of respectability, which was defined around heterosexual
marriage and family, involving pre-marital chastity and marital fidelity.
On the one hand, TAS made the assumption that country girls and young
women were pure and respectable, and needed protection from the dan-
gers and temptations of Britain’s growing cities and railway network. On
the other, the Society got involved in making rural areas in this image,
through its work in protecting and policing women travellers, including
those on their way to settle in Britain’s colonial empire. This project is
explained in more detail in the next sections. The chapter then goes on to
examine the significance of this work and of the rural sexual geographies
it illuminates. I argue that “respectable country girls” had a two-fold
24 Richard Phillips
significance: in shaping ideas about sexuality, on the one hand, and in

shaping rural geographies, on the other.
THE TRAVELLERS’ AID SOCIETY
H. T., most respectably connected, came up to London from a far-off

country village; it was thought to meet a young man whose acquain-
tance she had made. Fortunately he failed to meet her at the station,
and, on asking a porter to direct her to an hotel, she was sent by him to
the office, 16a, Cavendish St. It was late in the evening. She had only 6/-
in her pocket, and had never been away from home before. She was
safely lodged and persuaded to write to her mother, who, it turned out,
was in the greatest anxiety about her, and who sent for her home again
at once. We are glad to say that this mother expressed her gratitude to
the porter who, humanly speaking, saved the girl from ruin. 2 (TAS
Annual Report 1886, 11).
This case history, reported in the Travellers’ Aid Society’s first annual
report, illustrates the work of the Society and also gives an indication of
its approach to sexual life in the countryside. It also refers to the Society’s
work among women travellers, including those who travelled to work in
London and other British cities, and others who were going further
afield, including to British colonies. In both cases, great importance was
attached to respectability. This theme will be examined through the TAS
in this chapter, but some other sources give an indication of its broader
significance. Miss H. B. Richardson, an agent of the Department of Agri-
culture in Ottawa, put these ideas about respectable colonization into
practice when she visited London in 1883 to “communicate with societies
and individuals interested in the emigration of respectable women and
children to Canada” (Women’s Emigration Society, 1883–1915a). Similar-
ly, the Women’s Emigration Society rejected prospective emigrants
whose reputations seemed questionable. It rejected a request for contact
with “a Christian lady in Canada or elsewhere” who would look after a
woman who “has fallen some years ago, but has reformed” (Women’s
Emigration Society, 1883–1915b).
The TAS needs some introduction. The Travellers’ Aid Committee
had been formed in London in 1885 by the Young Women’s Christian
Association (YWCA) in association with the Girls’ Friendly Society, Met-
ropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, National Vigilance
Association, and the Reformatory and Refuge Union, as well as individu-
al members. Within a year, the word “Committee” was replaced with
“Society,” which was changed in 1891 to the Travellers’ Aid Society (for
Girls and Women) (TAS General Committee 1885–1893).This built upon
the work of an earlier meeting in July 1881, at which associates of the
YWCA gathered “to receive information, and to confer upon the best
means of counteracting the organized dangers at home and abroad for

young women” (“Perils for girls at home and abroad,” 1881). The TAS
grew into a network with global reach. Its London office became a hub of
travellers’ aid work, not only in the capital but also nationally and inter-
nationally, which supported organizations throughout the British Em-
pire. 3 Some of these societies, most notably the National Travellers’ Aid
Society of Australia (formed in 1944 from local groups founded in Ade-
laide in 1887, Victoria in 1916, and Queensland in 1928), outlived the
metropolitan organization and modernized its agenda (expanding their
work in the 1960s to include men) (The Australian Women’s Register
2011).
TAS representatives met girls and women at transport interchanges
and arranged their respectable and safe passage and temporary accom-
modation. In its first year, it claimed to have met 136 “girls” at London
stations and nine “young women” at the docks (TAS 1886, 1). In succes-
sive years the volume of work increased, such that in 1909 the organiza-
tion was dealing with an average of over five hundred cases per month in
total (6508 in the year as a whole) (Moor 1910, 103). The Society was also
concerned with the reasons for travel and the circumstances of girls and
young women once they had arrived. Much of its work was concerned
with domestic servants, particularly those who travelled to London to
take live-in domestic situations. It undertook to “make inquiries respect-
ing any situation about which a country girl is in negotiation, before the
final arrangement is made to take it” (Balfour 1886, 57), though it did not
generally seek employment for those who arrived without arrangements.
Much of the Society’s work revolved around ships and passenger docks,
trains and railway stations. Station visitors frequently referred to the mo-
ral dangers of the station. Reports from the 1930s, when the archives are
most complete, point to a range of moral dangers, including local prosti-
tution, white slavery, and general immorality. A 1934 report by the work-
er at Liverpool Street Railway Station in London repeated rumors of
white slavery:
The inspector on the 9:30 Flushing Express told me that he thought it
was nothing but White Slave Traffic—all these girls coming up from
Wales, the North and other places. He said that he knew for a fact that
numbers of girls had come up with only coach fare and a night’s lodg-
ing and then the streets. I tried to continue the conversation. He said he
would not say any more (NVA 1934).
Reports and other documents comment on prostitution and procurement
of women to work as prostitutes in and around a number of stations. The
worker at Victoria (railway) Station documented and investigated allega-
tions of this nature about the use of the Ladies Waiting Room and a bar in
the nearby Grosvenor Hotel (NVA 1936). Similarly, the worker at Kings
Cross Coaching Station reported that a station employee had “seen ser-
26 Richard Phillips
vant girls arriving from the North and then . . . seen them on the streets”
a few days later (NVA 1935). TAS reports also referred to what they saw
as a more general moral laxity at stations. In 1934 the worker at Liverpool
Street “counted 13 couples in various affectionate positions” in the wait-
ing room, and found instances of immorality and sexual danger. “Yester-
day,” for example, “a man came in, had a good look round the room. He
then sat down and for the 20 minutes I was there he hardly took his eyes
off a young girl who was reading. I could see the girl was distressed so
send in this report” (NVA 1934).
SPACES OF RESPECTABILITY
I have suggested that the figure of the “respectable country girl” and the
imaginative geography she inhabited were key sites in shaping ideas
about sexuality.
The case history quoted above, about a young woman who “came up
to London from a far-off country village,” reproduces an imaginative
geography in which rural areas are associated with home, purity, and
feminine virtue, all of which are set against large cities, which stand for
the unhomelike, impurity, and corruption. The TAS was particularly con-
cerned with protecting girls from the country. Away from home, the TAS
asserted, girls and young women were at risk, and preyed upon by “evil
persons who are on the look-out to entrap inexperience and innocence”
(TAS 1886, 3–4). Thus, for example, the 1888 Annual Report stated that:
Our lady at a small village in Berkshire writes that several girls have
applied to her to help them in finding situations, and she always tries
to find them a place in the country or one of the nearest towns, rather
than in London. This we were very glad to know, as we are most
anxious that girls should be discouraged from coming up to London
(TAS 1888, 23).
This imaginative geography, in which homes in the country represented
a virtuous contrast with the radically unhomelike spaces of the city, was
repeatedly echoed in the annals of the TAS. The sexual “dangers” cited in
its annual reports and proceedings revolved around imagined moral and
immoral geographies, structured around distinctions between home and
away, country and city, domestic and foreign. Thus, for instance, Lady
Frances Balfour, co-founder and first president of the TAS, reiterated
then-familiar anxieties about the “dangers to which these girls are ex-
posed on their arrival in London” (Balfour 1886, 56). She worried of the
dangers to “ignorant country girls, not knowing a single person in Lon-
don to whom to turn,” who were vulnerable, portrayed diminutively as
“girls” or “children” (TAS 1886, 12), despite the fact that few of those in
question were less than sixteen, in a society where childhood, at least for
the working classes, had ended long before (the statutory school-leaving
age, for example, was twelve). Notwithstanding the philanthropic inten-

tions of many TAS members and supporters, it could be argued that the
organization effectively infantilized young women, underpinning the au-
thority of their fathers and the patriarchal order of the society in which
they lived.
This imagined sexual geography—defined by rural virtue and urban
vice—translated in specific ways to the work of the Society. In its first
annual report, the TAS stated that, although similar organizations were
already in existence, “none of the other societies practically met the vital
need there is for extending protection to the respectable country girls
who come up to London immediately on their arrival, so that they may
not fall into the difficulties and dangers that await them there” (TAS
1886, 1). Successive annual reports and publicity material stressed that
the Society had remained true to this aim, which drew upon and repro-
duced ideals of home that had been expressed by conservative cultural
critics and ideologues such as John Ruskin, author of Sesame and Lilies
(1885), a hard-line assertion of distinct gender roles and separate spheres.
The organization’s first aim, as noted above, was consistent with this
approach: to prevent “country girls, as far as possible, from coming to
London” (Balfour 1886, 56).
Protecting girls and women from heterosexual dangers or, depending
upon one’s point of view, opportunities, the TAS at once addressed and
contained their sexualities. Its work among individuals also served a
broader social purpose, reproducing hegemonic constructions of moral-
ity and sexuality, which were associated with respectability, normality,
heterosexuality, and celibacy. Those who were represented and present
at the meetings at which it was founded and launched (in 1881 and 1885)
shared a broad if differentiated commitment to defining and defending
the moral center ground. They included members of “social purity”
groups, which had sprung up in the 1860s, first to oppose legislation that
targeted women for intrusive regulation, later to lobby for “positive”
legislation, which would curtail men’s sexual liberties. The membership
and agenda of the TAS emerged through and overlapped with these
social purity groups. Founded by the Ladies National Association, under
the auspices of the YWCA, it was primarily identified with preventative
purity activism, which lobbied for women’s civil liberties, rather than
with the “positive” movement of the 1880s, which was led by the Nation-
al Vigilance Association (NVA). But in practice these organizations were
often close, with overlapping memberships and agendas, which cohered
around the reproduction of hegemonic, normalized feminine respectabil-
ity (Balfour 1906; Bland 1995; Walkowitz 1980; see also, TAS General
Committee 1885–1893, 19–22). These values reflected the Christian ori-
gins of the TAS, in the social purity movements, the NVA, and the
YWCA. As it grew the TAS tended to downplay its religious affiliation,
removing the words “Young Women’s Christian Association” from pub-
28 Richard Phillips
licity (TAS Executive Committee 1886), and forbidding station workers

from distributing religious tracts (TAS Executive Committee 1890: min-
utes note that a station worker was told not to distribute tracts at stations
“even in her private capacity”), in a bid to appeal to and to serve as broad
a constituency as possible. Still, there was a religious dimension to travel-
lers’ aid work, and the TAS worked alongside Catholic and Jewish organ-
izations such as the International Catholic Association, and Jewish Gen-
tlemen’s Committee for the Protection of Girls, to see that girls and young
women would be helped, advised, and “placed in Homes according to
their nationality and creed” (NVA 1911). The organization had
transcended its roots in one religion, in an effort to appeal to and serve
women of all religions and none, and to generalize its moral project, but
it retained a commitment to defending a moral center ground in which
sex was confined to heterosexual marriage, and in which unmarried girls
and women remained demonstrably celibate. This moral center ground,
though really an abstract and universal ideal, was depicted through a
“respectable country girl,” whose virtue and purity the TAS went to great
lengths to defend.
RESPECTABLE PLACES
The figure of the “respectable country girl” was also instrumental in

shaping ideas about the rural, and in making rural geographies respect-
able places. This work was focussed on emigration and colonial settle-
ment. The TAS worked among girls and young women in transit—at
railway stations and on trains, and also on board ship and at passenger
docks—to help respectable women travel and to ensure that their reputa-
tions arrived intact.
TAS “lady workers” met passenger ships at ports including Dover,
Southampton, and Liverpool, and trains at all the large stations in Eng-
land, particularly in London (Balfour 1886). They met individuals by ar-
rangement with their parents or employers, or at the request of the travel-
lers themselves, and they also responded to calls from station staff, who
kept an eye out for young women who appeared to be lost or who ap-
pealed for help (NVA 1911). The TAS concerned itself with women’s
travel, accommodation, and employment. It directed and in some cases
conveyed young women to YWCA hostels and to lodgings it had vetted
and approved (Balfour 1886, 57).
This organization, global in reach but based in London, looked out
from its metropolitan offices to a series of non-metropolitan geographies,
ranging from country villages to foreign ports, provincial towns, and
fields of emigration and settlement. The London office became a hub of
travellers’ aid work, not only in the capital but also nationally and inter-
nationally. 4 The TAS had originally sprung from the extension of travel-
lers’ aid networks from Germany and Switzerland to England, after a

German activist addressed counterparts in London at the YWCA meeting
in 1881 (“Perils for girls at home and abroad,” 1881). The Society then
assumed the form of a network, coordinating the activities of disparate
organizations and activists, and collaborating with others including the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union in the United States and the Na-
tional Travellers Aid Society of Australia (The Australian Women’s Reg-
ister 2011). The TAS originally concentrated on assisting female travellers
in London, but it broadened its horizons to include a wider range of
national and international travel, both for pleasure and for longer dis-
tance journeys to work, involving emigrants and immigrants alike. It
established or supported the establishment of branches in provincial
towns and cities, beginning with Southampton in 1891 and Liverpool in
1898. Some of these, located at English ports, were geared to international
travel, as were TAS branches overseas. Soon there was a Travellers’ Aid
Society or close equivalent in most major ports and cities throughout the
British Empire and the United States (Pivar 2002). Whether her destina-
tion was London or Dublin, Halifax or Montreal, Brisbane or Adelaide,
and whether she was travelling by train or steamship, a young “friend-
less” woman might see the same sorts of publicity and be offered the
same sort of assistance (TAS handbills advertised respectable residences
for single women, such as a Governesses’ Home in Brisbane. See, for
example, TAS 1889, 16).
TAS also attended to the long distance journey itself. It secured the
cooperation of the pioneer tour operator, Thomas Cook, which allowed it
to assist its female clients, particularly those destined for places identified
in some way with immorality, including reputedly immoral ports such as
Portsmouth and Southampton, and others further afield such as Sydney
and Montreal. Its 1889 Annual Report thanked the company “for allow-
ing their interpreters at Paris station to give cards, with addresses of two
homes for young women, to any girls or young women who asked them
to direct them to lodgings, and also, as far as possible, to any girls or
young women travelling alone” who, the Society asserted, “might find
themselves in very undesirable surroundings” (TAS 1889, 14). In its first
year of operation over 27,000 English, French, and German “handbills”
were distributed on passenger ships, with the cooperation of forty-five
steamship companies (TAS Executive Committee 1886). One such leaflet,
distributed in 1886, issued a “Warning” to female passengers on ships to
and from English ports:
Young women on landing are most earnestly warned not to accept
offers of help from men or women who are unknown to them, and not
to go to any address given to them by strangers. Such persons are often
the agents of evilly disposed people whose object it is to entice young
girls to their ruin. Young women landing at any of the places named
below and having no friends to meet them are begged to go at once to
30 Richard Phillips
the address given on the paper, where they will find a lady ready to
give them all the information and help they require (TAS 1886, 7).
Many of these ships carried female emigrants, both to and from English
shores. The YWCA had begun its work among female emigrants in 1857,
when it collaborated with the British Ladies’ Female Emigration Society
to assist female passengers on board ships (Moor 1910, 95). Sentinel, an
English social purity journal, directed its readers to agencies such as the
Women’s Emigration Society, formed in 1880, which helped English
women to safely and respectably emigrate (“Safe emigration for women,”
1882; “Emigration of women to our colonies,” 1881). Overseas branches
of the TAS supported this project. For instance, the Canadian Travellers’
Aid was represented in centers of immigration beginning with Quebec in
1887—and was expanded to assist and promote female immigration
(YWCA Canada 2011). Through this work, the Society (alongside other
organizations) helped women to travel without risking their reputations.
As Alison Blunt has shown in her work on Mary Kingsley’s travels in
West Africa, women had to negotiate complex expectations and demands
if they wanted to preserve their reputations and respectability when at-
tempting to travel to, within, and beyond the British Empire (Blunt 1994).
In a comparative study of colonial Cape Town and Sydney, Kirsten
McKenzie (2004) shows that respectability was policed and framed
through gossip and scandal, which divided the respectable from the rest,
and accorded lucrative social position to the former. “A respectable
woman’s sexual reputation,” she argues, “was as much a commodity as a
merchant’s good name and credit” (McKenzie 2004, 90). There is evi-
dence in the archives of the TAS and female emigration societies to sup-
port this reading of respectability as a form of social capital. Opportu-
nities not only for marriage but also for employment were restricted to
“respectable” girls and women. Letters between Canadian immigration
agents and representatives of British and Irish female emigration soci-
eties made this explicit. Miss Richardson, the Canadian government rep-
resentative quoted above, visited London in 1883 to “communicate with
societies and individuals interested in the emigration of respectable
women” (Women’s Emigration Society, 1883–1915c). The Women’s Emi-
gration Society, also quoted, rejected an application from a woman who
had “fallen some years ago,” but “reformed” (1883–1915d). The TAS
acted in a similar way. With respect to women arriving at the docks in
London, the Executive Committee directed that “disreputable foreigners”
were to be “personally conducted to [the] Workhouse,” whereas “re-
spectable cases” would be taken to an “approved address or Home—but
not to the workhouse” (TAS Executive Committee 1892a). The signifi-
cance of respectability for emigration—and the high price paid by wom-
en who could not demonstrate their pre-marital chastity—gives an indi-
cation of how respectability functioned in the colonial context.
Helping girls and young women travel not only to London but also to
settlement colonies within and beyond the British Empire, TAS played an
active part in the making of empire, and more specifically in making
respectable rural colonies, and in making rural colonies respectable. Ru-
ral respectability revolved around the hegemony of the nuclear family
and the customs and attitudes with which it was associated: heterosexu-
ality, marriage, pre-marital chastity, and marital fidelity. Historical geog-
raphers have demonstrated the central place of this family unit in settle-
ment colonies. Cole Harris influentially argued that Europeans lived dif-
ferently when they settled overseas, discarding some of their institutions
and customs and amplifying others, particularly the family (Harris 1977).
Rural settlement revolved around the family farm in a range of colonial
settings, from the Canadian long-lot to the leeningsplaats of the South
African veld (Harris 1977, 471, 476) and the agricultural frontiers of Brazil
and Argentina (Metcalf 1991; Lavrin 1989). Harris’s argument that the
“core of this rural society was the nuclear family” (Harris 1977, 471, 477)
resonates with the literature and archives of Canadian settlement, illus-
trated through figures such as Susanna Moodie, the settler whose de-
scriptions of life in the backwoods of Ontario were printed in English
newspapers (1852). Moodie’s journey into the backwoods illustrates what
was discarded in the course of colonial settlement, and what was re-
tained. Her much-loved china—a symbol of metropolitan affectation and
pride, perhaps—was lost, while her husband and children survived:
Alas, for my crockery and stone china! Scarcely one article remained
unbroken. “Never fret about the china,” said Moodie, “thank God the
man and the horses are uninjured.” I should have felt more thankful
had the crocks been spared too; for, like most of my sex, I had a tender
regard for china, and I knew that no fresh supply could be obtained in
this part of the world (Moodie 1852, ii, 16).
The Moodies—Susanna, her husband, and “the two little children,” Katie
and Agnes—have travelled too often and too far to have taken much with
them, but in their pared-down existence they have each other: a nuclear
family, respectability, and the place in society that went with those things
(Moodie 1852, ii, 2). In turn, the Moodies helped to fashion a family-
centered, respectable colonial society. They illustrate the reciprocal rela-
tionships through which nuclear families made rural colonies in their
image, and vice versa. They were supported, in this endeavor, by colonial
laws and institutions that formalized and supported family life: land allo-
cation systems such as the Homestead Act and its equivalents in British
colonies, which favored married men; laws that formalized and under-
pinned the institution of marriage (Allman and Tashjan 2000; Jeater 1993;
Mann 1985); and adapted marriage to colonial contexts and settlement
imperatives (Plane 2000); and censuring individuals who broke marriage
promises or vows (Brode 2002).
32 Richard Phillips
These institutions and practices gave some substance to rhetoric about

“respectable country girls,” in that they helped defend respectability
where it already existed, and cultivate respectability where it had yet to
be planted. For the TAS, cities such as London were growing almost out
of control, providing much-needed employment to girls and young
women, but putting them in constant danger and/or temptation, which
demanded constant vigilance. Many girls and young women were driven
to London by poverty, which they did not entirely escape once they had
arrived. As one Irishwoman put it, in a letter to the TAS, many “friend-
less girls” were “compelled to go to earn a livelihood” in London (NVA
1938). According to the Society’s statistics, there were “4,600 girls under
the age of 22” in “common lodging houses” in London in 1892, “many of
them fresh from the country” (TAS Executive Committee 1892b). “Re-
spectable” employment was often poorly paid, and young women were
often forced to supplement their incomes; for this, some resorted to part-
time prostitution (Barret-Ducrocq 1991, 52). And for other young women,
living and working in middle-class households, there was always a risk
that male heads-of-household would not pay them, or would threaten
them sexually. A case history, recorded in the TAS Annual Report for
1886, illustrated this danger:
J. A., aged 17, got into a bad situation, and was taken abroad by her
employers. After some weeks she was dismissed; but her master, who
was a bad man, insisted on accompanying her by train to the port
where she was to embark for England. With much difficulty she got
away from him, and was received on board a steamer for England. Her
employers had borrowed the small sum of money she possessed, and
in return for this and for the wages that were due to her, her master
had given her £2 (as she thought). It was found that this money was
false, being merely counters used by card-players. Her fare to London
was however most generously subscribed by the officials on board, and
on her arrival in London (this being one of the steamers having the
Travellers’ Aid handbills on board) they sent her at once to the Travel-
lers’ Aid office. She was cared for while her friends in the country were
communicated with, and is now a member of the Young Women’s
Christian Association. She is a good, superior kind of girl; but the fright
she underwent has affected her health. Efforts have been made abroad,
so far in vain, to trace her late employers; but they have been identified
as well-known seducers of young girls (TAS 1886, 11–12).
This case history illustrates that, rhetoric aside, the TAS was confronting
some genuine issues, concerning the vulnerability of young women in
the workplace and in cities including but not limited to London. In this
context, the rural was seen as the home of respectability and all it encom-
passed, including marriage and family life. England’s rural hinterland
was a site of threatened respectability, to be protected where possible,
whereas rural and more generally non-metropolitan fields of colonial
settlement were seen as spaces of moral renewal, in which feminine vir-

tue and respectability might have a second chance.
CONCLUSION
Through the Travellers’ Aid Society, this chapter has examined the rural
as a key site in the production and reproduction of hegemonic heterosex-
uality, while it has also found reciprocity in this relationship: tracing the
significance of hegemonic sexuality for the making of rural areas. The
significance of this is indicated in Michel Foucault’s analysis of sexuality
as “an especially dense transfer point for relations of power” (Foucault
1978, 103). Ann Laura Stoler has extended these insights from the Euro-
pean contexts that most interested Foucault to the wider horizons of Eu-
ropean imperial outreach (Stoler 1995, 2002). These insights have influ-
enced and motivated a large amount of research on sexuality and power.
Much of this has been concerned with overt sexuality—geographers and
historians working in this area have been particularly interested in fe-
male prostitutes and gay men (Levine 2003; Phillips 2006) and in “sexy
spaces” (Hubbard 2011) and “immoral landscapes” (Symanski 1981).
However, more constrained expressions of sexuality and sexual morality
can also be important conduits of power, not least as sites for the repro-
duction of hegemonic sexualities and moralities. This makes it important
to interrogate apparently “unsexy” spaces in which, for instance, hege-
monic constructions of heterosexuality and respectability are normalized
and reproduced, defended and celebrated (Nast 1998, 192). This chapter
has provided one illustration of how “unsexy” spaces and constrained
expressions of sexuality can be interrogated, and in so doing it has ges-
tured towards the broader significance of questions about rurality, geog-
raphy, and sexuality.
NOTES
1. I would like to thank the editors of ACME for allowing me to update and
reproduce elements of a paper previously published in that journal (in volume 5, issue
2, 2006). I am grateful to Sandra Mather for technical assistance.
2. Travellers’ Aid Society records, including Minutes of the General and Executive
Committees, Annual Reports, and Reports on Station Work (1920s–1940s), are held at
the Women’s Library in London. Unless otherwise stated, archival sources referred to
in this paper are held at the Women’s Library.
3. Minutes of meeting between TAS and NVA, 9 November 1938, 4NVA/7/A/9.
4. Minutes of meeting between TAS and NVA, 9 November 1938, 4NVA/7/A/9.
TWO
Rural Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and
Trans Equalities
English Legislative Equalities in an Era of Austerity
Kath Browne and Nick McGlynn
Rural settings have historically been, and popularly are, conceptualized

as “backward” when it comes to addressing LGBT equalities. The uneven
geographies of implementation in terms of state legislative equalities of-
ten equates spaces outside of metropolitan hubs as “less likely” to engage
in these initiatives and more likely to place “firewalls” in the way of
enacting diversity initiatives. Such rural/urban distinctions are furthered
where rural areas are understood as areas of deprivation commonly asso-
ciated with prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes to sexual and gender
difference. This chapter disrupts these myths, and the heterosexual rural
idyll, in accounting for the move towards proactive equalities respon-
sibilities for public services in the United Kingdom in 2010. 1
Where once national government focused on disrupting local govern-
ment equalities initiatives, classifying them within the “looney left” and
enacting legislation that sought to prohibit equalities initiatives (such as
section 28 of the local government act [Cooper 2004]), contemporary U.K.
legislation now obliges local governments and statutory services to pro-
actively cater for their local populations. The Equality Act 2010 enshrined
into law eight protected characteristics, including “sexual orientation”
and “gender reassignment,” and sought to address discrimination across
a range of spheres. 2 Key for the purposes of this paper is that it gave
service providers public service duties to LGBT communities and constit-
uents. This is having the dual effects of, firstly, empowering certain LGBT
35
36 Kath Browne and Nick McGlynn
activists who can now make demands of services without needing to

“prove” that there are LGBT people in the area and that they have needs;
and secondly, prompting a desire from services to understand their re-
sponsibilities and meet the requirements of the new legislation. Yet, there
has been a subsequent and subtle removal of key aspects of accountabil-
ity in the implementation of this legislation. This has occurred under the
guise of “cutting bureaucracy” (which equalities initiatives are read as)
and “cutting costs” (as part of an extensive reduction of the welfare
state), following the formation of a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coali-
tion government in 2010. In exploring how the public sector is translating
national initiatives locally, we explore the “middle” layer, specifically the
enactment/interpretation of legislation by those who work as agents for
the state (in this case state employees). This offers insights into how the
state is enacted through prevailing discourses and policies.
This chapter draws on data collected in early 2011 with agencies
across the public sector in Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex. It illustrates
the complexities of implementing LGBT equalities within ruralities and
areas of deprivation as the “new era of austerity” begins. Offering in-
sights into the ways in which “the state” is manifest, we focus on the
public sector policies and discourses that enacted key equalities legisla-
tion and guidance outside of the usual focus on gay metropolises. This
rural focus heeds Brown’s (2008) call to explore local regions on their
own terms, rather than through the lenses of urban metropoles (Halber-
stam 2005; Robinson 2006). As he argues: “on the relatively rare occa-
sions, when urban homosexualities outside the global north are re-
searched, they tend to be theorized through comparison with London,
San Francisco or Sydney, rather than on their own terms, taking into
account local histories, geographies and indigenous conceptualisations of
homosexuality” (Brown 2008, 1225). Halberstam has challenged the met-
rocentricity of urban assumptions—assumptions that place certain cities
in the global north as “pinnacles” of gay (sic) life (and indeed enabling
the possibilities of any LGBT existence), while neglecting the nuanced
spatialities of rural areas, towns, and non-metropolitan“gay” cities. Criti-
cally addressing the enactment of legislative LGBT equalities through
public sector service provisions, rather than a focus on sex sites, gay
areas, or other measures of sexual (but not gender) difference, also heeds
Brown’s (2008) call to examine the “whole city.” Here we focus on a
broad rural area that sees similar forms of governance in terms of the
provision of public services (such as adult social care, children’s services,
and welfare provision). 3
We begin this chapter by exploring the literature that highlights the
messiness of state enactments, which reproduce the state in heterogene-
ous and contradictory ways. Following this we outline our conceptualiza-
tion of “the rural,” understanding this through imaginaries of gender/
sexual difference and tolerance of othering, rather than “objective” meas-
Rural Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans Equalities 37
ures. After outlining the methods used for this paper, we explore the
adoption/adaption of the Equality Act 2010 in Hastings, Rother, and wid-
er East Sussex, problematizing “the rural” as created through a homoge-
nous “rejection” of LGBT equalities. We finish by exploring the imple-
mentation of the Act in an era of public sector cuts and the changes in the
implementation guidance for this piece of legislation.
ENGAGING WITH “THE ENEMY”
Here we build on conceptualizations of LGBT activisms, understanding

these to be multiple and moving beyond the barricades which tradition-
ally place state actors in opposition to lesbians and gay men. What
Browne and Bakshi (forthcoming) term “ordinary activisms” seeks to
understand how multiple activisms can be manifest in ways that contest
the hierarchies prescribed to certain forms of activism (usually opposi-
tional against an “enemy”), in certain spaces (usually “public,” “commu-
nity,” or DIY spaces). In doing so, these conceptualizations open up room
to discuss the possibilities of activism “within” the state. They rely on
contesting the presumptions of state/non-state boundaries. Literature
about local authorities, “the state,” and U.K. sexual/gender identities has
explored structural approaches to “the state,” viewing it as an entity that
creates particular conditions of power, mainly through networked under-
standings which see state bodies as working at a local level and distanced
from, but networked to, national government bodies (Carabine and Mon-
ro 2004; Monro 2007). Building on this and taking a prosaic state ap-
proach (Painter 2006), we view the state as an assemblage that is perfor-
matively enacted and therefore fallible, incomplete, and constantly in
process. The state and the non-state are reproduced relationally through
assemblages that include physical and material elements, legislation, dis-
courses, and institutions. These assemblages are performatively created
through individual and collective actors, who act, and are produced, in
relation to each other (Andrucki and Elder 2007). State power can thus be
manifest in various ways and increasingly has been conceptualized
through network formations, rather than top-down hierarchies (Allen
and Cochrane 2010).
This approach is grounded in geographies that understand uneven-
ness of state implementation of sexualities governance as a function of
the unpredictability and messiness of state enactments—unpredictable
and messy because the state is enacted in diverse ways, and tools of the
state may not be used as intended or by those intended to use them
(Carabine and Monro 2004; Monro and Richardson 2012). This can be
read as progressive in terms of sexual emancipation—the law has been
seen by some activists as enabling certain claims to be made to resources
and including sexual and gender identities on the agenda (Cooper and
Monro 2003). However, “defacto firewalls” are also a possibility as local

government actors and others block or choose “not to know” (Cooper
2006). Developed from a Foucauldian analysis that can see individual
bodies as disciplining themselves and others (Painter 2006), such an ap-
proach forces a recognition of the ways in which space is integral to
multiple scales of governing and governance which produce and are pro-
duced by everyday lives. In turn, because of the questioning of state/non-
state boundaries, the “everyday state” is created through and recreates
local authorities, service providers, and other representatives of the state
that by 2010 were obliged to service LGBT people (Monro 2010, 1003).
While there has much been done on the symbolic sexualization of the
rural and increasing work is being undertaken on the lives of LGBT peo-
ple who live in rural areas (e.g. Gorman-Murray 2009b; Gorman-Murray,
Waitt, and Gibson 2012), the social policies that affect and recreate LGBT
lives in rural areas have yet to be fully addressed (however, see Gorman-
Murray 2011). The focus on urban (often gay) metropolises—in terms of
both gathering data and universalizing LGBT lives in ways that fail to
account for diverse geographies—are particularly pertinent where rural
areas are seen to be “hostile” to LGBT people. Such imaginings can in-
form how legislation is enacted as well as the expectations of LGBT peo-
ple have themselves. As the “active citizen” becomes more and more
important in order to access and maintain LGBT equalities and rights
(Monro and Richardson 2012; Stychin 2003), presumptions of the “char-
acter” of a place can inform the pursuit of rights through specific respon-
sibilities, whether encouraging this in specific ways and through specific
channels, or discouraging such a pursuit altogether. Where rights are
sought has been shown to be informed by where people “expect” toler-
ance, acceptance, and inclusion. This has effects, not only on LGBT peo-
ple, but also local state representatives, who may read areas as “not
LGBT friendly” or as not containing “people like that” (Browne and Bak-
shi, forthcoming). Thus, perceptions of place are key, both for enacting
LGBT equalities and for “expectations” of how these will be achieved
across state/non-state entities which are mutually informative. Where ar-
eas are “forced” to engage with equalities/diversity politics, such as the
UK Equality Act 2010, a will “not to know” can inform how LGBT equal-
ities are (not) enacted (Cooper and Monro 2003; Carabine and Monro
2004). Therefore, our data offers insights not only into rural sexualities,
but also into the operationalization of “the state” at a local level and the
use of the tools of the state—in this case national legislation—in multiple
ways.
WHERE IS RURAL? SEXUALIZING AND GENDERING

RURAL DEFINITIONS
Following recent theorizations in rural studies, we understand the rural

as contextually based (Halfracree 1993, 1995). Given the significant con-
testations regarding definitions and conceptualizations, “the rural” could
be created through perceptions and lived experiences of sexual and gen-
der difference (Phillips, Watt, and Shuttleton 2000). In particular, rurals
can be perceived and lived through their supposed lack of sexual “open-
ness” and acceptance of gender difference. Rather than highlighting the
proximity of urban spaces that may be seen to create the possibilities of
sexual liaisons, we instead argue for a reexamination of the rural idyll,
which is seen as heterosexualized (Philo 1992; Little 2002). This is, of
course, not to say that all rurals are defined through heterosexuality—as
authors have shown, the rural can also be used as a site of freedom for
LGBT people (Bell and Valentine 1995a; Browne 2009b; also see the col-
lection Introduction). Instead it is to argue that the rural idyll not only
represents “the rural,” but also (re)creates it, and as such the heterosexu-
alization of the rural (re)constitutes the rural itself. Thus, the perceived/
imagined heterosexualization and gender normativity of an area
(re)produces certain areas as “rural.” Such a conceptualization reverses
the usual identification of what is rural which then leads to the attribu-
tion of, in this case, social characteristics, and does not rely on population
sizes/densities or other “objective” measurements. Taking such a socio-
sexual symbolic understanding of the rural illustrates how sexual lives
and perceptions of rural idylls recreate ruralities.
We define rural as created through gender and sexual difference rela-
tionally, as the area we investigated was often discussed through what it
“was not.” In particular, this was related to the metrocentricity of “gay
urban metropolises” such as Brighton, London, and Manchester. The per-
ception of a “lack” regarding the acceptance of LGBT people and work
across local governments, and in other arenas, contrasted with the area
we are exploring as “rural,” namely Hastings, Rother, and wider East
Sussex.
When we began this research, we focused on Hastings, in the south-
east of England. It is one of the most socially and economically deprived
regions of the United Kingdom and the most deprived in the southeast. It
is often assumed that deprivation is indicative of levels of tolerance of
LGBT people in/by wider communities. Areas of deprivation frequently
“come out” as feared among LGBT people in social surveys, as sites of
potential violence, aggression, and lacking in acceptance (Browne and
Davis 2008). Similar to ruralities, then, these spaces are seen as exclusion-
ary, othering, and dangerous for LGBT people, sites of aggressive mascu-
linities and heterosexualities. Hastings, while not “rural” in the sense of
“objective” measurements (it is a large town/borough of around 85,000
people), is perceived as “rural” in terms of the “backwardness” of sexual-

ities and gender identity work. A 2003 survey of LGBT lives in Hastings
and Rother (Fairley and Nouidjem 2004) found evidence of seeking to
move from the city and not feeling accepted in the community, and the
vast majority of respondents (84 percent) felt that their views were not
taken into account by service providers. This is exacerbated by its prox-
imity to the “gay capital,” Brighton (Browne and Lim 2010; Browne and
Bakshi 2011). Hastings’ “socially deprived status” means that it is given
money by the national government to develop and support its commu-
nities (although this was cut significantly under the Conservative–Liberal
Democrat coalition). However, throughout the research it became clear
that there was a will among service providers and other LGBT people to
incorporate areas beyond Hastings. In particular, public sector services
argued that their remit encompassed wider parts of the East Sussex re-
gion, or even East Sussex as a whole. The Hastings and Rother Rainbow
Alliance (a Hastings-based community organization that works to sup-
port local LGBT communities—see www.hrra.org.uk ), also requested a
broader remit for the project. This broader geographical scope incorpo-
rated the county of East Sussex, but not key cities such as Brighton &
Hove, an area which, using our criteria, can be described as “rural” in
terms of perceptions of LGBT equalities. We now move on to discuss the
methods used to collect the data for this chapter.
ACTION RESEARCH IN THE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND

TRANS EQUALITIES IN HASTINGS, ROTHER,
AND EAST SUSSEX FORUM
Seeing “the state” as diversely enacted through how it is performed, we

focus on policy documents and LGBT Equalities Forum meetings in the
“rural area” of Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex. Such artifacts offer
valuable insights into the possibilities of what might occur (Lim 2007), as
well as reveal the processes through which legislation solidifies in and
through institutional practices, at times in desirable and sought after
ways. In order to gather these discourses and artifacts regarding LGBT
equalities, we recorded discussions at the LGBT Equalities in Hastings,
Rother, and East Sussex Forum and carried out a mapping exercise of
East Sussex, exploring the implementation of the Equality Act across
these services. As a piece of action research, it was anticipated that bring-
ing the public sector together with LGBT people, and posing questions
regarding how the Equality Act 2010 is being embedded, was a form of
“holding services to account,” and might push the development of poli-
cies.
The LGBT Equalities in Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex Forum is
held on a regular basis, and attended by a diverse group of activists,
academics, community groups, statutory and voluntary service represen-

tatives, students, and interested individuals. 4 In bringing these diverse
sectors together the aim is to advance LGBT equalities in Hastings, Roth-
er, and East Sussex in an era of juxtaposed equalities and public sector
austerity and cuts. The meetings were recorded with consent, and discus-
sions ranged from specifics regarding the forum to members sharing best
practice, knowledge, and key issues and concerns. In November 2011, the
forum ran a conference with the aim of bringing broader members of
LGBT communities and services into the dialogue.
The mapping exercise ran from September 2010 to May 2011 and con-
sisted of a questionnaire sent to a number of local organizations and
services (see McGlynn and Browne 2011, for the specific questions).
Many organizations also received an additional suite of questions specific
to them. All questions were suggested and designed with the LGBT
Equalities Forum. Members suggested general areas of inquiry and also
offered specific questions. These were then modified and adjusted by the
researchers on the project; further revisions were then made with final
questions approved by members of the forum. Responding organizations
were asked to include supporting evidence wherever possible. Requests
were then sent to organizations put forward by the group. Ten organiza-
tions responded and their answers form the bulk of the data analyzed
here. 5 The low number of responding organizations is due to public sec-
tor bodies’ implementation of the Equality Act at a strategic level (rather
than in individual teams of service providers). Many of the local govern-
ment organizations have multiple facets, for example, housing, adult so-
cial care. These chose to respond as one organization, indicating a “top-
down” approach to developing equalities policies and their implementa-
tion. This can be seen as ensuring that LGBT equalities cannot be ignored
or overlooked; however, it should be noted that the ways in which these
policies are enacted are always diverse and may be progressive and/or
contest/subvert the intentions and control of those supposedly “at the
top.”
The data from the mapping exercise were analyzed and coded by the
researchers, with further data drawn from discussions in LGBT forum
meetings, drawing on contemporary thinking regarding LGBT equalities,
as well as understandings of ruralities and gender and sexual difference.
In the following, we explore how the state is enacted through “achieving”
or not achieving the key aspects of the Equality Act 2010.
DO WE NEED LGBT EQUALITIES IN HASTINGS,

ROTHER, AND EAST SUSSEX?
The invisibility of LGBT people in rural areas has long been discussed in
the literature (Bell and Valentine 1995a; Browne 2011; Gray 2009). How-
ever, the assertion that there is no evidence of LGBT “needs” pervaded

discourses in Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex. This was important be-
cause when, prior to 2010, governments had to “cater for their commu-
nities,” a large and visible LGBT community in urban metropoles
contrasted with rural perceptions of an absence of LGBT people. The
challenge then was to “prove” LGBT people existed, used services, and
had particular “needs” to be catered for:
Phyllis: If I’m not seeing that anyone’s having trouble with, barriers or
things that are being said to use the services, I can’t do [anything] about
it. I have to give evidence.
Phil: The evidence is the lack of evidence. So what we did in [name of
service], we had no evidence we were really crap in LGBT ’cause we
didn’t ask the questions. My job is to advise [name of service] of their
legal responsibilities, because the way court cases work is, as a public
sector body, we have to prove that we haven’t discriminated against.
The only way to do that is to have evidence that you’ve met people’s
needs. If you don’t do that, then actually you’re not meeting those
people’s needs. It shouldn’t be the community that has to tell the or-
ganization, actually you’re getting this wrong, I think we need to turn
it upside down.
Aisha: I completely agree with what you’re saying. But your organiza-
tion was able to recognize “we are crap, and therefore we are going to
do something about it.” I will sit in a meeting, and you’re doing an
equality impact assessment for that [initiative], and the person who’s
done the equality impact assessment has said there’s impact for ethnic
minorities, there’s impacts for everyone, but there’s no impact on
LGBT. And you said, where’s your evidence for this? Well, we don’t
have evidence for this.
Emma: The Equality Act says that you have to be proactive, you’re
saying, well, we need evidence before we’ll be proactive.
Aisha: What I’m saying is, if they don’t think they’ve got a problem,
they ain’t going to do anything about it. (LGBT Equalities in Hastings,
Rother, and East Sussex Forum, March 8, 2011)
The Equality Act 2010 altered the terms of engagement between the wel-
fare state and marginalized groups. Rather than reacting to the needs of
those with “protected characteristics,” there is now a requirement for
local government and other public sector organizations to proactively
engage with LGBT needs, showing their services to be “accessible to all.”
However, as Aisha explains, the implementation of this is difficult where
there is no “evidence” of needs. Thus, “forced” participation does not
mean that all will enact state legislation in uniform and equitable ways.
The heterogeneity, even within one region, can be seen in this dialogue,
despite the fact that their responsibilities as public sector service provid-
ers are broadly the same. As has been suggested, the enactment of equal-
ities legislation—indeed, any legislation—will be diverse, messy, and

geographically uneven (Cooper and Monro 2003; Carabine and Monro
2004; Painter 2006). In focusing on Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex, we
will now explore the adoption/adaption of the LGBT aspect of the Equal-
ity Act 2010 at a local level, highlighting both the homogeneity within the
region with regard to certain aspects, as well as the unevenness of imple-
mentation in others. In this way, we problematize “the rural” as created
through a homogenous “rejection” of LGBT equalities.
EQUALITIES POLICIES AND IMPLEMENTATION
Our data pointed in many ways to the policy level successes of the Equal-
ity Act 2010, showing that the “sexual orientation” and “gender reassign-
ment” protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010 are being en-
gaged at a strategic level by the public sector in Hastings, Rother, and
East Sussex. All ten of the public sector organizations who responded
demonstrated that they had:
• policies explicitly addressing sexuality (including “sexuality,” “sex-
ual orientation,” and “sexual identity”);
• policies specifically addressing trans equality (including “gender
reassignment,” “transsexual,” and “transgender”); and
• Equality Impact Assessments that addressed LGBT equalities.
Questioning the “backwardness” of rural spaces, these policy contexts
had a particular temporal framing that led to “success” in terms of our
mapping exercise. This can be most vividly illustrated through exploring
each of the three public sector equality duties (A, B, C) associated with
the Equality Act 2010.
All of the ten public sector organizations included in this mapping
exercise demonstrated that their policies and practices addressed Equal-
ity Duty A—“the elimination of discrimination, harassment and victim-
ization of LGBT people.” Eight said that they addressed Equality Duty
B—advancing equality for LGBT people. However, some members of the
LGBT Equality Forum expressed surprise at the certainty that other or-
ganizations were meeting this equality duty, and suggested:
Phyllis: The only way [our organization] would know that we’re doing
that was through the Equality Impact Assessments. I’m just surprised
that other organizations definitely know that that’s happening. Equal-
ities monitoring is not brilliant between all of [the responding organ-
izations]. I’m looking at it and thinking [we] have been too honest!
(LGBT Hasting, Rother, and East Sussex Equalities Forum Meeting,
July 11, 2011)
How policies are implemented and monitored (through Equality Impact
Assessments) and then reported through the research (mainly in this
context citing broader Single Equality Schemes or Equality & Diversity

Policies as evidence of this) can seek a “good report” over “honesty.” The
disquiet surrounding the discourses of the organizations, and “evidence”
of engaging in meaningful ways with LGBT people, points to the multi-
ple ways in which policies can be enacted and resisted (Cooper and Mon-
ro 2003; Monro 2007). More than this, it illustrates the multiple ways in
which the modes of enactment can be perceived.
There is also a temporal aspect to the overall implementation of na-
tional equalities policies at local (rural) levels. It could be argued here
that the drives to eliminate LGBT discrimination and advance LGBT
equality made explicit in Equality Duties A and B could be related to
previous national U.K. legislation regarding LGBT equality, such that
public sector organizations were perhaps already familiar with the re-
quirements to eliminate LGBT discrimination and improve LGBT equal-
ity. The historical context within which the Equality Act 2010 was shaped
and enacted demonstrates the impact of an ongoing national agenda
around equalities requirements and responsibilities. However, this is
somewhat contradicted in the example of Hastings Borough Council,
which only after an LGBT conference in 2009 included sexual orientation
(and gender identity) in their program for the city. This questions the
trajectories of “progress” in equalities policy at national levels, and points
to the need to explore the enactment of the state in local contexts where
policies are enacted (or not).
In contrast to Equality Duties A and B, only six responding organiza-
tions said that they address Equality Duty C—fostering good relations
between people of different sexual orientations and between trans and
cisgendered people, 6 asking organizations to recognize the part non-
LGBT people play in LGBT equality. This is an important shift in locating
LGBT equalities as the concern of all people, not solely LGBT people.
Currently this active recognition is mostly spatialized away from the
rural areas in question. Rather than being supported as part of work in
Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex, many organizations used their atten-
dance at Pride in Brighton & Hove in 2010 as evidence of enacting this
duty. This reflects the dominance of Brighton in the local (as well as U.K.-
wide) gay imaginary, as well as the metropolitan focus of the “safe”
integration of LGBT and non-LGBT people. Arguably Pride offers a prac-
tical demonstration of LGBT/non-LGBT interaction and the portrayal of
supportive and positive images of LGBT people to non-LGBT audiences
(Johnston 2005; Browne and Bakshi, forthcoming), yet the location is cru-
cial. Brighton is reaffirmed as the place where “progressive” LGBT initia-
tives/politics “happen.” In contrast Hastings, Rother, and other parts of
East Sussex “trail behind.” Nevertheless, there were some examples cited
of initiatives located elsewhere—the East Sussex County Council Library
and Information Services suggested their “Human Library” project as an
example of seeking to foster good relations between people. Through this
project, the Library and Information Service invited “readers to talk to a

range of human books, who represent different groups, communities or
life experiences. The events aim to reduce stereotyping and discrimina-
tion by promoting understanding and learning about experiences differ-
ent to your own” (Luthmann 2011). Among the “human books” were two
gay men and a trans woman. This challenges the “unfriendliness” of
rural contexts. The project was subsequently replicated in Brighton—
illustrating the ways in which LGBT equalities initiatives can counter
assumptions of urban to rural “learning” (Knopp and Brown 2003).
In the main this discussion of equalities policies indicates a certain
homogeneity of Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex in terms of LGBT
equalities, questioning rural reticence to address LGBT equalities—at
least at a policy level. However, further examination of the implementa-
tion of particular “measures” of equalities illustrates how the state can be
enacted through such initiatives in diffuse ways. What becomes clear is
that the tools of the Equality Act 2010 were being deployed and resisted
in numerous ways (Cooper and Monro 2003; Cooper 2004; Carabine and
Monro 2004), both linking and setting in opposition rural “backward-
ness” and urban “progression.”
Eight responding organizations included LGBT issues in training of-
fered for staff. LGBT issues were often included as a part of a broader
training session—two organizations offered training specifically about
LGBT equalities, while six included LGBT equality as a part of more
general equality and/or diversity training. However, the amount of time
allocated to training, and who was targeted for training, was not uniform.
The University of Brighton offered a particularly poor example of work
in this area: “The university has a network of harassment contacts, who
every few years receive one day’s training on equality, diversity and harass-
ment issues relevant to their role, including on LGBT harassment” (ques-
tionnaire response, emphasis added).
Supporting data from other research (Valentine and Wood 2009), the
University of Brighton, with a campus located in Hastings, as well as
Brighton, had poor LGBT (and broader equalities) training in contrast to
other public bodies in the area. The research suggests that, far from being
bastions of liberal equalities, universities remain sites of homophobia,
transphobia, and biphobia, as reported by both staff and students. This
evidence demonstrates a lack of engagement with LGBT staff training,
and resourcing was cited as the key rationale for this absence. Moreover,
this instance questions the idea that links with, and a location in, the “gay
capital” will automatically translate to initiatives that make their way
from the “urban center” to the “rural.”
Four of the public sector organizations which responded said they
had some kind of internal LGBT staff network or group. Those LGBT
staff groups and networks that did exist generally received support from
their organization. There was resistance to seeing this as a measure of
equality from some representatives of public sector organizations within

the LGBT Equalities Forum. They highlighted particular issues with rural
areas, where staff bases were not large and had been further reduced
because of public sector cuts. Such an interpretation of reticence and an
absence of a “collective” illustrate particular imaginings and experiences
of rural workplaces, in the public sector, where it is expected that LGBT
people will not be clustered or have a collective of which to be part.
Perhaps more concerningly, representatives suggested that common re-
sponses from LGBT staff included saying that such a group was not
needed; staff saying that they did not want to be “out” in the workplace;
or that there was no LGBT person willing or able to lead the group. Such
organizational problems and implicit heterosexism (such as not examin-
ing the reasons why LGBT staff might not want to be out) highlight
continuing issues regarding LGBT people in certain workplaces in Has-
tings, Rother, and East Sussex. 7 The discursive uses of rural “isolation”
and the small number of employees, as well as resistances to being “out”
in the workplace, offer specific understandings of rural LGBT equalities,
as well as demonstrate the messiness of public sector implementation of
equalities initiatives. It was suggested in the LGBT Hastings, Rother, and
East Sussex Equalities Forum that some LGBT staff networks and groups
might exist solely as an equalities “tickbox,” to demonstrate “equality”
while not providing any tangible effects. As we move to consider one of
the key contemporary considerations of equalities work—the current
“era of austerity” in the United Kingdom—such “tokenism” and the po-
tential to tick boxes, but not enact the “spirit” of the Equality Act, came to
the fore.
Seven responding organizations said that the coming public sector
financial cuts would not affect their LGBT equality work, while the re-
maining three said they were unsure whether they would or would not.
Eight responding organizations said that the main means they would use
to try to ensure LGBT people were not adversely impacted by the finan-
cial cuts were their Equality Impact Assessments. However, other means
of ensuring this were liaising and partnership with other organizations
(two), staff training/information (one), and community engagement
(one). These rely on the tools of the state to ensure the cuts do not “un-
fairly” impact upon LGBT people, not that they won’t have consequences
for LGBT equalities. Yet, as has been noted in terms of New Labour,
changes in national government can have implications for the enactment
of LGBT equalities (Monro 2006). Moving from a Labour government to a
Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010 had implications for
government guidance on how the Act was to be implemented. The LGBT
Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex Equalities Forum explored the changes
in government guidance, noting that the “onus” has shifted to respon-
sibilities for “the public” in the form of engaged citizens who can access,
read, and interpret data, objectives, and outcomes:
Fran: The onus now, in government’s guidance, is that the public need
to be the source of criticism, and understanding about the data that
public authorities are producing. That’s the whole big kind of shift.
Benjamin: The responsibility is for the organizations. ’Cause I don’t like
the idea of using us to keep them on their track.
Fran: The problem is the government’s point of view is that, you don’t
need equality schemes anymore, you publish the data, and the public
will tell you whether you’re doing well.
Benjamin: Absolutely rubbish.
Fran: I know. But we do know we’ve got to publish data. And so we
will publish data. But it will require other people to be able to give
feedback, and say, “OK it’s interesting, you’ve made this move. We
think it’s good enough, not good enough,” but that’s why we’ll also
have engagement.
Emma: We might not like it, but the onus is on us as LGBT commu-
nities, to do something and to hold services to account.
Rose: It’s the interpretation of the law that’s changed. I think.
Emma: [The] interpretation of the law has changed, but what you’re
telling us is actually you’re implementing . . .
Rose: How it was intended.
Fran: ’Cause the law is still the law. That’s the end and it could get
tested through judicial reviews and all sorts of things, but the govern-
ment interpretation of the law, which translates into this guidance and
what is this specific duty, has changed.
[Rose takes out recent government guidance]
Fran: Starts off by telling you all the things you don’t need to do!
Rose: All these crosses are you don’t have to do this! You don’t have to
do that! [general laughter]! (LGBT Equalities in Hastings, Rother, and
East Sussex Forum, March 8, 2011)
The emphasis on “the public” holding public services to account is dubi-
ous, as Benjamin notes this should be the responsibility of the organiza-
tions themselves. Yet in the drive to remove “bureaucracy” the govern-
ment guidance “starts off by telling you all the things you don’t need to
do.” Members of the LGBT Equalities Forum raised potential problems
with (unpaid) “partnership” and “community engagement” work which
was implied in this new initiative and guidance. The reliance here is on
volunteer work and an active LGBT citizen (Monro and Richardson 2012)
who will work for free to interpret data, attend meetings and hold ser-
vices to account. Challenging ideas of rural “backwardness,” those in the
LGBT Equalities Forum were keen to implement the “spirit of the law,”
illustrating how state guidance can be reinterpreted and reenacted.
CONCLUSION
Fran: I can honestly say, this [new government guidance] is not being
used, certainly in this area [Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex], as a
way of going “OK so we don’t have to worry too much about that
now.” That’s not happening. That’s going to be part of our ongoing
work as [name of service], and I’m sure it’ll be the same for other
organizations too, because we are talking to each other about it.
Rose: From [name of service] point of view, they’ve just launched
[name of initiative], which is the most comprehensive tool for making
sure organizations can evidence progress against their equality duties,
and it’s a pretty robust tool. I think the government’s saying one thing,
but actually on the ground, people aren’t taking the easy option. (LGBT
Equalities in Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex Forum, March 8, 2011)
This chapter illustrates the complexities of the enactment of state equal-
ities outside of gay metropolises. It has questioned the location of “pro-
gressive” agendas solely in tolerant and accepting urbanities, illustrating
how supposedly hostile rurals can also enact progressive policies. Fran
and Rose show that the ways in which state initiatives are manifest does
not necessarily follow the intentions of governing parties, reiterating the
“messiness” of enacting the state. Focusing on Hastings, Rother, and East
Sussex, our data question the imaginaries of these areas which suggest
stagnation and a lack of action in terms of LGBT equalities. The strength
of the rural imaginary and the importance of differentiation of Hastings,
Rother, and East Sussex from “gay Brighton” may serve to re-inscribe
heterosexual “publics” that do not desire equalities initiatives. What is
clear, however, is that forced state power, and perhaps asking the “right”
questions, meant that for a time Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex em-
bedded progressive equalities legislation into local government and other
services. The tools of the state could be used for LGBT people and not
only through establishing consumption-led, marketable identities. How-
ever, for LGBT people, the “cultures” beyond that promoted at a strate-
gic/theoretical level, in other words, the “application” of the state on the
front line, was what “mattered.” As respondent Benjamin commented,
“There’s a culture that needs to be developed. I mean it’s fine having
these objectives and having all this theoretical perspective, but the reality
is that [if] the application of it doesn’t work, it isn’t working.”
NOTES
1. The authors would like to thank all of those who are part of the LGBT Equalities
Forum and all of those who contributed to this research.
2. Available online at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_
20100015_en.pdf.
3. “The public sector” is used here to describe the assemblages of a disparate
group of state-provided services. In the United Kingdom state-provided services in-
clude healthcare, housing, social welfare, education, and adult social care. These are
funded through taxation and can be seen as part of the welfare state. Although we use
the singular “the public sector,” we do not see this as homogenous but instead locate it
within our conceptualization of “the state.”
4. See McGlynn and Browne (2011) for a list of organizations.
5. See McGlynn and Browne (2011) for a list of organizations that were put for-
ward by the group and responded.
6. Rother and Wealden District Councils were unsure, while Hastings Borough
Council and the Fire and Rescue Service said that they were not addressing this duty.
7. The forum members discussed other ways their public sector organizations sup-
ported LGBT staff through groups and networks, such as signposting LGBT staff
members towards local LGBT community groups and organizations like the Hastings
and Rother Rainbow Alliance (HRRA), or offering broader “equalities” groups or
forums.
THREE
Heterosexual Marriage, Intimacy,
and Farming
Lia Bryant
Intimacy is a fundamental feature of relationships, and expectations of

marriage often include the notion of acquired intimacy. Yet talking about
intimacy, what it is and how it feels, is difficult and nebulous. If intimacy
is a state of being in relation to another person, it is a state imbued with
varied emotions like love, feeling safe, trust, and closeness, and less posi-
tive feelings like jealousy or resentment. The emotions that constitute
intimacy are also informed by actions like caring and listening, and in
some contexts by sexual relationships. Lynn Jamieson (2011), an influen-
tial scholar on intimacy, suggests intimacy in academic and popular dis-
courses is often understood as a quality of relationships. This quality and
how it shapes human relations has been a province of academic inquiry.
Academic work in the last decade or so has tended to engage with the
concept of intimacy from the discipline of sociology and Giddens’s (1991)
and Beck’s (1992) individualization thesis, where intimacy was conceptu-
alized as a desired state in personal relationships. Feminist scholars have
rigorously criticized this work, noting Giddens’s (1991) and Beck’s (1992)
lack of engagement with generations of feminist theorizing about hetero-
sexual relationships. In contrast, geographers have been hesitant to en-
gage in empirical work focusing on personal relationships and intimacy
(Valentine 2008). Indeed, Valentine suggests that in geographies of sexu-
alities there has been little interest in “any form of personal relationships,”
and theorists have instead focused on “bodies, identities, the closet, pro-
cesses of coming out, experiences of social exclusion and claims to citi-
zenship” (2008, 2098, original emphasis). Similarly, in rural studies the
51
52 Lia Bryant
question of intimacy in heterosexual marriage has largely remained un-

examined despite marriage being crucial to the continuance of farming
and regulating many aspects of rural life. In this chapter I explore how
married heterosexual farming couples practice intimacy. I understand
intimacy as a “specific sort of knowing, loving and caring for a person
that can embrace not just sexual and parenting relationships but also
forms of care and affective structures including friendship” (Valentine
2008, 2106). In the book Gender and Rurality, Bryant and Pini (2011) draw
on Gillian Rose’s (1993) work to reveal how intimate relationships be-
tween women and men hold specific meanings within specific sites in the
home. They suggest that “the spatial separation of inside/outside, the
separation of rooms and their functions within the home, and at the same
time the lack of spatial segregation between business and marriage, sexu-
alizes and genders space for farming women and men” (Bryant and Pini
2011, 93). Bryant and Pini’s (2011) spatialized conceptualization of inti-
macy allows for an exploration of intimacy that captures everyday prac-
tices of intimacy. In this way, daily conversations, emotions, acts, and
embodied practices or expressions emerge that reflect what it means to be
intimate in what may be referred to as the routine and mundane aspects
of life. My aim here is to avoid isolating intimacy to grand moments, like
when a child is born or when moments of emotional connectivity and
care occur during trauma or grief.
I begin by analyzing what has largely been sociological theorizing on
intimacy and its connection to heterosexual relationships to understand
intimacy as a quality of relationships. I then examine narratives from
younger farming couples to identify the ways in which intimacy is prac-
ticed in everyday life. The narratives tell stories of intimacy emerging
through acts of caring in work and in domestic spaces that also raise
questions of reciprocity and, therefore, social justice in marriage. At the
same time these stories are about places and the ways in which gender,
sexuality, and intimacy are connected to and performed in place.
THEORIZING INTIMACY AND HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
In the early 1990s, Giddens (1991) and Beck (1992), within their theses of
detraditionalization, brought attention to the question of changing prac-
tices of intimacy within heterosexual relationships. Detraditionalization
is the notion that in contemporary Western societies there is a loosening
of traditional ties that guide social behavior, resulting in individuals be-
coming increasingly autonomous and reflexive. This autonomy
transcends itself into new understandings of intimacy in heterosexual
relationships that evolve into “the pure relationship” (Giddens 1991;
Beck 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995). The pure relationship is
shaped by individual satisfaction guided by mutual self-disclosure and
Heterosexual Marriage, Intimacy, and Farming 53
appreciation of the qualities of one’s partner. Specifically the pure rela-

tionship is “one in which external criteria have become dissolved: the
relationship exists solely for whatever rewards the relationship can deliv-
er. In the context of the pure relationship, trust can be mobilised only by a
process of mutual disclosure” (Giddens 1991, 6).
The pure relationship is manifested through intimacy, and in this con-
text intimacy is trust enabling mutual self-disclosure. A number of as-
sumptions are inherent in the universalizing account of the pure relation-
ship. The first is that the “relationship” is extremely individualized and
removed from external structures and conditions that give shape to its
form and function. The second, leading from the first, ignores power
relations. It suggests the pure relationship is equal between the parties,
dismissing gender inequalities and hegemonic heteronormative practices
that shape how relationships are lived and which relationships are in the
main acceptable. Giddens (1991) deals with the first assumption by ar-
guing that there is an ongoing construction and reconstruction of the self
via a “narrative of the self.” The narrative of the self is a creative and
reflexive enterprise whereby traditions break down and individuals must
make increasingly more choices about how to live their lives than they
have in previous periods in history (Giddens 1991, 1992). Building on the
work of scholars like Lasch (1979) and Bellah et al. (1985), Giddens (1991)
suggests that the “therapeutic culture” of late modernity, which relied
heavily on experts like marriage counselors and psychologists, also rede-
fined intimate relationships by emphasizing the importance of reflexivity
to reach self-development and work toward the fulfilment of mutual
needs to achieve successful relationships.
He argues against the second assumption by suggesting that trans-
formed intimate relationships give rise to more equal gender relations
and “plastic sexuality,” opening up greater choices for women and men
in relation to expression of sexuality and how gender roles are expressed.
During the latter part of the 1990s feminists challenged Giddens’s (1991)
lack of engagement with feminist scholarship and his “optimism about a
new impetus toward gender equality and democratisation of personal
life” (Jamieson 1999, 479). There is a plethora of academic feminist schol-
arship that interrogates heterosexual relationships and consistently
shows unequal patterns of domestic labor, finances, and the practice of
caring within relationships (Jackson 2005; Burns 2002; Jamieson 1999;
Jackson and Scott 1996). Empirical studies indicate that, despite couples
reporting equal relationships, women undertake a greater proportion of
domestic tasks and childcare as well as emotional labor in caring and
maintaining the “health” of the intimate relationship (Jamieson 1999).
Burns (2002, 149) tells us that “in talking of intimate heterosexual rela-
tionships, pervasive assumptions of gender differences endure in the
stereotypic form of emotional female care-giver and rational male work-
er.” Thus, then, if in the pure relationship intimacy is dependent upon
54 Lia Bryant
individualist aspirations, equal choices, and mutual disclosure, how can

intimacy in heterosexual relationships be understood in the context of
unequal gender relations? Feminist critiques of Giddens’s (1991) under-
standing of intimacy suggest intimacy has multiple and varied meanings
in heterosexual relationships. To begin with, the scholarship on intimacy
in heterosexual relationships indicates that a range of emotions and prac-
tices are associated with the expression of intimacy, including love, care,
sexual closeness, self-disclosure, emotional expression, and support (Gaia
2002; Evans 2003). These in turn have been conceptualized by coupling or
examining the connections between one emotion and another, for exam-
ple, love with passion or care with trust (Patrick and Beckenbach 2009;
Duncombe and Marsden 1993). Taking the example of love, commonly in
Western cultures cultural practices and meanings of love are closely asso-
ciated with discourses of romantic love (Santore 2008; Coontz 2000; Seid-
man 1991). While discursive constructions of love are varied, they share
common themes—that is, romantic love as a meeting of souls, emotional
connectivity, physical attraction, and a headiness not grounded in ration-
al thought (e.g., Felmlee and Sprecher 2007; Evans 2003; Swidler 2001;
Whitehead and Popenoe 2001). These discourses of romantic love, which
may construct or counter-construct intimacy, are missing from the detra-
ditionalization thesis (Santore 2008; Evans 2003).
Burns’s (2000, 2002) empirical work challenges the idea of intimacy as
separate from cultural narratives about romantic love. She separately
interviewed women and men, finding that men used a discourse about
working at relationships without explaining what they meant by work
and “disposed of romantic love as a façade, constructing the important
determinant of a relationship as a business-like, rational approach to
partnership and family” (Burns 2000, 483). The women interviewed by
Burns (2000, 484) reflexively resisted romantic discourses of love and
drew on ideas of the “emotionally literate women and the emotionally
inexpressive man, although male inexpressivity was constituted in ro-
mantic discourse.” Burns (2000, 484) found that both discourses privi-
leged men’s involvement in heterosexual relationships either as “roman-
tic object or central ‘working’ subject.” There are corollaries between
Burns’s (2000) participants and Little and Panelli’s (2007) single farming
men who were seeking a wife, as in both cases constructions of marriage
were formulated in opposition to romantic discourses. For example, Lit-
tle and Panelli (2007) found that the core criteria by which male farmers
sought wives were associated with their suitability to a farming lifestyle.
Another key dimension of love and intimacy evident in the scholar-
ship on intimacy is the practice and expression of intimacy through
“care.” Intimacy and its relation to care have been conceptualized in
heterosexual relations as “practical doing and giving” (Jamieson 1999,
485). There is a scholarship of feminist work showing that care is ex-
pressed by action and is a different form of intimacy from Giddens’s
(1991) which is focused on “knowing” and mutual disclosure (Morgan

2009, 2011; Gabb 2008; Allen 2007). For example, for Jamieson (1999) care
is symbolized by the time and effort each partner devotes to their house-
hold. She suggests: “A common traditional rhetoric which couples can
and have drawn on when overlooking everyday differences in power
and privilege is the visualisation of their relationship in terms of comple-
mentary gifts—the man’s wage as his expression of care for his partner
and family, and the woman’s matching gift of housework as expressing
her tender loving care” (Jamieson 1999, 485).
In contrast, in quite recent research Duncan and Dowsett (2010),
drawing on interviews with men in long-term relationships, have con-
ceptualized care as reciprocal rather than complementary. As Hatfield,
Rapson, and Aumer-Ryan (2008) suggest, reciprocity equates with the
idea of social justice—that is, what individuals themselves define as fair
and equitable in emotional, material, and other kinds of exchanges within
relationships. However, juxtaposed to these meanings of intimacy are
feelings of social pressure or obligation to reinforce to others and to
themselves that their relationships are reciprocal and equal (Duncan and
Dowsett 2010).
Similarly, in the rural context, social norms about modern marriage
that advocate equality and partnership in marriage pervade meanings of
intimacy and marriage. Bryant and Pini (2011, 89) found that central to
meanings of intimacy among Australian married farmers was the notion
of a “good marriage” built on a specific understanding of equality. A
good marriage consisted of equality in joint decision making and mutual
respect, which occurred in the context of gendered roles and tasks. It is
clear from longstanding feminist scholarship focused on the rural and the
urban that women remain predominantly responsible for domestic and
emotional work in relationships, despite Giddens’s (1991) and Beck’s
(1992) emphasis on togetherness and equity in heterosexual relations
(Jackson 2005). As Valentine (2008, 2101) reminds us, geography and
feminist inquiry, while focusing on familial relationships, has largely ne-
glected “emotional ties, the meaning and quality of relationships, and the
‘doing’ of intimacy within ‘families.’” It is now timely to consider how
intimacy is practiced, and how these practices may reinforce gender ineq-
uities in heterosexual marital relationships in farming households.
METHODOLOGY
Men and women in marital relationships were interviewed separately for

approximately two hours to give individuals an opportunity to talk about
their experiences, understandings, and expectations about marriage. The
sample of sixty-eight couples was drawn from two regions in each of the
Australian states of South Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales
56 Lia Bryant
during 2001 and approximately 20 percent of the sample was re-inter-

viewed in 2011 in NSW and SA. I re-interviewed some participants to
identify any potential changes over time in practices of intimacy due to
the age of the original data set. Industries represented in the study in-
clude the beef industry, beef and sheep properties, and grain and viticul-
tural properties. The sample was accessed using snowballing techniques,
beginning with self-identification via farmers’ groups and networks. The
sample was then built from these initial contacts through farming couples
who were not associated with agricultural organizations and networks.
Couples who were re-interviewed were asked the same questions as
they were when interviewed in 2001. However, they were also asked
about the most significant changes to their relationships since their last
interview. Overwhelmingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, given the age
cohort, the majority of participants considered the birth of children to be
the most significant impact or change to their married life.
In the original data set participants had been married for between one
and seven years, and 75 percent of the sample had young children. The
majority of men were from rural backgrounds and most were from farm-
ing backgrounds. About half of the women in the sample were from rural
and/or farming backgrounds and the other half were from urban or larg-
er regional areas. Work statuses were mixed and whether men were en-
gaged in off-farm work depended on their farming commodity and re-
gion in Australia. For example, those on smaller horticultural or viticultu-
ral properties were more likely to have off-farm work. Most women had
worked off-farm but reduced their hours or terminated off-farm employ-
ment when their children were born.
Data were analyzed using an interpretive approach to reveal themes,
patterns, gaps, replication, and non-patterns or difference across the nar-
ratives (Patton 2002). The data were then coded and analyzed through
the identification of relationships between the key themes and then ver-
ified using qualitative data analysis software (the Non-numerical Un-
structured Data Indexing, Searching and Theorizing system) (Minichiel-
lo, Aroni, and Hays 2008). The inductive analysis of the data revealed
three dominant inter-relating themes. These themes were: the under-
standings and practices of intimacy as caring; challenges to intimacy
through lack of reciprocity; and regulation of marital relationships and
their impact on practices of intimacy.
INTIMACY AS CARE
Intimacy for these farming couples occurs as an “act” or a series of prac-

tices rather than, as Giddens (1991) describes, as a cognitive or emotional
“knowing” of one’s partner. Couples talked about their relationship in
terms of pragmatic tasks and their feelings about those tasks in relation to
their partner. Thus, who carried out domestic and farm work and under
what conditions was a matter of how individuals practiced or withheld
intimacy. Intimacy for these couples has specific meanings. It refers to a
way of showing love by “caring” and caring means to “step in and pro-
tect her,” “provide an organized home for him so he doesn’t have to
worry about that,” and by “being there to help him when he needs it.”
These are obviously gendered understandings of care. Indeed they are
gendered to the point of cliché, which caused me to question their au-
thenticity and my reading of the data. Intimacy here is work. Where do
emotions or discourses of romance come into play? For farming couples
then, what is this state or quality of relationship that those who define
intimacy talk about? I began to wonder whether my reading of the data
was drawing me into a gendered hierarchy of work and away from inti-
macy. However, the narratives below show that intimacy in marriage
occurs in the mundane aspects of everyday life, not as a sonata or an
indefinable passion, and that, while the gendered nature of intimacy as
care is blatant, what is subtle is the emotional drivers that reproduce this
form of intimacy, and, therefore, work and gender hierarchies.
FARMING MEN, INTIMACY, AND PASTORAL POWER
When farming men were asked to talk about what marriage meant to
them they talked about “looking after” or “protecting” their partners by
limiting their exposure to outside farm work, which can be “too danger-
ous.” For example, John, a thirty-year-old, Queensland sheep and beef
farmer, explained: “I don’t want to sound chauvinistic, but some of it’s
pretty rough and you can get hurt. There are some things she is just best
not exposed to. I’d prefer to be the person that something happens to, not
my wife.”
John recognizes that protection in this instance is based on gendered
normative roles, thus his reference to chauvinism. Nevertheless, he
understands protection as deeply tied to his masculinity and role of hus-
band. Protection in marriage is a gendered word loaded with meaning.
Notably, Carole Pateman (1988) has argued that masculinity is performed
in patriarchal gender relations embedded in the workings of the state.
This can be seen particularly in relation to protection and security
through militaristic action. However, as Young (2003, 18) suggests, hier-
archical power is obvious when it comes to the state and masculine pro-
tection, but in the household it “is more masked by virtue and love.”
Feminist theorists have drawn on Michel Foucault’s (1988) conceptualiza-
tion of pastoral power to understand the kind of power wielded in
households where decisions are made about what is in the “best inter-
ests” of another adult. Joseph, a twenty-eight-year-old sheep and crop
farmer from South Australia, also emphasized this practice of pastoral
58 Lia Bryant
care when he stated: “I think she could do everything on the farm. But
the only thing I think she probably couldn’t do is crutch sheep or shear
sheep. She’s quite capable of driving tractors and headers. She couldn’t
crutch sheep because it’s physical and we have got some fairly big sheep.
I’d rather do it myself—while you know there are women that do crutch-
ing and shearing, it’s just that I like looking after her.”
As Patrick and Beckenback (2009) suggest, the way men socially con-
struct intimacy in heterosexual relationships is by embodying the role of
protector, to save women. Hence Joseph’s understanding is that while his
wife is capable of physical labor he perceives it as his role to “look after
her.” Pastoral power is a useful way of understanding “protection” as a
form of intimacy and love, as this form of power “often appears gentle
and benevolent both to its wielders and to those under its sway, but it is
no less powerful for that reason” (Young 2003, 18). While these ways of
doing intimacy are often where gender inequalities are reproduced, I am
not suggesting that the practice of love by protection is not understood
by these men as a genuine way of caring. These men value giving care
and their partners mostly interpret this form of intimacy as care and love.
Consequently, pastoral power, which is couched in the language of love,
is a hardy and fairly enduring form of power, which makes change in the
domestic sphere difficult (Hochschild 2003). However, men negotiate and
move from gendered scripts when there are competing gendered norms
or when the continued reproduction of the farm is at stake. For example,
men commonly suggested that, if it became financially or pragmatically
necessary, that is, in their words “if we were stuck,” their wives could
undertake outside work otherwise deemed “too dangerous,” “too de-
manding,” or “too dirty.” Competing gendered norms are also evident in
the gendered division of labor around machinery use that disrupts the
practice of care and protection. For example, Tom, a twenty-nine-year-
old male crop farmer from New South Wales, explained: “To use the
heavy machinery you need to have a bit of experience. It’s pretty danger-
ous. I suppose cattle are dangerous as well but she does that.” Delia, a
female farmer aged twenty-six from a cropping property in South Aus-
tralia, confirmed that: “You never see the wives go out, like, if we go out
and buy a new tractor, they wouldn’t be allowed to sit in the tractor and
try it.”
These positions, which underwrite the connections between the farm
and its material goods to masculinities, have been the subject of much
discussion by feminists interested in the rural (e.g., Brandth and Haugen
2005). The narratives suggest that intimacy through care and how it is
practiced in the everyday lives of farming couples is not fixed, and is
subject to pragmatic circumstances rather than reflexive and transforma-
tive gender relations. As feminists suggest, love and care practiced
through actions are enmeshed with institutional constructions of gender,
which are embedded in various aspects of social life from understandings

of machinery to childcare responsibilities (Gabb 2008; Valentine 2008).
FARMING WOMEN, INTIMACY, RECIPROCITY,

AND DOMESTIC WORK
Women practice intimacy, in their understanding, by being “supportive”

to men, by reducing inside labor including domestic work and office
work for men. Dora explained that by doing inside work she “can keep
things going and not put pressure on Jim.” Jane suggested she does all
the household tasks “so that life can run more smoothly.” There were
many similar accounts of women talking about supporting their hus-
bands and reducing their stress by taking on the majority of domestic
work alone. An extensive feminist scholarship indicates that heterosexual
couples construct a sense of self and a sense of their partners by engaging
“apparently gender neutral devices to maintain a counterfactual sense of
equality” (Jamieson 1999, 484; Wilmot 2007). As with urban studies of
marital relationships and equality, these farming couples also assert that
a good relationship is an equal one but, like research on urban couples, it
is apparent that “creative energy is deployed in disguising inequality, not
in undermining it” (Jamieson 1999, 485; see also Hatfield, Rapson, and
Aumer-Ryan 2008; Jackson 2005; Burns 2000). For example, Peter said,
“our major goal is that we work together,” and Julie stated that this is “a
partnership in marriage and in work.”
Thus, these couples employ a discourse of equality to explain different
but gendered practices of caring and also, less commonly, to disrupt
traditional gendered norms associated with space and intimacy in farm-
ing. Young men are less likely than women to disrupt traditional norms.
In fact, only five of the thirty-four men in the sample expressed views
divergent from traditional gender norms. When they do disrupt the tra-
ditional gendered spatiality of inside-outside work they do so by using
counterarguments to the traditional view of women and men’s work in
farming. Hence, they practice their intimacy and care for their partner by
pointing to equality among women and men. Don, a thirty-two-year-old
mixed cropping primary producer from South Australia, explained: “We
work as a team. She could do most of the jobs because as you see I’m only
nine stone and she’s only nine stone, so it’s not that hard. Like you’ve
only gotta be able to drive a tractor and lift a few things.”
What is interesting about Don’s comments is that mutuality, equality,
and caring result in the sharing of agricultural labor. It is agricultural
labor that results in teamwork. However, as I suggest below, inequalities
among women and men in farming are predominately reproduced in the
domain of domestic labor. A number of women talked about missing
outside work and not expecting when they were married to do all the
60 Lia Bryant
inside work. Jess, from a wheat growing enterprise in South Australia,

aged twenty-seven, added: “Living on a farm and sitting inside a home
office all day is a huge contradiction. And I don’t enjoy that. I never
wanted to be a woman that did all the cooking and cleaning on my own.
But I seem to have fallen into that role. I struggle against and I could say
that we confront each other—there is that. But I guess that is one thing I
would prefer not to be [carrying out domestic labor] but I am.”
These women talked about wanting their husband to do some inside
work. This point of view is typified by Sarah’s comments as she ex-
plained how she would like a more equal division of labor in her relation-
ship: “It would be nice to have a husband that came home and, you
know, even just bathed the kids, spent ten minutes there so I could get
dinner organized. I think that is what many couples with children do;
husbands come home and help do that sort of thing. I’d like that to
happen here, that would be nice, but I mean you just sorta got to get by.”
The women did not specifically articulate that gendered work equates
with a lack of intimacy as expressed through care. Although they did use
the singular—“I struggle”; “I don’t enjoy that”; “I sorta got to get by”—
indicating that they are fighting this battle alone. So discourses of care
and work are not reflected in inside spaces for these women nor is the
idea that gendering of roles and tasks equates with mutuality and team-
work, as expressed by the men. Wilcox and Nock (2006) contend that the
extent to which women are content in their marriages is associated with
divisions of household tasks. Scholarship and activism in feminist rural
sociology has tended to focus on challenging the notion of the “invisible
farmer” to recognize women’s contribution to farming and increase
women’s participation in the public sphere of agriculture (Alston 1995;
Bryant 1999; Liepins 1998). It is now timely to focus our attention on
men’s contribution to domestic work, given that as scholars we recognize
that farm business and household intertwine in constituting work and
home.
REGULATIONS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND PLACE
Farming couples, despite working and living together, share many simi-
lar practices of intimacy as care with urban heterosexual married couples
(Hatfield, Rapson, and Aumer-Ryan 2008). However, what is specific to
farming couples is the regulation of their relationship according to the
cultural mores of rural places. The gendered politics of place result in
certain meanings about intimacy and relationships for farming couples.
Local constructions of marriage, place, and community impact on and
regulate expressions of intimacy, work, and marriage. For example, Jo
Little’s (2003, 2007) work reveals that marriage is a symbol of normalcy in
rural areas and that the community regulates sexual relationships by
sanctioning, exercising surveillance over, and disciplining behaviors. In

this study Steve talked about the moral code he reads in his community
that sanctions his way of making decisions about work and family with
his partner. Steve says: “We have talked a bit about kids coming along.
She would leave work. Well that’s just the way things happen out here on
the farm, isn’t it? Say she did have kids and she went back to work within
six months and put a child into childcare that would raise eyebrows.
They would sermonize.”
Interestingly he uses the word “sermonize,” suggesting that there is a
right and righteous manner in which the community regulates and sanc-
tions gendered behavior, desires, and opportunities for work and family.
The detraditionalization thesis indeed suggests a decline in regulative
traditions in relation to relationships and intimacy. Steve’s assertion
shows both reflexivity and traditional constraints. While he is reflexive in
articulating and assessing cultural norms he also recognizes how they
constrain his intimate relationships. As Gross (2005, 293) suggests,
“agents may realize, at the level of the discursive or practical conscious-
ness, that they will be excluded from some moral community in which
they have a stake in belonging if they do not enact the specific practises
the community regards as fundamental to its historical identity.” Steve,
like others in the study, recognizes the boundaries implicit within his
moral community and how they shape his thoughts and possible actions.
While he discussed community and morality as important in constituting
marriage, he did not mention religion and its contribution to moral codes.
Across disciplines scholars have demonstrated how Christianity in West-
ern economies in particular shapes marriage and norms about women’s
reproductive bodies (Ingraham 1994; Richardson 1996). Little is known
about the intersections between gendered performance, experience, prac-
tices, and norms about marriage and spiritual and religious beliefs held
within Western farming communities (Bryant and Pini 2011). Examina-
tion of these interstices may tell us more about how traditions act as a
moral reference for gendered forms of intimacy and care. They may also
tell us how individuals interpret and navigate religion and relationships.
The idea that women will leave off-farm paid work when children are
born was a common theme articulated across the narratives of farming
women and men. Indeed, it was the most common theme rearticulated
where couples were re-interviewed. The only notable difference in prac-
tices of intimacy recurring across narratives where individuals were re-
interviewed in 2011 was how the birth of children had changed women’s
working lives. Many of these women had not returned to paid work after
the birth of their children or had returned to work on a part-time basis
when children had reached school or pre-school age. In all cases, the
management of childcare was ostensibly the responsibility of the women.
Heteronormativity, which naturalizes heterosexuality and essentializes
62 Lia Bryant
women, remains woven into understandings of community and thereby

relationships in rural spaces.
CONCLUSION
In the narratives of younger farming women and men we see traditional

expressions of intimacy, and therefore, gender hierarchy and also contes-
tations of those traditional binaries. Quite recently at two different social
science conferences in Australia I presented similar findings and was
challenged on both occasions with the suggestion that “things have
changed” and told that marital relationships in rural areas are now built
less along traditional gendered lines. I queried: “How have things
changed?” and was told that women are more involved in farm work and
farm decisions.
I am not suggesting that intimacy is performed universally as acts of
caring that are gendered and traditional among Australian farming fami-
lies. Like Jamieson (2011), I am suggesting that difference in ways of
doing intimacy is hard to find and requires us to seek out couples who
practice caring through domestic labor in more equal ways. This very
practice of seeking out difference, while providing a counter-narrative, at
the same time reinforces the overwhelming nature of hegemonic tradi-
tional forms of intimate living in heterosexual marital relationships. It
draws our attention to farming men’s unequal work in households rather
than focusing on women’s work alone.
As Valentine (2008) says, patterns of intimacy will ebb and flow over
the life course. In this chapter I have presented fragments of intimate
relations expressed in time and place in relation to one or two aspects of
these couples’ lives. Intimacy in the form of care and its expression in the
interweaving of work and family may change as some people leave rela-
tionships, form new ones, and/or have children. What is known is that
there are particular expressions of care associated with family and work
that reverberate across generations and households. These expressions of
care are underpinned by rural heterosexualities that afford primacy to
marriage and reproduction and that have consequences especially for
women’s autonomy. The detraditionalization thesis, which as Giddens
(1991, 6) argues is shaped by individual satisfaction with the “relation-
ship exist[ing] solely for whatever rewards the relationship can deliver”
and where trust and mutual disclosure are paramount, appears, as femi-
nists have argued, somewhat idealistic. There is evidence in the narra-
tives that younger farming couples are less likely to accept and be satis-
fied with traditional norms, particularly around practices of caring. This
dissatisfaction is evident where domestic labor is more than unequally
proportioned to women and is echoed in discourses of equality and mu-
tuality to explain unequal contributions to the household and business.
In this chapter I have also discussed how marital relationships exist

within communities and are regulated by them. Roseneil and Budgeon
(2004, 138), discussing contemporary lesbian and gay relationships in
particular, refer to practices of intimacies that occur:
between friends, non-monogamous lovers, ex-lovers, partners who do
not live together, partners who do not have sex together, those which
do not easily fit the “friend”/”lover” binary classification system—and
the network of relationships within which these intimacies are sus-
tained (or not) have the following significance: they decenter the pri-
macy significance that is commonly granted to sexual partnerships and
mount a challenge to the privileging of conjugal relationships in re-
search on intimacy.
These ideas bring me to the question, how do friendships in the rural
sustain or transgress marital intimacy among farming couples? How do
friends provide intimacy as care, that is, provide those core aspects of
intimacy like trust and mutual disclosure and show care through a varie-
ty of ways that can provide the nourishment that may exist or be lacking
in marital relationships? Farming marriages are just as likely to be sus-
tained and/or regulated by communities. As Roseneil and Budgeon
(2004) suggest, the challenge for social scientists is to decenter the hetero-
sexual couple by introducing the multiplicity of actors and their potential
for sustaining, regulating, and transgressing practices of intimacy within
heterosexual marriage.
2
Communities
FOUR
Rural Men in Nordic
Television Programs
Hanna-Mari Ikonen and Samu Pehkonen
Open fields unroll behind a large farm building, modern, yet so tradi-
tional with its reddle paint. The camera zooms in on a good-looking
farmer in his thirties, sitting on the corner of the building, talking about
the life values he holds dear. His dreams are just about to come true as
he is falling in love.
A modern barn provides the scene for calving. A young farm-owner is
helping the cow by pulling the calf out and making sure that every-
thing is fine. His boyfriend is aiding the delivery.
Typical arctic coastal weather: strong wind and pouring rain. A door
opens and weather-beaten, mostly older men enter the community hall.
A moment later the men are lined up and singing about the wonders of
the northern nature.
The scenes described above are from three television programs set in
contemporary rural Nordic locations. These programs represent genres
of the documentary tradition (the last two) and the reality TV show (the
first): Maajussille Morsian, the Finnish adaptation of Season One of the TV
reality series The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006); Ullavan Cowboyt (Ullava Cow-
boys, 2006), a Finnish documentary film about a farming gay couple; and
Heftigog Begeistret (Cool and Crazy, 2001), a Norwegian award-winning
“docu-musical” about an amateur choir. In this chapter, we analyze these
programs for their visual media representations of rural men, masculin-
ities, and sexualities. We ask what types of culturally dominant—that is,
stereotypical—but also anti-stereotypical images of rurality and rural
masculinity are offered to the viewers in these programs. Do masculinity
67
68 Hanna-Mari Ikonen and Samu Pehkonen
and rurality share dimensions and characteristics that are represented as

unchanged or unchangeable; and if so, what types of practices are seen as
maintaining these stereotypes? How do these, in turn, inflect, reinforce,
and/or contest expectations about sexual subjectivities and relations?
Informed by the concepts of hegemonic masculinity and homosocial-
ity we attend to expressions of power, strength, and success, the control
of emotions, and the maintenance of heteronormativity. As a result, we
present mechanisms of how the hegemony of certain masculinities and
homosocial relations are reproduced and challenged.
RURAL MEN IN THE MEDIA
A primary rationale for utilizing television programs to explore embodi-

ment, emotions, and sexuality is because of the intermediary yet critical
role of such media (Fairclough 1995). An increasing number of people in
Western societies are estranged from rural life. For them, rural spaces are
experienced and consumed through selected media representations. Giv-
en that the everyday landscape for most of us is not directly related to the
countryside and as our present-day culture is predominantly a visual
one, television series and programs offer an interesting channel through
which the countryside and rural people, and particularly rural men, are
portrayed. In terms of the latter, while many researchers have overlooked
the role of gender in media constructions of the rural, some important
exceptions have demonstrated the significance of media texts in circulat-
ing and reinforcing dominant discourses of rurality and gender (e.g.,
Brandth and Haugen 2000; Liepins 2000; Little and Panelli 2007; Lon-
ghurst and Wilson 2002; Woodward 2000).
A second rationale for this chapter is to extend knowledge about rural
masculinities while contesting hegemonic masculinity. To study rural
men is not extraordinary; quite the opposite. Men and activities related to
masculinity have traditionally been the object of study, although this has
not been made explicit, particularly in rural studies where the literature
on men and masculinity remains limited and engagement with critical
masculinity studies and gender theory, more broadly, only marginal (Lit-
tle 2002; Little and Morris 2005). This lacuna is important to those of us
concerned with more inclusive rural communities, and is why our analy-
sis relates questions of gender relations to wider and parallel mechanisms
of societal transformation. Instead of focusing on rural men in order to
keep their privileged position within scholarship unchallenged, we aim
at tracing the whole system of gender and sexuality and highlight the
hegemonic features of masculinity and the deconstructive dichotomies
that have—a congestive and often unrecognized—impact on the lives of
men and women living in non-urban spaces (Longhurst 2000, 439–40).
Rural Men in Nordic Television Programs 69
Our aim is to examine whether the analyzed television programs could

assist in producing alternative images of rural men.
A final factor that motivates us to explore the three programs, Ullava
Cowboys (2006), Cool and Crazy (2001), and The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006)
is that they all focus on the everydayness and immanence of life in the
countryside, a topic that has often been neglected when representing the
rural. Although rural issues are on view in the news media, the media
tends to concentrate on topics that focus on extremes: when something
extraordinary, an overtly positive or negative phenomenon, occurs (see
Malmsten 2004 for Finnish media). However, in the programs analyzed
we have explorations of countryside living as the everyday. This means
that rather than trying to provide (or impose) definitions of hegemonic
(rural) masculinity, heterosexuality, or homosociality, we can concentrate
on the lived instances where these concepts gain their solidity and mean-
ing.
OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAMS
The programs were selected to open up to scrutiny a multi-faceted pic-

ture of rural masculinities and sexualities. The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006)
builds on a historically familiar, yet diminishing group of men: farmers
in a search for heterosexual love. Typical of this genre of reality show, the
search for love is framed by a stereotypical understanding of gender and
other social categories. In this case rural men seek women (not necessari-
ly from a rural background), and women are asked to leave their previ-
ous existence for a new life in the countryside. The urban-rural dichoto-
my is played out repeatedly throughout the season: the brides-to-be are
first made to encounter the working conditions on the farm, the women
learn to cook traditional food, and prior to the final decision the couples
spend a weekend in the city.
Ullava Cowboys (2006) takes a distinctly different trajectory compared
with The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) in that while it focuses on a relation-
ship, it is a same-sex relationship in the rural which is of concern. It thus
raises questions about what alternative masculinities can be constructed
when masculinity is explicitly detached from heterosexuality. The docu-
mentary follows the everyday working lives of a male couple. The couple
has come out about their homosexuality and has been accepted by their
families and friends. The main message is conveyed in an introduction to
the program: let’s please tolerate difference. The intention of the program
is to show that despite their sexual difference, gay men are very similar to
other rural men. In fact, the point of difference is not between rural
heterosexual and rural gay men, but between rural and urban gay men
(also see the chapter by Annes and Redlin). It is geography which is thus
the key marker for differentiation. Urbanity and gay identity are often
linked in social imaginaries, even in the research literature (Aldrich 2004).

Moreover, the limited connections drawn between gay masculinity and
the countryside in popular culture represent “rural homosexuality” as
untamed, unregulated, naïve, and far removed from the stereotype of
sophisticated “metrosexuality” (Bell 2000a). Such imaginative construc-
tions are arguably unfamiliar to lived experience. Instead, the documen-
tary presents rural gay men who live a rather normal and mundane life.
They are distinct from both tropes of “wild” rural sexuality and of urban
gay men concerned with fashion, partying, and consumption, as depicted
in popular cultural images.
Cool and Crazy (2001) diverges from the other two programs analyzed
as it is not based on farming/farmers. Instead it depicts how a community
of men, or more precisely a homosociality of men in a remote area in
Norway, is constructed through leisure activities. The men at the center
of the narrative are all members of a choir and live in a fishing commu-
nity on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The setting provides a lens for
exploring the social impact of rural change, and the gendered practices
embedded in this change, as well as for examining emotionally infused
connections to community. The natural environment, the powers of na-
ture, and especially the sea, are central elements to the masculinity of the
protagonists (also Little and Panelli 2007), as are unemployment, the cri-
sis of the fishery, out-migration, and other social problems.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The principal conceptual tool of this chapter is the notion of hegemonic

masculinity as elaborated by Raewyn Connell. Hegemonic masculinity is
a version of masculinity that is taken as legitimate and natural but is
available only to some men (Connell 2005, 74). It is not a normal state of
affairs in any quantitative sense, as only a small minority of men eventu-
ally can make use of it. It is a normative form of masculinity (Connell and
Messerschmidt 2005, 832). The concept is theoretically useful in assisting
us to understand how masculine identities are defined in relation to (and
supersede) feminine attributes, and how competing versions of masculin-
ity are structured (Hopkins and Noble 2009, 812). However, despite prin-
cipled sensitivity to the plurality of various versions of masculinity, the
concept of hegemonic masculinity has been criticized as being too univer-
salizing in its scope (for a summary of critiques and answers to them, see
Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). For example, Peter Hopkins and Greg
Noble (2009, 813) suggest that the sociological notion of gender in Con-
nell’s categorization of masculinities should be replaced by a cultural
one, “which focuses on questions of subjectivity, the discursive construc-
tions of masculinity, and its intersections with other vectors of identity,
like class, sexuality, race and ethnicity.” Thus masculinities are strategic
and best understood, as stated by Hopkins and Noble (2009, 814, follow-
ing McDowell 2003), “as performances which are undertaken in particu-
lar contexts, drawing on specific resources and capacities.” The content of
normative masculinity changes from situation to situation, and there are
simultaneously multiple culturally accepted ways to be a man.
The features typical of hegemonic masculinity in Western societies are
power, strength, success, emotional self-control, heterosexuality, and
heteronormativity (Jokinen 2000, 217). Performances of masculinity
which do not encompass these characteristics may be marginalized or
sanctioned. Few men actually performatively match the ideals of hege-
monic masculinity, but as an aspirational model this ideal-type affects
those men—a not insignificant number—who don’t or can’t measure up.
Jorma Sipilä (1994, 21–23) has coined the term “the burden of masculin-
ity” to elucidate the fact that while hegemonic masculinity includes the
incontestable privileges of men, it simultaneously creates social and mo-
ral problems for the whole society, as well as health hazards for many
men themselves. This contention is illuminated in a study of young male
farmers in Ireland undertaken by Caitríona Ní Laoire (2001). Through her
analysis of the changes in livelihoods, population structures, and gender
relations in the Irish countryside, she observes that the demands for heg-
emonic masculinity are not easily met by un-partnered men. Leaving and
being on the move are associated with power, while rural Irish men
remain behind on their family farms and in their rural communities.
Being rooted somewhere can support well-being, but combined with a
low educational level, bad work situation, and poor self-esteem, the bur-
den of masculinity can be experienced as too heavy.
While acknowledging some of the problematic ways in which the
notion of hegemonic masculinity has been engaged, we nevertheless find
it a useful conceptual tool for understanding the representations of mas-
culinity in the texts analyzed. This is particularly because primacy is
given to community in each of the series. Both in the media and in public
opinion a local community has a shared ideal culture with which other
cultures, such as the urban culture, and its people, such as city dwellers
and/or local “deviants,” are compared. Because local cultures also in-
clude locally hegemonic ways of being a man, Connell’s (2005) theoriza-
tion of a hierarchy of masculinities is useful. We perceive hegemonic
masculinity as a mechanism of hegemony which is produced by, for exam-
ple, church, the state, or the media, and which occurs in ideals, fantasies,
and desires (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Appearing locally, hege-
monic masculinity refers to the ideal type of masculinities acknowledged
in certain social environments, such as a family or a village.
Most strikingly, hegemonic masculinity becomes visible in homoso-
cial relations. As such, homosociality, that is, same-gender, non-sexual
activity, solidarity, and friendship or competition, is the second key con-
ceptual tool we engage in this chapter (Sedgwick 1985, 1–2). Jean Lip-
man-Blumen (1976, 16) offers a more detailed definition, arguing that

homosociality is “the seeking, enjoyment, and/or preference for the com-
pany of the same gender. It is distinguished from homosexuality in that it
does not necessarily involve (although it may under certain circum-
stances) an explicitly erotic sexual interaction between members of the
same gender.” Despite the fact that the term does not imply either hetero-
sexuality or homosexuality, it builds on an idea of heterosexual male
relationships where the heteronormative stance is reproduced with the
help of clearly marked heterosexual behavior, even homophobia (Kie-
sling 2005; Sedwick 1985; Jokinen 2000).
Homosocial male communities have served as arenas for physical and
verbal swaggering, and for conquering and appraising women (Ber-
glund, Johansson, and Kramvig 2005, 6). Indeed, Sharon Bird (1996) has
asserted that male homosociality is characterized by emotional detach-
ment, competitiveness, and sexual objectification of women. In this vein,
homosociality maintains hegemonic masculinities as cultural imposition
even though there may be personal conflicts with this ideal masculinity.
In short, homosocial relations reproduce masculine power structures.
Clearly, an important homosocial practice is to exclude women (Koivu-
nen 2011), but also important is the exclusion of men who do not ade-
quately embody and perform the elements of hegemonic masculinity.
Although the facets of hegemonic masculinity vary in time, place, and
community, gay men are among the most subjugated within the hierar-
chy of masculinities (Sipilä 1994). This subjugation could potentially lead
them to collectively contest and unravel the hegemony, but often any
aggression is directed to people who are even more repressed, by such
thinking as, “I may be a gay but I’m still a man” (Connell 1987, 285). The
willingness to belong to a homosocial group and to pursue the hegemon-
ic characteristics of masculinity may exceed the other constituents of a
person’s identity.
BUILDING BLOCKS FOR RURAL MEN
Through a constructivist and discursive approach, we explored the tele-

vision programs for how masculinity, sexuality, male homosociality, and
the countryside are represented. The analytical method is close reading:
we looked at the material both in detail and through a wider cultural
lens. We followed the storylines of the programs, observed shorter epi-
sodes, analyzed the pictures and the scenery, identified dominant
themes, and compared the programs. Prior to the analysis, we absorbed
theoretical ideas from the research literature and watched the programs
several times, took notes, and discussed them. Repeated, highlighted,
extraordinary, and neglected topics began to take shape. The first of these
was the notion of learning by doing, which was embedded in a broader
theme of embodiment and physical activity. A second recurring theme

mobilized around gender roles, including a sense of ambivalence about
such roles. A final theme to emerge was that of the ordinariness of the
rural people portrayed. These themes overlap and intertwine, but collec-
tively they underline the critical role of paid work in constituting rural
masculine identities. Reflecting on former, present, and forthcoming jobs
emerges as a key to understandings of rural manhood, activity, and ordi-
nariness.
THE ACTIVE BODY
Across the three programs there are numerous instances which depict
men diligently undertaking physical work in the rural environment. In
The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006), the first few episodes introduce the farm-
ers, as well as their trial spouses, and paint a picture of the daily life at the
farm. Various everyday tasks are performed, such as driving a tractor
and taking care of the farm animals. Although there is time for relaxation
in the beautiful rural scenery, most often the male bodies are in motion,
doing something physical. Managerial work, which would look like any
office work, remains invisible although contemporary farming requires a
significant amount of this type of labor. It is clear from their education
(mentioned in voice-overs) that the farmers would be capable of manage-
rial work, but for the series to give visibility to this labor would be to
challenge dominant gendered and embodied discourses about what
“real” and “proper” rural work should entail.
The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) gives considerable attention to the
farmers’ capacity for hard work and their level of industry, but also sug-
gests these are men who are simply doing “what a man’s gotta do.”
Gender roles are acknowledged throughout the program in that there is a
marked difference between the labor allocated to men and that allocated
to women. 1 However, sometimes there is tension and ambivalence as the
traditional gendered norms of family farming are set against the ethos of
equality articulated by men and women in the program, and in the Nor-
dic countries in general. In The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) both farmers
and their bridal candidates ponder whether they want to act within the
traditional rural gender roles or if there are possibilities to stretch the
boundaries. The answer seems to be both yes and no. In one episode, a
young farmer, Risto, takes a newborn calf to show his bridal candidates.
When the stubborn calf refuses to go back to the barn, the farmer grabs
the calf into his lap without any hesitation. The women’s role is to stand
aside admiring both the cute animal and the strong man, which under-
lines the man’s traditional role and the kind of rural hegemonic masculin-
ity behind it.
At the same time, the ideal rural woman is not passive either. There
are areas and duties that call for women’s activity. In The Farmer Wants a
Wife (2006), these duties are often to be found in the kitchen except when
women posses special skills, for example, knowing how to drive a tractor.
In Risto’s case, both his bridal candidates live in a city, but they seem
very keen to learn “traditional” rural ways of life. When Risto’s mother
invites them to bake traditional bread, the bridal candidates seize the
opportunity, honoring the skills and handcraftsmanship of Risto’s moth-
er. In another episode, Kati, a spousal candidate of Teemu, is left at home
to prepare dinner while Teemu takes care of the daily tasks on his farm.
While preparing meatballs, a traditional Finnish dish, Kati first considers
adding chili to the dough, but then decides not to take the risk. In The
Farmer Wants a Wife (2006), most women are given tasks that do not
conflict with traditional rural gender roles. Yet, they occasionally recog-
nize the potential for constructing these roles in their own manner.
For some of the women presented, reflection on gendered roles is
especially evident. One potential bride of the calf-bearing farmer takes a
very conscious stand for equality but, to some degree, in a post-feminist
way (Brooks 1997). She wonders whether it would be a good solution to
adapt to the almost over-traditional gender roles her host seems to expect
of her and let her man take the lead. Perhaps it would free her from the
continuous reflection and stop the excessive “buzzing” in her head, she
thinks. New life in a farm becomes portrayed as a downshifting strategy
made possible by the hardworking man.
ORDINARY, YET UNIQUE MEN
Although represented as hard-working people, neither the farmers nor

the other rural people depicted in the programs are fully characterized by
their profession. Instead, they are shown as loving people, enthusiastic
musicians, and skillful craftsmen, among other things. That a rural man
is much more than a farmer (and a rural woman much more than a
farmer’s wife) is illustrated in The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) by an ac-
count of a potential spouse who says of her host and love: “Well, I don’t
think about Teemu [the farmer] as, that, that he’s a farmer, that it would
make him a certain type of person, but for me Teemu is, well, a human
being and a personality, not a farmer.” The ordinariness of Teemu is also
underlined by his friends who claim that he is far removed from a stereo-
typical bumpkin. They tell viewers that he is a social person who is inter-
ested in many things, including heavy metal music, and emphasize that
he would find a girlfriend regardless of the television series and is thus
not desperately seeking a partner.
The ordinariness almost becomes a norm in the analyzed programs. In
The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) the farmers seeking loved ones are gener-
ally not desperate in their search, and neither are they “freaks” or red-
necks—rather, many emphasize that lack of time is the reason why they
became participants in the program (and thus, again highlighting that
they are busy working and doing other activities). As viewers follow the
farmers in their natural environments throughout the whole season, they
come to appreciate the different personalities and, we would argue, be-
come accepting of each of the farmers.
The emphasis on the regular and mundane is also a recurring theme
in Ullava Cowboys (2006). The male couple, of whom one is a farmer and
the other a relief worker on a farm, is repeatedly shown engaging in
everyday tasks such as getting up, having their morning coffee, going to
work, and enjoying the company of their friends. What is communicated
is that although these men are different from the heterosexual ideal of
hegemonic masculinity they are a very ordinary and normal couple. They
go to the traditional Finnish sauna, place photos in family albums, and
they maintain the agricultural landscape by farming it. In Ullava Cowboys
(2006), it is exactly the ordinariness of these representatives of sexual
minorities in the countryside that seems to be the main message. The
program is not about styling and partying, but about showing rural gays
living a “normal” life like any other men.
However, the discourse of ordinariness, that is, the willingness to be
like any other man, does not actually question heteronormativity. This
means that the extent to which the program destabilizes dominant idyllic
representations of rurality may be limited. The protagonists of Ullava
Cowboys (2006) are visually portrayed in a very traditional rural land-
scape and incorporated into this landscape with a seeming lack of diffi-
culty. Yet, hegemonic masculinity may be diluted when “difference” is
presented as not particularly deviant, unusual, and dubious. The ques-
tion arises as to how much of a challenge can hegemonic masculinity
resist? Are gay men tolerated as far as they do not damage the local
gendered practices too much, but adjust to the local customs in other
respects? Or are these sexual minorities a mirror to the other masculin-
ities, in the sense that a straight man is never on the lowest level in the
hierarchy of masculinities as long as there are gay men (as per Sedgwick
1985)?
Regardless of whether hegemonic masculinity is reproducing itself or
not in Ullava Cowboys (2006), there is some acceptance of more diverse
enactments of masculinity in the documentary when, after a period of
inner struggle, a brother of one of the gay farmers contends with his
brother’s sexuality. The brother, who at first appears representative of a
stereotypical rural man steeped in homophobia, stands by his gay sibling
after learning of his sexuality. At the same time, the manner in which this
narrative is told reflects and reproduces many discourses of hegemonic
masculinity. First, we learn that the brother had noticed how much his
girlfriend enjoyed chatting with his sibling at a party, and became angry
with both of them. At this point the girlfriend explained that there was
nothing erotic between them because his brother is gay. This leads to a
further stereotypical reaction as the brother explodes and runs out to the
winter night wearing only light clothing. It is only after having been
alone in nature for some time—“a man’s reaction” again—that he walks
back to the others and is ready to accept his brother’s sexuality.
REMEDIAL HOMOSOCIALITY
While work is an important part of individual identity, the programs also

highlight the significance of work for the rural communities as a whole.
Through work, the farmers and fishermen are confronted with family
and community traditions. Any difficulties in fulfilling traditions, such as
showing no interest in continuing the family farm or becoming unem-
ployed, pose a possible problem for continuity and the broader commu-
nity.
In Cool and Crazy (2001) which, as stated, depicts the life of men in a
remote fishing community on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, most of the
men are retired, unemployed, or live in constant fear of unemployment.
Some of them have minor health problems and bodily weaknesses
brought on by age or hard work. The problems, personal and global, are
not denied, yet they are not overtly discussed. The documentary seems to
suggest that happiness in life is to be found in community—in the group
of men who sing together.
The program suggests that place—that is, the fishing community—
depends on the joint activities of these men. Social welfare benefits from
the Norwegian state give the men some sort of financial safety, but their
most important network is constructed through the choir. Singing in the
choir provides meaningful interaction via concert tours and weekly re-
hearsals, but the choir’s role in building community goes beyond this as
it is choir members who are responsible for preparing and serving a
weekend dinner for the townspeople. The fact that the men are collective-
ly responsible for food may be read as a challenge to gender norms, but
importantly the men are undertaking this labor in the public sphere.
Food preparation in the private sphere of the home remains the work of
their wives. Those men not possessing the qualities generally associated
with hegemonic masculinity—power, wealth, physical and mental stami-
na—can nevertheless formulate their masculinity by showing their own
relevance for the whole community. Prioritizing the community for one’s
own and the family’s needs becomes a central element in the locally
constructed hegemonic masculinity.
The various local and global versions of hegemonic masculinity, as
well as the heterosexual construction of homosociality, become most evi-
dent in the scenes depicting the choir’s concert tour to Murmansk, Rus-
sia. There is excitement in the air when the men are packing for the
journey. A man asks his wife whether it is all right to dance “cheek to
cheek” with a Russian woman if there is a chance to do so. He even asks
her to pack some perfume. When he is finally at the hotel, jokes are made
about the Russian women and their possible reactions to the Norwegian
men. Soon after arrival one of the oldest men in the group reports to a
male colleague that he has been propositioned for sex by a woman in the
hotel elevator. This man had thought himself too old for sex with a
stranger, but for the rest of the group his story seems to serve as evidence
of the commonly held positioning of Russian women as objects of sexual
desire. The expectations for the evening become constructed in terms of
conquering the Russian women, even to the degree that some men ques-
tion whether there will be enough women to go around: if some of the
men do not succeed with their endeavor, will they be obliged to dance
with each other, as a pair of men?
Cool and Crazy (2001) does not reveal what actually happens after the
group enters the night club. Nevertheless, the talk and joyful banter re-
semble homosociality with an evident fear of homosexuality. The jokes
become a verbal battle between the men where the most powerful ones
are the luckiest in dancing with, or seducing, the most beautiful ladies.
This activity is not easily avoided as it is important to get one’s actions
accepted and evaluated by the other men (Kimmel 1996, 7). Hegemonic
masculinity, the exact contents of which escape definition, is the ideal to
be strived for, despite the fact that, in many respects, the members of the
northern choir seem to be far from embodying an idealized notion of
masculinity.
The same evaluative character is stressed in the closing episode of The
Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) where the farmers meet and discuss the time
spent with the women. Here the national frames of masculinity are
screened through the fact that the meeting takes place in a sauna by the
lake. Dressed only in towels, the farmers ask each other about their suc-
cess with the candidates. Strong emotions are noticed in the case of one
farmer who is clearly in love, but otherwise the men’s reactions focus on
how challenging particular “cases” have been, and the level of success
they have had in taming the women.
Homosociality can thus serve various ends and bear differing mean-
ings. It can subjugate and exclude women, as well as reproduce certain
masculinities and power structures. Yet, it can also be the necessary form
of social action that provides men and rural communities with well-be-
ing.
CONCLUSION
The depictions of men in the three programs discussed are based on a

stereotypical understanding of gender roles, but it is left to the viewer to
decide what the outcome of representing gender in such traditional terms
may be. Susanne Stenbacka (2011) concludes that the Swedish adaptation
of The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) carries with it a rather backward image
of men, whereas in the Finnish context the same claim can be justified in
the case of only some of the farmers. The non-farming men and women
in The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) are portrayed as either ignorant or
flexible towards traditional gender roles. Being a farmer can ultimately
be narrowed down to certain work tasks that are done by competent
people, regardless of their sex or sexual orientation, as in the case of the
gay couple running a farm.
Various local masculinities seem to seek their way to hegemonic ave-
nues, but it is not possible to completely define hegemonic masculinity,
even at a local level. To understand how masculinities become con-
structed, research into the relations and intersections between various
gender and sexual identities is needed (Bird 1996, Connell and Mes-
serschmidt 2005). The Farmer Wants a Wife (2006) emphasizes heterosexu-
al men seeking heterosexual women. The success of this search is fol-
lowed throughout everyday tasks and tests, albeit in a playful manner. In
the end, some couples seem to find an agreement over their common
future. When discussing these agreements man to man—when the farm-
ers meet each other before the final day—it seems that some men have to
hold back when talking about their emotions (Bird 1996). Those with no
luck this time are comforted by their fellow men who acknowledge the
difficulty of taming women. The degree of fulfilling hegemonic masculin-
ity is thus always acknowledged by other men (Kimmel 1996), and de-
fined at least verbally.
In Ullava Cowboys (2006), the role of women in constructing one’s
identity is less important, but it does exist: the heterosexual frames and
expectations for passing on the family name or continuing the family
farm are facts that cannot be dismissed. Therefore the mechanisms of
hegemonic masculinity are present here, too. Depending on the local
context, certain elements of hegemonic masculinity are emphasized and
reflected. Sometimes, as in Cool and Crazy (2001), it is for the best of the
community, sometimes for the individual’s own well-being, that the ex-
pectations of gender and sexual roles are followed or disrupted. These
positions are not constant as changes in the position of women, for exam-
ple, may also cause changes in masculinities. In The Farmer Wants a Wife
(2006), we find women explicating that a good relationship precedes any
possible expectations of whether or not to follow the traditional rural
gender roles.
Homosociality, or male-bound activity, is a highly disruptive social

mechanism for maintaining male power, as Sharon Bird (1996) rightfully
argues, but locally it can also be a provider of shared well-being for both
men and women. Emotional detachment, competitiveness, and the sexual
objectification of women are examples of mechanisms of social control
that can be made use of in homosocial action, while at the level of indi-
vidual identity these may be consciously rejected. Bird (1996) has noticed
this tension in her study of men’s communities and calls the tension
“private dissatisfaction.” Importantly, Bird does not see this providing an
opportunity for questioning hegemonic masculinity. Our analysis of the
media representations seems to lead to a more optimistic conclusion.
Television reality shows and documentaries make visible, perhaps for
entertainment reasons, masculinities that appreciate emotional acts and a
commitment to equality instead of competitiveness and objectification.
Bearing in mind that media representations always result from series of
selection processes, the programs nevertheless give individual men an
opportunity to tell their stories, and thus they mirror a wider set of mas-
culine identities in relation to hegemonic masculinity. Certainly, many
aspects of hegemonic masculinity remain unpacked, but by treating them
ironically, or by consciously distancing one’s own identity from particu-
lar characteristics associated with hegemonic masculinity, the media can
play a part in enriching the culturally acceptable ways of being a man.
NOTE
1. It has to be borne in mind that in the first Finnish season of The Farmer Wants a
Wife (2006) only heterosexual men were looking for a spouse.
FIVE
Queering the Hollow
Space, Place, and Rural Queerness
Mathias Detamore
LANDING ON MARS
I have a friend that I’m calling Elisa here. 1 She is an activist, organizer,
and business owner on the northeast side of Pine Mountain in Whites-
burg, Kentucky. On a weekend in August 2009, she invited me—and I
accompanied her and her husband, James—to the Music-Art-Recreation-
Sustainability (MARS) Festival hosted by a local hillbilly pride and inten-
tional community activist known as Wiley. The weekend event was held
on family land willed to him and his brother, dubbed Wiley’s Last Resort
sitting atop Pine Mountain. Friday evening through Sunday afternoon,
the venue provided a long list of scheduled local and visiting musicians
with a stage to perform on throughout each day and night. Kentucky’s
poet laureate, Gurney Norman, was featured on Saturday afternoon de-
livering a number of poems on home and place and the meaning of the
mountains to mountain folk. As well, a host of local and regional artists
and artisans set up camp with vending tables featuring their wares for
sale.
Because I arrived early to the event with Elisa and James who were on
the organizing committee, I volunteered much of my time the first day
helping on the gate. There, I took people’s money, told them where to
park, gave them their wrist bands, and directed them toward the activ-
ities and camping spaces below. One thing about being a gatekeeper at
these kinds of events, incoming participants are unusually generous.
81
82 Mathias Detamore
After sipping on some home-stilled wild cherry moonshine, generously

offered by an appreciative patron (and the cherries were the best part), it
became clear that I needed to move on before overindulgence got the
better of me. Night began to fall and I finally headed down into the
festival space to see what was going on. Bands played on the stage as I
meandered down into the space, taking in the night and sounds around
me.
Next to the commissary that sat above the dock to a large swimming
pond in the center of the resort that acted as an anchor to the social and
visual organization of the land, I happened upon two young men. Craig
and Joe were engaged in conversation and they asked me to join them. I
sat down in the moist August night air at a small picnic table and began
talking with them. Marked as an outsider, as I usually am in these spaces,
my sexuality quickly came into play. I felt at ease talking to them about
being a gay man from suburban southwest Ohio, who is a PhD student in
human geography studying rural queerness. It was a pleasant conversa-
tion and I never felt threatened. After a while talking to Craig and Joe, it
was suggested that we move closer to the stage to listen to the fusion
Bluegrass/pop rock band that was playing.
The three of us walked along the gravel road and leaned against a
stone wall, facing an amphitheatre of sorts. The stone wall both skirted
and retained a small knoll on which the stage sat. Craig began interrogat-
ing me about love, sex, and gender. Apparently the novelty of having a
bona fide “queer” to probe for answers as to why someone would be gay
was too enticing to pass up. In light of our burgeoning rapport, I felt
comfortable to engage in mildly antagonistic (yet playful) banter. I chal-
lenged a lot of Craig’s notions about sex and sexuality. It quickly became
apparent that while he was willing to see where I would take this conver-
sation it was making him slightly uncomfortable. He had to keep refer-
encing his girlfriend to reinforce his heterosexuality. I was amused and
pushed buttons largely because he remained so defensive—but it was in
good fun. While he displayed some tense skepticism, he was not of-
fended. In fact, he assured me of this the next day when I made sure that I
had not crossed any lines.
Joe was next to me on my right maintaining patient silence. I was in
the middle, listening to Craig speak. At one point the conversation began
to wane. The intervals by which Craig conjured his girlfriend were be-
coming more frequent and I was losing interest. There was really nothing
more to be said. However, before I even realized that the conversation
was indeed at a close, I felt Joe come up from behind me and as I sensed
his body, I turned to meet him. As he moved over to me, I turned to lean
with my back up against the stone wall. As he leaned in, his intentions
were immediately clear. We kissed. Lips pressed together in euphoric
submission with the backdrop of a brightly lit stage. Craig—awkwardly
taking this as his cue to be dismissed—slipped off with a half hearted,
Queering the Hollow 83
“See you later” into the ethereally illuminated darkness. The moon was
high and the moonlight reflected off the pond. Campfires were ablaze
and vendors had lights over their tables sitting with friends around pri-
vate campfires. They were glad to be interrupted from their leisure time
to sell whatever they could by the dim sparkle of bug zappers and Christ-
mas lights. Raucous sounds and lights emanating from the stage, people
meandering to and fro, the night buzz of a summer music festival all
orbited this kiss.
In this public display, as I was making-out with a man that I had just
met, I wondered how is it that rural gay folk, rural gay folk in Appala-
chia, are somehow still thought of as mysterious and exotic—the way one
might describe a Martian alien? How is it that I found myself, for all
intents and purposes (from the perspective of metropolitan gay life), on
another planet and still came upon the one thing that’s not supposed to
be there? How did I land on Mars? And what does it say that Martians do
the same things we humans do? And not just in private, but when the
moment presents itself, in public too—how can an open and visual dis-
play of queer attraction happen here? Further, how is it that I was able to
have an open and candid debate about sex and sexuality with a sympa-
thetic (however, slightly insecure) straight man? And while this was cer-
tainly an event that might be marked as hippie, it is nevertheless an event
conjured through its Appalachianness. What does this say about the pro-
duction of queer space in rural places—such as a hillbilly gathering in
eastern Kentucky?
This example highlights what is not known about rural queerness and
its spatial productions as they influence the meaning of place, queer
place-making, and rural gay identity. To be in a rural place at the same
time as participating in the queering of space flies in the face of popular
culture’s imaginaries that set the standards for queer representation. In
this chapter, I discuss how queer place-making is constituted through the
sensibilities of rural queerness, which intersect with queer and straight
social worlds. Rural queerness, rather than locating the anatomical make-
up of particular queer cultures, describes the social processes that ani-
mate and are a product of queer place-making and rural sensibilities. I
begin with an interrogation of making “queer space,” its instabilities and
possibilities, and explore how that might intersect with rural queerness
and place-making. I use this to illustrate an example of the queering of
rural space in eastern Kentucky that Elisa and I conducted, that we called
the gay bar experiment. This example highlights how rural queerness
shapes the dynamic interactions and interdependencies between what I
call queer and straight social worlds. I continue by discussing how rural
queerness as a social strategy marks the transformational possibilities
present in queer place-making. The chapter concludes by marking the
pitfalls and ethical responsibilities of describing the struggles and creativ-
84 Mathias Detamore
ity of life in fringe spaces, that is, studying rural queerness and rural
queer geographies.
MAKING RURAL QUEER SPACE
Patricia Price (2004, 4) argues that places are “thoroughly socially con-
structed” and “place qua place does not exist.” Instead, she asserts that it
is through the social narratives and processes by which human societies
conjure “place” that places come into the world and hold value and
meaning. But places are not merely stories that we tell each other. Price
(2004, 11) notes, “space and time can only arise from the experience of
place.” According to Judith Halberstam (2005, 6), “‘Queer Space’ refers to
the place-making practices within postmodernism in which queer people
engage and it also describes the new understandings of space enabled by
the production of queer counterpublics.” Because “queer counterpub-
lics”—understood to be those queer zones that exist outside of normative
representations of sexual otherness (i.e., rural queerness)—often exceed
the borders and typologies of metropolitan gay sex/life/politics, we can
imagine a multiplicity of counterpublics that function in between spaces
otherwise thought to be foreclosed to queer life. As these spaces unfold
and blur, defying definition, new possibilities emerge that may otherwise
seem untenable. In relation to rural queerness, I reference these in-be-
tween spaces by what I am calling the “intersection of queer and straight
social worlds.” I imagine the intersection of queer and straight social
worlds as the spaces and practices where sexual Otherness is folded into
dominant social narratives (often labeled “gay,” but nevertheless queer)
as a protracted and evolving set of negotiations that contribute to the
creative and productive queering of place.
Yet, while we might imagine the creative queering of place that devel-
ops at the intersection of queer and straight social worlds, the privileges
of social tolerance and respectability for sexual and gender minorities
remain limited and varied. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthill-
ette, and Yolanda Retter (1997, 5) note, “In the past decade, improve-
ments in life in communalities of sexual minorities have progressed un-
evenly,” which are often cut across by race and class. There is no denying
that the place-making capabilities and possibilities in metropolitan
spaces have produced a robust visual culture—which usually reflects a
default understanding of queer space and practice. However, this metro-
centric view of gay culture (often marked white, male, and upper middle-
class) often eclipses the existence and experiences of other queer possibil-
ities and places experienced in rural settings (Spurlin 2000)—among oth-
ers. In a rural context, these erasures are usually driven by fear, such as
“hillbilly horror” (Johnston and Longhurst 2010, 103). There couldn’t
possibly be rural queer space—the rural is a place where “queers are
killed.” But as my participation in the queering of space at the MARS

Festival suggests, queer place-making in rural places is not only possible
but can have a dynamic sensibility and visibility (Gray 2009).
Richard Phillips and Diane Watt suggest in the introduction of De-
Centring Sexualities (2000) that the socio-sexual manifestations of urban
sexual categories and forms as they relate to conventional Gay Rights
politics do not map neatly onto the “in-between” and “liminal” spaces of
sexual Otherness that exist in rural and small town spaces in the so-called
core regions of North America, Europe, and Australia. They go on to
propose that “these spaces may be of great significance, with respect to
representations and politics of sexualities, for it is in such spaces that
hegemonic sexualities may be least stable” (Phillips and Watt 2000, 1).
These in-between, liminal spaces—the rural, small-town terrains that
constitute the destabilizing of hegemonic sexuality—are nothing if not
connected to the spatial processes and cultural specificities that are linked
to place and the ways that it gets mapped onto identity. This suggests
that rural places are deeply implicated in the ways that bonds and attach-
ments, cultural values and sensibilities, and potential hazards and pitfalls
are formed, negotiated, and maintained across different types of sexual
boundaries. In other words, we cannot consider the ways in which spaces
exist outside of the metropole (and the possibilities that they offer us for a
new kind of transgressive sexual politics) without critically considering
the places in which they occur and the peculiar cultural patterns and
dangers that emerge from these places.
While Halberstam (2005) links queer space and queer place-making to
the conditions of postmodernity and “queer counterpublics,” what actu-
ally goes into the constitution of queer space and its transformative, as
well as limited, potentials? Jean-Ulrick Désert (1997, 21) suggests that:
Queer space is in large part the function of wishful thinking or desires
that become solidified: a seduction of the reading of space where
queerness, at a few brief points and for some fleeting moments, domi-
nates the (heterocentric) norm, the dominant social narrative of the
landscape. The observer’s complicity is key in allowing a public site to
be co-opted in part or completely. So compelling is this seduction that a
general consensus or collective belief emerges among queers and non-
queers alike. (Désert 1997, 21)
In this definition of queer space, the constitution of space itself is unstable
and relies on this instability, even while it attempts to solidify geographi-
cal formations. The benefit of this reading rests not in its emphasis on the
“fleeting moments” of queer space, but rather in the opportunities that
those fleeting moments open for us in the transformation of public spaces
and discourses. Queer space, then, is not about stabilizing the function of
social space, but transforming it through and across the crisis points in
dominant social narratives. The danger in allowing queer space to be
86 Mathias Detamore
seen as stable is that after the queer moment has fled, what is left over
becomes a new kind of narrative with similar possibilities for domination
(i.e., popular culture’s metro-centric obsession in the representation and
maintenance of queer space and gay identity [Herring 2006, 2010]). But
how does queer space intersect with queer place-making and what does
that mean for rural queer visibility?
Before moving forward, a brief description of how I am using the
terms “gay” and “queer” is necessary. I often, if seemingly loosely, trans-
pose these terms. In this chapter, I reference queer as both a process and a
potential, whereas the use of gay draws on contextualized interpretations
of identity and identity politics between that which is normalized (such
as metro-gay sex/life/politics) and that which is both indexical and dis-
ruptive (such as rural gay/trans folk). Moving back and forth between
“gay” and “queer,” as I do, is never seamless. Gay usually situates collo-
quial representations of identity—a nomenclature for labeling sexual dif-
ference. The conflict resides in its use and use-value. Gay can be both
normative and queer depending on the social constructs that conjure it.
While, queer can certainly be located in representations of identity, queer
more often than not references a process of disruption—a social and po-
litical praxis (both active and passive) of destabilizing and resituating
normative regimes of sexual being and citizenship. In this sense, gay is
still useful, while nevertheless being related to normative manifestations
of sexual and gender minority experience. Gay attempts to stabilize;
queer does not. Gay is often a means to ground sexual identity both apart
from, and alongside, heterogendered norms. It can simultaneously be
queer where its presence is not resolved in any set of socially sanctioned
relationships, while nevertheless attempting to reconcile sexual differ-
ence within dominant social narratives. Gay is often normalized but this
is not always the case, especially in rural queer geographies. Its usage
both conforms to and exceeds the expectations of being a sexual minority
in rural space/time. When I use “queer,” I am tracing out a disruptive
potential. I use “gay” contextually, to mark either constructs of normal-
ized identity politics or colloquial social manifestations of selfhood.
BECOMING “GAY BAR”
My friend Elisa and I have had many conversations about gay life in rural
Appalachia, about rural queerness. Out of this, we discussed doing a
research/documentation project on how the queering of social space
might be conceptualized through the concept “gay bar,” its social and
cultural representations, and what we are calling queer safe zones. What
makes a gay bar? While we are equally interested in rural queer mobility
and the use of metro-queer spaces (i.e., established gay bars) by rural
gay/trans folk as a resource for gay identity, we are also interested in the
plasticity of queer space that extends the meaning (without the labeling)
of gay bar as it enables rural identity. Elisa and I decided to try out these
explorations of queering rural social space in a material way by assem-
bling a social outing to see what would happen. We called it the gay bar
experiment.
On no particular Friday evening in August 2009, Elisa rallied her
friend Ronnie to meet us in Hazard, Kentucky, for a night on the town.
Elisa had a friend and summer boarder, Suzanne, living with her at the
time. She agreed to be our designated driver. On the way, we picked up
Ronnie, who lives in the small town of Vicco, a little over half way be-
tween Whitesburg and Hazard. We started out at the Applebee’s in Haz-
ard. It was a good place to get food and have our first drink. From the
moment we entered and sat down at the bar, Ronnie was in the spotlight.
At least two or three women came up to talk to him and coo over him. He
is a very popular, openly gay man in Hazard and Vicco. Also a hairdress-
er (and I’ve been told that he has sat on the town council of Vicco before),
Ronnie is well known and loved. Elisa’s brother-in-law, Greg, was there.
Greg has a roughneck, good ole boy feel of masculinity to him. Ronnie
enjoys teasing him—facetious flirtations and the like. Greg is used to it
and is as endeared to Ronnie in his stoic, butch masculinity as any of the
women throwing themselves at Ronnie.
From dinner, the gay bar experiment truly began. We went to Fugates,
a bar on the entire second floor of a former hotel that looks oddly like an
old paddle boat that would cruise up and down the Mississippi River in
the nineteenth century. I was expecting an evening of the four of us,
myself, Elisa, Suzanne, and Ronnie. Not long after arriving, the cavalry
showed up. Ronnie had invited two gay couples and a lesbian friend
along for the ride. We ended up with six gay men, two straight girls, and
one lesbian (we’ll call couple number 1 Ethan and Kyle, couple number 2
Brad and Jacob, and our lesbian friend Lisa). We almost literally became
our own mobile “gay bar.” Fugates caters to a middle age to older crowd
and it was karaoke night. While we took up a rather large table in the
back behind the karaoke machine, I could notice some lingering glances
as if to ask, “What is going on over there?” But nothing was ever pejora-
tively said to us or anything that smacked of looming violence. We
moved throughout the bar when we needed to refill our drinks. We were
rambunctious in our back corner (although the karaoke was so loud that
no one could have heard us anyway), and we were left in peace to have
our night together.
Not long after, we migrated to our next bar location. Originally, based
on Elisa’s and my conversations, we were supposed to go to the Brown
Derby. The way Elisa described it, Gabby’s is a place that would not be
appropriate for incorporating queer spaces into its borders, but the Brown
Derby is. However, a Kiss cover band was playing at the Dukes of Hazard.
It seemed to be the “must go” of the night, so we went. The most auda-
88 Mathias Detamore
cious (and eerily historically accurate) portrayal of Kiss came with full
make-up, silver platform shoes, long protruding tongues, and the dark
space-age costumes that emblematize Kiss in the 1970s. I thought, “Ooh,
look, a drag show.” The crowd was into it and we sat down to enjoy the
reimagining of Kiss. And they were quite convincing. Greg showed up as
well and intermittently joined us (he was there with his own friends).
While we were immediately marked “gay” (and there were others in the
crowd, as Ronnie liked to point out to me), our subtle flamboyance
seemed to neither hinder nor accentuate our social presence. My friends
knew many of the people in the crowd. We were as much a part of the
social space as anyone. We were chatted up, encouraged (if not pleaded
with) to dance, engaged to drink, and generally accepted as anyone else
during a highly elaborate male drag show, ostensibly located in an aver-
age sports bar. As it was starting to get late, we wanted to make it to one
last bar. Ethan and Kyle were getting tired, and Kyle had to work in the
morning, so they did not follow us to our final destination.
From Kiss to Bluegrass fusion, we headed back to Vicco to go to a little
hole in the wall dive called the Dawg House, a frequent haunt of Ronnie’s.
There was a live band with a Bluegrass feel to it doing popular cover
songs from the 1970s and 80s. In this bar, we let our hair down a bit more
than we had in the previous two. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was
the accumulating alcohol in our system, maybe it was the hospitality that
seemed present—but we all got out there and did our thing. Elisa and
Lisa danced together on the dance floor in a provocative manner. It was
fun to watch the look on the local men’s faces—not quite ogling but
definitely entranced. Toward the end of the night, Jacob got cornered by
a woman who wanted to talk to him about her love of gay people. There
had been a tense dynamic growing between Jacob and Lisa. They both
seemed to vie for the attention of his boyfriend, Brad, and apparently
Lisa won. It was in a sense of frustrated defeat that Jacob sat there trying
to avoid this woman engaging him in conversation. He was not amused
and did not want to talk to her. I came over and sat down next to him. In
her simple way, she just wanted to express her admiration for him—his
ability to be out and confident in his sexuality. She told us of closeted folk
she knows and how difficult it is for them. He looked over at me at one
point and pleaded in silence to get him out of there. I wasn’t quite sure
how to intervene and I was interested in what she had to say. But not
much longer; it was last call and we were all sent home.
As the evening unfolded, Elisa and I felt successful in our gay bar
experiment. In this, “gay bar” functions as a social process by which the
presence of gay/trans folk within rural social spaces are moderated by a
sense of social closeness—a sense of history, kinship, and connection.
That my friends are intimately acquainted with many of the people we
encountered that night managed how a sense of “safety” was secured.
“Gay bar,” then, is a conceptual bookmark that highlights what could be
called queer safe zones. The group of people I was affiliated with for that
evening is from there; they have roots there. This would have most likely
worked differently if I had assembled an alien group of graduate stu-
dents from Lexington. These places are built through connections that
extend past and precede the moment of encounter. Different from our
expectations of metropolitan queer space that secures safety for gay/trans
folk through aggregate density, political mobility, and magnified visibil-
ity, rural queer space is reliant upon its ability to interact with and inte-
grate into (and often, transform) straight spaces. The requisite social
closeness for these connections to take grip is shaped by a cultural sense
of care for kin. Queer safe zones emerge at the intersection of a dimin-
ished if varying emphasis on conventional representations of sexual iden-
tity and how social technologies of care are established and maintained.
These spaces are still marked straight, but there is nevertheless a
queering of their makeup through an accepted (if contingent) participa-
tion of gay/trans folk within their boundaries. Yet, because these are pri-
marily heterosexual spaces, it is important to note that neither of the
terms (gay bar or queer safe zones) could be directly applied to these nego-
tiated social spaces without disrupting, if not altogether dismantling, the
function of these spaces. There are certainly material artifacts that result
from these spaces and processes, but they could not be labeled as such.
This is where the “queer” and the “gay,” the disruptive and the stabiliz-
ing, might be seen to work together to manage how these social processes
intersect. Nevertheless, these conceptual terms offer us insight into the
queering of social space. These queer safe zones are, generally speaking,
safe spaces in and through which rural gay/trans folk practice the cultu-
ral sensibilities of being both gay and from the country. Different forms of
redneck, hillbilly, rough and tumble identifications, along with particular
types of drink, music, and social activities, animated through varying
contortions of masculinity, but also kinship, social closeness, care, and
fidelity characterize these spaces. But they still might be called “gay
friendly.”
RURAL QUEERNESS AS SOCIAL STRATEGY
The transformative potential in rural queerness and queer place-making,

implied by our social “experiment,” is in its ability to re-script the narra-
tives that limit the interpretations of social spaces and their meanings. In
making this claim, I am drawing on Phillips and Watt’s (2000) assertion
that gay in rural space—which might be seen as (homo)normalizing in a
critique of metro-queerness—is queer (2000). My gay friends and kin in
eastern Kentucky, for example, identify as gay. “Gay” in this instance
constitutes a queer politics that destabilizes social and cultural norms,
while allowing for an identity that may strategically remain understated,
90 Mathias Detamore
but nonetheless visible. Rural queerness, as a set of social strategies, fun-

damentally challenges the dominant narratives in Appalachia around sex
and sexuality, gender typologies and notions of hegemonic masculinity
while carving out new kinds of spaces where none previously existed:
Just as queer identities are constructed within the context of heteronor-
mativity, queer places have been forged within spaces not originally
intended for gay use. . . . Queer places are always formed by a mixture
of accidental and purposeful (though often unevenly articulated)
forces. In this century, sites of queer presence ambiguously overlap the
public and private. The intermediate zones survive by their popula-
tions’ consciously chosen strategies of invisibility and visibility, de-
fense, and expansion. The construction of queer sites, both unstruc-
tured spaces for spontaneous contact and key institutions, has many
facets: social, cultural, economic, and political. (Ingram, Bouthillette,
and Retter 1997, 295)
It would seem that queer place-making as a constituent element of queer
space is crafted through a complex negotiation of institutional features,
social and cultural sensibilities, the need for defensive borders, and a
precarious overlap of public and private.
These strategies, then, as they consolidate to form particular types of
spatial relationships (and redefinitions) in rural social settings, converge
at the intersections of competing (queer and straight) social worlds. In
these intersections, rural queerness emerges through and shapes the
negotiations that disrupt, parse out, and reorganize the connections that
make social spaces. These shouldn’t be thought of as discrete and re-
solved spaces. New allies are formed between rural hetero- and homo-
socialities, at the same time that moralist enemies of queer life are invigo-
rated to condemn its realities, often generating homophobia and brutal
violence. But it should be remembered that this is uneven as well. Queer
life and its discontents do not exist in a vacuum. Other social equipment
and technologies inform the degree to which rural queerness is met with
resistance in particular places. Dry versus wet counties (a common term
for the availability of retail alcohol), the depth and/or rigidity of religios-
ity in a community, right/left leaning political persuasions, economic dis-
parities, and so on, all inform how community-level social spaces receive
or reject (or a combination thereof) the emergence of rural queerness.
These negotiations also affect the extent to which rural queer visibility is
present or absent in any particular place, as the gay bar experiment sug-
gests (Gray 2009). But these visible forms are often, if not always, articu-
lated in relation to the broader socialities that constitute a sense of place
in rural environments.
Jeff Mann (2005) remarks on this power-of-place, expressed through
notions of family, home-cooking, and a need to be close to the mountains,
and how it intersects with both his gay and Appalachian identities. Ru-
minating on a passage in Storming Heaven, by Denise Giardina, “Heaven

is where everyone you love is in one place,” he contemplates the contra-
dictions and complexities of being gay in rural Appalachia. His vexations
vacillate between his love of the mountains, and the struggles he went
through growing up as a young boy targeted as the “queer kid” in the
mountains of West Virginia. Mann (2005, xii) states:
My compromise has been to live in university towns in Appalachia:
Morgantown, West Virginia, for thirteen years, now Blacksburg, Vir-
ginia, for the last fifteen. In such towns, I can feel safe in a liberal,
intellectual atmosphere. As an academic, I can even combine my seem-
ingly contradictory passions and teach both gay and lesbian literature
and Appalachian studies. And I can stay in the mountains, close to
what remains of my family, for, as Loyal Jones so eloquently points out
in his famous essay, “Appalachian Values,” “we hill folk are powerful-
ly attached to our native places and our kin.”
It is this powerful attachment to these “native places and our kin” that
often drive a sense of place in Appalachia and this is as equally true for
gay/trans folk as it is for straight folk.
It is interesting to note that Mann (2005) feels the need to compromise
in order to have both. On the one hand, his longing to be home from a ten
year respite in Washington, DC, requires a return to the mountains. On
the other hand, home is simultaneously in and not in Hinton, West Vir-
ginia (his birth home). In Hinton, he still feels uncomfortable around his
sexuality when he visits. Rather, it is in the safety that a “liberal college
town” produces. Yet somehow, in his interpretation, Morgantown, West
Virginia, and then his move to Blacksburg, Virginia, equals home for him,
even while there are great distances between his new home and Hinton
where he was born and raised. This speaks to the transmutability of home,
which does not always have to be directly attached to a physical location,
but can redirect its affect to give the new location similar homelike com-
plexions in the constitution of place. Substitution can equally be a strate-
gy of rural queerness to negotiate and secure its borders. (For a compel-
ling discussion on home as a “floating metaphor” attached to a “collec-
tion of objects, feelings and bodies” in counter-distinction to home as a
fixed place, see Bordo, Klein, and Silverman 1998, 75–76; see also Blunt
2005 for a robust review of the changing perspectives on home in cultural
geography.)
For many folk from rural Appalachia, for better or for worse, the
mountains and hollows, social geographies, kinship networks, home-
cooking and mom, a Christian sense of God and good-will become indel-
ibly mapped onto their sense of home, regardless of whether they stay or
leave; regardless of whether they are straight or gay. All of these place-
making possibilities for rural queerness lead us toward other questions.
What do we get when we look at these particular types of attachment to
92 Mathias Detamore
place as they intersect with sexual and gender minority desires and prac-
tices—as well, how do these map, both materially and mentally, into
rural landscapes (Howard 2001)? How do these desires and practices
shape notions of home and queer kinship (Weston 1991)? What are the
visibilities of these desires and practices and how do they enable political
awareness and action (Gray 2009)? What are the limitations of liberal
conceits and representations of queerness as they do not neatly map onto
rural queerness, such as the closet metaphor as a mode of sexual self-
discovery and autonomy (Halberstam 2005; Brown 2000)? How are these
informed by rural queer mobilities (Weston 1995; Herring 2010)? And
how are these cut across by class and race (Johnson 2008)? What do we
end up with at the intersection of all of these?
A DISCLAIMER
We end this chapter with questions because a conclusion seems implau-

sible. Queering space means continually raising questions about the pro-
cesses of place-making (Detamore 2010, 171–72). I could rehash the narra-
tive examples laid out over the better part of six thousand words. I could
make a final gesture at connecting these narratives to the analytical de-
vices I spent the remainder of six thousand words constructing. But it
seems unnecessary. I would rather the questions be left open. So this
conclusion briefly speaks to a limitation of this essay; one that must criti-
cally remain at the forefront of cultural activism for, and academic re-
search on, human populations aiming toward social justice.
In this chapter, I have mounted a particular interpretation of rural
queer space that highlights the transformative possibilities of rural queer-
ness and place-making. This might be seen as liberatory if not romantic.
Yet, I am constantly reminded of Elizabeth Povinelli’s warning about
tales of redemption (2006, 25). It should not be our job to attempt to either
vanquish or overemphasize the struggles of the marginal. There is indeed
intense homophobic violence in rural places that should not be over-
looked. To imagine that we can redeem these struggles is to assume
falsely that current iterations of liberal governmentality and capitalist
production already possess the equipment to fulfill their empty promises
and evacuate the liminalities and inequities that they have produced. It is
equally false to assume, however, that all human agency is foreclosed
and those who find themselves at the “end of liberalism’s trickle” (to use
Povinelli’s [2006] term) are doomed to the shackles of their own misery.
Other rural queer possibilities exist and they are not all tragic. Suspend-
ing these polarities through a sustained critical uncertainty may help us
to understand how they compete simultaneously, shaping the struggle
and creativity of social production. My goal was to turn the looking-glass
to the left and see the other possibilities present in the management of
everyday life on the fringe, particularly rural queer life—to ignore these
possibilities is to reproduce their erasures.
NOTE
1. I use pseudonyms to reference my research kin and friends throughout.

SIX
Documenting Lesbian and Gay Lives
in Rural Australia
In a global perspective, Australia is arguably imagined as “rural.” From

iconographic national terrains of “the bush” and “the outback,” and fan-
tasies of “the lucky country” “riding the sheep’s back” to prosperity, to
recent tropes of mining wealth that position the continent as the “world
quarry,” images of Australia are enfolded with rural landscapes and re-
sources (Gorman-Murray, Darian-Smith, and Gibson 2008). At the same
time, Australia is sometimes considered “gay-and-lesbian-friendly” in
international frames—a place and a nation that largely accepts, supports,
and ensures the rights and freedoms of lesbians and gay men (and other
same-sex attracted and gender diverse people, including those identify-
ing as bisexual, trans, and intersex) (Waitt and Markwell 2006). But rarely
are these descriptors—“rural” and “gay-and-lesbian-friendly”—applied
to Australia in combination. Australian ruralities are instead typically
evoked through heteronormative imaginaries, such as “the farming fami-
ly,” “the good marriage,” “the man on the land,” “the country girl,” “the
stockman,” inter alia (Little 2007; Bryant and Pini 2011; Driscoll 2012).
Meanwhile, lesbian and gay populations and communities are commonly
linked with large Australian cities, especially Sydney, rather than rural
settings or regional locations (Johnston and van Reyk 2001; Markwell
2002).
This chapter describes and examines some of the experiences of les-
bian and gay individuals and communities living in rural Australia, and
thereby charts some of the ways in which ruralities and minority sexual-
ities intersect. I do not aim to provide a systematic or comprehensive
95
96 Andrew Gorman-Murray
overview of rural lesbian and gay lives, and nor do I assert a particular or
singular relationship between rurality and sexuality in Australia. Rather,
I seek to illustrate some of the diversity of intersections between Austra-
lian ruralities and sexual minorities. Australian rural geographies and
landscapes are vastly differentiated, taking in farming, mining, wilder-
ness, outback, and coastal settings and communities; lesbian and gay
lives are also highly variegated; consequently the experiences of lesbian
and gay people in rural Australia do not constitute a straightforward
relationship. I argue that we need to attend to the diverse linkages be-
tween rurality and sexuality if we are to develop an appreciation for the
possibilities and the difficulties faced by lesbians and gay men in region-
al, rather than metropolitan, Australia. This relationship is complicated
by, but also realized in and through, personal geographies, where lesbian
and gay individuals arguably experience a complex mix of belonging and
alienation with regard to rural places in Australia.
I seek to illustrate some of this complexity by examining three recent
documentaries about the lives of rural lesbians and gay men in Australia:
Since Adam Was a Boy (2006), Destiny in Alice (2007) and The Farmer Wants
a Life (2010). All three documentaries were televised by the government-
owned ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) network, and pitched
to a “mainstream” (that is, heterosexual) audience, as well as reaching
lesbian and gay audiences. I undertake a critical reading of these pro-
grams, recognizing that, as documentaries, their message is framed in a
given medium and in a particular way. These are partial narratives: just
parts of people’s lives are presented, those parts that the writers and
producers of the programs allow the audience to see. Nevertheless,
through a close reading of what is presented—the “texts” of the pro-
grams—we can discern some of the multifaceted relationships these les-
bians and gay men have to rural places, landscapes, and communities
(also see the chapter by Ikonen and Pehkonen). They offer insights into
the spatial imperatives of rural lesbian and gay lives: isolation; migration;
place-attachment; connections to “the land,” nature, and animals; and
intra-familial and cross-cultural networks.
In eliciting the narratives and themes from these documentaries, I
recognize that gender intersects with sexuality and rurality, and lesbian
and gay lives in rural Australia are differently constituted (as in cities,
too: Adler and Brenner 1992; Watson and Murphy 1997). Accordingly, in
this chapter I discuss, separately and consecutively, the documentaries
concerning gay men and lesbians, which are also in different formats.
Since Adam Was a Boy (2006) and The Farmer Wants a Life (2010) convey the
life stories of two gay men from farming families in the eastern states of
New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland, while Destiny in Alice (2007)
presents a prosopography of the lesbian communities in Alice Springs, in
the Northern Territory, introducing the audience to the lives of several
local lesbians. Taken individually, each documentary offers a rich lens
Documenting Lesbian and Gay Lives in Rural Australia 97
into rural lesbian and gay lives, but I argue that juxtaposing critical anal-
yses of the three programs enables textured insights into the diversity of
intersections between Australian ruralities and sexual minorities.
This discussion advances the limited scholarly knowledge on sexual
minorities in rural Australia. Early work described the establishment of
lesbian separatist communities in northern NSW from 1974 to 1995, in-
cluding occasionally tense relations with local populations (Ion 1997),
while Moore’s (2001) lesbian and gay history of Queensland also iden-
tified the development of regional subcultures. Shifting to contemporary
times, Gottschalk and Newton (2003, 2009) conducted research on lesbian
and gay experiences in rural and regional Victoria, and found that in
many communities, interpersonal familiarity exacerbated homophobic
stigma and discrimination, deterring respondents from coming out.
Many concealed their sexuality and curtailed their lives, or migrated to
towns perceived as “accepting.” One such town is Daylesford, which is
“known to have a large gay population,” “seen as a diverse and tolerant
community and accepting of the homosexual population” (Gottschalk
and Newton 2003, 97), and home to ChillOut, the largest lesbian and gay
festival in rural Australia. Gorman-Murray, Waitt, and Gibson investigat-
ed “the politics of belonging” in Daylesford, finding that social and eco-
nomic change yields a dynamic interplay of acceptance and alienation for
lesbian and gay residents of Daylesford and rural Victoria (Gorman-Mur-
ray, Waitt, and Gibson 2008, 2012; Gorman-Murray 2009a; Gorman-Mur-
ray and Waitt 2009; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2008, 2011a).
Synonymy of belonging and alienation for lesbians and gay men in
rural and regional Australia has been stressed in other recent case studies
on diverse localities, in addition to Daylesford and rural Victoria. Work
on lesbian and gay communities in Townsville, a regional center in
Queensland, similarly identified feelings of connection and attachment
intermingled with experiences of discrimination and exclusion (Waitt
and Gorman-Murray 2007, 2011b, 2011c). These contentions are comple-
mented by Green’s (2007) study of gay men’s “belonging to place” in
rural western NSW: while socially marginalized in local communities,
these men developed empathy to the “physical place,” particularly “the
bush,” utilizing its characteristics to enhance their lives and emotional
well-being. Through different case studies, this chapter builds on this
scholarship to extend insights into the paradoxical place-attachment of
lesbians and gay men in rural Australia.
DOCUMENTING THE LIVES OF RURAL GAY MEN
Since Adam Was a Boy (2006) and The Farmer Wants a Life (2010) are docu-
mentaries about two gay men who were born and raised in farming
families in eastern Australia. The narratives focus on the men’s internal
“struggles” to come to terms with their same-sex attractions over the life
course, from youth to adulthood, and how they have reconciled their gay
and rural identities. The documentaries combine autobiographical reflec-
tions with biographical insights from family and friends. Both are part of
the ABC’s highly-decorated series Australian Story, comprising half-hour
episodes that depict “stories” of “ordinary” and well-known Australians.
Bryant and Pini (2011) analyzed a different Australian Story episode that
focused on a young married heterosexual farming couple in rural Austra-
lia, with one partner (the wife) living with a physical disability, using this
program to examine intersections of heterosexuality, gender, disability,
and rurality. They showed the valuable insights gained from careful scru-
tiny of documentary texts like Australian Story, but also their complexity.
Episodes focus on “actual” people, providing windows into the lives of
different Australians. But they often depict “highly emotive tales of de-
termination, and ultimately triumph, in the face of adversity” (Bryant
and Pini 2011, 106–7); they are not necessarily “ordinary” stories but
interesting ones that will resonate “with the Australian population.” Fur-
thermore, these “real” lives are embedded in the media’s “representa-
tive” practices—leading questions, editing, sequencing, affective tropes—
to create narrative flow (build up, climax, resolution) and invoke view-
ers’ sympathies.
“Reality” and “representation” interpenetrate in Australian Story’s
televisual-documentary style: we should acknowledge this interplay not
simply to distinguish “true” and “false” in life stories, but because all
individuals “narrate” their identities through stories (Hammack and
Cohler 2009). The stories we tell about ourselves help define our “selves”
to self and others. Simultaneously, the flow of these stories is never deter-
mined by the teller alone, but shaped by the constraints and possibilities
of society and inflected by relationships with other individuals (Ham-
mack and Cohler 2011). Socially-embedded and inter-subjective story-
telling is particularly germane to lesbian and gay lives: the “coming out
narrative” often underwrites self-identification as lesbian or gay and the
formation of communities based on affinities of sexual orientation (Plum-
mer 1995; Robinson, Peter 2008). The story of “coming out” is told to be
shared and “orients” lesbians and gay men with respect to heteronorma-
tive society (Hammack and Cohler 2011). The narrative thereby responds
to—and crucially reveals—the dynamic relations of belonging and alien-
ation that lesbian and gay individuals have to the spaces and places
where they live (Cant 1997; Brown 2000). The coming out narrative is
essentially a “spatial story” (Gorman-Murray 2007b).
The stories told by Adam Sutton in Since Adam Was a Boy (2007) and
David Graham in The Farmer Wants a Life (2010) on Australian Story are
fundamentally “coming out narratives,” and moreover, narratives about
coming out as a gay man in rural Australia. Read critically, they offer
telling insights into the little-explored intersections of gay masculinity
and rurality in Australia (Green 2007; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2011c).

Both men come from “inland” farming families, growing up on proper-
ties (not “service towns”). Adam’s family property is in NSW; David’s is
in southern Queensland. As adults, they remain “rural men” in residence
and occupation. Adam is a wrangler, breaking in horses, training and
handling them for work with people on farms or the entertainment in-
dustry. David manages a property, breeding exotic sheep, runs a dog-
training business, and is a dog-handler for an emergency rescue service.
Throughout their narratives, Adam and David impressed upon the audi-
ence their identification with rural places and livelihoods: “being rural”
is part of their sense of self. But so, too, they stressed, is “being gay.”
Their stories explored, via first-person narratives from themselves, their
family, and friends, how rural affinity and same-sex orientation were
reconciled in their lives in multifaceted and sometimes complicated
ways.
Their stories match the conventional linearity of coming out stories,
from isolation to self-acceptance, revelation to others, and integration of
same-sex attraction into “sense of self.” (The crisis-to-resolution progres-
sion of coming out narratives arguably appeals to tales of triumph-over-
adversity favored by Australian Story.) But there is a spatial twist: the
rural location vitally configured Adam’s and David’s struggles with their
sexual desires. Given that subjectivity is spatially-constituted (Probyn
2003), growing up and living in the country inflects coming to terms with
one’s sexuality, and coming out, in particular ways. Isolation—predicat-
ed on both geographical (physical) and social distance—was a starting
point for both men, but their discussions reveal that this experience was
not straightforward. David was sequestered on the property and “cut
off” from extra-familial interaction; he knew “there was something miss-
ing,” but “didn’t think that [he] was gay at all.” When he went “away to
boarding school,” “suddenly [he] was exposed to this whole world and
learning stuff,” including social discourses about sexuality and “being
gay,” and realized his same-sex attraction. But here, he was also “called a
fag” and “horrifically bullied.” For David, coming out of geographical
and social isolation on the farm didn’t mean coming into a community of
acceptance: social isolation continued in the school-yard and dorms (Rob-
erts 1996; Hopwood and Connors 2002).
Adam’s situation was different. He wasn’t socially isolated in the
same way: his sister said, “He always had lots of friends. Everyone loved
Adam, always; girls, guys, mates.” But like David, he knew “there was
always something missing.” 1 However, having friends doesn’t foreclose
social isolation: one can be alone in the company of friends. In Adam’s
case, the heteronormative expectations underpinning friendships—espe-
cially the homophobic prerogatives of homosocial bonding—meant he
concealed his same-sex attraction and showed only the “socially-accept-
able” facets of himself:
It’s very hard to be completely yourself sometimes because people

have a stereotype of what you should be like. My mates were all homo-
phobic, and you overhear these conversations, you know, “poofter
this” and “gay guys” and blah, blah. And they’re downgraded and
talked badly about. I was presenting them me, this happy person, but
inside, it was dynamite inside. And it scared me as well.
The imperative of fitting into the tight-knit rural community meant that,
as his father said, “he had to lie. He had to sort of misinterpret his homo-
sexuality.” This reinforces Gottschalk and Newton’s (2003, 2009) findings
about lesbians and gay men being compelled to conceal their sexuality in
rural Victoria. The social familiarity of a geographically-isolated rural
community inhibited Adam from expressing his sexual identity.
In fact, while Adam was “alone in the crowd,” he was most able to “be
himself” when he was “by himself.” Time away from friends and family
provided personal space for self-reflection. He sought physical isolation,
and the spatial affordances of the rural were vital for this: expansive
“natural” environments meant there was space in which to get away from
others: “I love the times when I’m out riding, whether it be through the
hills or through the trails, or even along the beach, and just taking it all in
as it goes by; that inner peace.” Physical and social isolation in “natural”
rural space allowed Adam to connect internally with facets of himself—
his sexuality—concealed elsewhere, and enabled reconciliation of his ru-
ral and sexual identities. This echoes Green’s (2007, 3) findings about the
significance of “the bush” for gay men living in western NSW:
The bush was . . . a place of seclusion, isolation and freedom: freedom
from the prying eyes of others, freedom that space can give and a
freedom to be oneself. The men in this study mentioned these aspects
time and again . . . using the outdoors, the rural as a place in which to
find that isolation and freedom. It was the physical experience of the
bush that was its most intimate. . . . The isolation of the bush sheltered
them from the community gaze as much as it nurtured their freedom to
be gay. These factors made it easier to live there as well as easier to be
gay.
For Adam, as for Green’s respondents, rural isolation and “natural” set-
ting could be used to facilitate self-reflection and identity work.
Yet simultaneously, not all of Adam’s and David’s personal dilem-
mas—“the inner turmoil of my sexuality,” as Adam put it—were re-
solved by “staying put,” and both discussed the significance of migration
for realizing their sexual desires and identities (see also the chapter by
Annes and Redlin). Rural-to-urban displacement is normalized in ac-
counts of queer migration and seen as a way to “manage” sexual iden-
tities; Binnie (2004, 93) posits that the “predominant movements of sexual
dissidents are rural to urban to escape the constraints of rural and small
town life.” It is imagined that rural gay men move to large cities with
visible gay communities to come out (Weston 1995). But Adam defied
this expectation, embarking on a journey of itinerant labor across “the
outback” and other remote regions: “I wanted to get away, run away, so
to speak, and be somewhere where I wasn’t known. I travelled to some of
the remotest parts of Australia working on fishing boats, pearling boats,
mines, properties, on outback Aboriginal community stations.” Adam
intimates he was “searching for himself,” but contra conventional coming
out tales, his journey of discovery entailed peripatetic movement across
“remote” rural Australia (Gorman-Murray 2007a). He thus shows that
not all rural gay men address or resolve “inner turmoil” by relocating to
urban gay communities.
David also undertook a “quest for identity” (Knopp 2004) to tackle the
“abhorrent battle that happened inside,” as he put it. His journey was
also peripatetic and picked up a trail of itinerant work, but it was interna-
tional as well: “In 1999 one weekend, a mate of mine decided that we’ll
head off to Sydney. I walked into a modelling agent . . . and the next thing
I knew I was on a plane and off I went to Europe. . . . [I] backpacked the
world for a couple of years. I worked all my way through Russia and
Mongolia.” Here, on this adventure, David experienced the discovery
and awakening of same-sex desires:
[I] met this local guy [in] Mongolia. It was so extraordinary that I was
so attracted to this person. And I remember one night we kissed and I
don’t think I’d ever felt so much electricity from another person. So
much, so much overwhelming power of “that’s just right.” I knew at
that moment that my life was going to be a little bit different from then
on.
Although David’s journey started with a conventional rural-to-urban
move (to Sydney), like Adam he resolved his “inner battle” “on the road”
rather than in an urban gay community.
Adam and David were drawn “home” after these years travelling,
and both discussed return migration and a lasting sense of attachment to
rural places and communities. After his sexual awakening, David con-
templated staying overseas but chose to come home: “there was attrac-
tion back to my farm and everything that I knew.” For both men, this
place-attachment endured internal struggle, concealment, strained rela-
tionships, and homophobic violence—David, for instance, recounted be-
ing “horrifically bashed” and “left for dead” (cf. Waitt and Gorman-Mur-
ray 2011b). They intimated multiple strands to this attachment, encom-
passing family bonds and geographical empathy. Familial ties signifi-
cantly bound them to “the land.” On the one hand, affirmative support
for their sexual identities from parents and siblings positively reinforced
attachment to the family farm and rural community. On the other hand,
both were “only-sons,” “heirs” to the family name and farm, and felt a
sense of duty (which also multiplied coming out angst). But duty wasn’t
a burden, since they also felt affinity to farming, the landscape, and rural
ways of life. Adam is a “country boy” who “loves the land,” while David
said:
My ultimate goal is to have a family. But it has to be on the land. I don’t
think I can go through life without returning to the farm. I’ve done a lot
of things and they’ve been fun and they’ve been amazing and they’ve
been fulfilling, but they haven’t allowed me to fall asleep at night and
have that same sense of fulfilment and gratitude for being alive as
farming does.
Alongside family support and duty, “being on the land” underpins onto-
logical and emotional security for these rural gay men.
There was another significant dimension to Adam and David’s rural
affinity as gay men: relationships with rural animals. Adam extensively
narrated his “love” for horses and how this was vital for coping with
inner turmoil about his sexuality:
I had so much inbuilt anger . . . because of me not liking me. I know
that the times I’ve spent with Archie and my favourite horses, my
release was through them a lot of the time. I could explain things to
them, silly as it sounds, because they listen to you. Horses have taught
me a lot about myself and about others. . . . I love them. I don’t know
what my life would be like without horses.
Similarly, David dealt with angst over his sexual attractions, from youth
to adulthood, through his relationship with dogs. He explained why this
is so important to his well-being: “You come home to your dog and it’s so
excited to see you and it says, ‘You know what? I don’t judge you. I don’t
think you did so bad today. I don’t care about any of that. All I care about
is that you’re home and you’re safe and you’re here with me.’” Inter-
species relationality was characterized as non-judgmental, unconditional
love, and this has been a lifelong support for David. Adam similarly said,
“It’s a special feeling to know that how you feel about that horse [i.e.,
love] is totally reciprocated by him.” Through their narrations, Adam and
David conveyed their relationships with rural animals as imperative for
surviving their internal struggles, and consequently, as a vital avenue for
reconciling their rural and sexual identities.
DOCUMENTING AN “OUTBACK” LESBIAN COMMUNITY
Destiny in Alice (2007) is a different style of documentary story-telling.

Not a coming out narrative, it is a prosopography, a collective biography.
Destiny in Alice (2007) documents the development of the “outback” les-
bian community in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory—or rather, it
introduces the lesbian communities of Alice Springs, their affinities and
differences. It is a “herstory” of sexuality and space in the outback: a
story of the connections between lesbian communities, identities, and

place-attachments. 2 As with all documentaries, its perspective is partial,
presenting certain windows into outback lesbian communities, but which
are nevertheless informative. It uses a “mock anthropological” style to
explore “the world of women who love women in Alice Springs,” but this
parodic technique has a serious edge, calling attention to the imperial
and colonial power relations of traditional anthropological documentary
film-making. The “expert guide,” Destiny Attenborough, is an Aboriginal
woman, inverting racialized anthropological excursions into Indigenous
communities, who instead explores the “local” lesbian communities
which encompass both white and Aboriginal women. The dig at imperial
frames of discovery is reinforced when the audience learns that Destiny
is styled after British naturalist David Attenborough.
Beneath the satiric veneer, the documentary is a serious attempt to
address lesbian lives in non-metropolitan Australia, notably the complex
intersections of race and sexuality. A fundamental aim of the production
is to bring to light the similarities and differences in the experiences of
white and Aboriginal lesbians in Alice Springs, eliciting cultural gaps and
attending to the difficulties and potentials of cross-cultural relations
within local lesbian communities. In addition to Destiny Attenborough’s
“anthropological insights” and “vox pop” interviews with local lesbians,
six women—three white, three Aboriginal—appear repeatedly through-
out the documentary, providing first person accounts of cross-cultural
relations. A range of lesbian spaces (or spaces “inhabited” by lesbians)
are featured in visual sequences and discussed by Destiny—including
homes, bars, and cafés—thus offering the audience insight into the les-
bian geographies of Alice Springs. Despite its humor and whimsical mo-
ments—and sometimes because of them—Destiny in Alice (2007) offers a
glimpse into some topics almost untouched in academic research: rural
lesbian lives, and notably, Aboriginal lesbian lives, in the outback. A
critical discussion of this documentary text thus extends existing scholar-
ship. Juxtaposed with the preceding analysis of gay men from farming
regions in eastern Australia—a very different landscape to “the Red Cen-
tre”—this discussion also highlights the diversity of rural lesbian and gay
geographies in Australia.
Destiny in Alice (2007) takes it “as given” that Alice Springs is home to
a sizeable lesbian population. Destiny opens her commentary thus: “I’m
standing at the heart of one of the harshest environments on the planet,
and I’ve discovered that this town surrounded by desert and scrub is
home to a rare species that is not only surviving but thriving. It has
become the lesbian metropolis of outback Australia.” The documentary
doesn’t offer evidence for this assertion—other than the breadth of vox
pop interviews—and this is not too surprising: quantitative material on
lesbian (and gay) population size and concentration is notoriously hard
to come by. However, drawing from other research, we can be reasonably
confident that there is a significant lesbian population in Alice Springs.

For instance, a study of the geography of same-sex couple families in
Australia, using data from the 2006 Census, found that Alice Springs
(represented by the Central NT Statistical Sub-Division) has one of the
highest concentrations of female same-sex couple families in Australia,
2.84 times the national average (Gorman-Murray and Brennan-Horley
2011). Although this refers to the demographic category “female same-
sex couple families” and cannot be transferred and used as a congruent
figure for all lesbian-identifying women in Alice Springs, as an imperfect
proxy it is nonetheless suggestive of a lesbian concentration above the
national average.
The documentary reasonably assumes this is the case—and the fact of
its production is predicated on this—but Destiny also asks local lesbians
if “Alice is overflowing with lesbians?” While one woman, Kathryn, says
tongue-in-cheek, “I certainly don’t feel inundated with women,” the re-
spondents agree that “there’s a huge amount of lesbians in Alice
Springs.” More interesting, however, is Destiny’s follow-up question,
which would arguably be on the lips of unknowing audiences: “How did
such a remote and seemingly inhospitable landscape become home to the
largest group of lesbians in outback Australia?” The answer is fascinat-
ing. At Alice Springs in the early 1980s, Aboriginal and white women
from the area and across Australia came together in a feminist protest
against the presence of a U.S. military base in the outback (Taylor 1997).
Juxtaposed with archival footage and recollections from an “Alice born
and bred lesbian,” Heather-Joy, Destiny explains:
Back in 1983 two tribes came together and something very strange
happened. Traditional owners, aunties and grandmothers led a group
of five hundred white women to the gates of Pine Gap, a top secret U.S.
military base just outside of Alice Springs. The women are doctors,
lawyers, academics and a few professional protestors. At the end of the
day, small communities start to form around the local watering holes.
They find they have something in common. They are minorities. So
begins the lesbian saga of Alice Springs as many of the women decide
to stay and begin a new life in Central Australia.
This herstory reveals the outback lesbian communities as the serendipi-
tous result of cross-scalar convergence between international relations,
national protest, and a local place.
Since the early 1980s, the lesbian population has continued to increase
in size and visibility, and this account about the origins of Alice Springs’
lesbian communities shows the importance of “migration herstory” for
their fluorescence. While some are “Alice born and bred,” like Heather-
Joy, the lesbian concentration in the town has relied, and still relies, on
immigration. Destiny asks, “Why do these women come here, why do
they stay, and what do they get from the lifestyle here that they can’t get
anywhere else in Australia?” Desert Rose says, “Lesbians come here be-
cause it’s got a reputation.” This intimates the significance of “gravita-
tional group migration,” which I elsewhere ascribed to immigration sus-
taining sexual minority concentrations in inner-city Sydney, Melbourne,
and Brisbane: “It typically refers to individual migrants from the same
cultural or ethnic group voluntarily clustering in a particular location . . .
through a combination of the availability of communal supports . . .
together with hostility and discrimination experienced elsewhere in soci-
ety,” and “this reasoning fits the experience of non-heterosexuals in con-
temporary Western societies including Australia” (Gorman-Murray
2009b, 450). Here, however, gravitation is from the city to the outback, as
Sonja proposes: “A lot of lesbians in Alice Springs have done a sea
change [an Australian-ism for counter-urbanization] to the desert.” Les-
bian gravitational group migration to the outback thus subverts conven-
tional rural-to-urban queer migration, suggesting noteworthy counter-
flows that support a non-metropolitan lesbian population.
Other interviewees contend that the town’s remoteness—its isolation
from major cities, its setting in “the Red Centre”—offers possibilities for
self-reflection, and also plays a key part in lesbians’ outback migration
choices. Heather-Joy says:
What’s lovely about Alice Springs is that when you come here there’s a
beautiful nature around you, and the gorgeous people. But there’s also
nothing much else but to look at yourself and do some soul searching.
People come here to find themselves, I reckon. And if you’re open to it,
I think this is the place that you can really grow emotionally and spiri-
tually. I think that’s what people feel when they come here.
On the one hand, this argument reinforces the points made earlier in the
chapter regarding the significance of “the bush” and rural isolation for
gay men, which affords opportunities for both self-reflection and feelings
of belonging. On the other hand, the case of Alice Springs also reworks
and complicates the experience of isolation, and shows diverse sexual
minority connections to rural landscapes and communities. Here, les-
bians can be concurrently sequestered and socially connected: the isola-
tion of the town is interleaved with a visible lesbian presence. A woman
can, if she chooses, be by herself; as Heather-Joy suggests, this is useful
for self-reflection. Simultaneously, she can connect to the town’s lesbian
networks for friendship, support, and intimacy, and the documentary
depicts a variety of lesbian social spaces, including homes (“socializing in
back yards is essential in Alice”), cafés (“I’m at Bar Dopplo’s, the most
popular lesbian café in Alice”), and public bars (“we’re at the Alice
Springs Resort for after work drinks . . . where the lesbians of Alice come
to discuss their week, and perhaps find new partners”).
One of the central themes of Destiny in Alice (2007) is the diversity of
outback lesbian lives in Alice Springs, including the multiplicity of les-
bian communities and their connections and differences. In one scene,

while showing an aerial panorama of the town, Destiny explains: “As
Alice Springs has grown, so has the diversity of cultural backgrounds in
this isolated habitat. Today, black and white lesbians mix and mingle,
creating a rich tapestry that is the lesbian sub-culture.” In the next scene,
the camera lingers at a back yard gathering, and we hear Kathryn, an
Aboriginal lesbian, say to the group, “There’s a sameness across cultures,
across everything. . . . [We] might be totally different people, from totally
different places, but there’s a commonality there about a female-loving-
female experience, a woman who loves women.” Kathryn asserts that
sexuality—lesbian identity—trumps cultural and geographical differ-
ences (among others). Perhaps this statement is meant to be ironic, or
hopeful, because from this point forward the documentary unravels
some of the differences within the lesbian communities of Alice Springs.
Some distinctions concern class and cultural capital. In one scene, Des-
tiny tenders: “There are several competing theories as to the division of
the lesbian community of Alice Springs. One very controversial theory is
that the lesbians fall into two very distinct groups: the A Team and the F
Troop.” We’re shown an image of a group of well-dressed women at an
art gallery, while Destiny informs us: “The A Team are [sic] identified as
professionals who, in a social situation, are never very far from a glass of
red wine.” Next, we’re offered a contrasting image of a pub pool hall,
with Destiny’s narration: “The F Troop can be identified as beer drinkers
who are rather good at playing a game of pool.” While the terms “class”
or “cultural capital” are not used, the visuals and descriptions make it
clear that this division is between middle-class (professional, wine-sip-
ping, art aficionados) and working-class (pub-going, beer-drinking, pool-
playing) women. With lighthearted commentary, the audience is led to
believe this difference is benign: “The two groups have two very impor-
tant things in common—they both love to dance, and they both love
women.” But the material bases of this distinction are unaddressed, as
are the implications of class (dis)advantage in the outback. For instance,
lack of financial resources might inhibit the possibility of outbound
travel, and reinforce negative, rather than positive, experiences of isola-
tion.
But the difference given most extensive coverage is that based on race
and culture: between white and Aboriginal lesbians. The first person nar-
ratives of three Aboriginal lesbians provide rich insights into particular
issues they encounter at the intersection of same-sex attraction, Indige-
nous culture, and the assumptions of white lesbian culture. A concern
raised by all the Aboriginal interviewees is kinship ties and family re-
sponsibilities, which are more extensive than in white families and often
poorly understood by white partners. For instance, Kathryn says, “When
you’re part of an Aboriginal family you can never really fly solo, you’ve
always got responsibilities for yourself within that family.” Sonja offers
more detail on the responsibilities, and the tension it can cause in cross-
cultural relationships with white partners:
Because I’m the oldest girl in the family, and I’ve got two younger
sisters, traditionally their children are considered my children, and I
think of them as my children as well, so when my sister phones me up
to baby sit the responsibility is greater because I’m actually responsible
for those children. The fact that I’m from a different cultural back-
ground and I’m going to have family around and I have responsibil-
ities, [means] throughout the relationship [with a white partner] those
are the things that I always find we’re arguing about.
Andrea’s summation reinforces the point: “What I’ve witnessed with
cross-cultural relationships is that there can a bit of a divide there in
regards to the Indigenous woman’s responsibilities to her family.”
Interestingly, extensive Indigenous kinships structures mean Aborigi-
nal lesbians also prefer not to partner each other. Sonja again provides a
clear discussion of the concern:
I see Indigenous women as my family, so to go out with them seems a
little bit weird to me. So I think I’d choose someone that’s a little bit
further removed, so there’s no possibility that I’m going out with some-
one that I’m related to. Because, you know, blackfellas—I’m related to
people in Perth, in Darwin, got the whole country covered except for
Tasmania.
Similarly, Kathryn says, “Indigenous lesbians in this town—I tend to
know them all and be related to them or be close friends with them, so
that narrows the field considerably.” It seems Aboriginal women must,
by default, form cross-cultural relationships to avoid inappropriate intra-
familial intimacy. Sonja suggests this can facilitate cultural understand-
ing: “There’s always going to be a transfer of knowledge within relation-
ships from one partner to the other. Because I’m Aboriginal the informa-
tion that I impart will be one of the most important transfers within the
relationship.” But other tensions may arise: some white women pursue
relations with Aboriginal women because of their Aboriginality. Kathryn
argues: “Sometimes I get involved in a relationship and I introduce them
to my family, and then I realise that I wasn’t involved in a relationship at
all, that it wasn’t about me, it was just part of a study.”
White and Aboriginal lesbians share a connection to the “natural”
environment around Alice Springs. This relationship differs from
Adam’s, discussed earlier, who felt a personal sense of “inner peace”
riding alone through country hills. Instead, the sense of connectivity is
communal and gendered, as Kathryn explains: “There is a collective con-
sciousness that’s just about being in a place that has a strong female
focus.” Desert Rose says, “I looked up at those mountains and I went,
‘This is the womb of the universe.’ That was my first impression of this
town. Very strong woman’s feeling around this place. I haven’t actually
spoken to any Aboriginal women about that, I’m just taking my own
senses.” As she intimates, white and Aboriginal women have different
relationships to “the land,” and this can cause tension. For Aboriginal
women, the connection is part of their traditional cultural identity, with
interviewees contending “black women’s business” is strong in Alice
Springs. Yet, Evelyn asserts, “you see a majority of the lesbian commu-
nity out there at law and culture meetings” to reinforce “strength” in
“being a woman.” While some white lesbians are genuine, Andrea and
Kathryn take issue with “culture vultures” seeking an “experience.”
White and Aboriginal lesbians share a gendered place-attachment, but
different embedded meanings highlight multifaceted affinities and dis-
tinctions within the outback lesbian communities. This elicits another
dimension to the complexity of lesbian and gay belonging to rural Aus-
tralia, and conjoint sexual-rural identities.
CONCLUSION
Rural landscapes and communities are varied, as are lesbian and gay
experiences of them. In this chapter, I have demonstrated some of the
diversity of lesbian and gay lives in rural Australia, and thereby illustrat-
ed some of the multilayered relationships between Australian ruralities
and minority sexualities. I have engaged a critical reading of documen-
tary texts—Since Adam Was a Boy (2006), The Farmer Wants a Life (2010),
and Destiny in Alice (2007)—to discuss two relational examples: gay men
from farming families in eastern Australia, and outback lesbian commu-
nities. The discussion has shown the complex mix of belonging and alien-
ation experienced concurrently by rural lesbians and gay men. In doing
so, I have stressed the spatial imperatives reconciling their sexual and
rural subjectivities, discussing their vital experiences of isolation, migra-
tion, attachment to place, land, and nature, and the roles of intra-familial,
cross-cultural, and inter-species relations in processes of belonging. I
haven’t sought to be comprehensive, or to fabricate a universal connec-
tion between rurality and sexuality, but to represent the geographical
contingency and multiplicity of these relationships, and thus the juxta-
posed difficulties and possibilities of rural lesbian and gay lives. This
ambivalence—agency and potential alongside marginalization and con-
straint—is illuminated in the documentary texts. As such, the communi-
cative function of the televisual-documentaries is critical: on the one
hand, they empathetically educate mainstream audiences; on the other
hand, they also speak to sexual minorities, and help form rural lesbian
and gay communities and identities.
NOTES
1. The use of the same language—“something missing”—indicates a common dis-

course underpins coming out narratives as shared stories.
2. “Herstory” is a feminist neologism that underscores and subverts the gendering
of history, which has tended to be written from the perspective of “great men.” This is
arguably true for sexual minority history, too, which has been dominated by gay
men’s stories.
SEVEN
Space, Place, and Identity in
Conversation
Queer Black Women Living in the Rural U.S. South
LaToya E. Eaves
Growing up and living in the rural United States South is a journey of

heritage and memory. Sweet tea, front porches, the county fair, and
weeklong church revivals characterize my childhood life living in “the
country.” My hometown is nestled in North Carolina’s western foothills,
alongside a highway with perfect hazy blue views of the Blue Ridge
Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountain range, hanging in the
backdrop. In less than thirty minutes you can find yourself wrapped in
the low-lying folds of rugged gray bedrock. The landscape is character-
ized by rolling hills of red clay that eventually give way to the local
shopping mall, strings of restaurants, the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart,
and a small but vibrant uptown district before returning to open, green
space. Remnants of the textile and mill industry can be found in aban-
doned brick buildings all over the county. The multiplicity of quaint
buildings topped with steeples is hard to miss in a town that maintains
strong relationships with the philosophy of Christian Protestantism. For
the first twenty years of my life, I rarely left the country for any reason
and held a strong desire to call this place home for the rest of my life. Yet,
after my sophomore year at a small Baptist college just outside of town, I
felt called away to the urban world. This was not for the sake of a tor-
tured queer existence or fear of persecution for my Black skin. However, I
felt that there was more in the world for me to experience—different
111
112 LaToya E. Eaves
people, places, and things. I had every plan to return to my home after
finishing college.
That was, now, over a decade ago. In that decade, I have searched my
soul and sought assistance from my Creator to deal with, fight through,
and accept my identities as woman, as Black, and as queer—collectively
and separately. Because I am all of these identities, as well as from the
South and “the country,” I often encounter an assortment of questions
and comments that invoke negative assumptions about my “marginal-
ized” identities. Yes, I am discriminated in terms of each of them. That
may never change. However, the imagined “cloud of doom” that hangs
proverbially over the rural and the South, removing any potential of
progressive political victory or peaceful livelihood, needs to be chal-
lenged. The rural Southern experience is, most certainly, not the boun-
dary of my oppressions in the world. But when I think about people’s
reactions to my intersectional identities, I ponder particular questions in
an effort to formulate a counter-narrative. Along these lines, there is
something about home that keeps me wondering: What would have hap-
pened if I had stayed? What kind of person would I be? Would I be at my
fullest queer Black womanhood at home? What would be my everyday
life experience? In lieu of actually having had the experiences to answer
these questions, I instead ask: How can existing literature assist me in
subjectively theorizing my sense of home in my identity? How can the
absences contribute to discursive formations of the intersections of race,
gender, sexuality, and geography in the case of the rural South?
In this chapter, I will first discuss existing literature that connects
sexuality and space with rurality and queer identity, building a conceptu-
al framework for understanding queer Black women’s experiences of the
rural South. In this, I underscore the gaping need to conduct research on
sexuality in the rural South, and stress the integral connections of race,
gender, sexuality, and place that need to be considered in a project in this
social and geographical context. The second half of the chapter then
introduces a modest empirical project I conducted on queer Black women
living in the rural South. The research used social networking media to
access rural queer Black women to begin to understand their identity
formation and daily experiences at these intersections. Their voices are
included in the discussion of the findings: I feel it is my calling to arrange
a meeting of the queer Black woman’s narrative from the rural South and
the discourses of queer geographies of sexualities. I am advocating for
queer Black womanhood that belongs in a space that recognizes its home,
and my research seeks to find and hear the multi-generational voices that
emanate from rural queer geographies, but are rarely heard in queer
culture or scholarship. Moreover, my research intersects rural queer life
with gender and race by focusing on the particularities of queer Black
women who occupy the rural U.S. South and by exploring how rural-
dwelling, Black, queer people find each other—for friendships, network-
Space, Place, and Identity in Conversation 113
ing, social support, sex, and dating. I use the colloquial term “the coun-
try” to indicate the material and ideological space of the rural. It is lik-
ened to terms such as “the countryside.”
BEYOND METRONORMATIVE QUEER GEOGRAPHIES:

SEXUALITY, RURALITY, AND RACE
Queer communities have developed into social movements, fighting for

equality and carving out geographies of inclusion for the betterment of
the lives of their members. Queer identity has metamorphosed into a
political movement of sexual citizenship, as advocacy for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and queer policies has made its way into political
discourses (Cohen 1997; Seidman 2001). Over the past four decades, busi-
nesses, entertainment venues, employment, educational opportunities,
religious institutions, and leisure options have been commonly and open-
ly created for the benefit and consumption of queer people (Gray 2009;
Knopp and Brown 2003; Leap and Lewin 2009). These geographies and
equality movements, however, have been limited in their scope and lev-
els of inclusivity in at least two ways: spatially and ethnically. In terms of
the first, rural geographies are rarely reflected in the queer discourses of
the everyday (Gray 2009; Leap and Lewin 2009; Turner 2000), but instead
are often limited to the few, but important, discussions of spatialities of
rural tourism (e.g., Browne 2011). Whereas the current queer discourse is
heavily centered on access to community resources and solidarity that is
characteristic only of urban spaces (Gray 2009; Howard 2001; Herring
2010; Leap and Lewin 2009), rural queer people are typically faced with
the opposite, that is, a lack of access. In rural America, geographies are
constructed so that group-oriented resources—such as community cen-
ters and social collectives—operate on a smaller scale (Gray 2009; Knopp
2004) and are infrequently, if ever, made available to queer-identifying
groups and individuals (Gray 2009; Johnson 2008; Knopp 2004). In terms
of the second limitation—ethnic inclusion—documented experiences
concerning queer racial and ethnic minorities are rare compared to those
explored among the white majority (Black and Rhorer 2001; Gray 2009;
Howard 2001; Johnson 2008; Whittier 2001), and bordering on nonexis-
tent among queers occupying rural geographies (Black and Rhorer 2001;
Gray 2009; Herring 2010; Smith and Holt 2005; Whittier 2001; also see the
chapter by Gorman-Murray for another corrective).
A problematic of queer discourses has been to assume, without ques-
tion, the uniform, monochromatic experiences of queer-identifying peo-
ple (Seidman 1996). Discussions of the rural South must include di-
alogues of the interplay of race, gender, and class, and particularly so in
this project. The literature utilized in the research thus far has failed to
account for the experiences of women of color who are sexual dissidents.
114 LaToya E. Eaves
How can these women be so “hidden in plain sight” (Johnson 2008, 5)?
Political scientist Cathy J. Cohen (1997) theorizes exactly what I have
described here, embedded in a larger conversation of the politics of
queerness when it is related to people of color. Cohen (1997, 442) states,
“beyond a mere recognition of the intersection of oppressions, there must
also be an understanding of the ways our multiple identities work to
limit the entitlement and status some receive from obeying a heterosexu-
al imperative.” The problem of essentialist discourses is the suppression
of the experiences of people experiencing non-heteronormative desires.
Both theoretical frameworks of intersectionality and queer theory argue
that multiple identities converge simultaneously and that the exclusion of
one identity is arbitrary and unstable in analysis (Collins 2007; Seidman
1996).
Throughout its short but important history, the literature on sexuality
and space has advanced tremendously but in at least one area it has been
surprisingly lacking in self-critique. The literature is urban-dominant,
though this is not surprising given that the study of sexuality and space
grew out of the work urban sociologists did on sexuality beginning in the
1970s—the time of the sexual revolution. This bias is evident in Mapping
Desires: Geographies of Sexualities (Bell and Valentine 1995b), the premier
and first collection of works on sexuality, space, and place. Throughout
the book’s introduction, the words “urban” and “city” appear while most
of the essays deal solely with the urban context (although it is imperative
to note Jerry Lee Kramer’s important exception, his chapter on “Gay and
Lesbian Identities and Communities in Rural North Dakota”). Why have
the lives of queer people living in rural areas been largely ignored? One
possible explanation derives from Scott Herring’s (2010, 5) work, in
which he notes that “It almost goes without saying that . . . urbanist
elisions have become endemic. . . . Much of queer studies wants desper-
ately to be urban planning, even as so much of its theoretical architecture
is already urban planned.” Scholars have been working towards the var-
ied manifestations of queer life and space in an effort to counter the
effects of urban discourses in the literature.
Theoretical approaches to understand queer geographies stem from
the strong influence of feminist theories as well as postcoloniality and
poststructuralism. In addition, understanding queer geographies in the
research process requires attention to three major perspectives. The first
of these is a focus on the production of space, where the researcher con-
siders and explores the dominant factors that have allowed a particular
queer space to exist (also see the chapter by Detamore). Second, research-
ers must be cognizant of the bearings of everyday social relations, which
contribute to the production of space and the impacts of these relation-
ships on a community and/or with respect to an individual. Finally, the
materiality of performance that comes through queer embodiment pro-
vides an alternative perspective through which to analyze an individual’s
actions, reactions, and behaviors based on the body’s movement through

the produced space (Browne, Lim, and Brown 2007a). With these three
theoretical perspectives in mind, the researcher is able to examine empiri-
cal queer terrain with the understanding that this production of knowl-
edge is situated in the positionalities of the researcher-situated knowl-
edges. Katherine McKittrick (2006) supports this perspective and argues
for Black women’s lived experience being given geographic attention. In
her work Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle,
she argues “recognizing Black women’s knowledgeable positions as inte-
gral to physical, cartographic, and experiential geographies within and
through dominant spatial models also creates an analytical space for
Black feminist geographies: Black women’s political, feminist, imaginary,
and creative concerns that respatialize the geographic legacy of racism-
sexism” (McKittrick 2006, 53). The visibility of queer Black women in the
rural South is limited in two key ways. Firstly, in the extent of her own
embodiment as a “carrier” of her sexuality, and secondly, limited to the
ways her racialized or cultural identity influences her way of life. There-
fore, what I view as McKittrick’s (2006) expansion of the queer geograph-
ic discourse is important in narrating queer Black women’s geographies,
including the rural Appalachian South.
The questions I have asked myself are actually quite unusual. To be
Southern, a woman, queer, Black, and rural are each and altogether
queer. They are each and collectively antithetical to the heteronormative
processes of hegemony in the United States. In this paper, I use the term
queer to indicate sex, life, and behaviors that are anti-normative to the
discursive operation of space and life. The assumptions I want to trouble
are the ones in which the hegemonic operational functions of life in the
United States are limited to urban possibilities, and that conceptualize
certain same-sex identities, subjectivities, relationships, or practices as
necessarily counter-normative. The historical representation of each of
these identities is entangled in discourses that can be traced back to histo-
ries of colonialism, specifically as they impacted upon the United States.
E. Patrick Johnson (2008) provides support for my argument in his oral
history project Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men in the South. In his introduction,
Johnson (2008, 5) states:
And yet many of the stories of Black queer life have gone undocu-
mented. Neglect on the part of historians of the South, Black sexual
dissidents’ complicity of silence around issues of sexuality, and south-
erners’ habitual taciturnity about things of a “private nature,” all col-
lude to keep the stories of southern Black gay men’s lives, like most
taboo things in the South, “hidden in plain sight.”
Though speaking about men’s experiences, Johnson (2008) points to im-
portant nuances about what it means to be a queer Black person in the
116 LaToya E. Eaves
U.S. South. There are three parts to this statement that Johnson (2008) has
dealt with and so should we.
Firstly, he supports my argument that those who write history have
left out or ignored those who are queered within homonormative cul-
ture—where, in the U.S. context at least, homonormativity arguably re-
fers to the mainstreaming of white, middle-class, same-sex families with-
in neoliberal political and economic landscapes (Duggan 2002). It is im-
portant to recognize that there are ways to acknowledge what exists rath-
er than to let it hover beneath the discursive surface. In a parallel move
that challenges the normalizing neoliberal impulses, Lisa Duggan (1994,
10) reframes the rhetorical strategies of liberal politics into a powerful
framework that seeks to “destabilize heteronormativity rather than to
naturalize gay identities.” I suggest that queer activists and scholars can
use this framework of destabilization to refrain from some (not all) as-
pects of essentialism in social and political argument and action. Dug-
gan’s (1994) reframing of liberal dissent allows for the rethinking and
remembering of sexual identity as malleable in history and culture.
Secondly, and responding somewhat to Duggan’s (1994) argument,
Johnson (2008) notes that there is a stark silence around non-heteronor-
mative sexualities by us, the dissidents, and with those with whom we
interact, and a tacit acceptance of normative discourses of sexualities.
Race is implicated in these norms. In discussing how sexuality and queer-
ness have become the marks of regulatory technologies and biopolitics in
the contemporary U.S. context, Jasbir Puar (2007) asserts that whiteness
and sexual exceptionalism have surmounted differences of non-hege-
monic racialization, gender, class, and ethnicity in these discussions.
There could be several reasons for this: fear of loss of community and
relationships, lack of social priority, or the desire to “belong,” “get by,” or
“get ahead” in heteronormative society without further intersectional
complications, among others. There is therefore a vital need to continue
to dissect the way “white” homosexualities become normalized in social
rhetoric and expectations. Thirdly, and I think probably the most promi-
nent, is that Southerners gossip, but they also keep the muttering to
themselves because good Southern manners call for this. That is to say
the social mores of the U.S. South often call for a “passive aggressive
stance toward any transgressive behavior” (Johnson 2008, 4), often ex-
pressed through politeness and coded speech and behavior.
QUEER BLACK WOMEN IN THE RURAL SOUTH
In 2011, I conducted a pilot project with twelve women to establish the

conceptual and empirical scope of my doctoral research on queer Black
women and social networking in the rural U.S. South. This small-scale
project dealing with rurality, cyberspace, and queer Black women proved
valuable in the exploratory understandings of the intersections between

different identities. The experiences of the twelve women who resided
across four Southern states, and who were all involved in the social net-
working website DowneLink (see http://www.downelink.com/) were uti-
lized to address two key research questions. Firstly, what is the role of
online social networking in connecting Black queer women in a society
and space where they are otherwise largely invisible or at least marginal?
And secondly, how do online social networks provide community, sup-
port, and other needs?
Two of the major concepts in my research are rurality and queerness:
What makes a space and/or an identity rural? What makes it queer? I
offer that queerness represents a deviation from societal standards of life
choices and world view (see earlier discussion). Rurality can be and is
defined in a myriad of ways—stemming from population per square
mile, land usage, capital flow, health and wellness resource access, com-
mute time, and poverty/income levels, among others. I used the Rural
Assistance Center’s search engine to help me determine the rurality of a
specific location. One of the indicators from the Rural Assistance Center’s
search tool is related to the United States Census Bureau’s designation of
urban and nonurban. For the United States Census Bureau (2011) urban
is defined as “core census block groups or blocks that have a population
density of at least 1,000 people per square mile,” and the neighboring
block having a population density of no less than five hundred people
per square mile. For my purposes, I define rural as the exact opposite—a
population density of less than one thousand people per square mile.
These quantitative definitions of rural space sit alongside, and sometimes
reconcile with, qualitative and discursive understandings of rurality and
the rural South. Rurality represents spatial locations that reinforce
psychosocial isolation in conjunction with spatial separation from an ur-
ban core. Arguably, then, low population density does figure in rural
imaginaries, and there are overlaps between instrumental/quantitative
definitions of the rural (measures of population density) and imagina-
tive/qualitative notions of rurality (distance, separation, isolation, and
how these play into social networks and individual experiences).
As I continue to conduct this research, I anticipate that the marketing
and increased development for reasons of accessibility (and building cap-
ital) by corporations that offer internet services to residences and busi-
nesses (such as public libraries) will allow for a collapse in space and time
and provide rural-situated individuals opportunities to connect with a
global society. Because of this connection, queer-identified Black women
in rural Southern spaces will be provided with resources that expand
their queer identity and involvement in queer community. Cyberspace
will then allow them to find a “home away from home” without having
to leave their physical environment, and to live and exist in two geogra-
phies—rural and cyber. While the question of authenticity in either
118 LaToya E. Eaves
world, but particularly the digital realm, will undoubtedly arise (Gray
2009), I am confident that the research will find similarities across multi-
ple research subjects and ameliorate the challenges of self-reporting and
self-definition of experiences.
As stated, the research utilized the social networking site DowneLink
to connect with individuals who identified with some aspect of the queer
continuum, or with those who could connect me with individuals of
interest. DowneLink’s intent is to be a
community that allows users to interact with one another through so-
cial networks and resources. The foundation of DowneLink is to pro-
vide a space for Downe people and their friends to exchange ideas,
build friendships, and utilize local and nationwide services. As with
any community, we hope to grow and introduce new and innovative
services that will suit their wants and needs. (DowneLink 2011)
The “Flirt” function of the DowneLink website allows any registered user
to search for other users. It also facilitates searching which can be tailored
to particular variables including age range, sexual orientation, gender,
relationship status, and proximity to a particular zip code up to one
hundred miles. By restricting the search to specific locations, I could
cross-reference search results with the Rural Assistance Center’s “Am I
Rural?” search tool. The “Am I Rural?” search tool can be used “to help
determine whether a specific location is considered rural based on vari-
ous definitions of rural, including definitions that are used as eligibility
criteria for federal programs” (Rural Assistance Center 2011).
Using the “Flirt” function, I identified “rural” women on a range of
other necessary criteria. The first was age. I selected women between the
ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, which excluded traditional college-
aged women as such a cohort is likely to have access to resources which
could facilitate their exploration of identity. As well as age and rurality, I
also selected for ethnicity and sexuality. After making contact through
direct messaging and explaining the nature of my research and its intent,
I conducted semi-structured interviews online via the website’s direct
messaging tool. While convenient and immediate, and therefore useful to
a pilot study, this type of interviewing is limited in that it does not allow
for the subtleties of the face-to-face semi-structured interview in which it
is possible, for example, to adapt the conversation to the speaker’s re-
sponses to probe or clarify.
In interpreting the data, I coded the transcripts using four codes: ru-
rality, queerness, online networks, and community indicators. This
turned into a slightly different project than I originally anticipated, as my
original intent was to focus solely on the use of online networks. Howev-
er, as queer theory and intersectionality theory suggest, multiple iden-
tities theorized individually are arbitrary (Bryant and Pini 2011). Addi-
tionally, I had not planned to use urban dwellers for this project. Howev-
er, the time I had to complete the interviews was limited, and I had to
expand my search. The expansion was still beneficial, though, because it
allowed me to consider rurality as a state of mind, a notion which has
been theorized by some scholars (e.g., Cloke 2006). What follows are
excerpts and analyses from my discussions with Molasses, Royal Auda-
cious, Baby, and Deshon (all pseudonyms). These informants were cho-
sen because of their apparently significant connections to the contexts of
rurality and queerness.
Rurality
Though I utilized a quantitative measure of rurality, I think it is im-
portant to conceptualize rural and rurality from a theoretical, cultural
standpoint. There are three strong theoretical specifications that can be
considered in understanding and conceptualizing the rural/rurality—so-
cial constructionism, functionality, and political economy (Cloke and Lit-
tle 1997; Bryant and Pini 2011). From a cultural standpoint, the borders of
rurality seem to be mediated by specific recognitions of aesthetic mark-
ers, denoted by particular bodily performances, and delineated by invo-
cations of certain states of being (see also the chapter by Browne and
McGlynn). Exact codification of the rural invoked as an idea of a place in
discourse is grounded in the knowledge that it is specific to a particular
location and context, which can be so identified by the recognition of the
variance of terms that are seemingly synonymous—rurality, the country,
farmland/agrarian, open space, countryside, among many others. Fur-
thermore, the dichotomy of urban/rural is exacerbated in the popular
imagination that understands rurality at any point on a continuum that
operates on both material and discursive scales. The continuum encom-
passes anything from a romanticized idyll to an oppressive, backwards
existence for people. The material status of the rural is recognized
through the potential place to live and work, to go on vacation, to have
space to farm, and to experience forms of nature, perhaps in conjunction
with or as opposed to the built environment. With this variance of rural
subjectivities, the imagined and discursive significance of rural space is
undoubtedly an important conceptualization with which to grapple for
scholars. Cloke (2006, 18) notes, “It is almost as if the strength of the idea
of rurality is in its overarching ability to engage very different situations
under a single conceptual banner. Yet as soon as attempts are made to
deconstruct the rural metanarrative, much of that conceptual strength
dissipates into the nooks and crevices of particular locations, economic
processes and social identities.” One of the issues in this distinction is
that the definition of the rural/rurality is complex and ephemeral, consti-
tuted in opposition to the definitiveness of urban and metropolitan space.
Urban areas are taken for granted as clearly conceptually grounded and
do not have to be explained. Rural and non-metropolitan areas, on the
120 LaToya E. Eaves
other hand, face the scrutiny of subjective, multifarious conceptualization

(Cloke 2006; Cloke and Little 1997; Gray 2009).
Molasses, originally from Greenwood, Mississippi, gave this response
to a question about what was different about living in a rural place as a
queer Black woman: “I mean, we are in the country. People are miles
apart and you got to drive to see them.” Her statement, and those from
other interviewees, mark the significance of several characteristics of ru-
ral life. First, there is the declaration of living in the country followed by
an assertion of spatial location in relation to others—“miles apart.” In
Molasses’ statement are indicators of spatial isolation—physical and per-
haps psychosocial—an acknowledgment of the privilege of mobility
(with its implicit economic implications), and a reflection on the necessity
of contributing to and maintaining community in rural Mississippi (by
driving to see others).
Like Molasses, Baby, from Mississippi, asserted that there were distin-
guishing features to rural life for queer Black women. In particular, she
highlighted the need to perform cultural norms in relation to gender and
sexuality, explaining that she connected with “straight acting girls or
what we call bi.” Such a statement points to how anonymity may operate
for queer Black women living in the rural. The women that Baby dates
and forms romantic and/or sexual relationships with are able to maintain
a version of “passing.” Historically, the notion of “passing” describes the
ability of light and pale-skinned African-American people to move
through the dominant society with no affiliation to their racial heritage. It
is now being used to seemingly distance the self from dissident sexual
behaviors and certain performances of gender. Deshon regarded the
community’s operation to be one that was not problematic so long as
people minded their business. This characteristic of rurality and rural
culture was evident in all of the interviews, both implicitly and explicitly.
This desired behavior should be considered in conjunction with Southern
social mores, described earlier in this chapter.
The fourth participant in the pilot sample, Royal, grew up less than an
hour’s drive outside of Atlanta, Georgia. While her hometown is still
considered rural according to United States Department of Agriculture
standards, her experiences seem far removed from rurality. The borders
of the rural are often contested. In many cases, the rural is delineated by a
subjective boundary, while in other cases the demarcations are consid-
ered objective, formulated by quantitative measures. The agencies of the
federal government of the United States are not completely synchronized
in their official definitions of rural space and rurality. Across the board,
however, the rural has not actually been defined for itself, but rather
assumed to be the remnants left behind by definitions of urban and met-
ropolitan areas. This type of definitiveness is problematic because it in-
sinuates a strict dichotomy that does not acknowledge the opportunities,
or realities, for more nuanced contexts, realities, and experiences of the

rural.
In her interview, Royal indicated that she was unable to give me much
information about being queer in her childhood hometown. Unfortunate-
ly, the mode of interview meant it was difficult to elicit why this was the
case. One factor explaining the absence of information could be an indica-
tor of a third rural characteristic—the thick silence that prohibits discus-
sion of sexuality in the rural South. Alternatively, these musings of rural-
ity and the South may have had nothing to do with Royal’s experiences
and may just indicate that the absence of this discussion is not, from her
perspective, indicative of any aspect of self-identity formation.
Queerness
Interestingly, little emerged in relation to the specific code of “queer-
ness,” perhaps because the research was already targeted towards that
demographic and discussion of being queer may have seemed redun-
dant. As Rinaldo Walcott (2007) notes, ultimately, the Black queer diaspo-
ra faces a myriad of contradictions and subjected identifications that
seems to displace them from white queer communities that operate
under the guise of “everyone’s the same” and “we are family.” Walcott
(2007, 234–35) writes:
Significantly, the Black queer diaspora functions as a network of bor-
rowing and sharing of cultural expressions, products, language, and
gesture. This cross-border, outernational sharing and identification
work to produce particular kinds of kinship relations and keep both in
play and at bay suggestions that Black queer practices are aberrant,
anti-Black, not as fully developed as Euro-descended practices, and so
on. Thus the Black queer diaspora is counterweight to forces, both
white and Black, that position Black queer sexuality as either non-exis-
tent or in need of spokespeople on its behalf. In this way, then, the
Black queer diaspora functions simultaneously as an internal critique
of Black homophobia and a critique of white racism.
Here, Walcott (2007) explicitly frames the intricacies of identity and com-
munity production that lie in multiple contingencies. Identity is mediated
by multiplicities, which are not typically addressed in essentialized stud-
ies of same-sex/queer sexualities. The explicit ways that processes of ra-
cialization occur alongside sexualities and gender may manifest more
subtly. A few important examples from the interviewees suggest further
inquiry. In her interview, Baby talked about her gender identity, the
types of women she dates, and how her community reacts to her. Baby’s
self-labeling of “stone butch” in her interview brings up questions that I
would be interested in exploring with her, or other similarly-performing
women, in the future. The performativity of her label would seem to
indicate that her gender presentation—through dress, hairstyle, and pub-
122 LaToya E. Eaves
lic behaviors—is one that does not neatly fit a male/female binary but one
that is genderqueer. Similarly, Deshon noted that she would consider
herself “as a male with a woman appearance.” She went on to say, “So I
change the outside to show others how I feel on the inside.” This descrip-
tion of her queered gender identity is further complicated by her Downe-
Link profile. I found her, as well as the other participants, through a
query for females. Her profile indicated her sexual orientation as “gay.”
Further, during our interview, she had no issues with being called a
lesbian. The messiness of identity is very apparent here and further in-
quiry into Deshon’s identity assemblages, along with others, is necessary
to understand the completeness of rural Black queer lives.
Molasses indicated, “Mississippi is so gay,” which troubles the pre-
conceived notions about dominant, heteronormative, culturally-conser-
vative deep South states. Molasses’ statement speaks to a more wide-
spread variance in queer sexual behavior and desire that has been over-
shadowed by more constant discussions of a monolithic rural South that
is racist and deeply oppressive for people of color. In her interview, De-
shon indicated opportunities exist to resist this narrative as it operates in
her community. In speaking about whether or not her queer identities
affect her everyday life, she states, “It is a problem when people look at
me crazy but I’m quick to stand up for myself and most of the time I let
them know how I feel about it.” This troubles the type of dialogue that
continuously characterizes the rural and the South as a monolithic space
without progressive change. Finally, Royal talked about her coming out
at twenty-three, when she was living in a metropolitan area. The indica-
tions of queerness in her life related mostly to her interest in finding out
how people live their own queer lives. This was her rationale for joining
DowneLink.
Online Networks
In the interviews, online networks seemed to be of the least interest to
participants until I posed specific questions about it. The only exception
to this was Molasses, who reflected on her involvement in the social
networking website BlackPlanet: “Talk to them. Say silly stuff. Look at
pictures. And you had to know who people were because not everybody
had pictures up. So you had to know their screen name. And you could
chat and stuff.”
Molasses indicated she joined DowneLink as she thought the website
would be useful in finding “people like me,” indicating a need that seems
unfulfilled, considering she is having a hard time meeting people in her
current location in Georgia. In a similar respect, Baby explained that she
was also seeking to reach out through her engagement with online social
networks, commenting that she joined DowneLink “just to talk to people.
Find people like me. Occasionally, talk to a girl or two, but mostly to get
up with people who are positive. Just good people.” For Baby, it seems
that her needs for DowneLink could be met by interacting with queer
Black women of similar lived experiences—through rurality, southern-
ness, Blackness, or gender, or through some multiplicity of intersections
with them all. Royal Audacious, on the other hand, uses it for the connec-
tion to people and their stories, as mentioned in the previous section. In
her interview, she stated, “I mean there are the people who have interest-
ing stories. The world is global so like you have to be able to talk to
people beyond where you are. I joined [DowneLink] because I think peo-
ple in other places can teach me a lot about life.” Royal’s statement is
indicative of the increasing interconnectivity of the world through expan-
sion of internet access, particularly in Western contexts but increasingly
in other regions. For rural-dwelling, Black queer women, these cyber-
based connections become the basis for going beyond the physical dwell-
ing and manifest into a space where one’s networks influence her identity
formations through global interactions in the cyberworld. Similar negoti-
ations of cyberspace can be found through Waitt and Gorman-Murray’s
(2011b) account of virtual journeys and remaking home in non-metropol-
itan Australia.
Community Indicators
In this project, my intent was to also uncover non-virtual community
structures that rural Black queer women are involved with as they move
through their lives. During the interviews, four major subcategories of
community became evident. They are summarized below:
Family
Molasses talked about family. Her family network seems tight, as she
told the story of traveling in the Mississippi Delta as a child with other
family members. She also thought it significant to include her mother’s
reaction to her lesbianism, which is still an ever-present conversation
fifteen years later. While the place of family in her life is very important,
Molasses’ comments about the length of time she has dealt with the con-
versation of sexuality with her mother indicates a limitation of full self-
expression, which seem to have been supplemented through her other
communities.
Friends
This was a subject raised by Molasses as well as Royal Audacious.
Molasses indicated that she met women through her existing social circle
while in Mississippi. She also had a friendship network that she sus-
tained through her college years. Royal reiterated that her friendships
were already formed so she did not seem to need any others.
124 LaToya E. Eaves
School
Molasses talked about going to college, which allowed her to meet
people in class and at house parties. However, she also had her mobile
community of childhood friends who also went to her university. There
is no indication that her multiplicity of identities was contentious or
problematic in this community space.
Organizations
Molasses is involved with a local tennis club, which, to an extent,
serves a social purpose. She indicated that she had developed close rela-
tionships with a small number of people through the group and felt her
intersecting identities (race, gender, sexuality) did not make a difference
within the organization. Royal joined a gay Black women’s fraternity.
This social-civic oriented entity provides her with some camaraderie and
a space through which her identities could be fully expressed.
The only “uncategorized” community identified by participants was
general public settings. In these types of settings the women sometimes
experienced marginalization and discrimination but, as an anecdote from
Baby demonstrated, also resisted such positioning. Baby observed: “Be-
ing the way I am I really don’t have that problem of making a big deal
about how I am, so I must say they mind their own business. That is
when they start to get to know me and realize how our community can
be more than you’re a girl, and I’m trying to get at you.” Baby’s argument
points to an important assumed queer-related negotiation by women in
her community as the women have to be firm in their identities and
ready to defend themselves in the public sphere.
CONCLUSION
Online social networking does assist as a community formation toolkit

for rural queer Black women. These community formations manifest
themselves in a variety of ways. None of the four women directly said
they presently used DowneLink for dating, although in previous years,
for women like Molasses, social networking websites served as vital
sources for maintaining dating relationships (BlackPlanet, not Downe-
Link). In this process, women find places of social support, a means
through which to learn about others, new friendships, and to simply find
“people like me.”
In thinking about my vested interest in making visible narratives of
those lying at the intersection of Black, queer woman, and rural, I am
reminded of James Baldwin, who writes:
I refuse to speak from the point of view of the victim. The victim can
have no point of view for precisely so long as he thinks of himself as a
victim. The testimony of the victim as victim corroborates, simply, the

reality of the chains that bind him—conﬁrms and, as it were, consoles
the jailer. (Baldwin 1985, 78)
Baldwin’s words are representative of my personal and professional
agendas. Inquiry beyond the dominant rhetoric of marginalization is, for
me, the place where we actually move from discourse to lived experience.
It is redundant to deconstruct race, gender, sexuality, and geography into
the binary of “us” and “them.” This issue is meaningful because it im-
plies an intersection of life that is relatively understudied—Black woman-
hood, queerness, and rurality. In my research, I am able to identify some
of the complexities that accompany rural spatial residence in concert with
racial and sexual identities. This topic is personally connected to my own
life as a rural Southerner with a queer Black identity. My ultimate desire
is to dispel ideas about what it means to be a Black, queer, rural, Southern
woman and to further an understanding of these populations who, as
indicated by E. Patrick Johnson (2008, 20), have always existed in the
South and “whose rich history is crucial to any understanding of race,
region, and sexuality.”
3
Mobilities
EIGHT
Conceptual and Spatial Migrations
Rural Gay Men’s Quest for Identity
Alexis Annes and Meredith Redlin
Migration is a process of distancing, both conceptually and spatially, and

includes not only departure but return (Annes and Redlin 2012; Gorman-
Murray 2007a). That is, migration is integrally involved with both the
rejection and formation of identity, and the disposal and retention of
one’s life experiences across space and time. It is culturally formed, but
individually driven.
This contribution is based on a larger study examining the intersecting
role of gender, sexuality, and space in shaping rural gay men’s subjective
identity. We examine not only factors such as race, ethnicity, age, and
class, but also incorporate geographic location as a decisive factor in con-
stituting identity (Andrews 2009; Inness 2004; Knopp 2006). Here, the
notion of the “quest for identity” is central to our argument. Following
Knopp (2004, 123), we define it as “personal journeys through space and
time . . . that are constructed internally as being about the search for an
integrated wholeness as individual humans living in some kind of com-
munity (if not society).” Moreover, “it is an effort to create order out of
the chaos that is fractured identity combined with structures of power
that discipline . . . identity” (Knopp 2004, 124). Following this argument,
we acknowledge that “quests for identity” are a common phenomenon
for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals in gener-
al, and for rural gay men, in particular.
In interviews with self-identified rural gay men in both France and the
United States, our research participants struggled with their homosexual
129
130 Alexis Annes and Meredith Redlin
desires and experienced difficulty in creating themselves as integrated

persons—that is, both gay and rural. Disciplined by heteronormative ru-
ral spaces, our participants, in their “quest for identity,” encountered
challenges. In order to overcome these challenges, most of these men
followed two distinct strategies. That is, they conceptually and emotion-
ally distanced themselves from the images and the actions of effeminate
gay men, and they temporarily and spatially distanced themselves from
the heteronormative place where they grew up.
RESEARCH POPULATION
The informants were thirty self-identified rural gay men—fifteen grew

up in the North American Great Plains, and fifteen grew up in the South-
west of France, whether in rural towns, in villages, or on farms. 1 All
American and French participants spent, at least, their entire childhood
and adolescence on a farm or in a rural town with less than five thousand
inhabitants. The men ranged from nineteen to sixty-two years of age, and
were mostly white and middle class. Distribution across age and social
class was similar for American and French informants. All were in-
volved, at least occasionally, in LGBTQ organizations located in rural
towns of the American Midwest and in the Southwest of France. Initial
participants were reached by using these existing networks of LGBTQ
organizations. As a result of the research design, the research population
does not contain men who grew up in rural areas and who have sex with
other men but do not identify themselves as gay, or who identify them-
selves as gay but are not involved in existing regional LGBTQ organiza-
tions. Data were collected from June 2007 to February 2008. Through
semi-structured interviews, participants provided an account of their life
story. Life story interviews were relevant in this research as they give
“rich evidence about impersonal and collective processes as well as about
subjectivity” (Connell 2005, 89). Moreover, identity, states Woodward
(2002), is a lifelong and dynamic process with possibilities of shifts and
contradictions occurring in the mundane context of everyday life (Robin-
son, Victoria 2008). Using this interview technique allowed us to better
grasp the complexity of our participants’ “quests for identity.”
It is important to note that there is a wide variety of rural contexts in
which LGBT individuals live and that we are not trying to create a uni-
versal and uniform experience of the rural. We recognize that non-hetero-
sexual experiences are plural and sometimes contradictory. Therefore,
this study emphasizes the situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988) of self-
identified gay men and, consequently, only reports on participants’ own
perspectives and representations.
Conceptual and Spatial Migrations 131
BEGINNING THE QUEST: GROWING UP IN THE COUNTRY
Both France and the United States constitute postindustrial societies

where rural spaces have undergone significant changes including a shift
to a more diverse population base (Brown and Schafft 2011; Perrier-Cor-
net 2002). However, these spaces remain highly heteronormative, empha-
sizing nuclear (heterosexual) family lives and stereotypical gender roles
and interactions which remain unquestioned (Little 2003; Little and Pan-
elli 2007). As shown by Campbell, Bell, and Finney (2006) in the Anglo-
Saxon context and Saugeres (2002) in the French one, they are still closed
environments where traditional hetero-masculinity is pervasive. Recent
studies suggest that today the invisibility of homosexuality in rural areas
is changing (Gray 2009). However, during the time period when both the
American and French informants grew up (i.e., 1950s to 1990s), it was not
the case. For the majority of our interviewees, insults such as “fag” or
“pédé” were clearly disparaging yet the meaning of homosexuality was
undefined. Most of the older participants (who grew up in the 1950s and
1960s) had not heard these terms until college. Even among the youngest
respondents, the meaning of these terms was unclear into their teenage
years. 2 For example, Guillaume, 3 a French respondent in his early twen-
ties recalled: “‘Pédé’ for me was just an insult. Because of the way and in
the circumstances it was said, it couldn’t be anything else than an insult. I
did not identify myself with being gay. Homosexuality? I don’t remem-
ber my parents ever mentioning it.” Tyler, an American respondent in his
early thirties, also recalled being more confused about his feelings be-
cause same-sex attraction and desires were not spoken of: “Later I real-
ized, you know, it had to do with my attraction also, and it was maybe
teenage years, and you know . . . there was a little bit of confusion,
because nobody was talking about it, there was not a lot of open discus-
sion or acceptance.” Not knowing about homosexuality contributed to
Tyler’s isolation, as it did for Dan, another American respondent in his
late teens. Dan described his feelings when he first self-identified as gay:
“I don’t know . . . sad, lonely, maybe because I didn’t know any other gay
people, like my friends knew about it and they were cool with it, but . . .
they weren’t gay . . . so I was hanging out with them and everything, but
I didn’t know any other gay people.” Like Dan, all participants—regard-
less of nationality or age—suffered from a lack of role models when
growing up in the country. Jean-Pierre, a French respondent in his late
thirties, said:
I think I would have liked to have somebody to listen to me and to
whom I could tell that there was something that was worrying me, to
ask if I was normal or if I was not. Somebody who could have told me
that homosexuality was not a disease or the end of the world; some-
body who could have answered all the questioned I had.
The experience of Guillaume, Tyler, Dan, and Jean-Pierre emphasizes

that despite the relative visibility of homosexuality in both French and
American broader society in the 1980s and 1990s, it remained invisible in
rural families. In the rural areas where they grew up, heterosexuality was
socially constructed in everyday social interactions, whereas homosexu-
ality was left undefined.
As a result, most participants internalized homosexuality as some-
thing unreal that only happens “far away.” When asked how he learned
about homosexuality, Sam explained:
Through movies and through TV shows and I think a lot of it too was
because of gay jokes. Nobody ever made the joke at me, and it made
that thing being so out there, like something they only do on TV, it is
made up, it is in the books, it is not real.
Like Sam, all participants formed their initial understandings of homo-
sexuality and its representations through popular culture artifacts. Popu-
lar culture—that is, television shows and movies—became a major source
of information for these young men eager to understand their same-sex
desires. However, in most cases if not all, discourses carried by these
media presented homosexual characters as effeminate. Like other rural
gay men whose experiences have been described in the literature (Loffre-
da 2000; Fellows 1996) our participants struggled with the cultural mes-
sage that homosexuality is effeminate. Tyler, a young American, ex-
plained:
I think when I was a kid I only heard about the negative aspects, people
thought that those things would only happen in the big cities, and if I
saw any representations in a movie or on TV, drag queens or men
wearing tight pink things, that was really unappealing to me, and I was
like, “That’s not me, and I don’t want that, so how can I be gay?”
Yannick, a French man in his late twenties, also described his confusion
when facing images and representations of homosexuality on television:
I learned what homosexuality was through television—it was really
my window to the rest of the world—with gay pride parades that they
were showing. . . . That was always a big moment at home because it
gave everyone opportunities to be openly homophobic. For me, gay
pride parades were giving a negative image of homosexuality. [What I
felt watching gay pride parades] is complicated. I could identify with
the whole thing, but the images that were displayed—only men
dressed up as women—and these images did not reflect who I was. So,
if you like, I could identify myself with the context, but not with the
form. . . . So, it was complicated because I was thinking that I might be
gay, but at the same time I might not be because I don’t dress up like a
girl.
As suggested by Eribon (1999), subscribing to artistic, literary, and cine-

matographic models to build one’s homosexual identity can represent a
way out of social and family models overwhelmingly shaped by the
heterosexual order. However, the discourse that conflates effeminacy and
homosexuality in these models (or at least the ones to which the partici-
pants had access) did not help them to accept and make sense of their
desires. This intermingling of effeminacy and homosexuality reflects the
dominant discourse existing in both French and American societies,
whether through homophobic discourses or cultural representations (Eri-
bon 1999; Halperin 2007). Among respondents too, this image of “la folle”
in France and “the queen” in the United States was central to their under-
standing of homosexuality. Consequently, this image is experienced as
an imposition, a forced identity which they not only did not recognize in
or as themselves but one from which they needed to distance themselves
conceptually (Le Talec 2008).
In heteronormative rural spaces, social interactions also reminded
participants that effeminacy was not appropriate for boys. In this sense
the conceptual distancing in which they engaged was reinforced through
real and immediate experiences. Yannick recalled a particularly painful
episode of his teenage years when other boys threw stones at him calling
him a “fag.” He explained: “This kind of episode only happened once,
and this was really the most difficult episode to handle, but most of the
time it was comments, and it was always once in a while, but it was
always there, always underlying.” For Yannick, these comments consti-
tuted a permanent underlying pressure reminding him of his difference
and of the threat of effeminacy. When reflecting on his teen experience,
Martin, an American in his mid thirties, explained that he also under-
stood the indirect message that masculine norms should be observed and
maintained. He stated:
I got a very strong sense that it was wrong for a boy to [sic] being
artistic. Like I said, I just felt pressure that if I was to be accepted I had
to act like this, I had to act the way every other boy I knew acted.
When asked how he could tell that it was not appropriate for a boy to be
artistic, Martin mentioned that, “It was just because of the comments,”
and a sense gained from how “people were looking at you and speaking
about you.” Therefore, whether openly stated or not, expressions or be-
haviors denigrating effeminacy were clearly coercive and all our infor-
mants understood and internalized that message.
In these heteronormative rural spaces—where homosexual practices
are almost invisible and available representations conflate homosexuality
and effeminacy—there was an inherent contradiction between accepting
one’s same-sex desires and creating an integrated gay sexual identity.
CONCEPTUAL MIGRATION: “BECOMING GAY”

BUT NOT “EFFEMINATE”
The first migration noted by these respondents was that of conceptually

distancing themselves from the most common signifier of being gay—
effeminacy. While a significant number of participants interacted with
effeminate (assumed gay) men during high school, others recalled that
observing how these individuals were ostracized encouraged them to
distance themselves from such men.
Jean-Pierre, a gay man in his late thirties, remembered a high school
counterpart who was the subject of (mainly male students’) derogatory
comments:
At this time, I did not accept who I was, and, because in my class there
was another guy who was gay. . . . He was very effeminate, so I think
my difficulty to come to terms with my sexuality was also coming from
the rejection of that, from the feminine appearance of this guy, of this
individual.
Guillaume, a younger man in his early twenties, also recalled a similar
experience:
I remember this student, because he was effeminate, because he was
gay, it was not accepted by others, so . . . obviously it did not encourage
me to say I was gay. He was called a fag, a girl, all the usual insults that
we hear about homosexuals.
Jean-Pierre and Guillaume did not identify with these two students be-
cause they perceived themselves as masculine, even as they started con-
sidering the possibility of being gay. For them, being a man and being
effeminate meant being constituted as appropriate targets for others’ crit-
icism because effeminacy in men was viewed as a departure from tradi-
tional gender expectations.
When asked if he had ever been involved in a relationship with an
effeminate gay man, Thierry, a student who recently came out to his
family, answered:
Yes, it already happened to me. . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know if we
can speak about degrees because . . . I don’t know . . . but to the point to
bring someone effeminate home . . . if I am really in love, I think it
would bother me, but I would do it. It would bother me because it
would be someone who would be stigmatized because of his sexuality
and people would see him only through that. I think it’s mainly be-
cause of that [that it would bother me to bring him home].
Here, being effeminate means being identified and recognized by others
as being gay, and eventually being rejected. It also means being visible as
gay and therefore confronting rural heteronormativity. With this per-
spective, most participants developed negative feelings toward effemi-
nate gay men. For example, Michel, a closeted gay man in his mid-50s
who still works the land with his parents, gave the following definition of
a “queen”:
It’s someone really “maniéré” (mannered), I don’t know how to put
it . . . someone really mannered, yelling, just acting crazy! Personally, I
don’t do it. I am manly and I would not like to be effeminate. If a man
is effeminate I don’t flirt with him, I don’t like him.
Michel’s perception of a queen reflects the general perception of other
French informants. For them, “unefolle” is a gay man whose behavior is
ceremonious, precious, and at times dramatic. “Les folles” are eccentric
individuals who do not follow traditional gender expectations, and there-
fore who disturb “normal life.”
Not finding effeminate gays attractive was not specific to French inter-
viewees. The majority of American informants also expressed their reluc-
tance to get involved with an effeminate gay man. As John, a man in his
early fifties, explained:
I was entertained by the drag queens, but I had no inclination in dress-
ing up like a drag, and I was not attracted to the drag queens or the
very effeminate men in the bars. I wanted a man, I wanted somebody
with hair, and blisters, and dirty clothes . . . and even smelly.
This distancing from effeminate gay men was expressed by men from
different generations. Jordan, a young man in his mid twenties, described
a character from Another Gay Movie:
That guy who has all these little outfits, that kind of guy, not to be
stereotypical or anything . . . but . . . I don’t know. I am not attracted to
a guy who would be wearing a feather boa or wears a big triangle shirt
or who is extremely, extremely effeminate. I like guys who are guys,
who are masculine. If I wanted extremely feminine or whatever I
would date women.
Jordan echoes the ideas expressed earlier by French participants. He is
not attracted to effeminate men because he is not attracted to women—
for him an effeminate man does not behave like a man, but a woman. The
fact that masculine men are perceived as “normal” whereas effeminate
men are perceived as “abnormal” is also stressed in Tyler’s comment
when asked to describe his boyfriend:
He is . . . very normal. He is not effeminate at all. He wears T-shirts and
shorts like any college town guy, some of his mannerisms and speech
patterns are sometimes a little bit gay, but his interests are similar to
mine. We are both interested in art, music, language, culture, and not
so much at . . . well he would do better than me at watching a football
game.
Tyler considers his partner (Sam) “very normal,” a typical college stu-
dent, despite some mannerisms and speech patterns. Even if Sam enjoys
“art, music, language and culture,” interests not necessarily associated
with traditional rural masculinity (Campbell, Bell, and Finney, 2006), he
is also able to enjoy a football game. Therefore, by stressing traditional
masculine interests and behaviors, Tyler defines Sam as fitting the image
of what constitutes a “normal” masculine guy.
All participants in this study identified themselves as masculine men,
and distanced themselves from effeminacy. This distancing often left
them with little recourse to establish an integrated identity as rural and
gay, prompting desires for spatial migration.
SPATIAL MIGRATION: EXPERIENCING URBAN GAY SPACE
Cities have become catalysts in the construction of contemporary gay

cultures whereas rural places have commonly been contrasted as cultural
vacuums where homosexuality is maligned and/or marginalized (Al-
drich 2004; Knopp 1998; Mort 1995). Indeed, the association between
homosexuality and the city has become so widespread in Western culture
that the rural-urban distinction has become embedded in gay conscious-
ness (Binnie 2004; Johnston and Longhurst 2010). Parallels between socio-
psychological and geographical journeys have been drawn whereby iso-
lated and lonely rural gay men move to urban centers to explore their
same-sex desires and come to feel part of a community in urban space
(Eribon 1999).The binary construction of the urban and the rural was a
recurring theme in the data. 4 Moving permanently to the city had crossed
the minds of all gay men interviewed, and all had been to the city tempo-
rarily. Some had sporadic excursions into urban gay spaces while others
stayed and worked in the city for several years.
For the vast majority of our informants, moving to the city became a
major objective, for some even an obsession. Throughout high school,
when dealing with his same-sex attraction and desire, Sam fantasized
about life in the city:
After high school I came here [rural college town], and it was so weird
because during my senior year in high school I kept telling myself “I
have got to deal with this, I have got to come out, I have got to . . .” I
don’t know why but I had this fantasy, I wanted to move to a big city
and there I would be happy, I would find people that would be accept-
ing of it and I would be fine.
For the French participants, the city represented not only the possibility
to explore same-sex desires, but also was constructed as the only place
where it was possible to come to terms with these desires. According to
Yannick, going to an urban center was a necessary rite of passage for
finding one’s identity. He noted:
Fucking hell, actually it was like an obsession. I worked all summer

long to be able to buy me a car and my only goal was to take the car to
go out. It was very stressful, you know, because you don’t know where
you are going, I was just leaving the place where I grew up, and then
you discover your first gay club.
Consistent with previous studies (Chauncey 1994; Valentine and Skelton
2003), interviewees perceived the city’s racial, cultural, and social diver-
sity as contributing to openness to difference, including for the gay life-
style. According to informants, this appeal is also due to its potential for
anonymity, something not possible in the country. In the city, partici-
pants assume that the anonymity resulting from the larger population
makes life easier for gay men—that they can separate professional and
private lives to have two or more distinct and separate social identities
(e.g., professional, religious, sexual). Contrasting his experience living in
a large metropolitan center after growing up in a village of 650 inhabi-
tants, Yannick, a French informant mentioned above, explained:
It’s [rural space] different from the city because of the close-minded-
ness on certain issues, and also the fear of others’ opinion. In the coun-
try, there are fewer inhabitants, you know, anything you say is going to
spread in an afternoon. There’s always this fear, this pressure. . . .
There’s a very strong pressure on your private life, because you know
that everybody is going to be aware of it. In the city . . . it’s not that
there are no bonds between people, but you just don’t give a shit what
your neighbor does! Not in the country.
Like other American and French informants, Yannick feels that it is pos-
sible for gay men to “disappear” into urban space, a feat not possible in a
small town or a village. Furthermore, like them he was drawn to the city
not only because of the presence of a visible number of gay men, but also
due to the invisibility of the individual gay man. Thus, they go to “a large
urban area to develop [a] gay identity,” as bluntly stated by Marc, an
American participant. Echoing findings from Valentine and Skelton
(2003), the existence of a gay scene with a gay community and easily
identified gay spaces (bars, bookstores, clubs) gave our research partici-
pants an alternative gay cultural framework where they could express
their identity, and have it validated by others. Thus, they were able to
negotiate both becoming visible as members of a group while remaining
invisible as individual gay men.
The city does not stand as an end point in informants’ life itineraries
(Annes and Redlin 2012). The relationship that these men entertain with
the city in general, and the gay scene in particular, is ambivalent, in that
the gay scene which provides the freedom to explore sexual identity may
also “precipitate a forced transition to a lesbian or gay sexual identity”
(Valentine and Skelton 2003, 857). In our study, both French and
American interviewees also found aspects of the city and the gay scene
(which they perceived, at least initially, as completely imbricated) as neg-

ative. As explained by Knopp and Brown (2003, 422) “queer migrants to
large metropolitan areas . . . do not arrive as tabula rasa when it comes to
their various forms of resistance,” on the contrary “they bring with them
world views, values, traditions, memories and experiences.” The learning
of norms and codes governing the urban gay scene was challenging for
men who grew up isolated in a heteronormative space, and, in some
instances, went against the value systems they internalized growing up
in the country. While in many ways benefiting from the search for an
integrated gay identity through spatial migration, these interviewees
were confronted, yet again, with a construct of “gayness” in which they
did not recognize themselves.
EVOLVING AN INTEGRATED IDENTITY THROUGH

DISTANCE AND MIGRATION
It is important to understand that both conceptual and spatial migrations

are concurrent and mutually influential. That is, we can see in these life
stories the transitory nature of both spatial and conceptual migrations
through which our informants integrated rural and gay identities.
Once moving to the city (whether temporarily or definitively) and
exposed to the gay scene, our research participants both explored and
rejected what they found. For American informants, urban gay life and
community were often perceived as superficial, emphasizing short-lived
sexual encounters and physical appearance (that is, clothing and hair-
cuts). This perception of the urban as superficial challenged their at-
tempts to create themselves as “gay men,” and complicated their accep-
tance of non-heteronormative masculinities. This was a theme which
emerged in John’s narrative. John spent his childhood and teenage years
in small rural towns, but migrated to a large city in the American West to
start vocational school. There he started to look for a gay life:
When I started venturing around [the city], I learned at that point
where the gay bars were, and where the gay guys hanged [sic] out, so I
started going to those places, started meeting guys, so it would be at
that point, I was in my early 20s, that I had my first intimate relation-
ship. There was still a lot of alcohol involved, but it was more than
playing around. It felt like love to me. It is what I thought love would
be or should be. We cared about each other, and had no qualms about
being real close and holding and touching, playing around, experi-
menting.
At the same time as John reflects on his first experiences in the gay com-
munity he is dismissive of what he describes as the “silliness” of the
scene, saying:
So I dropped out of vocational school, I got a job as a waiter, earned

very very good money, started going to the gay bars a lot, buy all kind
of clothing, started to fall into the whole routine of being a young gay
man and trying to be attractive, paying a lot of money for haircuts and
hair styles, and clothes, even having a degree of competition with a
couple of other guys that I knew from the bars, showing up in the bars
with the most recent fashion, and all this silliness that takes so much
time.
All American informants emphasized the perceived pressure to conform
to a particular dominant gay masculine identity, mainly based on body
image and appearance.
For French participants, the perceived effeminacy of the urban gay
community proved the greatest obstacle to involvement and identifica-
tion with an urban gay identity. Michael describes this ambivalence—he
believes that, on the one hand, living in the city would have made it
easier to be gay and to accept one’s homosexuality, but on the other hand,
living in the city would have rendered him effeminate. He posits:
I think if I would have grown up in a city, I would have come to terms
with my sexuality earlier, but I would have become a queen. When I
went to Paris, I came back looking like a queen. I think that if I had
grown up in a city, I would have become an effeminate gay man.
The perceived deterministic nature of the city appears clearly in this com-
ment. According to Michael, the city “makes you” effeminate, and being
an effeminate gay remains unacceptable in his eyes. For him, the urban
gay culture does not reflect how he sees himself—as a man like any other.
Many French informants concurred with this deterministic discourse in
that they felt their identity in the city was being altered rather than freely
expressed. Most altered their physical appearance to reflect norms exist-
ing in the urban gay community. Speaking about coming out to his moth-
er, Michael explained:
[When] I told my mum, I was just coming back from my trip to Paris. I
had been to several European cities, but Paris . . . it was my first vaca-
tion on my own. I stayed near the gay district, so I discovered all the
places and I came back with an entire [sic] different look. I dyed my
hair, I was wearing tight clothes, I was the perfect queen!
The experience of transforming one’s old (rural) physical appearance and
adopting the one privileged in the newly discovered gay community was
also described by Thierry: “Let’s say that when you start being involved
in the gay community, you . . . you become quickly really . . . you become
a complete cliché, so you start getting rid of your old clothes and you buy
new ones. More and more I started looking like a clone of what I could
see in clubs. It’s only when I met my partner that I came back to what I
was, I left all of that.”
As noted by Thierry, for many of our interviewees, time in the city

was a necessary evolution in gay identity formation, but engagement
with the urban also required another form of distancing or migration. For
many, in order to solidify and integrate both rurality and homosexuality
in their sense of self, time in the city resulted in the desire to come back to
“what I was” by returning to rural community and rural space. Such a
finding highlights Gorman-Murray’s (2007a) critique of unidirectional
approaches to gay migration which suggests a singular and simple move-
ment from the rural to the urban. Despite the city’s importance in the
initial development of gay identity for most (and, in particular, for older
informants), the city is better identified as a transitional space, rather than
one which creates or “fixes” sexual identity. Gay identity development
seems to rely on back-and-forth movements between different scales and
environments, 5 and both gay subjects’ departure from and their return to
rural areas are important in the process of identity construction (Knopp
2006).
CONCLUSION: MIGRATION AND RETURN
The migrations of the gay rural men described in this chapter reflect both
conceptual and spatial traversing of multiple oppositional dualisms in
Western discourse. They move through various forms of acceptance and
rejection of common tropes about rurality and urbanity, masculinity and
femininity, and heterosexuality and homosexuality. At the conclusion of
this research, eighteen of the men had returned to rural areas. These men
attested to reaching equilibrium in their sense of identity, in that they had
created an “integrated whole” across dualisms. Many asserted both gay
and rural identities, a homosexual identity in a heteronormative space.
Perhaps most importantly, they noted that this equilibrium was often
achieved through a successful long-term and exclusive relationship. In
this way, many of these men integrated both rural heteronormative val-
ues with gay visibility in their daily lives.
However imperfectly, their integrations performed in the quest for
identity reflect larger social constructs, as well as personal migrations.
According to Rubin (1984, 151), “modern Western societies appraise sex
acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value.” In this hierarchal
value system, marital, exclusive, and reproductive heterosexual relation-
ships occupy the top part of the pyramid, whereas unmarried, promiscu-
ous, non-reproductive homosexual ones stand at the bottom. She writes:
“Stable, long-term lesbian and gay male couples are verging on respect-
ability, but bar dykes and promiscuous gay men are hovering just above
the groups at the very bottom of the pyramid” (Rubin 1984, 151). Want-
ing to be involved in long-relationships and emphasizing the conformity
between their sexual and gender identity could be interpreted as a way to
“move up the scale of values” in order to gain legitimacy. In this way,

these men demonstrate not only their acceptance of a gay identity, but
also their acceptance of rural norms and values.
NOTES
1. The major goal of this study is to assess how, growing up in the country, gay men
build their sense of self and subjectivity. Therefore, at the time of their interview, some
informants no longer lived in the country. Nonetheless they spent their entire child-
hood and adolescence in a rural environment.
2. Overall, younger participants tend to have learned about homosexuality earlier
than their older peers, even if they did not know much about homosexuality when
they were growing up in the country. This is mainly because homosexuality became
more visible in the broader society and also because they could more easily access a
wider variety of information through the Internet.
3. For this study, the names of all the participants as well as the places where they
grew up and currently live are confidential, and all participant names are pseudo-
nyms.
4. In this way, rural gay men themselves often perpetuate the rural-urban dualism.
5. For a complete discussion of the idea of the city as a transitional space, rather
than one which creates or “fixes” informants’ sexual identities, see Annes and Redlin
(2012).
NINE
“It Doesn’t Even Feel Like It’s Being
Processed by Your Head”
Lesbian Affective Home Journeys to and within
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Gordon Waitt and Lynda Johnston
Townsville is my home now, but it’s not where I belong, if that makes
sense. I’m still so attached to Perth and Western Australia, like I consid-
er that my home. I lived there for over 30 years, so it’s been the primary
experience of other places. And still comes back to me in so many
ways. . . . I sort of feel those pangs of homesickness, and sometimes
unexpectedly, like you’re zoning out in front of the telly and they’ll
have some sort of story on Perth and so I get an emotional reaction.
You feel it in your heart, like it doesn’t even feel like it’s being pro-
cessed by your head, it just like catches your chest. . . . I always talk
about when I die I’ll go home. I asked in the Will for my ashes to be
scattered all over a beach in Fremantle. I feel like I’m really connected
to that place, but at the same time I don’t want to go back, at this point
in time.
As this quote from Sharni suggests, feelings for home are embodied, felt,
often contradictory, and connected to one’s sense of belonging and sub-
jectivity. We begin with this quote because it is a vivid illustration of
what we address in this chapter, in other words, the relationship between
mobility, homemaking, emotion, and lesbian subjectivities. Sharni and
her partner Tegan (pseudonyms) are a lesbian couple, and at the time of
the interviews (2005) Tegan was six months pregnant. Their in-depth life
narratives help us to understand the felt and lived experiences of place,
143
144 Gordon Waitt and Lynda Johnston
power, and sexualized subjectivities when lesbians move beyond the me-
tropolis (Phillips, Watt, and Shuttleton 2000) to find home and become
parents. 1
Townsville, while a small regional “city,” is often constituted by vari-
ous socio-cultural practices and beliefs that reflect and sustain a particu-
larly Australian “rural idyll.” For example, the tourism industry posi-
tions Townsville as a destination from which to experience the “Great
Barrier Reef, World Heritage Wet Tropics rainforest to the dirt and dust
of the Australian outback” (Townsville Holidays 2012). Furthermore, the
rural figure of the “redneck” (a derogatory term for uneducated, white
farm laborers) is always present in media coverage of events related to
sexuality (see Riggs’s [2000] discussion of the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation’s Four Corners program aired on July 17, 2000; Mortison’s
[2006] discussion of the allegations that Brokeback Mountain would not be
screened in Townsville; and Baskin’s [2010] response to letters that imply
which types of people belong, and who do not belong, following the
announcement of an inaugural Pride Festival in September 2010).
Drawing on Massey (2005, 141) we argue that any understanding of
Townsville must not be constrained by notions of boundaries, nor by
categories of “rural” or “urban,” and “gay” or “straight,” but rather must
recognize place as an “event . . . a constellation of process rather than a
thing.” In other words, the event of place stresses its “throwntogether-
ness” (Massey 2005, 140), a process involving sets of negotiations be-
tween pasts and presents, human and non-human, here and elsewhere.
Here, subjectivities are conceived as configured within a nested assem-
blage of relational processes across metropolitan and non-metropolitan
contexts that are simultaneously cultural, social, and physiological, rather
than within bounded regions that are self-contained and configured by a
pre-given gender order. We aim, therefore, not to reinforce boundaries
between discursive constructions of city and country, home and away, but
to explore the affective and emotional connections across and within these
constructions in relation to movement, provincial places, home, and par-
enthood. We are inspired by the work of Gorman-Murray (2009b, 454)
who investigates the “emotionally embodied nature of queer migration”
with a focus on “the body as a vector of movement, and how embodied
emotions insinuate into migration processes” (Gorman-Murray 2009b,
422). In our case study, Tegan and Sharni discuss their embodied emo-
tions and desires which shape their intimate attachments to place and
people in Townsville. The three themes we focus on are: leaving home to
find oneself; movements between homes; homemaking and the capacity
to stay im/mobile.
The empirical data for this chapter are drawn from the research pro-
ject “Home and Away” which was designed with the Queensland AIDS
Council and Townsville’s LGBT Anti-Violence Project in 2005. In collabo-
ration with the Queensland AIDS Council, Townsville was noted as a
“It Doesn’t Even Feel Like It’s Being Processed by Your Head” 145
region lacking comprehensive research into sexuality. The project used

life narrative interviews and analysis (Wiles, Rosenberg, and Kearns
2005) which offer a way of understanding more about feelings of (not)
belonging, queer subjectivities and mobility. Townsville, with a popula-
tion of around 150,000 people, is located on the coast, over 1,000 km north
from Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland. Townsville is not framed
as a regional city with a “gay and lesbian neighborhood,” nor is Towns-
ville part of the gay and lesbian tourist circuit of northern Queensland
that includes Cairns and Port Douglas. The “gay scene” in Townsville
relies upon a number of lively informal networks that temporarily queer
space, a couple of cafes, and one commercial venue, a pub/club called
The Sovereign.
There is a growing emphasis on the need to explore the links between
mobility, homemaking, emotion, belonging, and subjectivities (see, for
example, Ahmed et al. 2003; Blunt 2007; Gorman-Murray 2007a, 2009b;
Johnston and Longhurst 2012; Knopp 2004; Luzia 2010). Attentive to the
body in entangled space-power relations, this work successfully troubles
thinking around migration and sexuality, and the taken-for-granted
push-pull explanations of rural-to-urban migration. In the case of sexual-
ity and migration, there have been calls for what Knopp (2004) denotes a
“queer quest for identity,” that is attentive to a more sensually attuned
body, which takes accounts of, and learns to negotiate space through, a
range of sensory and affective registers. Gorman-Murray’s (2007a, 2009b)
account of sexuality and migration is a good example of this strand of
theorizing in human geography that involves the minded-body; and in
particular the senses, emotions, habits, and memories. Insights are pro-
vided to a multiplicity of migration patterns and the conflicting logics of
multiple emotional bonds that link individuals to their origins and desti-
nations.
While this shift to embodiment draws on different epistemologies, a
common theme cutting across this work is a critique of what Halberstam
(2005) termed “metro-centric” discourse; that is, explanations that are
locked into dualistic understandings that contrast the idyllic urban “gay
lifestyle” of the city with the purgatory of a “conservative lifestyle” of the
rural. Consequently, the “big city” is often taken-for-granted as a home-
coming for the transgender, lesbian, or gay subject, in contrast to non-
heterosexual subjectivities always being constituted as “out of place” in
rural places pre-configured as homophobic. In this chapter we respond to
Gorman-Murray’s (2007a) call for more empirical work to explore how
sexuality is entangled with attachment, movement, homemaking, com-
munity, family, belonging, and emotion.
We are interested in the affective meanings that define bodies and
places. We are concerned with affect as the reflexive and discursive ca-
pacity of place to impact upon emotional experiences. Hence, place is not
endowed with deterministic qualities. Instead, the process of experienc-
ing affect is cumulative, the outcome of a history of interaction between

bodies (human and non-human) and places, through which an individu-
al’s embodied history gives the capacity for emotions to arise. Thereby,
we recognize the variability and particularity of individual emotions. In
order to do this we turn to the work of Probyn (2003, 2004) to articulate
the relations between affect and emotions as central to the reciprocal
relationships between bodies, subjectivities, and places. Such an ap-
proach enables us to pay attention to what the body can do, rather than
what it is assumed to be. Familial relations, we argue, are fundamental
aspects of embodied sexuality—identities, feelings, desires, and intima-
cy—and as embodied histories, are woven into narratives of displace-
ment and replacement. The decision to migrate, or not, may vary accord-
ing to the (hetero)normative values of home and the (re)positioning of
home and family members over the life course. Equally important, affec-
tive and emotional ties among family members need to be understood
spatially, because they are often experienced through the place that peo-
ple call home.
As acknowledged by Luzia (2010), lesbian parents and their embodied
and gendered homemaking practices are under-researched in rural and
regional Australia. Yet, as Gabb (2008) suggests, these families provide an
excellent entry point for empirical research because they trouble various
hetero- and homonormative narratives about migration and homemak-
ing. The chapter thus unfolds as follows. To provide a conceptual frame-
work, we begin by reviewing a range of literature on migration, sexual-
ity, home, affect, and emotion. The present study advances these bodies
of work by focussing how the intersection between migration and sexual-
ity can be understood through the experience of affect of place, which
gives meaning to the emotional experience of home. We conceptualize
affect as a discursive product; the reciprocal relationship of how embodi-
ment shapes space, and space shapes embodiment. We then describe the
methods and location of our case study. Drawing on narratives of re-
membrance of parental homes, movement, and homemaking, our inter-
pretation contains three sections that all feed into each other: leaving
home to find oneself; movements between homes; homemaking and the
capacity to stay im/mobile.
MIGRATION, FAMILY, AND HOMEMAKING
Feminist geographers have illustrated the spatiality of subjectivity, and

how migration offers possibilities for the transformation of self through
how movement can evoke a sense of belonging as well as alienation. For
instance, Ahmed (1999, 342) argues that “migration narratives involve . . .
a spatial reconfiguration of an embodied self.” Silvey (2004, 498) explains
that feminist migration studies, “rather than seeing identities as fixed
definable characteristics of migrations . . . have increasingly emphasised

the constructedness of identities, and the ongoing nature of the process.”
Rather than understanding migration in determinist formulations of
push/pull factors, a feminist view of subjectivity as spatially mediated
turned migration studies towards an understanding of the self as perfor-
mative, constituted through a range of intersecting, sometimes compet-
ing, forces and processes.
Some of the first sexuality-focused geographical scholarship was par-
ticularly concerned with the specific manifestations of how the ideology
of heterosexuality policed sexual desires in the parental home, creating
mobile subjects. For instance, the work by Johnston and Valentine (1995)
examines the experiences and practices of lesbians in parental homes as
sites of oppression and subversion. Understanding sex and the body as
discursively produced by the effects of various institutional practices and
discourses, they argue that in some homes, particularly heteronormative
homes, “there is not the repetition or redoubling of the role that is neces-
sary for the lesbian category to be expressed” (Johnston and Valentine
1995, 103). In this example, lesbians may become mobile subjects because
of the ways they are policed by discourses defining appropriate gendered
and sexual behavior in the parental home. The movement here is trig-
gered by becoming a “stranger” in their childhood home.
By including subjectivities as important research foci, feminist geogra-
phers argue that sexuality may play a part in the migration decision of
non-heterosexuals, alongside how the political, economic, and social may
shape mobility. Indeed, Puar, Rushbrook, and Schein (2003, 386) argue
that “nonnormative sexuality is often tantamount to spatial displace-
ment.” As argued by Knopp (2004), it is important to take seriously the
migration narratives of non-heterosexual lives, because of how sexual
subjectivities are entangled with and mediated by spatial mobility.
Recent research on the relationship between sexuality and migration
has built on ideas of performativity but pushed further into the body.
While this shift to embodiment draws on different epistemologies, a com-
mon theme cutting across this work is a critique of linear understandings
of migration from the familial home to the imaginary belongings of “gay
homelands” (for example, London’s Soho, San Francisco’s Castro, or Syd-
ney’s Darlinghurst) to multiple, peripatetic, and ongoing journeys. As
outlined by Knopp (2004), Fortier (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006), and Gor-
man-Murray (2007a, 2009b) a striking feature of the discourses of migra-
tion-as-homecoming is how “home” is devoid of individual bodies. The
myth of the gay homeland assumes any (lesbian and gay) body will feel
at home (Howe 2001). Equally, the conceptualization of migration-as-
homecoming is devoid of the materiality of home-making: the economic
capital and the daily routines. Gorman-Murray (2009b, 444) centers bod-
ies in his analysis of migration. He advocates that emotions are integral to
migration, and hence to shaping im/mobility. He argues if
migration is predicated on the performativity of embodied sexuality,

then . . . migration is predicated on bodily desires and emotions, in-
cluding yearnings to test new sexual identities, practices and ways of
being; finding, consolidating or leaving intimate relationships; and
seeking communities of belonging.
Drawing on work in emotional geographies (Davidson, Smith, and Bondi
2005), Gorman-Murray (2009b) understands emotions as spatial, discur-
sive, embodied, practiced, and narrated experiences of mobilities that
reflect belonging and exclusion. By placing bodies and emotions at the
center of his analysis, he examines the crucial role of comfort and love in
mediating mobility and homemaking practices. Knopp (2004), Fortier
(2001) and Gorman-Murray (2007a) all confer that in a hegemonic hetero-
normative context, the quest for a self beyond the framework of norma-
tive heterosexism is never achieved but suspended between origin and
destination, departure and arrival, and being “in” and “out” the closet.
Also pertinent is Probyn’s (2003) theorization of embodied, spatial,
and performative subjectivities that helps us to unpack the affective and
emotional acts of im/mobility, home, homemaking, and belonging. Fol-
lowing Probyn (2004) we do not agree with Massumi’s (1987) interpreta-
tion of Deleuze’s claim that affect is an unstructured, preconscious capac-
ity for emotion, while emotion is a socially constructed “translation” of
affect. As Probyn (2004, 28) argues “[I]t would be convenient to say that
emotion refers to the social expression of affect, and affect in turn is the
biological and physiological experience of it.” Such arguments are, how-
ever, circular; there is a clear elision in such arguments between “the
social,” “the linguistic,” and “the subjective” (Probyn 2004). Instead affect
and emotion are embodied practices that shape space, and are shaped
spatially.
Following Probyn (2003), we understand the process of experiencing
affect as cumulative, and therefore an embodied historical process of
interaction between human and non-human bodies, through which the
particularity of individual emotions arise. We conceive affective registers
as having a significant impact on connecting and disconnecting to places,
and being able to call a place home, or not. If affect is both biologically
and socially constructed, then the affect of place involves the interconnec-
tion of bodies (human and non-human), embodied histories, cultural
norms, and material worlds that constitute social experience. Affects as-
sociated with places of origin and destinations are conceived to shape a
sense of belonging. We therefore understand belonging as a process of
identification and contestation generated by how subjects negotiate a
sense of self through emotional responses to places called “home.” This
definition of the term “belonging” allows an affective dimension to fluo-
resce that illustrates place-based connections involve not just “be-ing,”
but also reflect the yearning or “longing” for (ontological) meaning (Pro-
byn 1996).
METHODS AND LOCATION
The project was designed in collaboration with the Queensland AIDS

Council and Townsville’s LGBT Anti-Violence Project. In discussions
with the Queensland AIDS Council, Townsville was noted as a regional
city lacking comprehensive research into sexuality. Historically, Moore
(2001) argues that (homo)sexuality has been closely monitored in Towns-
ville by the police and the local print media. More recently, Cohen’s
(2000) documentary about homophobic violence in Townsville following
the bombing of the Queensland AIDS Council offices in June 1999, illus-
trated how some young men came to function as “guardians” of the
hegemonic version of Australian hetero-masculinity and heterosexual or-
der in the regional center. At another level, the paucity of research is
unfortunate because as a regional center for the mining and education
sectors, the population of Townsville is characterized by its transience,
therefore enabling possibilities for casual sex and sexual experimenta-
tion. Yet at another level, as a major garrison of the Australian army, and
“home” of the Australian National Rugby League team, the Cowboys,
Townsville is a training ground in dominant understandings of Anglo-
Australian masculinity.
This chapter draws on our analysis of the life narratives of the expec-
tant lesbian parents Sharni and Tegan. Their life narratives are drawn
from thirty-two that were recorded and transcribed from a project con-
ducted in 2005, Home and Away. This title alluded to the long-running
Australian soap opera set in the fictitious coastal-country town of Sum-
mer Bay, where heterosexuality patently frames acceptable behavior, atti-
tudes, and feelings. To explore the unfolding meaning of home through
the life course each participant was asked to narrate their migration and
homemaking practices. In each life narrative three open questions were
discussed: (1) How did you come to be living in Townsville?; (2) Describe
your idea of home; and (3) Do you consider Townsville home? Each life
narrative was conducted in the participants’ homes, and lasted for over
two hours as they shared their migration histories, coming out stories,
experience of home and decisions to move or stay. A form of narrative
analysis, termed by Gubrium and Holstein (2009, 22) “narrative ethnog-
raphy,” was employed to interpret the stories not as “factual-truthful
accounts” nor for linguistic content, but as phenomenological-interac-
tions constitutive of socio-cultural worlds. This involves close scrutiny to
not only where things were said, but listening to how things were said
through the experience of remembering and retelling.
Both women talked of their stable Anglo-Australian, middle-class

suburban family backgrounds. Similarly, both held tertiary education
qualifications, were employed in managerial positions and had lived in
Townsville for around six years. Sexuality was an integral part of their
journeys to move somewhere other than their childhood homes. In
Townsville, Sharni and Tegan had been able to realize their preference
for spacious housing by purchasing a house together in a rapidly gen-
trifying Townsville suburb. Financing their lives in Townsville required
both persons to have full-time paid employment. At the time of the inter-
view, Sharni was forty-five years of age. Tegan was thirty years of age,
and was six months pregnant.
LEAVING HOME TO FIND ONESELF: MIGRATION AS COMING OUT
Sharni’s and Tegan’s narratives premise “leaving home” as a journey

towards finding a sense of ontological security elsewhere. Sharni had
called Perth, Western Australia, home for thirty years before deciding to
leave, taking a two year trip around Australia. Sharni’s overall satisfac-
tion with life in Perth involved complex trade-offs concerning home, the
claiming of a lesbian identity for herself, and telling family friends and
work colleagues. Contradictions emerged when her self-identification
was at odds with the emotion-laden, normative values of home:
There was this real sense of dismay of sort of going back to somewhere
I felt trapped. So, I put my stuff into storage and did the big lap around
Australia for two years. After two years on the road, I just knew that I
just wasn’t ready to go home, I just, my fear was that if I went home
now I’d be there forever. Like, my family are there, and so it would be
so easy just to get back into that sort of you know, place of being.
Sharni’s narrative of mobility is through possibility for transformation,
self-reflection, transition, and self-searching that may occur moving be-
tween places. Sharni “felt trapped” and a “sense of dismay” because of
her attachment to Perth. She positioned Perth-as-home not only as an
isolated, static space, but a site of heterosexual familial relations left be-
hind. As Brown (2000, 50) argues, “resisting the heteropatriarchal script
does not just entail changing one’s attitude, behavior, dress, or style; it
means having to relocate oneself, to leave ‘home’ and reconfigure it else-
where.” Sharni’s narrative is a particular example of what Gorman-Mur-
ray (2009b) termed “coming out migration,” that is, moving for self-trans-
formation as non-heterosexual. Sharni comments:
So, I’ve been in Townsville as a consequence of some of the decisions
made on that trip. . . . I haven’t always been out. I have worked in jobs
where I’ve chose to be closeted. And, I look back with a tremendous
sense of shame. So, Townsville’s been a very powerful thing, because
when I arrived here, I thought I’m never, ever, going to do that again.
You know, this is an opportunity to be out and proud. . . . So, I live in

Townsville now. I identify as a lesbian, and that’s a really important
identification for me. I sort of plant my flag really firmly and stand
underneath it.
Through her migration narrative, Sharni expresses her shame in con-
structing a sense of self and belonging in Perth that denied her sexuality.
Through journeying to Townsville, alongside the pragmatic reasons of
outdoor activities and the cost of living, Sharni emphasizes the impor-
tance of her sexuality in constructing a sense of self and belonging. She
asserts that her identification in Townsville as a lesbian is “really impor-
tant.” For Sharni, in the socio-spatial relations of Townsville, homemak-
ing is a process tied to sexual politics and ongoing ideological contesta-
tion around the exclusion of lesbian and gay couples from full citizenship
rights. As Yuval-Davis, Kannabiran, and Vieten (2006, 1) note, identity
and citizenship politics encompass “an emotional dimension which is
central to notions of belonging.” Sharni underscores how coming out of
the closet in all dimensions of her life is spatialized as migration from
Perth to Townsville. An emotional refrain of the dynamics of pride and
shame underpins her coming out migration narrative.
Likewise, Tegan narrated her migration as a coming out story as leav-
ing her parental home in Sutherland, Sydney:
I was born into a Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist family, so there
was always a very strong Christian ideology. I was the youngest of five
children. I had very strong impressions given to me about homosexual-
ity being wrong, and I grew up in, I would say, a homophobic environ-
ment in Sutherland, Sydney. My coming out story. . . . I completed a
nursing degree, it was my first degree. And, after I finished that, I
actually worked as a volunteer in New Guinea for a year-and-a-half; I
was working on a HIV project. It was through that process that I was
actually able to come to an acceptance, which then gave me permission
to explore—both physically and also emotionally—myself. So, I sup-
pose I was about 23, and it was through probably being in an alien
environment where I was living, in an ex-pat type community, where
there’s lots of privacy, and you can get away with whatever you’re
doing. My coming out had all happened in working in remote New
Guinea, I hadn’t experienced community, gay and lesbian community.
Tegan constitutes migration as emancipation from her Christian and
homophobic heterosexual family life. Estranged from the heterosexual
culture in her parental home in Sutherland, Sydney, her narrative con-
firms Gorman-Murray’s (2009b) discussion of the “uncomfortable” match
between place and embodied sexuality. This may prompt “coming out
migration,” in other words, migrating “to know oneself as gay” (Brown
2000, 48) as recounted in many gay and lesbian autobiographies (Cant
1997; Maddison 2002; Plummer 1995). Sharni’s narrative confirms the
importance of migration in order to experiment sexually and explore
same-sex intimacies. Tegan’s coming out story confirms Knopp’s (2004)

argument about the importance of a sense of placelessness through which
to experiment sexually. Tegan describes the bodily comfort and privacy
in New Guinea, constituted as a “remote,” “alien environment,” com-
prised of social relationships where “you can get away with whatever
you’re doing.” Having “come out” in New Guinea, and coming to
Townsville to undertake a Master’s degree, a priority for Tegan when
arriving was to find like-minded others and experience “gay and lesbian
community”:
I assumed it [a gay and lesbian community] was here because it was a
larger center, and I tried to tap in quite early. I went to a local sexual
health service, and I actually was looking for a [magazine titled] Les-
bians on the Loose. I was actually looking for somewhere to live and I
thought there’ll be some kind of flatmate gay-friendly thing. And, I
was sent to the [adult] shop Sweethearts, where they have a [notice]
board. I thought then Townsville doesn’t have that much. But I only
met Sharni a week or so after being here, which then allowed me to sort
of become aware of Townsville’s networks.
Gorman-Murray (2009b, 446) classified this type of journey as “gravita-
tional group migration.” For Tegan, alongside the education motivation
for migration was the bodily comfort of actively seeking and finding
somewhere with like-minded people. Describing her migration from re-
mote New Guinea to Townsville, the possibility of finding a comfortable
setting was based on a hunch, rather than knowledge of a gay and lesbian
community in Townsville. For Tegan, Townsville represented a place
where she might be part of new affective relationships that were in-line
with her quest to be an open and political lesbian. She made a conscious
decision to be out and this meant finding and joining other out lesbians.
One of whom was Sharni.
MOVEMENTS BETWEEN HOMES: “HERE” AND “THERE,”

“PRESENT” AND “PAST”
For both Sharni and Tegan, homes and family are entangled in one an-
other but in different ways. Sharni’s sense of home is grounded in a sense
of familial ties to Perth, as the opening quote of the chapter illustrates.
Rather than leaving Perth behind, Sharni links Perth and Townsville into
a single narrative.
Narrating homes combines, at once, forces of movement and attach-
ment, as Sharni remembers her childhood home and transfers those feel-
ings to Townsville. Sharni describes her emotive attachment to Perth as
an affective experience that triggers sadness and melancholy. Sharni il-
lustrates how her embodied emotional responses to stories or images of a
place called “home” as a mobile subject is grounded in a sense of loss,
notably when she says: “I sort of feel those pangs of homesickness.” Perth
is “home” by way of heterosexual familial ties, yet it only becomes
homey under the spectre of death. In her coming home to die narrative—
“I always talk about when I die I’ll go home”—the return journey is to
finalize her life, not to enact her lesbian and parenting identities. Yet, her
attachments to Townsville are shaped by the emotional and affective
spaces of her “original” family home in Perth, and her desire to feel at
home in Townsville. Hence, for Sharni, migration cannot be conceived as
leaving the original home behind, fixing it into the past, and seeking
hominess elsewhere. Instead, as Eng (1997) suggests, home is an in-be-
tween space, both “there” and “here,” between origin and destination.
This confirms Fortier’s (2003) argument that remembering home is the
emotional work of attaching home to places and belongings. Further-
more, as Probyn (1996) argues, remembering home reveals the affective
relations or contextual capacity of home. For Sharni, these are yearnings
for comfort, relaxation, and belonging.
Similarly, Tegan illustrates how her idea of home is an oscillating
process of reassessing and reprocessing her parental family home in the
context of calling Townsville home. In this sense, homemaking combines
origin and destination to create a sense of comfort and belonging. Tegan
expresses this betweenness very clearly:
Traditionally, home meant it was my family home, where I was born
and spent the first 20 years of my life. It was a place that I could always
go to, the door’s always open. There was always food, warmth and
comfort, there was all that familiarity. And, I have never been kicked
out of home. . . . It was a base, a foundation that I felt was always going
to be there for me and I suppose in a way it is. . . . Now what does
home mean to me? It’s a very sensory thing. It’s a real inner feeling of
warmth, settled, comfort. It’s a core kind of feeling. And, it’s interesting
because since we’ve been here in Townsville, now that we’ve bought a
house together, we’ve renovated the house, we’re being very nesting;
so home’s actually been very much a focus for us. But, having said that,
we both acknowledge that home, the house that we have, would be
nothing if it wasn’t for the other person there sharing it. You know, the
house is empty and meaningless without the other person there. So
home, is not just about the physical building that we’ve both put a lot
of time and energy into, but it’s very much about our relationship.
As Cappello (1998) suggests, this space of betweenness, between “here”
and “there,” the past and the present, renders home utterly familiar, but
also disrupts fixed gender roles and identifications of home and family.
Furthermore, Ahmed (2000) argues that when leaving home is narrated
as a journey towards a new home, this may result in reinforcing the idea
of home as familiarity, comfort, and belonging. Brah (1996, 180) termed
this “homing desires.” In doing so, for Tegan, creating ontological secur-
ity in Townsville is underpinned by a longing for comfort, safety, and
becoming oneself through grounded familial relationships. Home is not

fixed to the house, but the unending homemaking practices needed to
sustain a same-sex relationship.
HOMEMAKING AND THE CAPACITY TO STAY IM/MOBILE
The emotional importance of the family unit is central to both Sharni’s

and Tegan’s narratives. Hence, as soon-to-be lesbian parents seeking to
enhance family life, feelings about Townsville are fraught with contradic-
tions. Sharni and Tegan have fears and anxieties about how gendered
norms are produced and reproduced in Townsville. As the only visible
lesbian parents-to-be in their suburb, they are fearful that their child will
face discrimination at school. They are concerned about possible reac-
tions to their child in a very heteronormative suburb. Sharni reflects:
We have all sorts of fear and anxieties about how our child is going to
assimilate into Townsville schooling. . . . I’d hate to think that our child
grew up thinking that Townsville culture was the norm. And, we’ve
spoke about—as long as it’s not overt discrimination—we’ve spoke
about lots of ways in which we might laugh about it . . . if our child’s
safety or mental health was at risk, or they weren’t happy because they
were being bullied at school, then we would certainly move from here.
And, I also acknowledge that perhaps it is a fear that’s not going to
come to fruition.
The affect of the Townsville suburbs evokes fear because of the hetero-
normative cultural family norms and embodied practices that sustain
suburbia in Townsville. As Sharni comments, she has a different relation-
ship with her suburb now she is becoming a parent:
I think most people have been very positive. Like, we feel quite confi-
dent to walk anywhere showing affection and being together. I’m a
little bit more cautious now that Tegan is pregnant. I just don’t want
any attention drawn. And there’s always incidences. Like just recently
we were walking down to the local deli down the road and this guy
shouted out: “Lemons, lemons.” . . . It certainly wasn’t hostile, it was
just unnecessary and rude. But, yeah, that sort of stuff.
For Sharni, the spaces that made Townsville “lesbian-friendly” as a
couple are not the same as those that facilitate the life of a lesbian parent.
Given her fears of being “out” in public as a lesbian parent, the affective
social construction of the family home is doubly comforting:
The house is fantastic, and keeps us here. . . . As soon as we walked in
here, we just knew, both of us, that this was the house, and I guess it’s
just been a focus for the last three years in terms of planting a garden,
putting fences up, just painting. . . . So that was a fantastic project to
share. . . . And, I think it’s also symbolic of our relationship too. We
found it together. We selected it together. It’s been a real focus and a
project. And, I think there’s a real sense of contentment that’s associat-

ed with that. I think it’s just a place of solace, really like a place where
you can come and just recharge . . . having lots of family and genera-
tions of family around. I think that’s wonderful.
Similarly Tegan underscores the importance of house-as-home in sustain-
ing same-sex parents:
To have photographs of your relationship, I think especially when
you’re in a same-sex relationship, because there’s no, there’s very rare-
ly ever any visual representation that affirms that.
Living in Townsville, where regular exposure to same-sex parenting cul-
tures is absent, the socially-constructed affect of a family life sustained
within the suburban house is that of contentment, solace, and rejuvena-
tion. As a family space, the suburban house became particularly desirable
in sustaining Sharni’s and Tegan’s parental, sexual, and familial subjec-
tivities. The suburban house-as-home was a place of security for their
family.
Furthermore, for Sharni and Tegan the affect of gay and lesbian pride
events was discussed as a priority as lesbian parents. Sharni and Tegan
describe how their capacity to stay in Townsville as lesbian parents is
premised on their ability to journey to major pride events like the Gay
Games or Sydney Mardi Gras:
Sharni: If we stay in Townsville then our number one strategy is to
actively visit gay and lesbian events. You know, we’d like to go to the
Gay Games or the Mardi Gras, and all of the events that precede Mardi
Gras, the parade or party or anything, because it’s not enough for us to
have a child who accepts that they are living in a different family. Like,
we want that to be a source of uniqueness and celebration. And, we’re
going to cultivate that as much as we can. And, I don’t think we can do
that in Townsville, for the simple reason of visibility. You know, look,
other people, it is a celebration of gay and lesbian pride and so forth.
Tegan: In order for us to enjoy and thrive living here in Townsville
we’ve identified that there are some holiday priorities for us. In doing
travel we’d like to link it in with pride events in various states, so that
when we do travel, I suppose is that having a family, our kids might
not get that kind of pride and affirmation here. We definitely want
them to be able to experience it by watching the Mardi Gras, or going
to various pride festivals, where they can actually meet other kids and
allow us to meet other parents.
For Sharni and Tegan the pride festival as family space is an important
affective site outside the home. They imagine the possibility of attending
a pride festival to provide an opportunity for their child to acquire some
familiarity with gay, lesbian, and queer cultures. This is not a simple
assertion of urban-gay/rural-straight binary. The capacity to live in
Townsville as lesbian parents is premised on leaving to attend pride
festivals that are envisaged as a family space and sustaining closer family
ties. The affect of leaving to attend a pride festival is to return to Towns-
ville as home, sustained through the same-sex parent networks and affir-
mation of queer family culture.
Furthermore, for Sharni and Tegan, their capacity to stay is based on
socially-constructed affects of “nature” and a “provincial center” on fam-
ily life in narratives that compare Townsville with Perth (Western Aus-
tralia) and Brisbane (Queensland). Sharni spoke of her appreciation of the
benefits of a tropical climate:
I just remember at the time that I left [Perth] I was working a job on the
Terrace, like St George’s Terrace is the main sort of business strip
through the central business district. And, it was always a problem. We
lived in the inner city. We lived in various sorts of gay and lesbian
areas. I just remember doing that drive down one of the major tributar-
ies into the city morning after morning and just feeling harassed and
harangued of: “Where would we park?” And, there was so much traf-
fic. And, I think one morning it just all hit me like what is this all about.
My life in Townsville is in fact becoming that as well, but I think the
lifestyle offsets it. I think when you take away the aspects of feeling
grumpy in cold weather and having to sit in bumper traffic as the rain’s
coming down and it’s dark, and you’re not at home yet. I think Towns-
ville buffers it to some extent. You know, it’s a very easy relaxed atmos-
phere, even if you might not say particularly easy.
Sharni emphasizes the ways the “affect” of the tropical climate sustains a
more relaxed atmosphere, and outdoor lifestyle for her family. She
contrasts a problematic inner-city lifestyle in Perth and almost idyllic
outdoor lifestyle in Townsville, filtered through a problematic discourse
of the “tropics.” Remembering Perth as cold, wet, and dark and feeling
“grumpy,” Sharni particularly values the warmth, blue skies, and long
periods of dry in Townsville and feeling “relaxed,” where she is striving
to make home despite the lack of visibility of other lesbian parents. Like-
wise, Tegan believed that family relationships benefit from the slower
pace in Townsville and tropical climates:
Townsville is home for the moment. We really like the lifestyle. We
went to Brisbane the other weekend, and well Brisbane’s great, you can
do all this stuff, but I don’t think I’d want to live there, because you
have to travel too far. It takes me seven minutes to get to work. We
have sunshine every day of the year. Here there are some aspects of the
lifestyle which are really enticing and that’s what I like about it, and
that’s really homely.
The affect of tropical climate constitutes a social nature which is associat-
ed with a slower pace of life, and closer family ties. Tropical nature is
produced through the prism of climate, and in this instance, constructed
as positive. Discourses of tropicality are, it has been noted, highly ambiv-
alent: “the ‘tropics’ are seen in both positive and negative terms (as a
space of abundance and fertility, as well as poverty and disease)” (Power
2009, 493). Sharni and Tegan draw on positive climatic discourses to
imagine Townsville as comfortable, relaxing and homely, thus reaffirm-
ing their decisions to move beyond the metropolis.
CONCLUSION
Narratives of migration and homemaking demonstrate the importance of

ontology that enables thinking beyond ideas that territorialize and bound
rural geographies as distinct from the urban. Migration narratives illus-
trate how places narrated as “urban” and “rural” may become woven
together over a life course. The decision to migrate, and the choice of
destinations, may be understood through an affective longing to “fit in”
and sense becoming relaxed in and through a place called “home.” The
home is saturated with affective meanings of comfort and belonging.
Family relations are crucial components of the emotional and affective
geographies of home, migration, sexuality, and belonging. Contradictory
emotions of belonging and alienation may emerge when sexual desires
are at odds with the heteronormative values of the parental home. Home
journeys enable the construction and reconstruction of the affective
meanings of home, as people refashion places both of origin and destina-
tion. Tegan and Sharni discussed their emotions concerning Townsville
as home by simultaneously linking their experiences of origins and sub-
sequent destinations. Experiences of home were always narrated as un-
folding through relations; a place always simultaneously between depar-
ture and arrival, fixity and movement, “here” and “there,” “now” and
“then.”
At the same time, our empirical focus on a two-income lesbian couple
expecting their first child beyond the metropolitan center serves to high-
light how homemaking is rendered both familiar through the reciprocal
relations between comfort and family space, as well as queer, by ruptur-
ing longstanding notions of home aligned with gender roles. Women
parenting together in Townsville are not common. For Sharni and Tegan,
as lesbian parents-to-be, the affective geographies of Townsville emerge
from the house-as-home, the tropical climate, and return journeys to
pride festivals. The affective social construction of the house-as-home is
narrated as a nurturing context. Staying in Townsville enables Tegan and
Sharni to more effectively achieve their goals of making a family home
because of the affective attributes of both the tropical climate and pos-
sibilities for return journeys to pride festivals. Staying in Townsville,
their experience of the climate is narrated in terms of contrasts with wet-
ter, cooler climates of places they have called home in the past, and a
longing for a particular quality of outdoor relationships with family
members. The tropical climate was narrated as facilitating a more relaxed

life and freedom from the stressful pace of life they experienced in cities.
The affective import from pride festivals is narrated as derived from the
capacity to build friendship networks with same-sex-parented families
beyond Townsville, and closer family ties. The affective import of joy
derived from planning future return journeys is an integral part of their
present capacity to call Townsville home. In the ongoing process of
homemaking that unfolds during a life course, the contextual capacity for
Tegan and Sharni to call Townsville home as lesbian parents relied upon
the socially-constructed affects of house-as-home, tropical climate, and
pride festivals. Affective capacity that is simultaneously a product of, and
produces, experiences of space provides crucial insights into why Sharni
and Tegan can call Townsville home, despite the lack of same-sex parents
and ongoing concerns about heteronormative ideas of home and family.
NOTE
1. Our thanks to: funding from the University of Wollongong’s Small Grant
Scheme, the Queensland AIDS Council, the Townsville’s LGBT Anti-Violence Project,
and everyone who participated in this project.
TEN
Coming Out, Coming In
Geographies of Lesbian Existence in Contemporary
Swedish Youth Novels
Jenny Björklund
Over the last decade Sweden has seen an increase in the publication of
youth novels depicting teenage girls experiencing lesbian love and com-
ing out to their families and friends. 1 The public interest in the lesbian
teenager seems to have begun with Lukas Moodysson’s blockbuster mo-
vie Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love, 1998), which I have discussed elsewhere
(Björklund 2010), and continued the year after when Marika Kolterjahn’s
coming out novel I väntan på liv (Waiting for Life, 1999) was published.
Kolterjahn’s novel was followed by at least a half-dozen youth novels
describing lesbian teenagers coming out, many of them critically ac-
claimed—for instance, both Annika Ruth Persson’s Du och jag, Marie Cu-
rie (You and I, Marie Curie, 2003) and Sofia Nordin’s Det händer nu (It
Happens Now, 2010) have been nominated for the prestigious August
Award for best children’s/youth book of the year.
Despite individual differences, the coming out novels discussed in
this chapter (see Table 10.1) are strikingly similar in terms of the protago-
nists’ trajectories in discovering lesbian desire, experiencing their first
love, and coming out to friends and family. 2 The body plays a crucial
part, and it interacts with its surrounding space, making the coming out
process material and spatial. The spatiality of the coming out process has
mostly been understood in terms of the rural-to-urban narrative (e.g.,
Halberstam 2005) but in these novels the central characters stay in the
same “small town” or “small town-like” location throughout the novel.
159
160 Jenny Björklund
Still, a kind of migration takes place within the small town setting. In the
following I map the geographies of lesbian existence in seven contempo-
rary Swedish youth novels. I discuss how the lived lesbian body moves
from a marginal location, through the union with another lesbian embod-
ied subject, to a location of centrality and acceptance. Reading the lesbian
narratives as geographies brings out their material and spatial aspects,
which sheds new light on the coming out narrative and its relationship to
embodiment, marginalization, centrality, and rural-to-urban migration.
In this context geography is understood as a description of the interac-
tions between humans and space. That is, how human bodies affect and
are affected by the spaces they inhabit. My definition of geography is
consistent with phenomenological understandings of the lived body,
which emphasize the body as the necessary condition for experience,
understanding, and knowledge. Feminist phenomenologists have used
the concept of the lived body as a way to challenge the mind-body dual-
ism underlying previous theories of sexed bodies and gendered iden-
tities, but also as a means to bring to light the body as intercorporeality.
Gail Weiss (1999, 5) argues that “[t]o describe embodiment as intercorpo-
reality is to emphasize that the experience of being embodied is never a
private affair, but is always already mediated by our continual interac-
tions with other human and nonhuman bodies.” Similarly, for Simone de
Beauvoir (2010, 46) the body is not a thing, rather “it is our grasp on the
world and the outline for our projects” (see also Grosz 1994; Heinämaa
Table 10.1. The Novels
Author Title Year of publication Central characters

Marika Kolterjahn I väntan på liv 1999 Marta, Rebecka
(Waiting for Life)
Ylva Karlsson Dit man längtar 2001 Hedvig, Marija
(Where One Longs)
Annika Ruth Du och jag, Marie 2003 Jenny, Filippa
Persson Curie (You and I,
Marie Curie)
Katja Timgren Det jag inte säger 2004 Jenny, Kristina
(What I Don’t Tell)
Åsa Nilsson Dags att våga? 2005 Alexandra, Yulia
(Time to Dare?)
Maja Hjertzell Henrietta är min 2005 Måsen, Henrietta
hemlighet
(Henrietta Is My
Secret)
Sofia Nordin Det händer nu (It 2010 Stella, Sigrid
Happens Now)
Coming Out, Coming In 161
2003; Käll 2009; Stoller 2000). Thus, according to phenomenological

understanding the lived body is the very site from which we experience
the world and interact with people and objects inhabiting the world,
including partners in love. An analysis of the geographies of the coming
out process needs, accordingly, to take the body as its point of departure.
As authors in this book have noted, research on sexuality and space
has grown rapidly recently (for an overview see Browne, Lim, and Brown
2007b) but as some scholars have reported it has mainly been focused on
gay men (Bell and Valentine 1995c; Halberstam 2005). Furthermore, exist-
ing literature has not been particularly preoccupied with fiction (see
however Abblitt 2008; Brown 2006; Jazeel 2005). Work on sexuality and
space has also been criticized for favoring urban spaces, a tendency that
Judith Halberstam (2005) has named metronormativity, establishing a
narrative of queer subjectivity that involves migration from a close-
minded rural environment to a place of tolerance, the city (see also Bell
and Valentine 1995c; Binnie 2004; Gorman-Murray 2007a, 2009b; Herring
2010; Weston 1995). As Gorman-Murray (2007a) states, this idea of gay
rural-to-urban migration has led to an over-determination of the queer
narrative as teleological and final on the cost of the diversity of queer
migrations.
In opposition to the rural-to-urban narrative of queer migration, the
majority of the main characters of the Swedish novels discussed here stay
in the same physical location throughout the novels. This location is not
an urban one, although a couple of novels are set in suburbs or residen-
tial areas of some of Sweden’s biggest cities. However, most of the novels
take place in unidentified small towns or small town-like settings. Even
the settings in the narratives taking place in suburbs or residential areas
of bigger cities are more small town-like than urban. The small town may
not be considered a traditional rural location in Sweden, but it is associat-
ed with a similar potential narrow-mindedness towards queer people,
and could thus be seen as a kind of (or an aspect of) rurality, at least for
queer people. Most of the central characters of the novels are teenagers
who live with their parents, attend school, and thus have very limited
possibilities to change their physical location. Still, the novels can be said
to involve some kind of migration or change of location—a migration of
lived lesbian bodies navigating the different spaces of teenage life, and
this migration has impact upon the surrounding small town space. Thus,
the novels challenge the common idea of the rural as conservative and
unchanging. In unpacking the various meanings of the closet for gay
people, Michael Brown (2000) stresses that the closet is both a material
space and a metaphor of power/knowledge. He contends that the closet
has been crucial to gay oppression in the twentieth century, but seeing it
as a spatial metaphor reveals how power imbalances are in fact spatial
and material. Drawing upon Brown’s (2000) argument I explore how the
entire coming out process is material and spatial in contemporary Swed-
ish youth novels and how reading it as such gives us a better understand-
ing of the oppression and marginalization—but also the joy and beauty—
of lesbian existence.
THE LIVED LESBIAN BODY AND ITS LOCATIONS IN SPACE
Drawing upon Knopp’s discussion on “queer quests for identity” (Knopp

2004), Gorman-Murray (2007a, 111) argues for the need to “downsize”
explanations of queer migration “from the regional or the national to the
body” and proposes that “queer migration should be understood as an
embodied search for sexual identity—an individual search which can be materi-
alized at differing, multiple scales and paths of relocation.” I want to adopt
Gorman-Murray’s (2007a) challenge and downsize explanations of queer
migration even more by mapping the sexual geographies that take place
in the same physical location, the small town or the small town-like set-
ting—at least without any physical relocation within different parts of the
country or town.
In this process described by Gorman-Murray (2007a) the body takes
center stage. The body also plays an important part in most of the novels
discussed here. For instance, the majority of the protagonists are preoccu-
pied with hobbies where the body is crucial. Some are engaged in sports,
and they often share their interest in sports with the objects of their love.
Nilsson’s (2005) Alexandra is a talented basketball player, who meets her
girlfriend Yulia through the sports club. Persson’s (2003) Jenny and her
beloved Filippa are good soccer players. Måsen’s love object Henrietta in
Hjertzell’s (2005) novel is a boxer, and Timgren’s (2004) Jenny shares her
interest in horse riding with her love Kristina. The focus on sports brings
forward the bodily dimensions of the narratives. Nilsson’s (2005) and
Persson’s (2003) novels in particular contain several passages depicting
ball practice and games. Alexandra and Yulia (Nilsson 2005) talk about
basketball and play together when they meet. Jenny and Filippa (Persson
2003) are on the same soccer team and collaborate well on the field.
After Jenny and Filippa have started approaching each other on a
personal and private level, Jenny plays the soccer game of her life. In this
game she becomes more sensitive than ever to what happens on the field:
the author explains that “it is like she sees and hears with her entire
body” (Persson 2003, 58). After her team scores and Filippa touches Jenny
her body becomes even lighter, and every pass she sends to Filippa feels
like giving her a gift (Persson 2003, 59). Jenny’s increasing experience of
herself as lesbian makes her body more sensitive to the ball game and
increases her ability to navigate the space of the soccer field. This process
is described as an interaction between Jenny’s body and the surrounding
space in a way that illustrates the notion of the lived body: Jenny’s body
is the foundation for experience (“sees and hears”), and when it gets
touched by another object (Filippa’s body after they score) it gets lighter.
The two young women affect the surrounding space by becoming even
more invincible on the field.
There are other hobbies that also bring out the spatial and bodily
dimensions of lesbianism in the novels. Hjertzell’s (2005) protagonist
Måsen is interested in photography, and in Nordin’s (2010) novel the two
lovers, Stella and Sigrid, share an interest in drawing. Initially drawing
becomes a way for Stella to live out her dreams about Sigrid as she
secretly draws her sexual fantasies of her. Stella even describes her draw-
ing as “a place” where she can leave the ordinary world behind (Nordin
2010, 27–28). When Sigrid and Stella come out to each other they are in
different physical locations—they actually come out when text messag-
ing—but meet up shortly after. Their encounter is depicted in images
similar to those Stella used to draw—close ups of Stella’s and Sigrid’s
hands touching, freckles, the shape of lips etc. This brings the body, or
rather body parts, into focus, while also foregrounding the body as inter-
corporeal. This is a theme at the center of Sara Ahmed’s (2006) discussion
of sexual orientation.
In her phenomenological understanding of sexualities, Ahmed (2006)
argues that living sexuality as oriented brings out its spatial dimensions
and that, in fact, sexuality is about the body being oriented toward other
objects. By using Kant’s example of walking blindfolded into an unfamil-
iar room, Ahmed (2006) shows that all orientation begins with disorienta-
tion. When you use your body to interact with objects around you, you
gradually become acquainted with the space you inhabit, according to
Ahmed (2006, 6): “Space then becomes a question of ‘turning,’ of direc-
tions taken, which not only allow things to appear, but also enable us to
find our way through the world by situating ourselves in relation to such
things.” Orientation is about finding our way, but also about how (in
what way) we feel at home, which is not a quality that already “is” in
space; rather, familiarity and the feeling of being at home is shaped in
interaction between bodies and spaces (Ahmed 2006, 7).
Stella’s lived body is oriented in a new direction when she discovers
her love for Sigrid is reciprocated. They usually hug when they meet but
now they have to find new ways to approach each other. They feel dis-
oriented. Stella has spent so much time looking at Sigrid, dreaming about
her, and the actual touching has been friendly rather than sexual. Now
they come towards each other in a manner illustrative of Kant’s example
of the blindfolded person in the unfamiliar room, except they are able to
see. However, touching and feeling with their bodies become new ways
of extending into and inhabiting space.
Ahmed (2006, 69–70, 79–92) contributes further to theorizing about
sexuality and space by contending that all spatial contexts have become
straight rather than queer through performative actions. She posits that
within compulsory heterosexuality bodies are rewarded when they ori-
ent themselves toward bodies of the opposite sex—which in turn makes

the queer body “out of line” or “out of place.” This thesis also finds
resonance in the youth novels discussed in this chapter. That is, we could
read the protagonists’ interest in spatial/bodily activities as a way to
make sense of straight spaces in which they, as queer bodies, are dis-
oriented and out of place. Although Ahmed argues that all spatial con-
texts are straight, the small town or the small town-like setting—where
these novels take place—is traditionally thought of as a particularly
straight space that leaves no room for queer bodies, contributing to the
characters’ sense of being “out of place.” As the protagonists fall in love,
this feeling of disorientation gradually transforms into a feeling of orien-
tation, or being at home in the union with another lesbian embodied
subject. But before they enter into that union the feelings of love make the
protagonists feel disoriented. In the majority of the novels the bodily
reactions to love are described vividly. When Alexandra is close to Yulia
she blushes, gets warm, and has difficulties with breathing. Her heart
beats faster and she has butterflies in her stomach (Nilsson 2005). When
Sigrid touches Stella or leans closer it feels like Stella has a fever, “a
thousand degrees” (Nordin 2010, 46). In Hjertzell’s (2005) novel, Sap-
pho’s poem “Like the gods” plays an important role, and the protago-
nist’s bodily reactions to the object of her love are similar to those in the
poem, where pain and sickness are emphasized. The bodies of the pro-
tagonists react physically to being close to the objects of their love, and
the metaphors used to describe the process refer to sickness and instabil-
ity, thus conveying with clarity bodily and spatial disorientation.
When the protagonist approaches her beloved the spatial metaphors
refer to passages or borders. This is particularly obvious in Persson’s
(2003) novel. On a few occasions Jenny stands outside of Filippa’s win-
dow. Sometimes Filippa climbs out and at other times Jenny climbs in.
They do not use the door but choose the more complicated window to
pass through, something that emphasizes the difficulties of coming out.
When Jenny touches Filippa for the first time (after Filippa climbed out
her window) they stand close to each other holding hands. Jenny feels
Filippa breathing in her ear and her mouth is close to Filippa’s neck: “On
the verge of Grand Canyon.” Then Jenny “jumps” and touches Filippa
(Persson 2003, 39). 3 Jenny is interested in Marie Curie, and some of the
spatial metaphors of love are borrowed from Curie’s field of physics:
Jenny is drawn to Filippa because of her “blackbody radiation” and as
the two of them get closer everything gets dense (Persson 2003, 78 and
87–88). When Filippa leaves Jenny she becomes a “brain tumor” that
grows in Jenny (Persson 2003, 127). But Jenny leaves traces on Filippa’s
body too. When angry and jealous because Filippa dates a boy, Jenny
throws an object at Filippa and hits her so hard that Filippa gets a scar on
her forehead. These examples highlight the body as intercorporeal; the
lived body has an impact on spaces and other bodies, but spaces and
bodies also shape the lived body.
The inter-relationship of bodies and space is also foregrounded in
descriptions of sex in the novels. The girls’ love is not platonic, and their
sexual desire is continuously emphasized in the novels. Liv Saga Berg-
dahl (2010, 265) refers to the depictions of sex in Persson’s novel as one of
the most explicit in Swedish youth novels, and female desire is indeed
depicted in detail in this novel. However, Persson’s (2003) novel is not
the only text dealing with sexual intimacy. Indeed, a range of the other
novels are as explicit when it comes to sex. Before Stella and Sigrid have
sex for the first time in Nordin’s (2010, 203–7) novel, Stella trembles and
feels like she has a fever, but after her orgasm she feels like she has run
the marathon. In Hedvig’s and Marija’s first sexual encounter in Karls-
son’s (2001, 110) novel bodily details are emphasized: “Fingertips. Skin.
Marija’s nipples like candy raspberries.” After the sexual encounter they
become more aware of their bodies and all the details around them
(Karlsson 2001, 111–12).
Sex changes the bodily and spatial metaphors engaged by the novel-
ists. As we have seen, being in love is associated with sickness, instability,
and borders. After the protagonist has entered into a union with another
lesbian embodied subject the metaphors become more stable. This is evi-
dent in the example above where Stella feels like she has run a marathon:
she is tired, but happy. For Hedvig and Marija the world around them
stands out, and it seems like they are “in place.” More illustrations can be
found in Karlsson’s (2001) novel where a tree of warmth is growing in-
side of Hedvig, and there is an invisible thread between her and Marija
when they fall in love. When Hedvig misses Marija and is on her way to
see her the space she inhabits becomes oriented around Marija; every-
thing around Hedvig “sings and calls Marija”: the brakes of the subway
train, the doors opening and closing, the escalator and her own footsteps
on the street, over the bridge and up the hill (Karlsson 2001, 172–73). In
these examples the bodies have impact on the spaces they inhabit.
As the protagonists start experiencing lesbian desire and move to-
ward a union with another embodied subject, bodily and spatial disorien-
tation is gradually replaced by orientation. Their bodies are initially “out
of place” in the surrounding space, but through love, which means being
oriented toward another lesbian body, orientation is restored. The pro-
tagonists feel more at home and less “out of line,” and the space around
them makes more sense. The straight spaces of the surrounding world
impact upon the lived bodies of the protagonists, constructing them as
deviant and thus making them feel uncomfortable. But the union be-
tween two lesbian bodies also affects space, changing it and restoring the
embodied subjects’ senses of orientation. The rural, including small
towns, has traditionally been a space where there is no room for queer-
ness, which contributes to making lesbian bodies “out of place.” These
books could be said to challenge the notion of the rural/small town as

static and unchanging by emphasizing the body as intercorporeal—the
body is affected by the surrounding straight space, but it also has impact
upon space, slowly undermining its straightness through its lesbian exis-
tence.
THE GEOGRAPHIES OF COMING OUT
The seven novels are surprisingly similar in their depictions of the geog-
raphies of the coming out process. In all the novels the lived body of the
protagonist is initially located in an outsider position, but by coming out
it moves into a place of centrality and becomes less lonely and more
connected to friends and family.
In the narratives of Nilsson (2005) and Nordin (2010) the protagonists
initially seem to be in a place of centrality, at least from the perspectives
of their fellow teenagers. Both Alexandra and Stella respectively are at-
tractive and well liked by friends as well as boys. At the same time, both
of them feel like outsiders. They are not interested in talking about boys
and make-up but they do anyway, to garner acceptance. Nilsson’s (2005,
10) Alexandra expresses a sense of duplicity, claiming she has created a
shell that she shows to her friends, while simultaneously hiding a “real”
self, who is not interested in boys and who is only allowed out when she
is alone in her room. In both texts tension is initially created through
engaging the concepts of inside and outside; from the outside (other stu-
dents’ perspective) the protagonists seem to be insiders (objects of admi-
ration and envy), but on the inside (in their bodies) they feel like outsid-
ers (different). The surface of their bodies is beautiful and impacts upon
the inhabited space, making the other students create an image of who
they are (popular and heterosexual). This fabricated image rests uneasily
against the reality of the lived embodied selves of Alexandra and Stella
and renders them out of place.
Alexandra meets Yulia and realizes after awhile that she is in love
with her (Nilsson). Stella is in love with her best friend Sigrid (Nordin).
Both girls are afraid of coming out to the objects of their love; they as-
sume they will be rejected and found abnormal and disgusting, but even-
tually the girls learn that their love is reciprocated. When they come out
and start relationships the geographies of their existence change. They
move from experiencing an outsider position into a union with another
embodied subject. As we have seen, this relocation is grounded in the
body, and it restores the embodied subjects’ orientation in space, at least
to begin with. Equally the union also places them in a new outsider
position. Loving at a distance made it easier to keep love a secret, and
Alexandra and Stella could pretend to be like everybody else. Having a
relationship means running the risk of being revealed as lesbian/outsider,
and this causes Alexandra and Stella to withdraw from their friends and
family.
Alexandra is afraid of coming out and prefers to hide with Yulia in
her or Yulia’s rooms. That the girl’s room could be seen as a metaphor for
the closet is accentuated on one occasion when Yulia leaves her room and
comes out to her father while Alexandra chooses to stay in the room.
When Alexandra goes home afterwards she hides in her room and re-
fuses to come out and talk to her mother. Eventually she comes out, in
both senses, and the coming out process brings Alexandra closer both to
her mother and to her best friend Linn. Coming out thus (re)orients Alex-
andra’s body toward the bodies of family and friends, and the closeness
in turn makes Alexandra feel more at ease in the space she inhabits after
leaving the closet. The closet has been seen as “the defining structure of
gay oppression in [the twentieth] century” (Sedgwick 2008, 71). As we
have seen, Brown (2000) takes Sedgwick’s (2008) argument further by
arguing that the closet as a metaphor for gay oppression has a spatial
foundation. This is true also of Alexandra’s experience of being closeted.
She is terrified of being outed by Yulia, and she feels out of place in the
rest of the world. She is not able to let her lived lesbian body extend into
the straight space. Only in her or Yulia’s room, which could be seen as
queer spaces, does she feel safe and at home.
Importantly, when Alexandra eventually comes out she not only
comes out but also comes into something. It is a distinction she shares with
her counterparts discussed in this chapter and one which recalls George
Chauncey’s (1994, 6–7) challenging of the metaphor of “the closet.” In his
study of gay male culture in New York prior to World War II Chauncey
found that the illusion of ‘the closet’ was not even used by gay people
before the 1960s, and the term “coming out” was used differently in the
prewar years. Coming out did not refer to coming out of something, like
the closet, but coming out into the gay world or homosexual society in the
same sense young upper-class women were introduced to, or came out
into, society at a certain age. The coming out process as described by
Chauncey is similar to what the lesbian protagonists in the Swedish
youth novels discussed here encounter. That is, with one important dif-
ference. While Chauncey’s queer subjects come out into the gay world,
the young women at the center of these Swedish novels come out into a
straight space inhabited by the straight bodies of family and friends, who
make them feel at home by accepting and welcoming their lesbian bodies.
Nordin’s (2010) Stella and Sigrid are less afraid of coming out, but
nevertheless the coming out process is not without complications. There
is no need to come out to their friends; they confront Stella and Sigrid one
day and ask if they are dating. Their friends appear comfortable with
their relationship, almost to the point where their comfort seems exagger-
ated, but over all coming out to them is fairly easy. In contrast Sigrid’s
mother cannot accept their relationship. She does not forbid the girls to
see each other, but she pretends that Stella does not exist. She refrains
from interaction with Stella’s lived body, thus denying it intercorporeal
existence. She assigns Stella and Sigrid a marginalized position, and they
have to struggle back to the center. They stay together, and eventually
Sigrid’s mother accepts Stella and even invites her to Sigrid’s birthday
dinner with the family. Stella does not need to come out to her mother,
who has already understood everything, but talking about Sigrid makes
the relationship between Stella and her mother stronger. The coming out
process relocates the protagonists into yet another space, one of accep-
tance and closeness to friends and family and thus of intercorporeal em-
bodiment in a straight space.
The geography of the coming out process in the works of Persson
(2003), Kolterjahn (1999), and Timgren (2004) is both similar and slightly
different compared to the books by Nilsson (2005) and Nordin (2010).
Like the protagonists of the previously discussed novels Persson’s (2003)
Jenny, Kolterjahn’s (1999) Marta, and Timgren’s (2004) Jenny begin in a
position as outsider before moving into a union with the object of their
love. However, in two cases the relationships do not last and in the third
case (Kolterjahn) it is not clear that it will since Marta’s girlfriend Rebecka
has moved to another town far away. In Persson’s (2003) narrative the
relationship ends after a period, while Timgren’s (2004) central character
Jenny has to deal with her beloved Kristina moving to another town just
as she realizes her love. The loss of love causes a change of geographies;
Persson’s (2003) and Timgren’s (2004) protagonists do not only share a
given name (Jenny), they also share their trajectories. They both retreat to
a place of grieving. In Persson’s (2003, 139–41) novel Jenny feels invisible
and cut off from the world by an opaque membrane. Timgren’s (2004)
Jenny feels even more misplaced in her teenage reality and retreats from
her friends who want to talk about boys as well as from her parents who
do not understand her.
At first glance Persson’s (2003) and Timgren’s (2004) novels seem very
different. The friends of the former’s protagonist strive to pull her back
from her place of retreat and they eventually succeed. Most of them
understand she is lesbian, so coming out is unnecessary, but she feels
closer to them by sharing her thoughts and feelings. She does not get her
beloved Filippa back, but she gets acquainted with other lesbians, and in
the end of the novel she has gained an identity as a lesbian. Timgren’s
(2004) Jenny needs to come out to her friends and family but they accept
her. Still, she decides to leave her small town and her narrow-minded
and homophobic schoolmates. Although she is forced to leave, she has
gained the same as Persson’s (2003) Jenny: a lesbian identity. This in-
volves a bodily alteration as she buys new clothes and shaves her head.
In this process she is not alone anymore. Coming out has made her more
connected to people around her and she has a new self-confidence. Kol-
terjahn’s (1999) Marta goes through a similar process. In the beginning of
the novel she is truly an outsider who is shy and afraid to talk to people.
Through her relationship with Rebecka she becomes more courageous
and makes new friends. Regardless of the fact that Rebecka moves in the
end of the novel, Marta is not alone; through her lesbian identity she has
been able to reach out and is now surrounded by friends.
In these three novels the geography of lesbian existence is similar to
the one identified in Nilsson’s (2005) and Nordin’s (2010) novels, at least
on a general level. The protagonists’ lived bodies move from an outsider
position through a union with another lesbian embodied subject to a
place of centrality where they are more connected to friends and family.
But in the novels by Persson (2003), Kolterjahn (1999), and Timgren
(2004), the love object is of less importance and what matters in the end is
the lesbian identity that has been gained. This is what facilitates the pro-
tagonists’ connection to friends and family. The lesbian identity is most
apparently embodied in the case of Timgren’s (2004) Jenny, who changes
her physical appearance, but the body is at the center of this process in
Persson (2003) and Kolterjahn (1999) as well. All three central characters
receive a new stability through their lesbian identity and allow their bod-
ies to extend into (straight) spaces, which have hitherto felt alien and
uncomfortable to them. The lesbian embodied identity makes the protag-
onists intelligible to the surrounding (straight) world and its people who
are now able to welcome them. Ken Plummer (1995, 85–86), who has
studied sexual narratives, argues that the ultimate goal of the coming out
narrative is establishing a sense of who one really is, one’s identity and a
sense of self. In the novels studied here, this process is emphasized by the
shift in locations. Changing geographies are most apparent in Timgren’s
(2004) novel where Jenny leaves the town in which she grew up. Howev-
er, a physical change of location also informs the novels of Persson (2003)
and Kolterjahn (1999). In the former Jenny returns to her friends and to
centrality after a period of refuge in the margins, and Marta moves from
an outsider position to being surrounded by new friends in the latter
narrative.
These youth novels depict a coming out process in opposition to the
dominant rural-to-urban queer migration narrative. Instead of leaving a
narrow-minded rural setting for a more welcoming queer space in the
city, the Swedish protagonists stay in their small town locations and
change them into less straight spaces by allowing their lesbian lived bod-
ies to extend into their surroundings. In most cases this leads to better
and closer relationships between the protagonists and their family and
friends.
A slight variation of the dominant geography of lesbian existence can
be found in the novel by Maja Hjertzell (2005). The protagonist Måsen is
so afraid of coming out to the object of her love, Henrietta, that it takes
her almost the entire novel to do so. In that sense she remains an outsider
through most of the novel, but in another sense she does not, since one of
Måsen’s best friends is aware of her love for Henrietta and does every-
thing she can to set them up. However, it is not until Måsen herself
decides to pursue her love for Henrietta that things change and she is
able to enter into a union with her. The turning point comes when an
older girl at her uncle’s birthday party kisses Måsen; Måsen embodies a
lesbian identity and is then able to pursue Henrietta. Since their union
takes place in the last chapters of the book there is no time for them to
come out to friends and family, but their new lesbian identities are mani-
fest through their bodies when they hold hands in public. This is received
with joy and acceptance by those in the surrounding space, as represent-
ed by some children who ask them if they are together and confirm their
existence as lesbians.
As we have seen, the map of the geographies of lesbian existence in
contemporary Swedish youth novels looks quite different from previous
maps of queer geographies, especially that of rural-to-urban migration,
since the central characters remain in the same small town-like setting
throughout the novels. In the coming out process the lesbian protagonists
move from a location of marginalization, an outsider position, through
their union with another lesbian embodied subject to a location of accep-
tance and centrality, an inside position. Thus, by coming out, the protag-
onists in fact come in(side). This process takes the body as its point of
departure; the lesbian identity is made manifest as the protagonists inter-
act with the inhabited space and other bodies, that is, in intercorporeal
situation.
CONCLUSION: COMING OUT, COMING IN
This chapter has used the coming out process in contemporary Swedish
youth novels to demonstrate how such a process can be read in bodily
and spatial terms even when queer embodied subjects stay in the same
physical location—in a small town or small town-like setting. I have fol-
lowed the lived lesbian bodies’ interactions with and movement in space,
and mapped their geography as a trajectory from a marginalized, outsid-
er position, through the union with another lesbian embodied subject to a
position of centrality and acceptance. Thus, coming out is a process of
coming in. I have used the phenomenological notion of the lived body
and Sara Ahmed’s (2006, 92) discussion of sexual orientation to show
how the lived lesbian body is initially disoriented and out of place, but
how it gradually extends into the surrounding space and eventually feels
in place or at home. It has become oriented in the world, and since the
world is ultimately a straight space according to Ahmed (2006), the lived
lesbian body could be said to contribute to challenging that space, mak-
ing the world a little queerer. This is especially so for rural, small town,
and small town-like environments, which are conventionally seen as anti-
thetical to lesbian lives, but which come to materialize and buttress les-
bian self-identification in these novels.
NOTES
1. I would like to thank Lisa Folkmarson Käll for discussions on the subject of the
lived body as well as for her insightful comments on this paper. I am also indebted to
Ann-Sofie Lönngren and the editors for helpful comments.
2. I do not have room here to go into details with the plots of each novel, but the
publication details of the novels discussed are presented in Table 10.1. The novels
have not been translated into English, so all the translations from the novels, including
titles, are mine.
3. A similar metaphor occurs in Hjertzell’s (2005, 157) novel where Måsen is said
to be at a precipice called “Hopp,” a Swedish word that means both “jump” and
“hope.”
4
Production and Consumption

ELEVEN
Screwing with Animals
Industrial Agriculture and the Management of
Animal Sexuality
Claire E. Rasmussen
In 2011, much to the amusement of media onlookers, the state of Florida

attempted multiple times to pass an anti-bestiality law. What seemed to
be a relatively uncontroversial measure failed repeatedly. The prevailing
narrative emerging from the legislature was that they did not want to
have public discussions about a “yucky” topic, particularly at a time
when they had more important issues to tackle (Davis 2010; Linkins
2010). The inclusion of the measure in an agricultural bill and the need
for a discussion about the measure may be telling of an additional prob-
lem with anti-bestiality legislation. Humans have inserted themselves
into the reproductive processes of domesticated animals to the extent that
the commercial practices of animal sex are practically indistinguishable
from bestiality, at least for the animals. The bill that was eventually
adopted by the legislature included, as most states’ bestiality laws do,
phrases that clearly exempted “animal husbandry, conformation judging,
and veterinary practices,” many of which are not dissimilar to the sexual
practices that are banned (FL Senate 2011, SB 344).
The distinctions between criminalized sexual practices with animals—
exempting those in which animals are physically harmed—and accept-
able commercial insemination procedures have less to do with the impact
or harm on the human or animal and much more about the maintenance
of the human/animal boundary. This boundary is particularly unstable
around sex and sexuality because of presumptions that sex represents
175
176 Claire E. Rasmussen
our more beastly desires (Brown and Rasmussen 2010). Reiterating hu-
man difference enables and justifies the very forms of domination institu-
tionalized in industrial farming and generates distinctions between good
and bad sex in exclusionary ways. The anxieties reflected in a desire to
criminalize some sex with animals and not others demonstrates how
human exceptionalism actually enables abuses because it sets up a di-
chotomy between human beings who have representational subjectiv-
ity and animals who lack it . . . exceptionalism does not protect human
beings from abjection, but it enables abuse by creating animality as a
position of non-subjectivity and of socially sanctioned abjection. (Boggs
2010, 99)
This chapter examines the most common methods used in the industrial-
ized farming of pigs with the premise that we are engaging in sex with
animals in pork production. The forms of artificial insemination (AI) that
are the norm in pork production exemplify new circuits of desire, com-
modification, and sexuality that pose a challenge to the dichotomies of
nature/culture, animal/human, and good/bad sex. I begin by putting the
literature on rural sexuality into dialogue with calls to queer animality
studies, examining the ways both literatures place the nature/culture di-
vide at the center. Next I examine the most commonly utilized techniques
used in industrialized pig farming which is almost entirely dependent
upon AI. Finally I look at representations of these practices produced by
the industry and by the media in order to examine how the anxieties
provoked by human/animal intimacy both affirm and challenge our con-
ceptual edifice of human exceptionalism.
SEX IN NATURE: RURAL AND ANIMAL SEXUALITIES
Geography has often placed its work at the “interface between natural
and social words,” calling into question the division between the social
and natural sciences (Whatmore 2002, 2). Perhaps for this reason, geogra-
phers have often seen their task as unsettling the nature/culture binary
that has often framed the construction of both sexuality and animality. In
particular, literature on rural sexuality has focused on the ways that ideas
about nature have played a constitutive role in the interpretation of ur-
ban and rural sexualities, creating a complex geography of desire that has
both eroticized and stigmatized nature as a site of freedom and deviance
(Bell and Valentine 1995; Bell 2000a; Phillips, Watt, and Shuttleton 2000).
Conversely, animality studies have increasingly called for a queering of
animality (Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010b; Giffney and Hird
2008; McHugh 2009), challenging conventional nature/culture divides
that have placed animals on the side of nature and humans on the side of
culture while leaving explorations of animal practices up to natural sci-
ence (Coppin 2003). Emphasizing the co-constitution of humanity/ani-
Screwing with Animals 177
mality in, for example, processes of domestication whereby species inter-

sect and modify one another, animality studies challenge both the onto-
logical and normative assumptions of the nature/culture divide (Ander-
son 1997; Anderson 2000; Haraway 2008). The history of linking bestiality
and homosexuality as “unnatural” sexual practices criminalized in sodo-
my statutes makes any comparison politically problematic, but also dem-
onstrates the need for the nature/culture assumptions that make such
connections possible (see Rydström 2000).
Literature on rural sexualities has examined the multiplicity of dis-
courses circulating around sex in the rural context, highlighting the ways
that the urban/rural distinction is eroticized and politicized, creating re-
gimes of power in which certain sexualities (and gender performances)
are rendered acceptable. In both political and popular representations of
the rural, the rural is often romanticized as free from the corrupting influ-
ences of modernity and affirming the heterosexual family (Rasmussen
2006). Much of the literature emphasizes how the rural pastoral rein-
forces heteronormativity via contrasting the natural, rural, traditional
family with the “metropolitan queer culture, urban life and homosexual
identity and community” (Bell 2000a, 548). The literature reflects
debates on the social construction of nature and how rural sexual rela-
tionships are controlled by a set of morally sanctioned codes that separ-
ate the urban from the rural and which see the countryside, in terms of
both rural social relations and rural nature, as central to the moral
superiority of family-based heteronormativity. (Little 2007, 851)
Other scholars have emphasized the ways that representations of the
rural highlight traditional gender norms, especially linkages between ru-
rality and masculinity in which the country is a place “to become a man”
(Bell 2000a, 559), particularly through the domination of nature (Little
and Leyshon 2003, 264).
In the queer imaginary, however, the rural plays a complex role as
both a pastoral ideal and an oppressive reality. Much of the examination
of the lives of queer individuals has emphasized the “great gay migra-
tion,” the narrative of escape from oppressive rural environments to a
community in more tolerant urban environs (Weston 1995; Bell 2000a).
On the other hand, a “gay pastoral” also embraces the traditional mascu-
linity eroticizing rural men as “natural, maybe even as instinctual or
bestial in opposition to their affected, feminized urban counterparts”
(Bell 2000a, 559). Representations of the rural and personal narratives
about the rural experience often present conflicting views of the relative
freedom and oppression of the rural relative to sexuality, often circulat-
ing around the construction of “nature.” Thus the pastoral discourse of
rural sexuality can both “authenticate and disrupt” the ideological func-
tion of nature as legitimating particular sexual practices (Shuttleton
2000).
Nature plays a similarly complex role in the construction of animal

sexuality. The tendency of animality to function “predominantly as a
metaphor for that corporeal part ‘of man’” (Shukin 2009, 10) has meant
that animal sex has been viewed almost exclusively as natural and thus
the domain of natural science while human sex represents the triumph
(or tragedy) of the domination of natural impulse by human agency.
While human sexuality is the product of culture, society, and politics,
animals merely have sex as a biological function. This relationship has
important consequences for the meaning of human sexuality as within a
scientific framework “sexual desire is newly constructed in relation to
‘animal instinct’ rather than temptation or devilish impulse. . . . Desires
that are ‘unnatural’ are constructed against Darwinian reproduction”
(Lundblad 2009, 498).
The centrality of the natural/biological impulse model in understand-
ing animal sexuality has led scientists to primarily emphasize the repro-
ductive function of animal sexuality which, naturally, has the effect of
prioritizing heterosexual, procreative animal sex (McHugh 2009, 154).
The very human presumptions that go into observing and interpreting
animal sex often mask the projection of human desires, practices, and
culture onto animal behaviors (Haraway 1990, Roughgarden 2004). The
motivation and consequence is legitimation of particular human behav-
iors and practices as “natural.” As Terry (2000, 152) argues,
Humans’ desire to watch animals . . . is shaped by conscious and un-
conscious investments in making claims about human life. . . . We look
to the sexual behavior of animals to give meaning to human social
relations, and by doing so, we engage in imaginative acts that frequent-
ly underscore culturally dominant ideas about gender and sexuality.
The popularization of the “gay penguins,” for example, highlights the
desire to legitimate same-sex desire by pointing to the “natural world” in
ways that write penguin sex into human narratives about marriage, fami-
ly, and love (Talburt and Matus 2011).
The social construction of nature plays a paradoxical role in which
nature is both celebrated as the innocent, pure, and transcendent as well
as denigrated as the merely biological and instinctual. This contradictory
narrative is clear in the historical divergence of homosexuality and besti-
ality as “unnatural” sexual practices. In the case of homosexuality, same-
sex practices are “modernized” in the language of Rydström (2003),
understood to be a part of one’s identity rather than remaining patholo-
gized as a set of sex acts or roles (Lundblad 2009, 498). Bestiality is under-
stood as the expression of inappropriate sexual instinct in which the hu-
mans who indulge their immediate corporeal needs with an animal are
disavowing their own humanity. In this way sex becomes “ontologically
transformative,” creating the human being as that which ought not have
sex with animals (Boggs 2010, 102). Same-sex sexual practices, on the
other hand, are a component of human identity, creating a sense of self

that transcends and dominates biological instinct, contrasting human
subjectivity with mere materiality. This narrative highlights the ways that
nature plays a political role in authorizing particular sexual practices and
particular modes of subjectivity, drawing lines between good and bad
sex and between human and animal subjects. In this sense, interrogating
the construction of the natural in practices of human and animal intimacy
can reveal and challenge the ideological assumptions about sexuality and
animality. The next section outlines the ways in which modern industrial
agriculture continually transgresses the nature/culture and human/ani-
mal boundary through practices of AI.
TO SCREW A PIG: COMMODIFIED ANIMAL SEX
In the last thirty years, pigs in industrial agriculture have been experienc-
ing a sexual revolution as a consequence of major changes in the way in
which pigs are produced for consumption. These changes reflect the
analysis of many animal geographers who argue that the “technospatial
configurations” of human animal interactions (Holloway 2007, 1042) can
be understood as forms of biopower in the Foucauldian sense. These new
spaces are not only about the production of animals for death but also the
fostering of life through the rationalization of processes involving the
production of knowledge about life in order to intervene in it. The conse-
quence has been a set of “microgeographies and rules, producing and
expecting particular sorts of . . . subjectivity in the name of efficiency,
rationality and modernization” (Holloway 2007, 1053). The transforma-
tion of pig production represents a shift in the exercise of power on the
bodies of animals and humans through technological intervention pro-
ducing new biopolitical arrangements.
Large-scale hog confinements or Concentrated Animal Feeding Oper-
ations (CAFOs) have replaced pasture farming as the primary mode of
production. Historically, raising pigs has been labor-intensive because of
the sensitivity of pigs to weather, the size of the animals, their rate of
growth, and their reproductive schedules (Novek 2005). Mega-farms con-
centrate production geographically, moving the animals into confined
indoor spaces for better control, segregation, monitoring, and interven-
tion (Coppin 2003, 600). Within these facilities, individual animals are
separated from one another in stalls. Female pigs are kept in farrowing
stalls that are large enough in which to feed but not large enough so that
they move around and crush their offspring. Most pigs will not walk
more than a few feet before going to slaughter in order to minimize the
production of lactic acid and to encourage rapid growth (Pandora’s Box
2008). Moving pig production indoors massively increased productivity
as pigs could reproduce year round rather than seasonally (Novek 2005,
222). Because most pigs will never go outdoors, most farmed pigs lack an
immune system that enables them to go outdoors (Pandora’s Box 2008;
Coppin 2003). The pigs are thus generally given manufactured feed that
contains antibiotics and/or other immune boosters to help them survive.
A biosecure perimeter is established around farming facilities to ensure
that humans do not become a vector of infection and human traffic in and
out of facilities is restricted (Johnson 2006). Many of the tasks of human
beings such as the removal of dead animals from crates, feeding the
animals, and even leading them in and out of their crates is performed by
machinery. Manufacturers like Swine Robotics advertise machines that
perform physical tasks like leading boars out of their pens and removing
corpses.
If the movement to industrialized farming has changed the spaces of
production, the bodies of pigs have undergone a similar transformation.
As Holloway (2007, 1042) emphasizes, animal bodies are not passive and
inert material but are “co-constituted as they are entrained within various
and changing sets of socioeconomic, ecological, spatial and technological
relationships.” One of the goals of industrialized pig production is uni-
formity in the bodies of the pigs. Uniformity is an advantage for farmers
in terms of standardizing their crate sizes, feed requirements, and equip-
ment, including machinery for slaughtering. Consumers also demand
uniformity in their product, expecting particular size, shape, color, and
texture when they purchase pork products (Johnson 2006). In order to
make lower fat products more appealing to consumers, most pigs have
very low body fat, particularly in the back, rendering them sensitive to
temperature changes. In order to encourage their rapid muscle growth
without increasing their fatty tissue, the pigs are given specific feeds like
Paylean, a product described on their website as of March 18, 2012, as a
chemical supplement that increases growth, maximizes muscle mass, and
minimizes fat deposits.
To produce uniform, efficient bodies, pig producers have turned to AI
as the preferred method of production. It avoids the problem of cross-
contamination of herds through direct animal contact, minimizes the
number of boars necessary for reproduction, reduces physical stress on
the sow, and it makes fertilization more likely through the use of technol-
ogy. Since 1990, AI has grown from accounting for less than seven per-
cent of swine breeding to more than 90 percent of all breeding (Johnson
2006). Very few domesticated pigs ever experience mating with another
pig and their reproduction is mediated via technological and human
intervention. The practice has allowed hog farms to specialize even fur-
ther, with some facilities being devoted only to breeding with piglets sent
to other farms for growth to market. Farms like Lean Value Sires house
only boars and specialize in the production of semen which is then sold
to breeding facilities. Large farms have boars and sows but keep them
separated from one another, often transporting the semen via pneumatic
tubes from building to building to avoid human contamination of sam-

ples (Johnson 2006).
To obtain the semen samples, boars are separated from the other
males and aroused utilizing the scent of a sow in estrus. Boars are encour-
aged to mount a dummy sow that simulates the experience of mounting a
female. When the pig reaches a state of arousal, a human being grasps the
boar’s corkscrew-shaped penis and provides steady pressure or places it
in a manufactured “artificial vagina.” When the pig ejaculates, the mate-
rial is then preserved and can be used to fertilize several sows (SAFE-
MATE 2009).
When the sow enters estrus and is ready for fertilization, she is pre-
pared by exposure to the smell of a boar. Sometimes this is done by
leading a single boar through the sow confinement area or by bringing in
boar scent samples. Individual sows are then further aroused applying
pressure to their backs simulating mounting by the boar. This is usually
done by having a human climb on the sow’s back and rock back and
forth. Manufacturers like Swine Robotics have also created devices like
the Super Saddle, advertised on their website as of March 20, 2012, that
rest on the sow’s back and simulate the weight and motion of the boar.
Once the sow is aroused and receptive, a tube is then inserted in the
sow’s vagina and the semen is injected via the tube. The semen is allowed
to drain into the sow’s vagina and the tube is removed.
The management of animal reproduction is hardly new since it is at
the heart of processes of domestication in which animal genetics are ma-
nipulated to produce breeds with characteristics that are desirable for
human beings. What is significant is that human beings are not directors
of these processes standing outside of the messy materiality of animal
reproduction. Human beings and their technology are active participants
in the processes of animal reproduction involved in the arousal, stimula-
tion, and consummation of sexual acts. They have fundamentally trans-
formed how pigs and humans engaged in AI processes experience sex.
These practices require a transgression of the human/animal bodies in
such a systematic way that entire generations of pigs will only have sex
with humans/machines. In spite of this, these practices are not described
in industry literature as sex with pigs nor do pork consumers likely think
of themselves as eating the product of a human/technology/pig coupling.
Instead, AI is constructed as a scientific and commercial practice ex-
punged of desire. This construction erases the erotic experience of the
animal, reducing it to mere instinctual reaction to physical stimuli. It also
conceals the production of human desire in the commodification of ani-
mal bodies for consumption, primarily as meat. The clinical understand-
ing of AI as a scientific practice avoids the sticky confusion of boundaries
that results if we try to differentiate between good sex with animals (in
commercial farming for human gustatory gratification) and bad sex with
animals (criminal sex for human sexual gratification).
These practices also confound the clarity of the distinction between

nature and culture in which presumably natural physical responses (such
as male arousal when exposed to the smell of a female in estrus) are
harnessed by human science in order to completely transform pig sex
into an “artificial” practice. Yet, the lines between natural and cultural
become blurred within a system in which domesticated pigs have already
been the product of human intervention and human culture is profound-
ly shaped by its interactions with the natural world of animals. This
raises questions about what we think we are doing when we screw with
pigs, and how we might cast a critical eye on these practices without
reiterating the sorts of human exceptionalism and conceptual binaries
that allow us to screw with them in the first place.
BETWEEN SEX AND SCIENCE: HOW WE REPRESENT ANIMAL SEX
Through commercial agriculture, human and animal bodies are inserted

into the biopolitical realm as objects and subjects of power. These pro-
cesses, however, are not the mere imprinting of cultural meaning onto
physical bodies. They transform how we, and animals, relate to our
selves and our world. In other words,
biopower is also . . . productive of subjectivity . . . the internalization of
disciplinary authority and particular knowledges about life means that
individuals become subjects through particular ways of understanding
themselves and behaving in particular ways . . . what farming does to
animal bodies and what it makes them do with their bodies, is impor-
tant in terms of subjectivities. (Holloway 2007, 1047)
In the case of animal husbandry that involves intimate contact between
humans and animals, these practices have clearly transformed the lives
and experiences of the pigs involved since their reproductive and life
cycles are harnessed in new ways by human technology. In engaging in
these practices with animals, how do we represent human subjectivity
and how does it relate to the line between animal husbandry that is
considered socially and legally acceptable and those practices that are
forbidden because they are, as described in FL Senate Bill 344, “for the
purpose of sexual gratification or sexual arousal of the person.”
The line between licit and illicit is clearly drawn relative to the hu-
mans’ experiences of the exchange rather than that of the animal. Focus-
ing on human intent enables the stability of the human/animal distinc-
tion. Because animal husbandry is understood as a scientific and com-
mercial practice it does not challenge the human/animal boundary or
beliefs about human exceptionalism. The intervention in the sexual lives
of pigs is understood to be a further instance of human domination of
nature for human (commercial) benefit. Unpacking the ways that these
practices are represented demonstrates the anxiety provoked by these
boundary crossings and how we continually seek to shore up these boun-

dary transgressions either by distancing human beings from these prac-
tices through technological interventions or by anthropomorphizing the
animals in a way that ironically highlights human/animal differences.
Examining several of these representations demonstrates the complex
and contradictory ways we represent what we do when we screw with
pigs.
One of the strategies deployed to redraw the human/animal boundary
is the utilization of laughter as a means of rejecting the potentially proble-
matic nature of the practices. Humor often acts as a distancing technique
by which we defuse discomfort about a situation that provokes anxiety or
disgust (Brown and Rasmussen 2010). In the case of sex with pigs, we see
a similar utilization of laughter as a means of reconfiguring our intimate
relationships as humorous and thus as less threatening. In an article in
Harper’s in which the author visited several pork producing farms, the
author had the following exchange with one of the farmers about the
process of obtaining semen from boars: “Do you ever stop in the middle
of that and think, ‘I’m holding a boar’s penis?’” I blurted. Watje laughed
“Sometimes my friends give me a hard time about it. But, no. I’ve been
doing this since I was a kid” (Johnson 2006).
The interviewer creates a moment of tension by drawing attention to
the fact that the practice is a sexual act that replicates—or is—sexual
release for the pig. That tension is defused through laughter in which the
farmer acknowledges the apparent strangeness for outsiders but reas-
sures the reader that the exchange is normal in farming.
Another example is a training video produced by Louisiana State Uni-
versity veterinary students enrolled in a Swine Production Class. One of
the frames shows a sow used in insemination with “Love Machine” writ-
ten on its side. The soundtrack includes the song “Always Have to Steal
My Kisses From You.” The students joke: “We didn’t take her to dinner
and we didn’t ask her name” (Swine Production Class 2010). The laughter,
on the one hand, acknowledges anxiety, but in doing so, highlights the
human/animal difference by pointing out the absurdity of “romancing”
the pig in the way that one might a human being. The human being
asserts superiority by differentiating the culturally loaded practices of
human reproduction (that presumably involve complex social interaction
in addition to the exchange of fluids) and the “merely biological” pro-
cesses of animal reproduction. In doing so, the representations also elide
the obvious element of power involved in the human/animal boundary;
the humor is not just in the idea that human beings are romancing a pig
but that the pig has any say in consenting to or enjoying the processes of
intimacy with humans.
A second common technique used to re-draw the human animal
boundary is to de-emphasize the role of humans in the insemination
process. Not uncommonly, industry videos highlight technology rather
than humans. They cut off any identifying features of human beings,
avoiding showing the faces of the individuals either by cutting off the
frame at the human’s shoulders or by focusing on the pig with the human
being out of focus or out of frame. A second technique to de-emphasize
the role of humans is to depict them in laboratory coats or uniforms,
demonstrating that the act is scientific and not sexual. Increasingly, in-
dustry is also producing technologies that minimize the role of human
beings by producing technological devices that distance humans from
physical contact with the animals such as SAFEMATE’s (2009) artificial
vagina or Swine Robotics’ “Super Saddle” that simulates mounting by
the boar so that a human being does not have to sit astride the animal
during the process of injecting semen.
A third technique is to anthropomorphize the animals in order to
project more human qualities onto them, imposing human categories of
meaning onto animal bodies in order to normalize their sexuality. One of
the most common techniques is to emphasize the gendered construction
of the animals. This technique is visible in swine semen catalogs. The
catalogs display images and descriptions of the boars designed to entice
potential consumers. These images rely heavily on hypermasculinity to
“sell” the characteristics of the boars. The names for boars include “Man
Up,” “Kolt 45,” “Maneater,” “Scarface,” and “First Blood.” The ads,
posted on the Lean Value Sires website as of August 12, 2011, always
include two pictures, a shot of the boar from the front and a rear shot that
displays the large testicles of the boar. Even as the traditional male/fe-
male roles have been transformed by a sexual economy in which male
and female pigs almost never even meet one another, conventional gen-
der roles are maintained.
As an example of the ways we re-interpret human subjectivity in these
processes, Mary Roach’s TED talk (2009) utilized a Dutch video about the
insemination of pigs. The talk elicited a great deal of laughter from the
lecture audience as it showed a farmer/scientist simulating the role of the
boar in reproduction in order to increase farrowing through sexually
stimulating the pig and thus presumably increasing the uptake of semen
into the vagina. On the one hand, the video emphasizes the scientific side
of the process in which knowledge about reproduction is deployed in
order to increase economic efficiency with a quantified six percent in-
crease in litters. On the other hand, the image of the farmer caressing the
pig’s teats as he squeezed the semen into her body emphasizes the sexual,
pleasurable component of the action for the sow, bringing her subjectiv-
ity and sexual desire literally into the scene. The depiction challenges
clear boundaries of human/animal and nature/culture by having the hu-
man literally substitute for the boar/animal in the reproductive process.
Of course, given the standard use of AI and the fact that most boars/sows
will not actually experience coupling with another pig, the human is no
longer a substitute for the boar but is, in fact, the typical sexual partner
for the sow. For a moment, the human/technology/animal coupling em-

phasizes the ways that human and animal bodies are entangled in a
circuit of desire, pleasure, and profit that cannot be reduced to nature or
culture, human or inhuman. Roach uses the example to show what sci-
ence tells us about the role of orgasm in reproduction, suggesting that
animals’ natural, unmediated sexual experiences can help illuminate hu-
man sexual relationships. By transforming the act into a spectacle of sci-
ence (and humor), she sidesteps the difficult questions raised by the fact
that the audience has just watched human/animal/technology sex.
CONCLUSION
Looking at animal husbandry practices as screwing with animals can

challenge human exceptionalism in ways that also undermine prevailing
beliefs about the relationship between sexuality and nature. The lines
between good and bad sex often reflect normative presumptions flowing
from constructions of nature. As both the rural sexualities and the ani-
mality studies literature demonstrate, the discourse of nature works in
complex ways to delegitimate certain forms of sexuality that are deemed
as “unnatural” while at other times working to privilege (human) culture
over mere nature. Looking at our practices with animals, especially those
involving sex, may challenge the ability to clearly delineate human/ani-
mal and nature/culture in ways that obfuscate the power relationships
involved in generating these categories.
The ways in which humans interact with animal bodies are often rep-
resented as scientific or economic, denying or eliding the ways in which
very human pleasures are derived from animal bodies. In addition, these
power relationships with animals help to construct a sense of human
exceptionalism by which we differentiate ourselves from and justify our
actions on animal beings. Drawing greater attention to the fuzzy boun-
daries between human/animal in real material interactions may help us
develop new and potentially less hierarchical relationships with animals.
As Holloway et al. (2009, 398) argue:
Within a heterogeneous sense of biosociality both agency, as the ability
to affect, and subjectivity, as constituted through discourses and prac-
tices . . . are taken as the co-productions of sets of entities. In redefining
biosocial collectivities as heterogeneous, we suggest that the inter-spe-
cies relationships within collectivities are important in terms of how
the fostering of animal life is a joint product of the human and the non-
human.
The most common practices of animal husbandry have created new
forms of biosociality that implicate human and animal sexuality together.
While these relationships provoke laughter, anxiety, and disgust, think-
ing through their implications and reasons for these responses may help
entangle some of the relationships of power that operate through the

binaries of human/animal and nature/culture. While thinking about how
our ordinary practices of consuming animal products are the conse-
quence of screwing with animals is an uncomfortable proposition, it may
also be a necessary one as we think about the political and ethical impli-
cations of practices of biosociality and biosexuality.
TWELVE
Gender, Sexuality, and Rurality in
the Mining Industry
Barbara Pini and Robyn Mayes
Sexuality is a subject that has been, at best, marginal in the significant

body of literature that has examined gender and mining in contemporary
Western nations. This is despite the fact that academics have circled, if
not almost bumped into the topic in closely related discussions of hege-
monic masculinity and mining work, and of patriarchal familial relations
and mining communities. This scholarship has documented what has
been and remains women’s primary relationship to mining—that is, as a
“mining wife.” How patriarchal relations are manifest in and emerge
from this state of affairs has been critiqued with research on the gendered
implications of housing arrangements in mining towns, the division of
household labor, changing shift-work mining rosters, and the gendered
consequences of strikes and mine closures (Williams 1981; Gibson 1992;
Gibson-Graham 1996; Rhodes 2005; McDonald, Mayes, and Pini 2012).
Despite the centrality of the heterosexual relationship—and indeed
heteronormativity—to these discussions, scholars of gender and mining
have had little to say on the subject of sexuality. In response to this
lacuna, this chapter takes an exploratory lens to the subject of sexuality
and the mining industry. We approach the task from the perspective that
the mining industry is gendered as masculine. That is, definitions of min-
ing mobilize around masculinized notions of physicality, technical com-
petence with machinery, and strength, as well as emphasize the harsh-
ness and dirtiness of the work (Mayes and Pini 2010). This dominant
socio-cultural construction of mining as men’s work is, of course, rein-
forced by the fact that it is the case that gendered occupational segrega-
187
188 Barbara Pini and Robyn Mayes
tion continues to define the sector. In Australia, for example, a 2006 study
commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) found that in
the face of boom conditions and a tight labor market, women represented
just 18 percent of all employees at mine sites and in minerals processing
operations in comparison to a national workforce participation rate of
around 45 percent. Importantly, as Connell (2003, 47), among others, has
pointed out, “masculinities as cultural forms cannot be abstracted from
sexuality, which is an essential dimension in the social creation of gen-
der”; that is, “while sexuality addresses the body, it is itself social practice
and constitutive of the social world.”
At the same time, mining is historically and pragmatically associated
with rural and remote regions, just as the notion of the frontier as an
untamed borderland in which traditional masculine attributes are not
only desirable but necessary for the greater benefit, is central to the mas-
culinization of mining work. The rural is also, as we shall demonstrate,
central to contemporary articulations of a related and underpinning
dominant heterosexuality. In Australia, again for example, the vast ma-
jority of mining operations are to be found in rural, if not remote, areas
and communities. Though mining in the past may have been predomi-
nantly understood as a “blue-collar” or “working class” activity, recent
changes in the industry challenge and destabilize this stereotype. Such
(interrelated) changes include substantial technological advancement re-
quiring an increasingly skilled, highly-educated, and “corporate” work-
force; a move to continuous production and compressed work shifts; and
the ongoing global consolidation of the minerals industry through mer-
gers (Russell 1999; Pini, McDonald, and Mayes 2012). BHP Billiton and
Rio Tinto, as contemporary industry leaders, are transnational (or multi-
national) corporations with assets and/or operations in numerous loca-
tions around the world. The point, rather, in this instance is that domi-
nant heterosexual masculinity, though it may encompass variations, con-
tinues to inform if not underpin what is, after all, a substantially reconfig-
ured industry.
One critical aspect of this reconfiguration of relevance to this paper is
the shift to fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work or DIDO (drive-in drive-out) work.
The practice, which involves working in a relatively remote location
where food and lodgings are provided for workers at the work site, but
not for their families, and where schedules dictate a fixed number of days
on-site followed by a fixed number of days at home (Storey 2001) has
been contentious in the mining sector. Impacts of FIFO noted in the litera-
ture include significant occupational health and safety concerns (Di Milia
and Bowden 2007; O’Faircheallaigh 1995), negative effects on the psycho-
social well-being of mine workers’ partners (Kaczmarek and Sibbel 2008)
and concerns by many regional authorities about the loss of local benefits
(Storey 2001). Despite these well-documented anxieties about the effects
of FIFO, commute operations have continued, if not expanded, and few
Gender, Sexuality, and Rurality in the Mining Industry 189
new, purpose-built mining towns have been constructed in the past

twenty years, due mainly to significant savings by mining companies in
capital expenditure on infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and
shops, and the avoidance of capital gains taxation on developed proper-
ties (Eveline and Booth 2002; Storey 2010).
In this chapter we explore three core intersections of rurality and sex-
uality manifest in the contemporary Australian minerals industry and
culture, namely: mining and prostitution; fly-in fly-out work and sexual-
ity, and mining and sexual harassment. In undertaking this task we draw
upon over three hundred documents, images, and artifacts collected from
2008 to the present as part of a broader social and cultural geography of
the most recent so-called “resource boom” in Australia (Lloyd 2008). As
unprecedented demand from China and India for the nation’s minerals
has resulted in numerous new mining ventures in rural and regional
areas, as well as the considerable extension of existing enterprises, we
have sought to broaden the ambit of “the boom” and explore its social
and cultural manifestations and contexts.
The library of materials comprises newspaper and magazine reports,
postcards, novels, documentaries and feature films, web-based discus-
sion lists, photographs, corporate publications, pamphlets, maps, and
brochures. Collectively, the material we draw upon provides a central
but often overlooked place in ethnography for social and cultural re-
search (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007) as McFarlane and Hay (2003,
211) demonstrate through their analysis of the coverage of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) protests in The Australian newspaper. They
explain that the newspaper is itself an “institution of everyday culture in
Australia,” and go on to reveal that textual representation is an important
mechanism by which hegemonic understandings, in this case of free
trade and corporate globalization, are powerfully maintained (McFarlane
and Hay 2003, 229). In seeking to uncover similar types of hegemonic
meanings in the texts we have collected, we have afforded recursive at-
tention to patterns, convergences, differences, marginal themes, coding
and cross-coding throughout, relevant to the three areas under investiga-
tion (Alvesson 2002).
MINING AND PROSTITUTION
The prominence of prostitution in discourses about mining is such that

there is an entry specifically dedicated to the industry in the Encyclopaedia
of Prostitution and Sex Work (Aderinto 2006, 316–17). Tellingly, however,
the entry discusses prostitution in relation to mining as an entirely histor-
ical phenomenon. This is illustrative of much of the writing about the
subject, for while there is indeed a literature on sexuality and mining
pertaining to prostitution, it is largely examined through an historical
lens (e.g., Hurtado 1999; Dando 2009). Yet, the connection, if not confla-
tion, between mining and prostitution is not solely an historical phenom-
enon, as our data reveal. Indeed, in response to the query “Do mining
engineers get lonely?” posed in an Australian focused internet discussion
forum, one of the discussion participants assured the questioner: “Mate,
prostitution and the mining industry go hand in hand. Don’t worry.”
In her comprehensive overview of this literature, Julia A. Laite (2009)
usefully challenges claims that prostitution has been typically associated
with the metropole, and more particularly, as emblematic of urban decay
(e.g., Scott et al. 2006), highlighting instead the deep historical connection
between mining in rural and remote locations and prostitution. She ob-
serves that commercial sex work was prominent in rural and regional
locations from the mid-nineteenth century onwards as the modern min-
ing industry and associated mining communities developed around the
globe. She identifies three ways in which prostitution in mining towns
has been characterized and understood. In brief, commercial sex in min-
ing communities has been approached as: a means for women (excluded
from mining work) to make money from mining and an opportunity for
male workers to escape the confines of the ordered environment of the
mining site and thus in each case, as a strategy of resistance; as playing a
(tolerated) role in ensuring a docile (implicitly heterosexual) male labor
force; and finally, and most recently, as an imported and potentially dis-
astrous by-product posing a threat not only to worker discipline and
production levels, but also community safety and (family) values. In each
of these approaches identified by Laite (2009), sexuality is implicit rather
than explicit, as is the assumption and construction of a normative
heterosexual mining workforce. At the same time, in these three ap-
proaches it would seem that sexuality is defined by its relationship to
mining, that is, as a gendered means to secure economic benefit or relief
from mining, or in terms of the impacts upon the success or otherwise of
a mining project (leading to “social interventions” on the part of mining
companies). Thus sexuality is clearly positioned or constructed as “out-
side” or external to the industry and its spaces.
The three approaches described by Laite (2009) are evident in contem-
porary research and media commentary in Australia around mining-re-
lated prostitution. “Working girls” also tellingly referred to as “coal
girls”—in an overtly sexualized direct relationship to mining—are re-
ported in one newspaper article as:
travelling from as far away as New Zealand to the resource-rich re-
gions of Queensland and Western Australia . . . making as much money
in one or two days as mine laborers earn in a week. . . . The rich
pickings up to $2000 a day are attracting scores of women to commu-
nities bursting with cashed-up men deprived of female company for
weeks. (Donaghey, Passmore, and Sinnerton, 2011)
The emphasis here is on women benefiting from mining, if not preying

on vulnerable mining men. This is constantly reiterated in the type of
language used about the women who are described as “opportunistic”
(Beato 2011) and “targeting” FIFO workers (Thomas and Rickard 2012).
Alongside the positioning of women as benefiting from mining via
prostitution, the texts we have assembled also echo Laite’s (2009) obser-
vation that prostitution is often assumed to be an inevitable and natural
outcome of the presence of large numbers of men. In this reckoning men
and masculinity are unquestionably conflated with heterosexuality, so
that while “devious” entrepreneurial women may be making money
from the resource boom, it is male heterosexuality which is driving de-
mand. This dual construction of prostitution and mining is evident in
another report, headlined “FIFO prostitutes to cash in on mining boom,”
in which a journalist contends, “Another businesswoman said she was
approached by an interstate group looking to take advantage of the surge
of male mine workers, who spent their working week ‘in a hole’ and
emerged with cash to burn and ‘one thing on their mind’” (Maharaj
2010).
Rurality is central to the demand for prostitution, as the above quota-
tion demonstrates, for these are men whose work demands isolation from
civilization. As part of a self-described online community interested in
“controversial news,” Beato (2011) responds to the types of newspaper
reports cited, writing: “There’s a new mining boom taking shape across
the vast expanses of rural Australia. It’s not for precious metals or rare
earths. Rather, it’s for another type of rare commodity: women.” He
argues that because mining jobs are those that “men take and women
avoid,” preferring urban-based employment, there is a “colossal imbal-
ance of the sexes in mining towns.”
Also intertwined in the texts is the third dominant trope discussed by
Laite (2009) in the historical construction of prostitution and mining. This
is a construction which incites “moral panic” (Hubbard 2004, 1695), that
is, a sense of fear, risk, and danger around the “panic figure” (Hubbard
2008, 645) of the (unregulated) sex worker, and the potential for health
risks to mine employees, their partners (families) and, to a lesser extent,
the sex workers themselves. The currency of this framing was evident in
the widespread media attention garnered by a submission to the Austra-
lian Government inquiry into the social impacts of FIFO work by the
Western Australian (WA) peak body of General Practitioners, which fo-
cused on the risks of sexually-transmitted disease (e.g., Trenwith 2011). It
was also illustrated when the national president of the Australian Medi-
cal Association linked rising numbers of sexually-transmitted infections
(STIs) in rural areas to the mining boom. One regional newspaper quoted
the President of the association as saying:
We are undoubtedly seeing this explosion in regional and rural

Queensland and I’m sure the FIFO workforce is a major factor in that.
The work that FIFO workers are causing for doctors, is in part, the
eruption of STIs. Unregulated prostitutes are coming in and servicing a
lot of men in a very short timeframe . . . it’s very easy to spread dis-
eases. . . . Sex workers who just go up and freelance don’t understand
the risks they are taking . . . and the girls that are just out for a good
time, they are not necessarily thinking about the risks.
(au.news.yahoo.com/the west/fifo-men-targeted-by-sex-workers)
Again, rurality is a key to this discussion, for typically the rural has been
imagined as a pure and unsullied place. The idea that mining—and its
inevitable connection with prostitution—is a potential threat to this con-
struction of the rural is evident in a number of media reports. This was
exemplified in the significant national coverage given to a group of “min-
ing wives” in central Queensland when they led a protest against FIFO,
arguing that it resulted in family and community breakdown (the impli-
cations of FIFO work for interpersonal and sexual relations between part-
ners are discussed in detail later in this chapter, as the third theme). The
otherwise spectral presence of the mining prostitute as menace and threat
was given materiality, as repeated mention was made of research assert-
ing large numbers of unregulated sex workers and high rates of STIs in
Australian mining towns (e.g., Passmore 2011; Feeney 2011). In a blog on
her website, Jodinee—“a private and independent escort of Australia and
New Zealand”—offered a strong challenge to the media reports and the
broader claim that STIs could be blamed on sex workers. She told readers
that she took “great offence” at the media reports and the cited research,
adding:
I am a successful private independent sex worker and I, like the major-
ity of sex workers, use condoms with all of my clients and conduct STI
checks with every client (male and female). . . . It is not the sex workers
who are spreading disease, as articles like this insinuate. The truth is
that sex workers have led the way in STI prevention because we are
self-regulating, our bodies are our business and it is part of sex work
culture to use condoms. . . . I am concerned with poorly researched,
speculative media articles like this that paint a false, disgusting, nega-
tive image of sex workers as less than human, unclean and ignorant.
(www.escortjodine.com/category/offensive-media-articles)
In speaking back to academia and the media, Jodinee offers a powerful
antidote to negative and stigmatized representations of the “mining town
prostitute” while giving voice and agency to what researchers and jour-
nalists have otherwise presented as a shady and shadowy figure contam-
inating rural spaces.
FLY-IN FLY-OUT WORK AND SEXUALITY
Academic interest in the psychological implications of FIFO, as

O’Shaughnessy and Krogman (2011) rightly report, has not been matched
by social or cultural critiques of the practice including, of course, studies
of sexuality. At the same time, the psychological research and even popu-
lar media highlight the potential of such a research trajectory. When, for
example, the findings of a psychological study were released (see Sibbel
2009), comments about the implications FIFO had for the sex lives of
partners and workers were widely taken up by the media and elicited
extensive discussion on message boards and blogs. The journal Australian
Mining reported:
Recent studies show while the money earned is great, the tens of thou-
sands of workers who fly between work and home are facing long term
disruption to both the employee and their partner. Managers are now
being forced to provide more than high wages and accommodation
and also consider the sex lives of workers, to ensure workers are happi-
er in relationships to perform better at work. A study conducted at
Edith Cowan University in WA revealed it can be more difficult for
female partners to become pregnant or have sexual relations if their
menstrual cycle did not fit in with the roster. (Burke 2011)
Coinciding with the release of the research was a self-help guide penned
by a Brett Gilbert (2012), a male FIFO worker and entitled The Fly-in/Fly-
out Bachelor: A FIFO Bachelor’s Guide to Success with Women. In promulgat-
ing ideologies of self-empowerment and self-regulation, promoting gen-
der stereotypes, and positioning the author as expert, confidant, and
friend, the text mirrors many of the popular self-help books focused on
heterosexual relationships (Zimmerman, Holm, and Haddock 2001;
Winch 2011). A key difference is that its intended audience is men and,
more specifically, men working FIFO in rural areas. In part, the rationale
for the book, as explained by Gilbert (2012) on his website, is that there
are so few women in mining. He contends that this then has the potential
to render men desperate and unpracticed socially, as well as uncon-
cerned with personal appearance. To support this thesis he provides a
“testimonial” from “Peter” on the website. “Brett has been a great help to
me. Being a person who has lived in the mining community for many
years I’ve had very few interactions with women in a romantic sense
which resulted in a lack of confidence with women.” According to Gil-
bert (2012) the problem for Peter and his counterparts is not just what is
occurring in the rural space but what is simultaneously occurring in the
urban. He writes: “To magnify things, FIFO bachelors are competing
with more socially adept males for women who work city commute jobs.
Men who work city jobs have a higher chance of meeting and interacting
with women on a day-to-day basis; thus forming resistances to social
barriers, women’s qualifying strategies and their unconscious tests.”

Thus, the urban based heterosexual male is advantaged on numerous
accounts, not least because he develops a nous and savvy in his dealings
with women. In contrast, the FIFO worker is encumbered by naivete and
inexperience in understanding the distinctly different (and potentially
devious) world inhabited by women.
At the same time as Gilbert’s website and book emerged, the mining
industry sponsored “Mining Family Matters” (miningfamiliesmat-
ter.com) website, self-promoted as “Australia’s first online mining com-
munity,” engaged a psychologist to address a series of questions and
answers about “sex for the FIFO couple.” Examination of questions and
comments posted on discussion boards and forums on this site reveals a
preoccupation with accommodating male sexuality, and related anxieties
around infidelity, as opposed to women’s sexuality in the face of ex-
tended absences of male partners. Interestingly, some women identify a
shift towards misogyny in partner behavior as a result of FIFO work.
Another website to appear in recent times is “FIFO Families,” (fifofami-
lies.com) created by a “FIFO mum,” to offer social network opportunities
and support for other families also affected by FIFO work practices. Mas-
culine heterosexuality forms the basis for this emergent “FIFO family”
identity, as exemplified by the logo featured on the site. This logo con-
sists of a cartoon illustration of a woman and man with two children
between them, all four holding hands in a line. Both sites are clearly
founded on helping women make FIFO work.
As alluded to earlier in the chapter, sexuality is further an important
aspect of FIFO work practices in the resistance strategies mobilized by
some rural residents and communities. FIFO workforces are presented as
a threat to women in rural towns, in particular. For example, women
resisting a proposed FIFO operation in their local area were reported in
the media to be concerned that “the ratio of men to women [changing
due to the presence of a predominantly male FIFO workforce] was chang-
ing the way female residents felt about their own safety when moving
around towns like Collinsville and Moranbah on foot at night” (Ander-
sen 2011). They referred to “cases of sexual assault in the camps” and
“cases of drunken men breaking into ladies’ rooms.” The risk to women
is presented as an inevitable, if not natural, product of concentrations of
male mine workers in particular places—rural communities—rather than
a product of masculine heterosexuality.
As a further example, the adoption of FIFO by the mining industry is
believed to result in an increase in domestic violence and marriage break-
down, with fatigue and the heavy consumption of alcohol, as opposed to
masculine heterosexuality, seen to be the key factors. Additionally, in
media coverage of the release of Australian reports on the social impacts
of FIFO, and also coverage of community protests against this practice,
masculine heterosexuality is the ex-nominated norm (e.g., Passmore 2011;
Feeney 2011; Trenwith 2011). The concerns raised tend to foreground loss
of job satisfaction on the part of mining employees, and the related threat
to the industry.
MINING AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
One aspect of sexuality that has been afforded some attention in scholar-
ship on gender and mining is the prevalence of sexual harassment in the
mining industry. Suzanne Tallichet’s (2006) study of the coal fields of
Appalachia in the United States focuses on a critical historical moment
when, as a result of a successful class action suit over sex discrimination
in the coal industry, women began working in large numbers in the
underground mines in the area. This represented a significant rupture in
the sexual division of labor in the mining communities, to strongly held
gender norms, and to the conflation of masculinity with mining work.
However, Tallichet (2006) records that women miners were subject to
overt and persistent sexist and sexual harassment as part of their every-
day work life. A decade later, Joan Eveline and Michael Booth’s (2002)
examination of “Emsite,” a mining operation in remote Western Austra-
lia, revealed sexual harassment had not diminished in mining and contin-
ued to be utilized as a means of resisting women’s presence in the sector.
Drawing on interviews with mine workers, managers, and union repre-
sentatives as well as document analysis, the authors detail a culture of
violent and extensive sexual harassment directed at female employees.
Indeed, a woman miner who has a current high-profile sexual harass-
ment case before the Australian Human Rights Commission stated that
when she reported her claims to management she was told, “So what?
This is mining. You should grow up” (Buckley-Carr 2011).
What Tallichet (2006) and Eveline and Booth (2002) do not take further
in their highlighting of sexual harassment is the way that the mining men
use sexual banter to generate collective identification as masculine
heterosexual men. That is, as a form of what Roper (1996) contends is
homosocial practice embedded in male desire (see also McDowell 2001).
In his study of men in a management college in Australia, Roper (1996)
reports on the way in which men express their fondness and affection for
other men. Often this very intimate homosocial/homoerotic context is
disguised via humor or horseplay. Roper (1996) claims that the preva-
lence of homosocial relations in male-dominated organizations, and the
implications of these relations for women and some organizational men,
means that it is critical that we name what we see. However, this is not
easy when what we are witnessing typically falls “between the categories
of the social and the sexual” (Roper 1996, 223). He sees value in the term
“homosocial reproduction” (Kanter 1977), for it accentuates the way in
which men’s preference for other men creates male monopolies in organ-
izations, but worries that it fails to convey the eroticism involved. Simi-
larly, he rejects “homosexual reproduction,” for what is going on be-
tween men does not actually involve explicit sexual intimacy. Indeed, the
institutionalized nature of heterosexuality in many organizations would
render the naming of any male to male desire impossible. Roper (1996,
223) thus engages the concept of “homosocial desire” from Sedgwick
(1985), arguing that it incorporates the “radical discontinuities between
heterosexuality and homosexuality.”
The fact that there is much yet to understand about how men engage
with other men in mining has been highlighted in two 2010 sexual ha-
rassment cases. The first was initiated by a male worker against two male
colleagues in the Hunter Valley coal mine in rural New South Wales.
Among the proven allegations were incidents of perpetrators having
drawn pictures of male genitalia on the victim’s safety equipment, and
regularly displaying their penises and openly masturbating in front of
their workmates. Perhaps most significantly, when the perpetrators were
sacked by management, the male-dominated union went on strike to
protest (see www.abc.net.au/news/2010-10-18). In a similar case, Sam
Hall, a gay male coal miner in West Virginia sued his former employer
for harassment in 2010. Hall reported having slurs and signs such as “I
like little boys” written on his car and/or locker, and co-workers waving
their penises at him (see www.queerty.com). Both cases highlight that the
“queer country” literature (Bell and Valentine 1995a) has yet to fully
detail the workplace experiences of gays and lesbians, particularly those
involved in traditionally-defined rural industries such as mining. The fact
that studies of gender and mining have repeatedly reported that “gay”
and “lesbian” are frequently used as terms of abuse for certain employees
suggests that the mining sector may be a particularly hostile environment
for gays and lesbians (Wicks 2002; Miller 2004).
These sentiments—that sexual harassment is integral to mining and
responsibility for sexual harassment rests with the victim rather than the
perpetrator—are reproduced in a recent Australian novel The Girl in the
Steel-Capped Boots by Loretta Hill (2012). The “girl” to whom the title
refers is new engineering graduate Lena Todd who, according to the
cover blurb: “is a city girl who thrives on cocktails and cappuccinos” who
finds her “world is turned upside down” when her boss sends her “to the
outback to join a construction team.” As even this brief introduction sug-
gests, a dichotomized urban/rural is a recurring theme in the text. What is
of significance to this discussion is that it emerges even in relation to the
issue of addressing sexual harassment. Lena is one of five women among
350 men and is harassed both on-site and off-site in the work camp. In
pondering what to do, she suggests that reporting the harassment and/or
invoking the sexual harassment policies of the company are urban solu-
tions, and ultimately, not useful. Hill (2012, 96) writes:
What if she. . . ? No, she couldn’t. The Barnes Inc Human Resources
team back in Perth would have simultaneous coronaries if they found
out. Bugger that! It was all well and good for a city-slicker HR manager
to sue for sexual harassment. But how was that going to give her good
engineering experience? How was that going to help her clear her con-
science and earn her degree? Her decision solidified. Lena was going to
do this her way.
The novel—one that a reader/reviewer refers to as a “must read for all
engineers . . . especially female ones!” (www.goodreads.com/book/show/
13231142)—minimizes the sexual harassment as something that is not
personal nor intended to harm, reiterating well-worn and now well-chal-
lenged beliefs that sexual harassment is relatively harmless fun. Ulti-
mately, Lena successfully, but gently, takes on her harassers, muting
their sexist and sexual harassment with her wit and superior engineering
knowledge and skills. As an addendum, she wins the heart of the incred-
ibly rich, youthful, and handsome owner of the mine, Dan Hullog.
CONCLUSION
Focussing explicitly on sexuality in mining foregrounds more than wom-

en’s exclusion from employment in the industry (important as that is
given that, in Australia, for example, in 2010 the MCA reported that the
sector paid a wage 63 percent higher than the national all-industry aver-
age). As indicated in this chapter, highlighting the hegemonic intersec-
tions of (hetero) sexuality, masculinity, and rurality as enacted and legiti-
mized in the mining industry facilitates engagement with broader social
and cultural inequalities and their ongoing reproduction. That is, wom-
en’s subordinate relationship to mining and mining men—as “mining
wives” or “coal girls”—can be seen to be grounded in the sector’s perfor-
mance of masculine heterosexuality spanning both the private and public
spheres. Importantly, this chapter has suggested the role of rural spaces
and imaginaries in (re-)asserting and naturalizing heterosexual masculin-
ity in the minerals industry.
Foregrounding sexuality also makes clear the important role of the
mining industry in the ongoing construction, (re)assertion, and legitima-
tion of specific hegemonic versions of heterosexuality and heterosexual
practices and sites. As Jackson (2003) reminds us, this normative hetero-
sexuality not only reproduces hegemonic gender difference but also in-
equality, not least in terms of the structuring of the division of domestic
labor. This chapter has also suggested the complexity of this construction
and reproduction of hegemonic sexuality in terms of, for example, multi-
ple sites and, less directly, classed dimensions. It is, after all, the working
men living in dongas (the prefabricated accommodation on work camps),
who pose a threat to the community as opposed to corporate staff gather-
ing in a Sydney bar. Just as the reference to “coal girls” activates an

historical stereotype of working class femininity, mine workers elicit tra-
ditional tropes of working class masculinity. Similarly, this mobilization
of hegemonic masculine sexuality has adverse consequences for many
men, and is constructed in the context of ongoing resistance.
THIRTEEN
The Global Cowboy
Rural Masculinities and Sexualities
Chris Gibson
There is arguably no more iconic motif of rural masculinity than the

cowboy. The cowboy is a persona, a stereotype, an ideology, and a style
of manhood strongly associated with rurality. With origins in Mexico and
the American West, cowboy imagery and identities were globalized in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and were adopted, mutat-
ed, and subverted in contexts as different as Hawai’i, urban Japan, and
remote Aboriginal Australia. This chapter traces the historical emergence
and diffusion of cowboy masculinity, arguing that key to its endurance
has been its malleability—its multivalent combinations of hero worship,
ambiguity, rural place-based associations, and expressiveness. If there is,
as various geographers have suggested, now a “global rural” that neces-
sitates analysis (Woods 2007; McCarthy 2008; Nelson and Nelson 2011),
then one of its central characters must be the global cowboy.
By suggesting that there is such a figure as the global cowboy, I do not
wish to imply that cowboy masculinity is universal or consistent, histori-
cally or geographically—quite the opposite. In certain places and eras
diverse cowboy masculinities emerged as potent expressions of man-
hood, sexuality, identity, and rurality. As I discuss below, cowboy mas-
culinities are hybrid and often contradictory—merging multicultural ori-
gins into a singular iconic “formula” and “look” that has traveled global-
ly, yet one that remains loose enough for a multitude of local adaptations,
with resulting performances of cowboy masculinities serving quite
contrasting ideological and moral goals. The global cowboy offers a pal-
199
200 Chris Gibson
ette of mixed colors and shades, from which come into being diverse
place-specific expressions of masculinity and sexuality.
The story of the global cowboy that I bring together here is also admit-
tedly partial—reflecting my own interests as a geographer with a person-
al passion for cowboy style and aesthetics. I focus on cowboys and mas-
culinity, leaving untold an equally important story of cowgirls and femi-
ninity (but see Jordan 1984). I nonetheless draw on diverse sources and
critiques: from feminist analysis of frontier masculinities to visual image-
ry in global pop culture. This is, I would argue, a peculiar but important
story for a broader examination of the intersection of rurality and sexual-
ity. Cowboy iconography, fashion, music, and myth together provide an
enduring suite of associations with the rural, and with masculinity,
through which contemporary understandings of rurality and sexuality
are filtered. As the world’s population becomes ever more urbanized and
everyday experiences with country life become scarce, cowboy imagery
continues for many to be synonymic with rurality—even if exaggerated
and knowingly dependent on fantasy.
In this regard, consideration of the global cowboy figure adds another
layer to existing academic discussions of the emergence of the “global
rural” and “global countryside.” Michael Woods (2007, 491) described
the global countryside as:
a rural realm constituted by multiple, shifting, tangled and dynamic
networks, connecting rural to rural and rural to urban, but with greater
intensities of globalization processes and of global interconnections in
some rural localities than in others, and thus with a differential distri-
bution of power, opportunity and wealth across rural space.
This is very much borne out in the case of the global cowboy—a traveling
figure, both real and imagined, connecting Mexico, Texas, Hawai’i, out-
back Australia, and the Argentinean pampas—but also the boardrooms
of Houston and Perth, the honky-tonks of Fort Worth, and the gay bars of
San Francisco and Sydney. No study of rurality and sexuality could be
complete without coming to terms with the remarkable journey—figura-
tively and literally—of the cowboy.
Examination of cowboy masculinities helps illustrate deeper associa-
tions between rurality and sexuality—manifest in collisions of morality
and emotion, visuality, and materiality, body and image—as well as in
intersections with ethnicity, class, and postcoloniality (Bell 2000a; Gor-
man-Murray, Waitt, and Johnston 2008; Bryant and Pini 2011). Arguably
this focus on rurality and sexuality has been thus far missing from the
literature on the global countryside, which has tended to emphasize po-
litical-economic dimensions of globalization. Yet through sexual dis-
courses and practices too, rural places are “reconstituted under globaliza-
tion, not as an imposition from above, but through a process of co-consti-
tution that involves both global and local actors” (Woods 2007, 497).
The Global Cowboy 201
Some of the more profound tensions at work in rural places—between

conservatism and rebellion, between ruggedness and intimacy, between
isolation and estrangement and community and belonging—reveal them-
selves vividly in sexual practices and identities, and in this instance
through the cowboy figure.
What follows here is a meandering through the history and geogra-
phy of the cowboy, indelibly shaped by my own experiences and inter-
pretations as someone outside the American West, on the far flung edges
of the cowboy diaspora. The main trail followed is historical—not simply
for the conveniences of a loose chronological structure, but because the
cowboy has a peculiar genealogy worth exploring: one that challenges
assumptions and simplistic interpretations. Behind the remarkable global
diffusion of cowboy masculinities and style is the allure and continuing
marketability of cowboy imagery in a global cultural economy. But as we
shall see, the story of global cowboy is not nearly so recent, nor entirely
disembodied: from its earliest days the global diffusion of cowboy in-
volved the mobility of bodies and things—Wild West performers, west-
ern shirts, country singers, cattlemen, blue jeans, and boots—through
which cowboy imagery and mythology traveled. In this very particular,
path-dependent way, formats for performing cowboy masculinity
emerged.
Before we hitch a ride with the global cowboy, a note on where this
research comes from: the chapter as it stands mostly reflects my personal
“scrapbooking” on cowboy iconography and themes. I grew up in Britain
and Australia with a fascination for cowboy clothes and mythology; my
childhood memories are of being entranced by Wild West shows at Brit-
ish seaside holiday camps in the 1970s; of Sundays spent in front of the
TV watching repeats of Bonanza and Lone Ranger movies. As an adult I
have since indulged in collecting western shirts and cowboy boots (vin-
tage and new), early twentieth-century sheet music of cowboy songs,
second hand vinyl records, tin signs, western wear catalogs and adver-
tisements, and even sewing patterns depicting cowboys. A scattering of
these material artifacts are included here as illustrations. But, too, this
story intersects with other intellectual concerns of mine: writing for in-
stance about cowboy iconography and country music in Australia, espe-
cially at festivals and in Aboriginal communities (see Gibson 2008; Gib-
son and Davidson, 2004; Dunbar-Hall and Gibson 2004); and then most
recently interviewing surviving cowboy boot-makers in Texas—for a
longer, focused ethnography of cowboy boot-making as craft-based crea-
tive industry. The cowboy figure has lurked in much of the geographical
work I have previously pursued on rurality, identity, and creative ex-
pression; this chapter is an opportunity to bring him out of the shadows.
202 Chris Gibson
ORIGINS
Much historical scholarship has been dedicated to exploring the origins

of the cowboy. The generally accepted wisdom is that cowboys emerged
as a specific form of the frontier rural worker in the American South and
West, a variant on the already-present Spanish Mexican vaqueros who
worked under poor conditions on colonial cattle ranches from the 1500s
onwards. Although a genealogical point of origin for the later American
cowboy, the vaquero was unrecognizable in terms of the later romantic
mythology of the lonesome but free wanderer. Their lives were tightly
constrained and surveilled under the authoritarian rule of ranchers and
regional stockmen’s associations.
The vaquero’s form of pastoral work moved northwards through the
1700s and 1800s as cattle ranching spread into modern California, New
Mexico and Arizona, and Texas, where Americans “adopted and mod-
ified many of the vaquero’s tools, techniques, and customs and thereby
created their own cowboy culture” (Dary 1989, xi). The 1860s to the 1880s
was characterized by gigantic trans-continental cattle drives: from Mexi-
co and Texas up to railheads in Abeline, Dodge City, and Wichita, Kan-
sas. The archetypal cowboy is said to have emerged within this relatively
short, confined time period—before the advent of fences and stock feed,
and before railways completed their crisscrossing of the continent, ren-
dering long trails and round-ups obsolete. In a much-repeated, cherished,
and nationalistic history told about cowboys from this period, masculin-
ity is intricately interwoven with late nineteenth-century American fron-
tier expansion: “In the legendary West, Europeans became Americans
who tamed a wilderness” (McCall 2001, 5). The westward expansion of
the frontier was a narrative of white male mastery of nature—hence
Frederick Jackson Turner’s (1920) idealized frontier space was what made
American men. This was a masculine drama in which the adaptive, inven-
tive, muscular cowboy battled against the odds amidst isolation to fend
off violent Indians, tame unruly cattle and horses, and simultaneously
open up the interior for the expansion and establishment of a nation
(Figure 13.1).
Key to the emergence of the cowboy myth was the specific set of
conditions surrounding masculinity in this confined period of nine-
teenth-century America. According to Laura McCall (2001, 1–2), this was
“a time when standards of ideal manhood were undergoing profound
change,” a transition from “Victorian norms of manliness that empha-
sized self-restraint, chastity, sobriety, self-denial, sentiment, and delayed
gratification” to newer ideals of “physical prowess, the masculine primi-
tive, and a deliberate linkage between white supremacy and male domi-
nance.” The setting was a tumultuous period in American masculinity, in
which “the rugged, individualistic maverick of the West became a fash-
ionable antidote to urban malaise” (McCall 2001, 5). The emergence of the
Figure 13.1. Jacke Wolfe Ranchwear catalog, 1962. The cover painting, “After
the Rain” by Joe Beeler, epitomizes the myth of the rugged, individualist white
cowboy as master of the frontier. Source: Jacke Wolfe Ranchwear, 1962, compa-
ny catalog, Salt Lake City.
cowboy figure thus had the effect of gendering urban and rural space
(also see the chapter by Annes and Redlin).
Importantly, this mythology was always mediated by commercial
interests, especially metropolitan cultural and entertainment industries.
As Smith (2003, 170) describes, depictions of cowboys in films, dime nov-
els, and paintings:
popularized the notion that the western wilderness, free of the effemi-
nizing forces of the city, challenged and therefore stimulated white
204 Chris Gibson
men’s masculinity. Their ideas appealed to middle-class men who

found their work increasingly deskilled under corporate capitalism
and who were threatened by the movement of women into the public
sphere. Such Americans abandoned Victorian ideals of self-denial and
restraint and celebrated strength and virility as the basic qualities of
manhood.
Cowboy masculinity and sexual prowess were thus commercial as well
as cultural invocations.
All this was refracted through the embodied experiences of working
cowboys themselves, on the plains and in cow-towns, as workers, and as
social and sexual beings. Accompanying the mythologization of the fron-
tier as the laboratory for an emergent, nationalist masculinity were the
vernacular experiences of men in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s—working
alone or in men-only traveling camps on the great cattle trails. Here they
negotiated daily a tension between an isolated working life and nascent
forms of community, between estrangement and belonging: theirs was a
lonely life in single-sex places, undertaking hard physical work, coming
into town only intermittently for supplies, drinking, gambling, and sex.
According to historians, the result was a complex mix of sex segrega-
tion, repression, and release: long months of isolation and the forming of
peculiar bonds of friendship in the company of other men, followed by
the intense roistering of “cutting loose” in the saloons, dance halls, and
red-light districts of cow-towns. According to this historical interpreta-
tion, isolation and repression fuelled a dysfunctional view of women and
an astringent, humorless, and violent masculinity. Western films fre-
quently hyperbolized this, depicting cowboys fighting over women or
abusing prostitutes—what 1950s Swedish film critic Harry Schein (1955,
319) once described as a “sadistic dislike for women,” their six-shooter as
“phallic symbol” substituting for impotent sexuality. The cowboy
emerged in both everyday practice and in pop culture myth as stridently,
violently heteronormative.
Scholars of the history of sexuality have since pointed out that on the
trails of the 1860s and 1870s some men were indeed drawn to cowboy life
because of same-sex attraction (D’Emilio and Freedman 1988). Homosex-
uality was likely present, with same-sex relations often referred to euphe-
mistically as “mutual solace” (Wilke 1995), though evidence of how
widespread is slim (Rupp 1999) and sodomy laws and heteronormative
mores prevailed, repressing expressions of homoeroticism. As with pi-
rates and sailors, same-sex sexuality was a lived response to isolation
(Rupp 1999, 55); yet too, “Westerners responded to a multitude of inter-
nal and external conditions that allowed them to alternately discover or
redefine their emotional and sexual desire” (Wilke 1995, 164). Boundaries
were decidedly blurred between sexual orientations and between inti-
mate acts and asexual companionship practices (Packard 2006). Such inti-
mations of the ambiguous (bi)sexuality of cowboy life would later resur-
face in Brokeback Mountain, the Annie Proulx short story (1997) and then
Ang Lee directed romance-western film (2005) in which the two male
cowboy protagonists fall in love but later pursue heterosexual marriages
and family life, caught in a tragic Romeo and Juliet/“star-crossed lover”
scenario.
GLOBAL THEATRICS
Non-academic histories of cowboy culture frequently lament what is per-

ceived as a gulf between the “real” life of working cowboys in the late
nineteenth-century American West and subsequent exaggerated stereo-
types. Westermeier (1976, 104) for example, complained that
from the dawn of his era, the cowboy suffered from overexposure. He
rapidly became one of the most notable stereotypes of the West. . . .
Now the working cowboy is the forgotten man of novels, cinema, and
TV, while the fictionalized image dominates the scene to the extent that
his real-life counterpart is obliterated.
As we have already seen, such a position suffers from the faulty assump-
tion that the cowboy’s hegemonic masculinity had “authentic” origins, or
was once singular or pure. The counter-argument is that there has never
been anything “natural” at all about cowboy masculinity; from its earliest
days the cowboy figure emerged iteratively out of everyday practice and
media representations—it was simultaneously lived and contrived.
Again, the context here is pivotal: the cowboy myth emerged deep in
the Romantic period—that also saw the fetishizing of hermits, gypsies,
pirates, and noble savages. Hyperbolization of frontier masculinity was
already familiar by the time of the great cattle drives of the second half of
the nineteenth century: indeed, by the 1850s, and preceding the golden
age of the cowboy on the cattle trail, American readers were already
devouring the “tall tales in which . . . the mythic hero of the Tennessee
wilderness, battled nature, killed Indians with his bare hands, and sub-
dued wild animals” (Rupp 1999, 54). By the 1860s and 1870s working
cowboys were “aware that their occupation had attracted the popular
imagination, and some tried to cash in by writing their stories or giving
exhibitions. . . . By the late nineteenth century most . . . probably knew
that their occupations exemplified heroic masculinity” (Wilk 2007, 23).
Cowboy mythology also spread transnationally in the late nineteenth
century, at the same time that its masculinities were being embodied and
performed prosaically. Cowboy mythology emerged and was dissemi-
nated in an embodied fashion, by American and Mexican men, often
working cowboys, who in the mid to late 1800s themselves traveled the
world to work cattle, or with Wild West shows, rodeos, and circuses
(often accompanied by Native Americans and Mexican vaqueros). After
206 Chris Gibson
the introduction and subsequent rapid reproduction of cattle to Hawai’i

in the early 1800s, Mexican vaqueros (then working in California, which
was still a part of Mexico) visited Hawai’i and taught locals how to work
cattle. The Hawaiian paniolo (cowboy—said to be a Hawaiianized transla-
tion of español) subsequently adopted vaquero dress, saddles, and riding
style, as well as mainland American cowboy hats, western wear, and
jeans. In France, the 1889 visit by Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show
started an urban craze for all things cowboy—“children’s toys, choco-
lates, candies, cigar boxes, cabaret songs, operettas, books, comic books,
postcards, anything that could be printed or designed” (Rainger 2000,
170)—but at the very same time also influenced vernacular cattle herding
practices of gardians, the domestic equivalent to working cowboys.
Nineteenth-century Wild West acts were not so much nostalgic for a
long-vanished past, but simultaneous mobilizations of stereotype and
fantasy amidst actual working lives, and on-going colonial expansion
(Kasson 2000). McCall (2001, 6) described this as “a dialectical process by
which cultures of manhood took shape, as actual residents of the
American West encountered notions of iconic western masculinity.” The
line between lived experience and staged persona was decidedly blur-
ry—if not absent altogether. Buffalo Bill Cody, for instance, toured his
Wild West Show with working cowboys; in the off-season they worked
on the range with cattle, as scouts, or bounty hunters. Cody himself
scouted for the 5th U.S. Cavalry, employed to pursue the Sioux and
Cheyenne warriors thought responsible for killing George Custer and his
troops. In one well-known fight, “Cody killed the Cheyenne warrior Yel-
low Hair and the scalp and other trophies he brought back traveled on
exhibition afterward” (Nottage 2006, 18). In that battle, “Cody had worn
a theatrical outfit reflective of Mexican style, a black velvet shirt with
scarlet and lace trim and silver buttons; later he wore it onstage, merging
the real with the mythic” (Nottage 2006, 18). Wild Bill Hickok, one of the
most famous active outlaws in the Black Hills of South Dakota, was also
at the same time a member of Buffalo Bill’s stage troupe. As early as 1849,
tourists could be found at places such as St. Louis (at that point on the
perceived western edge of Anglo-American civilization) seeking
glimpses of western frontier life and Indian culture, decked out in leather
shirts in preparation for an “authentic” western experience (Nottage
2006). City-dwellers purchased western costumes themselves as tourists,
feeding the growing market for “Dude ranches” scattered across the West
(where from the 1870s onwards city slickers could play cowboy, learn to
ride horses, round-up cattle, etc.), and newly-minted western states such
as Montana and Wyoming marketed themselves as western through the
cowboy figure (as would inland Australian “country towns” some fifty
years later, seeking to position themselves as “authentically” rural—see
Gibson and Davidson 2004).
Wild West shows took the cowboy persona far and wide, over half a
century, to South America, India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand,
Britain, Europe, and Canada. Buffalo Bill toured his show (which in-
cluded sharp-shooter Annie Oakley) for two decades, beginning in 1883.
Well beyond the American West, the cowboy figure—revised for local
circumstances—would inform colonial, frontier imaginaries. Just as U.S.
Manifest Destiny was “expressed in masculine terms” (McCall 2001, 8)
so, too, in Australia the cowboy/pastoralist/drover was a mythologized
figure who tamed nature for European agricultural expansion (Anderson
2003). In places like Australia models of frontier manhood evolved inde-
pendently at first, with colonial British influences, but were in time hybri-
dized as American cowboy mythology—and traveling cowboys them-
selves—visited the Antipodes. Another point of early connection was
rodeo: in Australia, where horses and cattle were similarly tools of colo-
nization, early “buckjumping” (riding unbroken horses) and “camp
draft” (round-up) competitions developed independently of North
American rodeo. In the 1880s and 1890s such events went on the road as a
form of traveling rural entertainment, and in time attracted American
competitors and were accompanied by touring American Wild West
shows (Hicks 2002).
In this highly embodied way models of manhood dispersed and the
cowboy persona was adapted to national cultures: Mexican charro, Ha-
waiian paniolo, Argentinean and Uruguayan gaucho, Chilean huaso, Peru-
vian chalan. In Australia, while some independent buckjumping promot-
ers scoffed at the visiting Americans with their razzamatazz showbiz
methods and phony reenactments, the sheer popularity of Wild West
entertainment convinced Australian rodeo stars, horseriders, musicians,
and entertainers to adopt western style, dress, sounds, and acts. A model
of cowboy hyper-masculinity thus mutated in Australia: stockmen and
ringers who worked with cattle were transformed into cowboys who
cracked whips, demonstrated lassoing and round-ups, along with log-
chopping, sheep shearing, and staged shoot-outs between bushrangers
(Australian outlaw figures) and the law. By the mid 1920s Australian
horseriding competitions began being known as rodeos, and typically
featured hillbilly music performances between heats, as well as lassoing,
bull-dogging, whip-cracking, sharp-shooting, rope-twirling, boomerang-
throwing, and wood-chopping. In parallel to Hawai’i, Argentina, and
elsewhere, Australian working cowboys developed and wore their own
vernacular frontier clothing (Akubra hats, RM Williams and Blundstone
Boots), but at the rodeo, buck jumpers, bull riders, and hillbilly music
stars increasingly favored American style cowboy boots, shirts, and hats
(Figure 13.2).
Cowboy motifs were also adopted in Australia by Aboriginal people,
the very populations subject to colonial incursions by pastoralism. The
American cowboy figure, mutated into the Australian context, formed a
208 Chris Gibson
Figure 13.2. Smoky Dawson’s Golden West Album (sheet music), 1951. Daw-
son was one of Australia’s most popular country music stars, with a career span-
ning five decades. Source: Smoky Dawson, 1951, Golden West Album (sheet
music), Southern Music Publishing Co., Sydney.
basis for a new mode of Indigenous masculinity. This was especially

meaningful for working Aboriginal stockmen maintaining connection to
country in an inhospitable set of circumstances that would otherwise see
them physically evicted from their traditional lands (Gill 2005). After
direct conflict between the incursions of pastoralists with their cattle
herds and traditional Aboriginal communities, Aboriginal men were em-
ployed as laborers and stockmen on pastoral stations established by Eu-
ropean colonizers on their land, while women worked as domestic hands
on farmsteads. With strong echoes of the vaqueros in Mexico, Aboriginal

stockmen were chronically underpaid for their work rounding-up cattle,
fencing, and branding, and their role in the successful establishment of a
European pastoral industry remains under-appreciated (Gill 2005). Be-
coming a cowboy was an important means to maintain masculine dig-
nity, and connection with traditional country in the face of eviction.
Meanwhile Aboriginal people in the remotest of outback communities
would come to love cowboy imagery in popular culture, notably music
and fashion, dispersed by radio on pastoral stations and performed by
touring country music stars. In time Aboriginal cowboys would perform
at rough riding and rodeo contests (Hunter 2008), and transcultural flow
would form the basis of a post–World War II Aboriginal country music
oeuvre, sometimes sung in traditional Aboriginal languages, but in dis-
tinctive hillbilly style, wearing western shirts, boots, and hats (Walker
2000; Dunbar-Hall and Gibson 2004; Figure 13.3). In consequence it is
possible to read Aboriginal cowboy masculinities as appropriating and
inverting the cowboy figure in an innovative form of post-colonial iden-
tity construction.
SEXUALIZATIONS AND SUBVERSIONS
By the 1920s, the family ranch had replaced the trail drive in the
American West, making “ranching more like farming” (Garceau 2001,
150). In Australia too pastoralism became more settled. The cowboy en-
tered into a new period of pop culture hyperbole and global cultural
diffusion: in films, music, and radio. In 1921 alone, no less than 854 west-
ern films were released in the United States, a full quarter of the entire
output of Hollywood (Hicks 2002, 74). Film producers went to great
lengths to market their cowboy stars as “authentically” western, position-
ing them as “spokesmen for the American pioneer”: Hollywood studios
“marketed these men as indigenous heroes whom they had not created
but had merely discovered” (Smith 2003, 203). Such heroes were saleable
at the very time that gender roles in American society (and on farms in
particular) were shifting, with increasing integration of women into
working life and public affairs. There was less a chasm between myth
and reality, than an iterative process reinforcing the masculine cowboy
myth and entrenching gendered divisions of rural labor. The pop culture
portrayal of cowboys as rugged individualists “reinforced the masculine
occupational identity of raising beef, even as the reality shifted from
nomadic all-male herders to men and women together on family
ranches” (Garceau 2001, 153).
There were limits to the hyper-masculinity of popular culture cow-
boys. As Smith (2003, 170) describes, the hyper-masculine cowboy fig-
ure—isolated, morally relativist, tough to the point of being sadistic, stoic
210 Chris Gibson
Figure 13.3. Jimmy Little, Country Boy Country Hits, c. 1968. Jimmy Little was
the first Aboriginal musician to achieve mainstream commercial success, in the
country music genre. He passed away after a six-decade career, as this chapter
was being written. Source: Jimmy Little (c. 1968) Country Boy Country Hits (LP),
Festival Records, Sydney.
to the point of causticity—would have alienated female-dominated mo-

vie palace audiences. Therefore,
the cowboy actor and his screenwriters modified the message: if the
natural environment made men strong and virile, it also caused them
to become dangerous and unpredictable. Only through the influence of
white women and Christianity would the frontiersman renounce his
life of instinct, take up Victorian ideals of manliness, and become a
responsible and contributing member of a western community. (Smith
2003, 170)
Hence the Broncho Billy films of the 1910s had a repeated script of the
outlaw figure “tamed” by Christian women, making the cowboy figure
more palatable for urban, middle-class nickelodeon audiences, but also
reflecting emerging codes of masculine domesticity. Later incarnations in
film, music and television negotiated this tension between conservatism

and rebellion: what Andrew Brodie Smith (2003, 151) called the “western
good/bad man” figure, a composite of “competing images of the cowboy
as social outcast and the cowboy as socially respectable” (Garceau 2001,
153). On national TV, Gene Autry publicized his “Cowboy Ten Com-
mandments” (“he must never shoot first,” “he must be gentle with chil-
dren, the elderly, and animals,” “he must be a good worker,” “he must
keep himself clean . . .”) and Roy Rogers had ten “rules” for membership
of his Riders Club (“be neat and clean,” “always obey your parents,”
“protect the weak and help them”) (Tucker 2000). In the 1950s the Nash-
ville music industry fused hillbilly music, cowboy iconography, and
southern Baptist Christianity to create the clean-cut “country” music gen-
re (Peterson 1997), but this stood in tension with other figures: the hard-
drinking, drug-addicted Hank Williams, Patsy Cline’s feisty, partying
persona, Johnny Cash’s murderous man in black, and later the dope-
smoking Willie Nelson, cocaine-addicted “Jewish-cowboy”-turned mys-
tery writer Kinky Freidman, and renegade outlaws the Dukes of Hazard.
Popular culture cowboys “skirted between windfalls of iconic status and
lingering disrepute” (McCall 2001, 7), and sexuality was central to this—
variously repressed or hyperbolized.
Meanwhile, opportunities to theatrically perform cowboy masculin-
ities provided occasions to further exaggerate visuality and sex appeal.
Cowboy clothing as we have now come to know it—western snap shirts,
chaps, blue jeans, boots, hats—settled into a formula in the 1930s and
1940s as elements of working cowboy clothing were transformed into an
emblematic on-stage genre. Wild West performers, rodeo riders, and
western silent film stars such as Tom Mix and Buck Jones sewed their
costumes themselves, or had them made by expert tailors such as Nathan
Turk, Rodeo Ben, and Nudie Cohn, whose workshops were conveniently
concentrated in Hollywood. Rather than buying stock clothes from dry
goods stores (as might working cowboys), rodeo, film, and recording
stars had tailors produce ever more stylized and exaggerated designs.
Cowboy clothing enabled manhood to be refashioned (as well as norms
of femininity: women became more involved in films, and especially in
rodeos, as sexy and athletic cowgirls, and cowgirl clothing design
adapted to reflect this—see Jordan 1984). The lines and embellishments of
cowboy clothing were steadily dramatized in order to amplify masculin-
ity and sex appeal for live crowds at rodeos or concerts (whose levels of
applause were crucial for entertainers hoping to secure invitations for
repeat performances). Western shirts from the start were “form-fit and
flattering to the slim physique” (Weil and DeWeese 2004, 35). Although
true that tight-fitting shirts and snaps were practical for working cow-
boys (they were less likely to snag, and snaps enabled shirts to pop open
when caught, without damage), “when western wear came into being it
was mainly popular with young, slim men” (Weil and DeWeese 2004, 35)
212 Chris Gibson
for whom it enhanced sex appeal. Other elements in the twentieth-centu-

ry evolution in the design of western clothing aided the construction of a
cowboy’s masculine sexual ideal: leather cuffs worn to protect the wrists
from rope burns lent distinctive lines to the sewn cuffs and plackets on
later cowboy shirts (distinctive 6-snap cuffs known as “shotgun cuffs”
that amplified the impression of strong wrists and forearms); flap pock-
ets, piping and bib fronts reflected a military influence; and distinctive,
stylized front yokes emphasized broad shoulders and pectoral muscles
(Figures 13.4 and 13.5).
Clothing design pushed the boundary between the myth of rugged
individualism and camp effeminacy. The Native American preference for
jacket designs with buckskin fringes and delicate silk embroidery was, as
one example, appropriated by fur-traders and mountain men, a decora-
tive style that conveyed ruggedness and frontier authenticity rather than
femininity; then via Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West stage persona, fringes
and embroidery started to appear on costume-tailored and then mass-
produced cowboy western shirts—becoming part of the “formula.”
Fringe-work and embroidery became increasingly fancy in the 1940s, fre-
quently incorporating flowers, scrolls, and western motifs (cacti, boots,
bucking horses, wagon wheels). Country singers performing at rodeos
Figure 13.4. Jacke Wolfe Ranchwear catalog, 1962, 32–33. Featuring “form fit-
ting outdoor shirts for western men” and “rugged shirts for western outdoors-
men,” complete with fringed yokes, embroidered floral designs, snap buttons,
and prominent front pockets. Source: Jacke Wolfe Ranchwear, 1962, company
catalog, Salt Lake City.
Figure 13.5. Simplicity sewing pattern for western/cowboy shirt, 1974. With
tight-fitting slim design, prominent yokes and front pockets emphasizing broad
shoulders and pecs, floral patterns and gingham fabrics, 1970s cowboy fashion
walked the tightrope between rugged rural masculinity and urban effeminacy.
Simplicity Creative Groups (reproduced with permission).
and the Grand Ole Opry pushed things even further, embellishing
fringes, yokes, collars, and cuffs with rhinestones that caught the reflec-
tion of stage lights and projected an aura of stardom to all corners of the
arena (Bull 2000). The rhinestone cowboy was born—a variant on the
cowboy figure bordering on overt effeminacy. This was exemplified in
the designs of Nudie Cohn, the rodeo tailor responsible for, among other
214 Chris Gibson
things, Elvis Presley’s 1970s jump-suits, over-the-top cowboy outfits for

Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, and Porter Wagoner, and wild costumes for Elton
John and Gram Parsons (see Nudie and Cabrall 2004). Bejeweled cow-
boys thus walked the tightrope between exaggerated masculinity and
decorative femininity.
Cowboy masculinities became increasingly divergent and contradic-
tory in the second half of the twentieth century. After World War II,
American GIs stationed in Japan played the music of Hank Williams and
Bob Wills on the radio, and country music and cowboy style grew in
popularity in urban Japan. In time, the Japanese market would become
one of the largest export destinations for American western wear compa-
nies (Weil and DeWeese 2004). There, the cowboy evoked the wide-open
West and isolated individualism in a “nation of crowded cities and group
dynamics” (Marquand 2002, 7). Amidst repressive conformity, cowboy
masculinity became a means to self-expression, studied in minute detail
and woven into a distinct subculture (see http://www.realwestern.com/).
As one reveler at the Country Gold Festival in Kumamoto, the nation’s
largest, described, “in Japan, you know, we can’t wear this on the street.
We hide it away until there’s an occasion” (quoted in Marquand 2002, 7).
Following John Travolta’s film Urban Cowboy (1978) was the global
Urban Cowboy fad—a veritable explosion in the market for commercial-
ly-produced western wear, cowboy boots, and hats, which fused with the
growth in urban country music bars and disco clubs. Themes of trans-
mogrified masculinity and escape from repressive conditions of urban
life returned. Writing at the time as a journalist in Esquire, Aaron Latham
explained the phenomenon: “Since a young man trapped in a boring job
can no longer ‘go West’, he goes to a western bar”; urban cowboys “usu-
ally work in refineries or in construction, but at night they turn into
cowboys” (Latham 1978, quoted in George-Warren and Freedman 2006,
184). Another round of the sexualization of western wear accompanied it:
blue jeans became astonishingly tight, and slim fit western shirts for both
sexes became even slimmer, produced using fabrics such as satin, polyes-
ter, and denim that enhanced the appearance of svelte figures. A far cry
from the clean-cut, clean-shaven appearances of early silent western film
stars, the “plainsman hunter” look boomed, with long hair, horseshoe
moustache, and/or goatee beard. In its hardened form, this was popular
with biker gangs, but it was also an open invitation to camp (Figure 13.6),
and unsurprisingly it became a de rigueur model of deportment in the
urban gay subcultures of the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile leather chaps
provided a handy accoutrement for overt butch performances and, with-
out crotch and backside pieces by definition, were easily incorporated
into fetish and sadomasochistic (S&M) subcultures.
Conservative elements of the cattle industry and western wear indus-
tries reacted against the urban cowboy craze: western shirts became
plainer, lost their decorative yokes, and regular buttons replaced snaps,
Figure 13.6. Advertisement for Tem-Tex commemorative Buffalo Bill Cody

western shirt, 1981—arguably evoking more strongly the “plainsman” look pop-
ular in the 1970s within urban gay scenes, than Cody’s own stage persona of the
1880s or 1890s. Source: The Western Horseman, November 1981, 109.
and working cowboys shifted their preferences to plain boots without

Cuban underslung heels. What custom-made boots remained became
more elaborate, an artform the province of collectors, film stars, and
Houston oil-barons. The effect was to engineer a bifurcation in the cow-
boy persona and appearance, redefining and entrenching a binary be-
tween heteronormative, rugged masculinity and camp showmanship.
216 Chris Gibson
Texan businessmen, rodeo-riders, and working cattlemen eschewed

snaps and embroidery and western-wear companies (especially Wran-
gler and Ely Cattleman) marketed plain-colored, denim, and plaid but-
ton-up shirts to them instead. Prominent bootmakers including Justin,
Tony Lama, and Ariat introduced flatter-soled and plainer working cow-
boy boots in the “Roper” style.
The conservative “look,” downplaying embellishment and suppress-
ing expressive sexuality, would also itself travel internationally. In Aus-
tralia, working cattlemen came to prefer plain clothes; male country mu-
sic stars aiming for conservative audiences dropped the use of ornate
hats and shirts; and companies such as RM Williams introduced lines of
conformist clothing (chambray shirts, plaid button-ups, chino pants)
reminiscent of repressive country clubs, urban preppy culture, and Chris-
tian do-gooders. Such clothes, along with conservative haircuts, became
“code” for heteronormative, right-wing rural culture.
Theatrical cowboy masculinity nevertheless endured, merging with
punk, rockabilly, and alternative country subcultures in cities as diverse
as Los Angeles, Austin, Berlin, Sydney, and Melbourne. It also became a
means to erotic fantasy and parody in gay and lesbian fiction, pornogra-
phy, and art. Painter Delmas Howe from New Mexico combined homo-
eroticism and classical realism in his depictions of cowboys as the mytho-
logical figures Atlas and the three daughters of Zeus (Strong 2011; see
Figure 13.7). Nevertheless, transgressions and ambiguities across the line
between conservative and camp cowboy sexualities became rarer and
more difficult. One example was the rodeo scene. The International Gay
Rodeo Association was formed in 1976, and now boasts twenty-seven
regional and state-based gay rodeo associations. Battling heteronormativ-
ity and homophobia in the established rodeo circuit, it developed an
arena for homosexual cowboy sports and culture, but had to remain sep-
arate to the “mainstream” rodeo world. A belated measure of recognition
is that its archives are now housed in the Autry Center in Los Angeles—
the first museum to recognize the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual, and transgender communities to the culture of the American West.
CONCLUSION
By the twenty-first century the cowboy has come to signify a range of

seemingly contradictory cultural threads. Cowboy culture manages to
effuse colonial mentalities and indigenous post-colonial appropriations;
mastery over nature and delicate intimacy; violent heteronormativity and
homosexual camp; rural conservatism and urban rock ‘n’ roll dissidence;
hyper-masculinity and renegade lesbian femininity. Such contradic-
tions—and the polysemic possibilities for diverging interpretations of
Figure 13.7. Delmas Howe (b. 1935), The Three Graces, 1978, oil on canvas, 50
x 42 inches, The Albuquerque Museum, Gift of the artist, 2010.14.1. Source: The
Albuquerque Museum.
gender and sexuality they enable—are arguably what have kept the cow-
boy figure alive.
As the cowboy figure was invented, practiced, and performed, he
traveled. Mobility was both central to the mythology of the itinerant
cowboy, and a feature of that figure’s global dispersal and influence. As
the cowboy figure transnationalized—in film, music, and in person—he
encountered new circumstances and audiences, and mutated according-
ly. The cowboy came to occupy the Australian rangelands, the Patago-
nian steppes, the rich, tropical Hawaiian pastoral lands, locations where
he would in turn define rural masculinity and sexual identity. Notwith-
218 Chris Gibson
standing possibilities for rendering more fluid the boundaries between

heterosexual and homosexual identities, the cowboy persona also stood
for rugged, even violent, expressions of masculinity as well as right-
wing, Christian moral orthodoxy. Commercial interests in the fashion,
media, and entertainment industries funneled such variants, and work-
ing cowboys and performers negotiated them in their personal and pro-
fessional lives.
In film and TV, in myth and lived experience, the cowboy occupies a
hyperreal moral universe of absolute good and bad, “consistently gun-
ning down badmen and saving virgins from ‘a fate worse than death’”
(Rainey 1976, 1), and yet there are troubling moments of quandary, dou-
ble jeopardy, and pathos: the hero reluctantly coerced into a gunfight (as
in Owen Wister’s The Virginian 1962–1971), or having to shoot the
maimed horse. Ambiguity is ever-present within the stereotype. Cowboy
masculinity can simultaneously work to reinforce “an older, masculine
West” (Mitchell 1987, 66)—a tool of hegemonic masculinity—while at the
same time providing much more: radical alternatives to Victorian sexual
conservatism, a means to self-expression in an otherwise conformist soci-
ety (as in Japan), an opportunity for homoeroticism or camp parody, or a
method of identity maintenance amidst colonial oppression (as in Abo-
riginal Australia). All the more reason to take the global cowboy figure
seriously; he remains among our more malleable and complex fusions of
rurality, gender, and sexuality.
Conclusion
Barbara Pini, Lia Bryant, and

Reiterated across the chapters of this book is the claim that there is limit-
ed theoretical and empirical development about rural sexualities in the
field of geography, and more broadly, in the social sciences. This collec-
tion begins the processes of furthering discussion and knowledge about
the inherently dynamic and constantly changing nature of the rural, and
the multiple, varied, and complex sexual subjectivities lived through cor-
poreal experiences and virtual and imagined lives. Thus, we began this
journey with the story of the academic development of knowledges about
rural sexualities, tracing three themes: gay, lesbian, and queer (GLQ)
experiences of rural spaces and imaginaries; heterosexuality in rural
spaces and imaginaries; and animal and non-human sexualities in rural
spaces and imaginaries. Discussions of these themes indicated an inter-
esting and growing body of work in relation to rural sexualities. They
also highlighted the vastness of the topic and the potential for further
research in each of these areas. Across this scholarship, this book devel-
ops and extends knowledge within the four themes around which the
book is ordered—intimacies, mobilities, communities, and production
and consumption. We noted in the introduction that these themes were
somewhat arbitrary and each may transcend or slide into the other. We
now reflect on how the chapters of the book cross and intersect with our
earlier categorizations before turning to highlight two further thematic
topics, which are drawn from insights across the four sections of the text.
The first theme examines the methods used and the methodological im-
plications for developing further understandings about ruralities and
sexualities. The second explores and questions the notion of globalization
and/of sexualities, and considers how we have collectively understood
globalization and its possibilities and limits. While each of these themes
may appear, on the surface, to be quite different, they interconnect in the
drilling down to the subject, and in particular, in the intersections be-
tween self and multi-scalar processes, practices, and representations of
rural sexualities.
219
220 Barbara Pini, Lia Bryant, and Andrew Gorman-Murray
Intimacy, the first of our thematic categories, is sometimes elevated to

a noble experience or quality of relationship, but is also part of the mun-
dane and desperately difficult aspects of everyday life. Heterosexual and
GLQ subjects work through intimacy as they undergo not just the “inter-
esting” aspects of life (celebrations and festivals) but also the struggles,
inequities, pleasures, desires, and sometimes boredom of dealing with
institutions, employment, and attempting to live in relationships with
partners, community, and family (see chapters by Browne and McGlynn;
Bryant; Eaves; Gorman-Murray; Phillips; Pini and Mayes). From the con-
cept of communities it became evident that while the construct of com-
munity is about the collective, the notion of community in the chapters of
this book is deeply tied to the notion of self as well (see chapters by
Annes and Redlin; Björkland; Bryant; Detamore; Eaves; Gorman-Murray;
Ikonen and Pehkonen; Pini and Mayes). Community is given meaning by
sexual subjectivities that intersect with race, gender, ethnicity, and class,
and other core categories to which we have given less attention, like
(dis)ability and age. The idea of mobilities and spatial movements
brought to the fore the complexity of spaces which rural sexual beings
inhabit. In this context, meanings of the rural open up to incorporate all
of the potentials and possibilities that come forth through the body,
which also include emotional and cognitive spatialities (see chapters by
Annes and Redlin; Björkland; Eaves; Gorman-Murray; Ikonen and Peh-
konnen; Phillips; Waitt and Johnston). The final theme, production and
consumption, extends further than the creating of goods and the sale of
bodies (animal and human) (see chapters by Pini and Mayes; Ramussen).
Production and consumption are broadly apparent in how sexual sub-
jects consume and produce virtual space to create and disturb social rela-
tions (see chapter by Eaves) or impart upon culture (see chapters by
Björkland; Gibson; Ikonen and Pehkonen), and are evident in the concept
of heterosexual marriage and how farming couples produce off-spring to
enable the commodification of agricultural goods (see chapter by Bryant).
REFRAMING METHODOLOGIES
Traditionally, rural geography has been limited in its methodological

approach. Like other sub-disciplines of geography, it has been strongly
defined by quantitative methods. In the past decade, however, “the fet-
ishism” with numerical data (Cloke 1997, 370) has been challenged by the
(still limited) influence of the cultural turn, with researchers asking criti-
cal and reflexive questions about the gathering of knowledge, and turn-
ing to different methodologies to understand and illuminate rurality
(e.g., Previte, Pini, and Haslam-McKenzie 2007; Pini 2002). In contrast to
rural geography, the geography of sexualities has, as is evidenced by the
early collection of work by Bell and Valentine (1995b), been associated
Conclusion 221
with a wide and rich range of data collection tools. At the same time, as
Browne and Nash (2010, 2) observe in a recent editorial introducing a
collection on queer methodologies, there has been relatively little discus-
sion about what it means to do “queer research,” including articulating
the relationship between queer epistemologies and methodologies. They
note that while researchers of sexualities often label their research
“queer,” there is typically little discussion of what this means to the eve-
ryday practices of academic knowledge production, such as entering a
field, collecting and analyzing data, and sharing results.
We are aware that this lacuna has not been adequately addressed in
the pages of this book. In large part, this is our own omission. When we
canvassed particular topics with potential contributing authors, we no
doubt emphasized the empirical over the methodological—the “what” of
research rather than the “how.” In this respect we were perhaps unwit-
tingly influenced by broader methodological silences in geographical
writing. Perhaps, too, aware of the growing, but still nascent field that
constitutes “geographies of ruralities and sexualities,” we may (again
unintentionally) have focused our goal on knowledge generation about
the subject itself rather than about the processes by which such knowl-
edge comes into being. While there is, of course, no such easy separation
between knowledge and the production of knowledge, traditional re-
search orthodoxies suggest otherwise. The fact that we did not seek more
overt methodological engagement from authors is indicative of the domi-
nance of these orthodoxies. A final factor, which has impeded a more
robust methodological conversation throughout the pages of this book,
relates to the pragmatics of what a single book on such a complex and
understudied topic can achieve. The methodological questions arising
from sexualities research situated in the rural are multiple, varied, and
complex, and would justify further book-length treatment. In the absence
of such a book, we will briefly overview some of the key methodological
themes of note in the chapters that might deserve elaboration in future
scholarship.
In reviewing the chapters, the first methodological theme that
emerges is simply that of choice of method itself. Textual analysis domi-
nates. This may be reflective of some practicalities about the cost of re-
search (and particularly rural research) as well as the challenges of sam-
pling, especially sampling gay and lesbian rural populations. In terms of
the latter, Kramer (1995, 201) explains that “simply locating participants”
for a study of rural gay men and lesbians in North Dakota was a signifi-
cant problem given the reliance on “invisibility and anonymity in adapt-
ing to what is for most a hostile social environment.” While textual
sources populate numerous chapters, what is notable is the sheer range in
type of sources, from blogs to historical materials, teen fiction to policy
documents, reality television programs to documentaries and feature
films (see chapters by Björklund; Browne and McGlynn; Gibson; Ikonen
and Pehkonen; Pini and Mayes; Rasmussen). Alongside document analy-

sis, other authors have utilized ethnographic methods, interviews, and
focus groups. Notably absent is any quantitative approach, apart from a
questionnaire used by Kath Browne and Nick McGlynn as a mapping
exercise. The inclination to qualitative methods is indicative of prefer-
ences in broader fields underpinning the contributions, such as feminist,
queer, and cultural studies, but belies recent efforts by scholars in these
areas who have argued that the criticisms leveled at quantitative metho-
dologies by activist academics are not intrinsic to the approach, or indeed
immutable and that there are, in fact, political imperatives to count
(Brown 2007; Browne 2011; Hughes and Cohen 2010; Kwan and Schwa-
nen 2009a, 2009b). Indeed, Ellis’ (2009, 303) call for all critical geographers
to engage reflexively with quantitative methods to address global injus-
tice resonates in terms of sexualities and ruralities. Such an engagement
has the potential to open up critiques of heteronormative bias of main-
stream surveys of the rural, as well as assist in rehabilitating the survey
for bringing visibility to the experiences and perspectives of rural people
marginalized by their sexuality.
A second methodological theme embedded in the text—sometimes
explicit and other times implicit—is the question of researcher identity/
ies. LaToya Eaves takes the former approach, arguing that her research is
embedded in her intersecting social locations as a Black, queer woman
from the rural South of the United States. Indeed, she explains that the
very subject of her inquiry is informed by her autobiography, including
childhood memories of landscape, family and home, and her desire to
understand her own conflicted experiences and perspectives about iden-
tity, belonging, and place. What is highlighted in Eaves’s naming of her
rural, sexualized, and gendered positionality is that research is mediated
by our personal life histories and identities. We may choose not to dis-
cuss it, but whether we do or not we will all be positioned in and by the
field, which may be of particular importance to research on sexualities
and ruralities. Gill and Maclean (2002), for example, explain the way in
which their own attempts to assume the identity of “academic research-
er” while undertaking ethnographic research in rural communities in the
United Kingdom were undermined by participants. Of importance to
rural residents were the gendered and, relatedly, the sexualized identities
of the female academics. Gill and Maclean (2002) note that being posi-
tioned as “heterosexual” and/or “lesbian” by particular rural residents at
particular moments simultaneously closed off and opened up opportu-
nities for gathering data. Their reflexive examination of how they were
constructed in their respective rural locales not only enriches the strength
and legitimacy of their accounts, but also provides key insights into the
way rural spaces are sexualized and the implications of this for rural
residents.
Conclusion 223
The use of the multiple, fluid, and fractured self as a resource for
research by Eaves foregrounds a third methodological issue that requires
further elicitation in research on ruralities and sexualities. That is, given
theoretical understandings of sexuality and rurality as fluid and contin-
gent, and as refracted through the prisms of a range of other social loca-
tions such as class, disability, race, and age, how do we study them?
Presently, there appears to be somewhat of a disjuncture between our
complex conceptualizations of sexuality and rurality and our methodo-
logical approaches, which often suggest we can identify and separate
discrete aspects of identity for discussion and analysis. This is a concern
being grappled with by feminist researchers utilizing intersectional theo-
ry, and generating varied calls for particular approaches, such as case
studies or certain types of analytic techniques like the close reading and
re-reading of data to reveal shifts and disjunctures in identity (McCall
2005; Valentine 2007; Bryant and Pini 2011). In a contribution to this
literature, Meth and McClymont (2009) outline their approach to a study,
which has particular resonance for exploring ruralities and sexualities.
The authors’ central thesis is that a mixed methods approach, which
engages participants in different ways, is most appropriate to under-
standing the messiness of identity formation. They advance this claim
through their interactions with a particular research participant, named
Sakhile, in a project on rural Black South African men and violence. In
total, Sakhile participates in the study in six different ways, ranging from
diary entries to focus groups, and thereby communicates movements of
power/powerlessness across shifting identifications and disidentifica-
tions with heterosexuality, masculinity, and rurality.
A final and overarching methodological theme, which runs through
the chapters in this book, mobilizes around ethics. This includes ethics at
an individual level as it is manifest in relationships between researcher
and participant, which may be especially fraught for researchers of rural-
ities and sexualities. La Pastina (2006, 724), for example, explains that he
hid his identity as a gay man, and pretended to be married while con-
ducting fieldwork in a rural community in Brazil, writing: “I felt I had to
be honest with the people I was ‘studying,’ an ethical mantra I had inter-
nalized . . . but I also had seen how the few openly gay men in the
community were treated and marginalized, and I saw the implications of
that peripheral status to my work.” As the quotation suggests, La Pastina
(2006) largely frames his decision at an individual level with individual
effects (such as the emotional impact the decision had on him). However,
as Mathias Detamore demonstrates in his chapter, there are political im-
plications to the muting or celebrating of non-normative/normative sexu-
alities in the rural field. His research has an overt political intent whereby
he uses his gay identity (and the identities of gay and lesbian friends) to
queer rural space. This, of course, might raise its own ethical conun-
drums, especially if the researcher has the capacity to leave the field and
return to a separate and different space (whether urban or rural), but it

does highlight that for many scholars of ruralities and sexualities, social
change is a significant imperative of research. As authors such as Kath
Browne and Nick McGlynn, and Gordon Waitt and Lynda Johnston dem-
onstrate, there is often a strong connection between the queer activist
community and the queer research community.
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS LIMITS
The globalization of sexual identities, representations, and practices has

received increasing attention over the last decade in studies of sexuality,
and more recently in studies of rural sexualities. Studies focused on the
globalization of sexual identities have paid attention to urban spaces, that
is, global and world cities (e.g., Altman 2001; Aldrich 2004), with Brown
(2008) arguing that this body of work has focused on a small set of cities,
thereby reproducing a set of elite metropolitan gay centers. In turn, the
study of globalization and rurality has been overwhelmingly concerned
with commodity chains rather than the cultural, thereby largely ignoring
sexual minorities and identities. In recent times, Woods (2007, 485) has
led the charge to reconceptualize rurality and globalization in ways that
focus more on place and the politics of negotiation between the local and
the global. This edited collection contributes to understandings about the
multi-scalar processes and patterns in which rural sexualities are consti-
tuted, represented, and practiced in different rural places. The book ex-
amines rural sexualities across the globe, including Finland, Sweden,
Norway, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
This contribution importantly develops understandings about what Mas-
sey (2005, 101–2) refers to as “uneven development” in the way sexual-
ities are lived and imagined.
The way globalization has been conceptualized in studies of sexual-
ities requires further discussion to enable us to consider the direction in
which future research on rural sexualities may develop. Binnie (2004) has
highlighted the multiple and sometimes loose meanings attached to the
concept of globalization, and how these understandings, in turn, have
relevance for conceptualizing sexuality. He draws attention to how stud-
ies of globalization tend to ignore the sexual, and how studies of sexual-
ity tend to use theories of globalization to homogenize sexual identities
within and across national boundaries. This brings us to consider the
theorization of globalization and its limits. Perhaps the narrowest theor-
izations of globalization are reductionist political economy accounts,
which exclude the cultural and tend to give meaning to the global only in
its relation to nation-states (Gamson and Moon 2004). Within this per-
spective, the local and national tend to be conflated, and nation-states
appear as vulnerable to, or victims of, global economies (see Robinson
Conclusion 225
2012), while at the same time the local and the national are often consti-
tuted as “authentic” sites of social life. Studies have also shown the na-
tion-state to be constrictive in defining sexual citizenship and a key domi-
nating presence in reproducing heterosexism (Peterson 1999; Conrad
2001), with globalization as a suggested means for liberating sexual mi-
norities across nation-states (Altman, 2001). Thus, more often than not,
the national and global have been dichotomized. In terms of sexuality,
political economy approaches have tended to add culture to understand
the sexual realm of social life, and to argue that sexual identities and
cultures are dominated by the consumption of culture, and in particular,
American culture across spaces and places (Gamson and Moon 2004;
Grewal and Kaplan 2001). Sexuality studies in these areas tend to refer to
the power of film, art, fashion, as well as active political social move-
ments, in constituting, in particular, gay, lesbian, and heterosexual mid-
dle-class identities (Blackwood 2005). For example, the idea of the “pink
economy” assumes that gay and lesbian communities travel to certain
locations (e.g., cities or hotels) that are marketed as “gay-friendly” (Bin-
nie 2004; Hacker 2007; Browne 2007; Johnston and Longhurst 2010; Waitt
and Markwell 2006). Such a proposition universalizes subjects and sub-
jectivities on the basis of sexuality, and in doing so, also ignores that
sexualities intersect with other key social categories, like class and race
(Nast 2002; Taylor 2011).
Several chapters in this book contribute to extending understandings
about globalization and sexuality by examining the “disjunctive flow of
meanings produced across” sites (Blackwood 2005, 221) and how these
disjunctions take on meanings “in relation to other social phenomenon,
social experiences and social inequalities” (Hearn 2008, 37). The inter-
stices of sexualities with ethnicities come to light in Gibson’s chapter, in
which he examines the iconic global cowboy. He shows that local cul-
tures, and indeed masculinities, interpret, shape, and reshape global im-
ages, fashions, and cultural practices associated with the cowboy. Hence,
Gibson understands globalization and its relation to sexualities as co-
constitutive across multiple sites. Gorman-Murray provides further ex-
amples of intersectionality giving meaning to sexualities in time and
place. While the rural has always been a normalized key maker for
straight identities, Gorman-Murray draws our attention to the impor-
tance of the rural in the shaping of gay and lesbian sexual identities. In
addition, he makes clear that both rural spaces and gay and lesbian lives
are “highly variegated.” Eaves also examines race, rurality, and sexuality,
but in the context of their intersections with gender, to understand iden-
tities for queer Black women in the U.S. South. Thus, these chapters col-
lectively move, as Eaves suggests, “beyond the dominant rhetoric of mar-
ginalization . . . from discourse to lived experience . . . [away from] the
binary of ‘us’ and ‘them.’”
The understanding of globalization inherent in this text is not a repu-

diation of political economy. Indeed, we agree that to examine multiple
scales of sexual life the political and the economic are crucial factors in
shaping rural sexualities. This position is reflected in the contributions of
Rasmussen and Pini and Mayes, in whose chapters the production and
consumption of sexuality are inter-related in analyses of rural-based sec-
tors like mining and the pig industry. Pini and Mayes show that sexual-
ities in mining are relational, and have argued that the mining industry
facilitates specific hetero-masculinities, which in turn construct women
as counterparts to these stereotypes—that is, in the context of straight
traditional sexualities which are available to these men as wives, sex
workers, or “skimpy bar girls.” Rasmussen draws our attention to mean-
ings of sex not commonly examined in political economy approaches. By
focusing on artificial insemination of pigs in the production of pork, she
challenges the “dichotomies of nature/culture, animal/human, and good/
bad sex.” Rasmussen’s work echoes critiques of globalization theory and
sexuality, which have failed to take into account the role of technologies
in reshaping or transforming sexualities and working as instruments for
“disembodied sexual capitalism” (Hearn 2008, 40).
In this collection we have examined information and communication
technologies (ICTs) from the periphery. Eaves explores how queer black
women in the rural U.S. South use ICTs for social networking and to find
a home away from home, moving between cyber and rural spaces. In
turn, Bryant posits that an examination of ICTs in relation to heterosexual
marriage in rural spaces may provide richer and more nuanced knowl-
edge about how these marriages are sustained and regulated through
friendships and intimacy within and beyond rural locales. Over the past
decade, scholars working on globalization and sexualities have examined
the potential of ICTs to create sexual change, liberation, emotional con-
nections, and community and/or exploitation across spaces (Hearn and
Parkin 2001; Moore and Clarke 2001; Hughes 2002; Berry, Martin, and
Yue 2003). Scholars interested in geographies of rural sexualities have
also become increasing interested in ICTs and sexuality (see Johnston and
Longhurst 2010; Waitt and Gorman-Murray 2011b). However, the poten-
tial of ICTs in their multiple forms, from mobile ICTs to desktop comput-
ers and smart televisions, to organize, reconstitute, or surveil sexualities
across multiple spaces is a vast arena requiring more attention to further
understand the geographies of rural sexualities.
The question of mobilities or migration is another important dimen-
sion to understanding the conceptualization of globalization in relation to
sexualities. Commonly, it has been argued that, as a consequence of the
politics and laws of nation-states, GLQ communities may migrate to
more welcoming countries (Stychin, 2000). In the context of rurality and
sexuality, it has been posited that rural GLQ subjects move away from
rural areas to cities to “come out,” to engage in sexual relationships and/
Conclusion 227
or to express identity in ways that are not constricted by the regulation

and the surveilling eye of rural communities (Binnie 2004; Knopp 2004).
These perspectives identify and rationalize movements across and within
borders, however, as Binnie (2004, 95) suggests, there is more to the story.
This edited collection illustrates the complexity of migration and further
nuances the migration story as embedded in the rural and the sexual. For
example, Björklund interrogates Swedish youth novels about rural teen-
agers coming out as lesbian, arguing that the “novels challenge the com-
mon idea of the rural as conservative and unchanging” (see page 161 in
this book). The characters in these novels do not move away from their
hometowns but instead navigate and find spaces in which to express
their sexual identities. Thus, the body takes center stage within rural
townships and “is affected by the surrounding straight space, but it also
has impact upon space, slowly undermining its straightness through its
lesbian existence” (see page 166 in this book). Björklund’s reading of
rural space challenges static reproductions of meanings about rurality
and sexuality by locating bodies, and therefore agency, in place. Similar-
ly, Detamore brings attention to the queering of space through agentic
GLQ bodies participating in rural communities. Indeed, he shows a be-
longing and connection for GLQ folk to the rural as consequence of care
from and to family and friends. Detamore’s rural is not simply isolating
or rejecting. These nuanced interpretations are also apparent in chapters
by Gorman-Murray, and Annes and Redlin, as it is evident rural sexual
minorities experience a complex mix of alienation and belonging asso-
ciated with returning to home rural communities.
As Massey (2005) has argued, and the chapters in this book show,
globalization need not be theorized as disconnected from agency and
place. However, globalization, as a term, gives prominence to what hap-
pens outside of nation-states and local places. In attempts to intersect the
economic and the cultural, and destabilize binary thinking between glo-
bal and national, theorists suggest replacing the concept of globalization
with transnational (e.g., Ong 1999; Grewal and Kaplan 2001; Bachetta
2002). In studies of sexualities, the term “transnational sexualities” is be-
ing used to dissolve global/local dichotomizing and to indicate that the
global and local “infiltrate each other” (Blackwood 2005, 221). However,
while the idea of the transnational suggests spatial movements across
nations, it also signifies, as Binnie (2004, 34) suggests, “the resilience of
the nation-state.” We would argue this centralizes the nation-state. While
questions of sexual citizenship occur in national spaces, this restriction is
also problematic, as shown in chapters by Browne and McGlynn, and
Phillips. Thus, the attempts at defining and categorizing multi-scalar
movements, images, and practices as globalization or transnationalism
do not solve how we incorporate the global, the transnational, the nation-
al, the regional, and the local, and the commonalities and differences
within, between, and across each of these sites. Blackwood (2005, 222)
pertinently asks, “How do researchers make sense of the complex rela-

tionship between cultural locatedness and global connectedness without
re-creating hierarchical dichotomies of traditional-modern and indige-
nous-global practices?” Categorization both opens and restricts under-
standings, leaving us with the prospects of a continued healthy debate
about how to further understand multi-scalar processes and practices,
and how best to represent these in language. In this context, the new
rubric of “translocal geographies” might be usefully developed with re-
spect to rural sexualities and the global countryside. Translocal geo-
graphical approaches explicitly contest transnational discourse through
foregrounding multi-scalar movements, and also emphasize the inter-
penetration of economic, cultural, political, and affective structures and
experiences (see Brickell and Datta 2011). What has been ascertained in
this book is the importance of agency in relation to reading and interpret-
ing global sexualities and how trans- and intra- and inter-nationalities
accept, challenge, resist, and reshape sexualities.
A FINAL STATEMENT
Our concluding themes, articulated in this final chapter, are complemen-

tary; they bring together methodologies and conceptual questions that
might provide further investigative nuance for understanding the inter-
sections of sexualities with rural spaces and imaginaries. These methodo-
logical and conceptual issues share a concern with interpreting the every-
day lives of sexual subjects in localized non-metropolitan places, includ-
ing social, cultural, economic, and political constraints and potentials of
sexual identities, practices, and relationships. The spatial imperative of
rural sexualities impels both methodological and conceptual develop-
ment. In wrapping up this concluding chapter and this book, we high-
light the third term in its title: geography. Imbricating the themes of this
conclusion, we suggest that interrogating the multi-scalar (global, trans-
national, and translocal) processes and practices that constitute rural lo-
calities, and how these recalibrate and realign over time, requires meth-
ods that are spatially appropriate. Having multiple methods in our rural
researcher’s toolkit is important here, providing options that are sensitive
to local sexual geographies, and that enable the contextualization of local
sites within more-than-local connections. In this way we can begin to
grasp and articulate the multiple sexual meanings that link material
places, geographical imaginaries, and embodied subjects, and which thus
dialogically construct and reconstruct rural sexual geographies.
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Index
Aberystwyth, Wales, 22 Balfour, Frances, 26–27

Aboriginal lesbians, 106–108 Beato, Andrew, 191
Aboriginal people: cowboy motifs Beck, Ulrich, 51, 52, 55
adopted by, 207–209; culture of, Beckenback, John, 58
106–108; GLQ, 106–108 Bell, David, 1, 3, 11, 12, 114
action research, in LGBT Equalities in Bell, Michael, 131
Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex Bellah, Robert N., 53
Forum, 40–41 belonging, definition of, 148–149
active citizen, 38 Bergdahl, Liv Saga, 165
affect, 148 Besio, Kathryn, 12–13
Ahmed, Sara, 146, 153, 163–164, bestiality, 13–14, 177, 178
170–171 “The Big Picture: Masculinities in
AI. See artificial insemination Recent World History” (Connell),
Alexandra (character): body and, 162, 188
164; geographies and, 166–167 Binnie, Jon, 100, 224, 227
Alice Springs, Australia, 102–108 biosociality, 185
animality studies, 176–177 biphobia, universities as site of, 45
animal sex, 179–185. See also artificial Bird, Sharon, 72, 79
insemination black queer diaspora, 121
animal sexualities, rural and, 11–14, Blackwood, Evelyn, 227–228
176–179 Blunt, Alison, 30
Another Gay Movie, 135 body, 160–161, 162–166, 180–182. See
anti-bestiality law, 175, 176 also lived body
“Appalachian Values” (Jones), 91 Booth, Michael, 195
Applebee’s, 87 Bouthillette, Anne-Marie, 84
artificial insemination (AI), 176, Bowditch, Kate, 8
180–185 boys, effeminacy inappropriate for, 133
Attenborough, David, 103 Brah, Avtar, 153
Attenborough, Destiny, 103–106 Brighton, England, in gay imaginary,
Aumer-Ryan, Katherine, 55 44
Australia: GLQ people scholarly Brokeback Mountain (film), 17n1, 205
knowledge, 97; GLQ people treated “Brokeback Mountain” (Proulx) (short
by, 95; perceptions of, 95; as rural, story), 204
95. See also marriage study Brown, Gavin, 36, 224
The Australian, 189 Brown, Michael, 4, 13–14, 150, 161–162,
Australian Story, 98 167
Autry, Gene, 210 Browne, Kath, 37
buckjumping, 207
Bakshi, Leela, 37 Budgeon, Shelly, 63
Baldwin, James, 124–125 Buffalo Bill Cody. See Cody, William
253
254 Index
burden of masculinity, 71 “Conceptualising Rurality” (Cloke),

Burns, Angie, 53, 54 119
bush, 100 Connell, R. W., 70, 71, 188
“Constructing Nature in the
CAFOs. See Concentrated Animal Performance of Rural
Feeding Operations Heterosexualities” (Little, Jo), 60
Campbell, Hugh, 131 consumption, production and, 16–17,
Cappello, Mary, 153 220
care: intimacy as, 56–57; intimacy’s Cook, Thomas, 29
relation with, 54–55; meanings of, Cool and Crazy: community on, 76, 78;
57; as reciprocal, 55 hegemonic masculinity on, 76–77;
Census Bureau, US, 117 homosociality on, 76–77; overview
Chauncey, George, 167 of, 70; scene from, 67
children, women influenced by, 60–61 coping strategies, 4
Christianity, 61 country music, 210
Cloke, Paul, 119 “The Cowboy and Sex” (Westermeier),
closet, 161–162, 167 205
Cody, William, 205–207 cowboy masculinity, 218; formats for
Cohen, Cathy J., 114 performing, 201; as natural, 205;
Cohen, Janine, 149 theatrically performing, 211–212,
Cohn, Nudie, 212 216; after WWII, 214–216
colonies, 30, 31–33 cowboys: Aboriginal people adopting
“Coming Home: Queer Migration and motifs of, 207–209; clothing,
Multiple Evocations of Home” 211–212, 214–216; culture, 216;
(Fortier), 147 figure, 216–218; homosexuality as
coming out, geographies of, 166–170 reason for becoming, 204; Japan
coming out migration, 150–152 popularity of, 214; in media, 203,
coming out narratives, 98, 109n1; goal 204; mythology, 205–209; origins of,
of, 169; isolation in, 99–100. See also 202–204; overview of global,
specific coming out narratives 199–201; Urban, 214
coming out novels, 160; body in, culture: Aboriginal, 106–108; of
162–166; geographies of coming out community, 71; cowboy, 216; GLQ
in, 166–170; love in, 164–165; people, 48; nature’s distinction
overview of, 159–160, 161–162; sex from, 182; therapeutic, 53
in, 165–166 “Cultures of Intimacy and Care
communities, 15–16; in Alice Springs, beyond ‘the Family’: Personal Life
105–108; on Cool and Crazy, 76, 78; and Social Change in the Early 21st
culture of, 71; family subcategory Century” (Roseneil and Budgeon),
of, 123; friends subcategory of, 123; 63
indicators, 123–124; organizations Custer, George, 206
subcategory of, 124; school
subcategory of, 124; self tied to, 220; Dagsattvåga? (Nilsson), 162, 166–167,
sexual relationships regulated by, 168, 169
60–61; in social networking Dawg House, 88
research, 123–124; subcategories of, Daylesford, Australia, 97
123–124; traditions influencing, 76; de Beauvoir, Simone, 160–161
work significant for, 76 De-centring Sexualities: Politics and
Concentrated Animal Feeding Representations beyond the Metropolis
Operations (CAFOs), 179–180 (Phillips, Watt, and Shuttleton),
Index 255
21–22 Emel, Jody, 13

defacto firewalls, 38 emotions, 51, 148
Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Emsite, 195
Cartographies of Struggle Encyclopaedia of Prostitution and Sex
(McKittrick), 115 Work, 189–190
deprivation, GLQ people fearing, Eng, David, 153
39–40 “Engaging the Global Countryside:
Désert, Jean-Ulrick, 85 Globalization, Hybridity and the
Destiny in Alice, 96–97, 102–108 Reconstitution of Rural Place”
Dethänder nu (Nordin), 163, 165, (Woods), 224
166–168, 169 equalities: discourse of, 59; duties,
Det jag intesäger (Timgren), 162, 168, 43–45, 48, 49n6; expectations of, 38;
169 government and, 35–38, 46–48;
“The Detraditionalisation of Intimacy initiatives, 35–38; limitations of
Reconsidered” (Gross), 61 movements of, 113; need for, 41–43;
detraditionalization, 61; definition of, policies and implementation, 43–47;
52; Giddens on, 62 rural areas spatialized away from
discourse of equality, 59 recognition of, 44–45
Dit man längtar (Karlsson), 165–166 Equality Act 2010, 35–36; equality
dogging, 11 duties in, 43–45, 48, 49n6; Equality
dolphins, as sexy beasts, 12–13 Duty A, 43, 44, 45; Equality Duty B,
domestic work: farming women and, 43, 44, 45; Equality Duty C, 44–45,
59–60; intimacy and, 59–60; 49n6; implementation of, 41, 41–43;
reciprocity and, 59–60 legislation related to, 44; policy
DowneLink: Flirt function of, 118–119; implementation relating to, 43–47
intent of, 118; joining, 122–123; era of austerity, 46
using, 122–123 Eribon, Didier, 133
Dowsett, Gary W., 55 Erickson, Bruce, 11
drive-in drive-out (DIDO) work. See Eveline, Joan, 195
fly-in fly-out work everyday state, 38
Duggan, Lisa, 116 evidence of needs, 41–43
Dukes of Hazard, 87–88
Duncan, Duane, 55 family: as community subcategory,
Du och jag, Marie Curie (Persson), 123; FIFO, 194; in Home and Away,
162–163, 164–165, 168, 169 154–157; migration, homemaking,
and, 146–149; sexuality influenced
East Sussex County Council Library by relations of, 146; Townsville and,
and Information Services, 44–45 154–157
effeminacy: boys inappropriate to The Farmer Wants A Life, 96–98;
have, 133; homosexual identity Graham in, 98–99, 100, 101–102;
distanced from, 134–136; story told in, 98–99
homosexuality conflated with, 133; The Farmer Wants A Wife, 79n1; gender
in migration research, 134–136, roles on, 73; hegemonic masculinity
139–140; relationship with gay man on, 78; managerial work on, 73;
displaying, 134; urban causing, masculinity on, 77; men portrayed
139–140 in, 78; overview of, 69; physical
Ellis, Mark, 222 work on, 73; rural men depicted on,
“Embodiment and Rural Masculinity” 74–75; rural women on, 74; scene
(Little, Jo), 9, 10 from, 67; women portrayed in, 78
256 Index
farming men: intimacy and, 57–58; on survey of, 40; hierarchy of

marriage, 57–58; pastoral power masculinities subjugation, 72;
and, 57–58 intimacy practices and, 63; intimacy
farming women, 8–9; domestic work worked through by, 220; legislation,
and, 59–60; intimacy and, 59–60; 35–36; migration of, 226–227; needs
reciprocity and, 59–60 of, 41–43; parents, 154–157; political
feminists: Giddens challenged by, visibility of, 6–7; privileges of,
53–55; on intimacy, 53–55 84–85; rural animals’ relationships
Ferber, Abby, 7–8 with, 102; rural differentiated from
FIFO families. See fly-in fly-out families urban, 69–70; rural groups, 4–6;
FIFO work. See fly-in fly-out work rural invisibility of, 41–43; rurality
Filippa (character): body and, 162–163, experiences of, 2–7; separatists, 5;
164–165; spaces and, 164–165 staff networks and groups, 45–46;
“Finding Oneself, Losing Oneself: The training regarding, 45; Ullava
Lesbian and Gay ‘Scene’ as a Cowboys depicting, 75; urban
Paradoxical Space” (Valentine and influencing, 38. See also coming out
Skelton), 137 novels; migration research
Finney, Margaret, 131 gay bar experiment: analysis of, 88–89;
Florida, 175 at Applebee’s, 87; at Dawg House,
FL Senate Bill 344, 175, 182 88; at Dukes of Hazard, 87–88; at
The Fly-in/Fly-out Bachelor: A FIFO Fugates, 87
Bachelors Guide to Success with gay imaginary, Brighton in, 44
Women (Gilbert), 193–194 gay pastoral, rural men and, 177
fly-in fly-out (FIFO) families, 194 “Gender and Sexuality in Discourses of
fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work, 188–195 Managerial Control: The Case of
Forsyth, Ann, 5 Women Miners (Eveline and
Fortier, Anne-Marie, 147, 153 Booth), 195
Foucault, Michel, 33, 57–58 “Gender as Contradiction: From
friends, as community subcategory, Dichotomies to Diversity in Natural
123 Resource Extraction”
Fucking Åmål, 159 (O’Shaughnessy and Krogman), 193
Fugates, 87 gendered norms: marriage study on,
58; men disrupting, 59
Gabb, Jacqui, 146 gender roles, on The Farmer Wants A
gardians (cowboys), 205 Wife, 73
gay, lesbian, and queer (GLQ) people: general public settings, 124
Aboriginal, 106–108; acceptance of, geography, 220–221; Alexandra
39; Alice Springs migrated to by, (character) and, 166–167; of coming
104–105; Alice Springs’ population out, 166–170; definition of, 160–161;
of lesbian, 103–104; animality, 12; in GLQ people differentiated by,
Australia scholarly knowledge, 97; 69–70; Jenny (Perssen’s character)
Australia’s treatment of, 95; and, 168, 169; Jenny (Timgren’s
belonging to place, 97, 101–102, character) and, 168, 169; limitations
107–108; bush’s significance to, 100; of, 113; Marta (character) and,
culture, 48; deprivation feared by, 168–169; Måsen (character) and,
39–40; differences among Alice 169–170; queer, 114–115; rurality’s
Springs, 105–108; era of austerity connections with, 1–2; rural
influencing, 46; geography sexualities in, 219; sexuality’s
differentiating, 69–70; Hastings connections with, 1–2; Sigrid
Index 257
(character) and, 167–168; Stella Henrietta (character), body and, 162

(character) and, 166–168; translocal, Henrietta är min hemlighet (Hjertzell),
228; work of, 176; Yulia (character) 162, 163, 164, 169–170, 171n3
and, 166–167 Herring, Scott, 114
Giardina, Denise, 90–91 herstory, definition of, 109n2
Giddens, Anthony, 51, 52–55, 56, 62 heteronormativity, destabilizing, 116
Gilbert, Brett, 193–194 heterosexism, 46
Gill, Fiona, 222 heterosexuality: intimacy and
The Girl in the Steel-Capped Boots (Hill), relationships of, 52–55, 58; rural
196–197 and, 7–11, 39; scary, 11
global countryside, 200 heterosexuals, intimacy worked
global cowboy. See cowboys through by, 220
globalization, limits of, 224–228 Hickok, Bill, 207
GLQ. See gay, lesbian, and queer hierarchy of masculinities, 71, 72
people Hill, Loretta, 196–197
good marriage, 55 Hillier, Lynne, 8
Gorman-Murray, Andrew, 4 Hjertzell, Maja, 162, 163, 164, 169–170,
Gottschalk, Lorene, 97, 100 171n3
government: equalities initiatives and, Holloway, Lewis, 180, 185
35–38, 46–48; guidance, 46–48; space Holstein, James, 149
integral to, 38. See also state Home and Away: conclusion, 157–158;
Graham, David, 98–99, 100, 101–102 family in, 154–157; homes in,
gravitational group migration, 152 152–154; methods and location,
great gay migration, 177 149–150; migration in, 150–152
Green, Ed, 97, 100 “Home and Away: Narratives of
Gross, Neil, 61 Migration and Estrangement”
Gubrium, Jaber, 149 (Ahmed), 146
“Guest Editorial” (Puar, Rushbrook, homemaking, 146–149, 154–158
and Schein), 147 homes: definition of, 153; feelings for,
143; in Home and Away, 152–154;
Halberstam, Judith, 36, 84, 85, 145, 161 movements between, 152–154;
Hall, Sam, 196 parental, 147; place and, 91; as
Harris, Cole, 31 spaces in-between, 153
Harrison, Lyn, 8 homing desires, 153
Hastings, England, 39–40 homonormativity, definition of, 116
Hastings and Rother Rainbow Alliance homophobia: isolation caused by,
(HRRA), 40 99–100; universities as site of, 45
Hastings Borough Council, 44 “Homopoetics: Queer Space and the
Hatfield, Elaine, 55 Black Queer Diaspora” (Walcott),
Hay, Iain, 189 121
Hedvig (character), sex had by, 165 homosexuality: bestiality linked to,
Heftigog Begeistret. See Cool and Crazy 177; cowboy created because of, 204;
hegemonic masculinity, 197; on Cool effeminacy conflated with, 133;
and Crazy, 76–77; criticism of, 70–71; effeminacy distanced from identity
definition of, 70, 78; on The Farmer of, 134–136; identity, 131–136;
Wants A Wife, 78; features typical of, insults regarding, 131; knowledge
71; media influencing, 79; Nordic of, 131–132, 141n2; learning of,
television program study on, 76–77; 131–132, 141n2; media teaching,
on Ullava Cowboys, 75, 78 132; rural, 70; television programs
258 Index
teaching, 132; undefined, 131–132, through, 220; institutions

141n2; white, 116 influencing, 14; meanings of, 55;
homosocial desire, 195–196 men socially constructing, 58;
homosociality: on Cool and Crazy, pastoral power and, 57–58; patterns
76–77; definition of, 71–72; Nordic of, 62; pure relationship manifested
television program study on, 76–77; through, 53; reciprocity and, 59–60;
remedial, 76–77; women excluded romantic love’s narratives separate
by male communities of, 72 from, 54; spatialized
Hopkins, Peter, 70–71 conceptualization of, 52
Howe, Delmas, 216 “Intimacy as a Concept: Explaining
HRRA. See Hastings and Rother Social Change in the Context of
Rainbow Alliance Globalisation or Another Form of
human/animal boundary, 175–176, Ethnocentricism?” (Jamieson), 62
183–185 “Intimacy Transformed? A Critical
Human Library project, 44–45 Look at the ‘Pure Relationship’”
hunting, 10, 13 (Jamieson), 55
invisible farmer, 60
ICTs. See information and communica- isolation: in coming out narratives,
tion technologies 99–100; homophobia causing,
identities, 130; distance influencing, 99–100; spatial, 120
138; homosexual, 131–136; I väntan på liv (Kolterjahn), 159, 168,
marginalized, 112; migration 168–169
influencing, 138–140; in migration
research, 133–136, 138–140; in social Jackson, Stevi, 197
networking research, 121–122; Jamieson, Lynn, 51, 55, 62
stories narrating, 98; urban causing Japan, 214
finding of, 136–137. See also quest Jenny (Perssen’s character): body and,
for identity 162–163, 164–165; geographies and,
industrial farming. See Concentrated 168, 169; spaces and, 164–165
Animal Feeding Operations Jenny (Timgren’s character): body and,
information and communication 162; geographies and, 168, 169
technologies (ICTs), 226 Johnson, E. Patrick, 115–116, 125
Ingram, Gordon Brent, 84 Johnston, Lynda, 12–13, 147
inside work. See domestic work; Jones, Loyal, 91
managerial work
institutions: colonial, 31–32; intimacy Kannabiran, Kalpana, 151
influenced by, 14 Kant, Immanuel, 163
International Gay Rodeo Association, Karlsson, Ylva, 165–166
216 Kimmel, Michael, 7–8
intimacy: as care, 56–57; care’s relation Kings Cross Coaching Station, 25–26
with, 54–55; definition of, 53; Kingsley, Mary, 30
domestic work and, 59–60; Kirkey, Kenneth, 5
emotions constituting, 51; farming Knopp, Larry, 4, 129, 138, 145, 147, 152
men and, 57–58; farming women Kolterjahn, Marika, 159, 168–169
and, 59–60; feminists on, 53–55; Krogman, Naomi T., 193
GLQ people and practices of, 63;
GLQ people working through, 220; Laite, Julia A., 190–191
heterosexual relationships and, La Pastina, Antonio, 223
52–55, 58; heterosexuals working Lasch, Chris, 53
Index 259
Latham, Aaron, 214 Mann, Jeff, 90–91

legislation: anti-bestiality, 175, 176; Mapping Desires: Geographies of
enactment of, 41–43; Equality Act Sexualities (Bell, D., and Valentine),
2010 related to, 44; GLQ people, 114
35–36; urban focus influencing, 38 Marija (character), sex had by, 165
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans marriage: Christianity shaping, 61;
(LGBT) Equalities in Hastings, farming men on, 57–58; good, 55;
Rother, and East Sussex Forum: meanings of, 55; protection in, 57–58
action research in, 40–41; equalities marriage study: conclusion, 62–63;
need discussed by, 41–43; equalities data, 56; on gendered norms, 58;
policies and implementation interviews, 55–56; methodology,
discussed by, 43–47; era of austerity 55–56
discussed by, 46; government MARS Festival. See Music-Art-
guidance discussed by, 46–48; Recreation-Sustainability Festival
mapping exercise, 41; questions Marta (character), geographies and,
asked of, 41; staff networks and 168–169
groups discussed by, 45–46, 49n7 masculinities: burden of, 71;
lesbians. See gay, lesbian, and queer construction of, 78; on The Farmer
people Wants A Wife, 77; hierarchy of, 71;
LGBT Equalities in Hastings, Rother, media portraying, 79; mining
and East Sussex Forum. See Lesbian, definitions mobilized around,
Gay, Bisexual, and Trans Equalities 187–188; as strategic, 70–71;
in Hastings, Rother, and East Sussex television programs portraying, 79;
Forum on Ullava Cowboys, 75–76; women
LGBTIQ. See gay, lesbian, and queer influencing, 78. See also cowboy
Lipman-Blumen, Jean, 71–72 masculinity; hegemonic masculinity
Little, Jo, 9–10, 54, 60 Måsen (character): body and, 162, 163;
lived body, 160–161; lesbian, 162–166; geographies and, 169–170
in space, 162–166 Massey, Doreen, 144, 227
Liverpool Street Railway Station, 25, 26 Massumi, Brian, 148
“The Logic of Masculinist Protection: “A Matter of Life and Death? Men,
Reflections on the Current Security Masculinities and Staying ‘Behind’
State” (Young), 57 in Rural Ireland” (Ní Laoire), 71
Longhurst, Robyn, 12–13 MCA. See Minerals Council of
love, in coming out novels, 164–165 Australia
Luke, Brian, 10 McCall, Laura, 202–203, 206
Luzia, Karina, 146 McClymont, Katie, 223
McFarlane, Thomas, 189
Maajussille Morsian. See The Farmer McKenzie, Kirsten, 30
Wants A Wife McKittrick, Katherine, 115
MacKenzie, John, 13 media: cowboys in, 203, 204;
Maclean, Catherine, 222 hegemonic masculinity influenced
“Making Home: Queer Migrations and by, 79; homosexuality learned about
Motions of Attachment” (Fortier), through, 132; masculinities
147, 153 portrayed in, 79; rural men in,
“Male Perceptions of Intimacy: A 68–69; rural portrayed in, 69
Qualitative Study” (Patrick and men: The Farmer Wants A Wife
Beckenback), 58 portraying, 78; gendered norms
managerial work, 73 disrupted by, 59; intimacy socially
260 Index
constructed by, 58; mining as work 150–152, 157; queer space

of, 187–188; women protected by, influencing, 85–86; of self, 53. See
57–58. See also farming men; rural also coming out narratives
men nature, 176, 182
Meth, Paula, 223 naturecultures, 12
methodologies, reframing, 220–224 nature tourism, in New Zealand, 12–13
metro-centric discourse, 145 needs, 41–43
metronormativity, 161 Nelson, Margaret, 11
metrosexuality, 70 networks, state as, 37
migration: to Alice Springs, 104–105; Newton, Janice, 97, 100
coming out, 150–152; definition of, New Zealand, 10, 12–13
129; family, homemaking, and, Ní Laoire, Caitríona, 71
146–149; of GLQ people, 226–227; Nilsson, Åsa, 162, 166–167, 168, 169
gravitational group, 152; great gay, Noble, Greg, 70–71
177; in Home and Away, 150–152; Nock, Steven, 60
identities influenced by, 138; non-metropolitan, 22–23
narratives, 150–152, 157; sexuality’s non-state, state’s boundaries with,
relationship with, 147–148; spatial, 37–38
136–138 Nordic television programs: overview
migration research: conclusion, of, 69–70; rationale for exploring,
140–141; effeminacy in, 134–136, 68–69; rural men depicted by, 74–76.
139–140; identity in, 133–136, See also specific Nordic television
138–140; population, 130, 141n1; programs
spatial migration in, 136–138; urban Nordic television program study:
in, 136–140 conclusion, 78–79; on hegemonic
Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), masculinity, 76–77; on
188, 197 homosociality, 76–77; managerial
mining: masculinities mobilized work in, 73; overview of, 72–73;
around by definitions of, 187–188; physical work in, 73; on rural men’s
as men’s work, 187–188; depiction, 74–76
prostitution and, 189–192; rural Nordin, Sofia, 163, 165, 166–168, 169
associated with, 188–189; sexual Norman, Gurney, 81
harassment and, 195–197; sexuality “Notes on the Translation and
marginal in research on gender and, Acknowledgements” (Massumi),
187 148
Mining Family Matters, 194
mixed methods approach, 223 “The Olympian Cowboy” (Schein), 204
mobilities, 16, 154–157, 220 online networks, in social networking
Moodie, Susanna, 31 research, 122–123
Moodysson, Lukas, 159 operationalization of state, 38
Moore, Clive, 97, 149 organizations, as community
Morgan, Edwin, 22 subcategory, 124
Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, 11 O’Shaughnessy, Sara, 193
Murmansk, Russia, 76–77
Music-Art-Recreation-Sustainability Panelli, Ruth, 10, 54
(MARS) Festival, 81–83, 85 paniolo (cowboy), 205
parental homes, 147
narratives: coming home to die, 153; passing, 120
ethnography, 149; migration, pastoral power, 57–58
Index 261
Pateman, Carole, 57 “Queer Country: Rural Lesbian and

Patrick, Shawn, 58 Gay Lives” (Bell, D., and Valentine),
perceptions: of Australia, 95; of place, 3
38; policy influenced by, 43–44; queer discourses, problematic of,
ruralities recreated by, 39 113–114
Persson, Annika Ruth, 162–163, Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics,
164–165, 168, 169 Desire (Mortimer-Sandilands and
Phillips, Richard, 21–22, 85, 89 Erickson), 11
physical work: on The Farmer Wants A queer geographies, 114–115
Wife, 73; in Nordic television queernaturecultures, 12–13
program study, 73 “Queernaturecultures” (Bell, D.), 12
pigs, 179–185 queerness: rural, 89–92; rurality and,
places, 84, 144; character of, 38; GLQ 117; in social networking research,
people belonging to, 97, 101–102, 121–122
107–108; home and, 91; meanings queer place-making, 90
defining, 145–146; perceptions of, queer places, 90
38; queer, 90; regulations and, “The Queer Politics of Gay Pastoral”
60–61; relationships and, 60–61; (Shuttleton), 3
respectable, 28–33; space linked to, queer quests for identity. See quest for
85 identity
plastic sexuality, 53 queer research, 221
Plummer, Ken, 169 queer space: definition of, 85; narrative
policy: of equalities implementation, influenced by, 85–86; rural made
43–47; Equality Act 2010 into, 84–86
implementation of, 43–47; quest for identity, 129, 145, 162;
perceptions influencing, 43–44 definition of, 129
political economy, 224–225, 226
“The Politics of Scaling, Timing and radical faeries, 5
Embodying: Rethinking the ‘New railway stations, 25–26
Europe’“ (Fortier), 147 Rapson, Richard L., 55
Povinelli, Elizabeth, 92 Rasmussen, Claire, 13–14
“Power, Difference and Mobility: reciprocity: care as, 55; domestic work
Feminist Advances in Migration and, 59–60; farming women and,
Studies” (Silvey), 146–147 59–60; intimacy and, 59–60
Price, Patricia, 84 regulations, 60–61
Pride, 44 relationships: Aboriginal culture
Probyn, Elspeth, 146, 148, 153 influencing, 106–107; community
production, consumption and, 16–17, regulating sexual, 60–61; effeminacy
220 and gay men in, 134; intimacy and
prostitution: mining and, 189–192; heterosexual, 52–55, 58; place and,
around railway stations, 25–26; of 60–61; pure, 52–54; regulations and,
respectable country girls, 32 60–61; religion and, 61
protection, in marriage, 57–58 religion, relationships and, 61
Proulx, Annie, 204 respectability: in colonial context, 30,
Puar, Jasbir, 116, 147 32–33; places of, 28–33; rural, 32–33;
public sector, 49n3 significance of, 24; as social capital,
pure relationships, 53–54 30; spaces of, 26–28
respectable country girls: prostitution
queer. See gay, lesbian, and queer of, 32; sexuality influenced by,
262 Index
26–28; significance of, 23–24 rural sexualities: frames of work, 2; in

Retter, Yolanda, 84 geography field, 219; literature on,
Richardson, H. B., 24, 30 177
“‘Riding the Rural Love Train’: rural South: queer black women in,
Heterosexuality and the Rural 116–125. See also social networking
Community” (Little, Jo), 9, 10, 60 research
Roach, Mary, 184–185 rural women, on The Farmer Wants a
rodeos, 207 Wife, 74
Rogers, Roy, 210 Rushbrook, Dereka, 147
romantic love, 54 Ruskin, John, 27
Roper, Michael, 195–196 Rydström, Jens, 13, 178
Rose, Gillian, 52
Roseneil, Sasha, 63 Saugeres, Lise, 131
Rubin, Gayle, 140 Schein, Harry, 204
rural animals, GLQ people’s Schein, Louisa, 147
relationships with, 102 school, as community subcategory, 124
rurality: animal sexualities and, 11–14, Scott, John, 11
176–179; Australia as, 95; Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 167, 196
conceptualizing, 119–121; as self: community tied to, 220; narrative
contextually based, 39; definitions, of, 53; stories defining, 98
1, 39–40, 117, 119–121; displacement Sentinel, 30
from, 100–101; equalities Sesame and Lilies (Ruskin), 27
recognition spatialized away from, sex: animal, 179–185; in coming out
44–45; geography’s connections novels, 165–166; good differentiated
with, 1–2; GLQ people groups, 4–6; from bad, 181; Hedvig (character)
GLQ people invisible in, 41–43; having, 165; Marija (character)
GLQ people’s experiences of, 2–7; having, 165; in nature, 176–179;
heterosexuality and, 7–11, 39; Sigrid (character) having, 165; Stella
homosexuality, 70; idyll, 39, 144; (character) having, 165. See also
localities’ process investigation, 228; artificial insemination
in media, 69; mining associated “Sex Girls Trading Dignity for Dollars”
with, 188–189; as non-metropolitan, (Beato), 191
22–23; perceptions recreating, 39; “Sex Outside the City: Sex Work in
queer black women’s anonymity in, Rural and Regional New South
120; queerness and, 117; queer space Wales” (Scott et al.), 11
made from, 84–86; respectability, sexual harassment, mining and,
32–33; sexuality’s connections with, 195–197
1–2; in social networking research, sexuality: familial relations as
119–122; studying, 223; urban fundamental aspects of, 146; FIFO
juxtaposed with, 3–4, 35, 69, 136, work and, 193–195; geography’s
137, 141n4; women in communities connections with, 1–2; ICTs and,
of, 8 226; migration’s relationship with,
rural men: building blocks for, 72–73; 147–148; mining and gender
The Farmer Wants A Wife depicting, research marginally including, 187;
74–75; gay pastoral and, 177; in plastic, 53; political economy and,
media, 68–69; Nordic television 225; respectable country girls
programs’ depiction of, 74–76 influencing, 26–28; rurality’s
rural queerness, 89–92 connections with, 1–2; studying,
223; transnational, 227. See also
Index 263
animal sexualities; rural sexualities Swedish youth novels. See coming out
Shepard, Matt, 4 novels
Shuttleton, David, 3, 21–22, 85, 89 Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men in the South
Sigrid (character): body and, 163, 164; (Johnson), 115–116, 125
geographies and, 167–168; sex had
by, 165 Tallichet, Suzanne, 195
Silvey, Rachel, 146–147 TAS. See Travellers’ Aid Society
Since Adam Was a Boy, 96–98; story told “Technologies of the Self” (Foucault),
in, 98–99; Sutton in, 98–102 57–58
Sipilä, Jorma, 71 television programs: homosexuality
Skelton, Tracey, 137 learned about through, 132;
Smith, Andrew Brodie, 203, 209–210 masculinities portrayed in, 79. See
social capital, respectability as, 30 also Nordic television programs
social networking research: Terry, Jennifer, 178
community in, 123–124; concepts in, therapeutic culture, 53
117; conclusion, 124–125; general “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical
public settings in, 124; identity in, Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”
121–122; online networks in, (Rubin), 140
122–123; queerness in, 121–122; Timgren, Katja, 162, 168, 169
rurality in, 119–122; women Townsville, Queensland, Australia, 97,
identified in, 118 144–145, 149; family and, 154–157;
social purity groups, 27–28 understanding of, 144
spaces: Filippa (character) and, traditions, community influenced by,
164–165; government and, 38; home 76
as in-between, 153; isolation, 120; training, GLQ people, 45
Jenny (Perssen’s character) and, translocal geographies, 228
164–165; lived body in, 162–166; transnational sexualities, 227
place linked to, 85; of respectability, “Transnational Sexualities in One
26–28; rural queerness influencing, Place: Indonesian Readings”
90; sexy, 33; unsexy, 33 (Blackwood), 227–228
spatial migration, 136–138 transphobia, universities as site of, 45
state: enactments, 37–38, 48; everyday, Travellers’ Aid Society (TAS): annual
38; as network, 37; non-state’s reports, 26, 27, 29, 32; case history,
boundaries with, 37–38; 24, 32; cities with, 29; 1886 Annual
operationalization of, 38 Report, 32; 1888 Annual Report, 26;
Stella (character): body and, 163, 164; 1889 Annual Report, 29; formation
geographies and, 166–168; sex had of, 24–25, 28–29; handbills, 29–30;
by, 165 women infantilized by, 26–27; work
Stenbacka, Susanne, 78 of, 27–33
Stoler, Ann Laura, 33 “Travelling in Your Backyard: the
stories, 98 Unfamiliar Places of Parenting”
Storming Heaven (Giardina), 90–91 (Luzia), 146
study, mixed methods approach to, Travolta, John, 214
223 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 202
“Subjecting Cows to Robots: Farming
Technologies and the Making of Ullava Cowboys: GLQ people depicted
Animal Subjects” (Holloway), 180 on, 75; hegemonic masculinity on,
Sutton, Adam, 98–102 75, 78; masculinities on, 75–76;
264 Index
overview of, 69–70; scene from, 67; “Wherever I Lay My Girlfriend That’s
women on, 78 My Home” (Johnston and
universities: as biphobia site, 45; as Valentine), 147
homophobia site, 45; as transphobia white slavery, 25
site, 45 Wilcox, Bradford, 60
University of Brighton, 45 Wild West Show, 205–207
“‘Unnatural Acts in Nature’: The With this Ring, 10
Scientific Fascination With Queer women: children influencing, 60–61;
Animals” (Terry), 178 Christianity influencing, 61; The
urban: Cowboy, 214; displacement to, Farmer Wants A Wife portraying, 78;
100–101; effeminacy caused by, farmworkers, 8–9; homosocial male
139–140; GLQ people influenced by, communities excluding, 72;
38; identity found due to, 136–137; masculinities influenced by, 78; men
legislation influenced by focus on, protecting, 57–58; queer black, 115,
38; in migration research, 136–140; 116–125; in rural communities, 8;
rural juxtaposed with, 1–4, 35, 69, social networking research
136, 137, 141n4 identification of, 118; TAS
Urban Cowboy, 214 infantilizing young, 26–27; on
Ullava Cowboys, 78. See also farming
Valentine, Gill, 3, 51, 55, 62, 114, 137, women; rural women
147 Women’s Emigration Society, 24
vaqueros, 202 Woods, Michael, 200, 224
Vieten, Ulrike M., 151 Woodward, Kath, 130
“Violent Love: Hunting, Woodward, Rachel, 7
Heterosexuality, and the Erotics of work: communities and, 76; of TAS,
Men’s Predation” (Luke), 10 27–33
World War II (WWII), cowboy
Waitt, Gordon, 4 masculinity after, 214–216
Walcott, Rinaldo, 121
Washington State, 13–14 Yellow Hair, 206
Watt, Diane, 21–22, 85, 89 Young, Iris Marion, 57
wedding tourism, New Zealand, 10 Yulia (character): body and, 162, 164;
Weiss, Gail, 160 geographies and, 166–167
Westermeier, Clifford P., 205 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 151
western good/bad man, 210
About the Contributors
Alexis Annes is associate professor in the Laboratoire de Télédection et de

Gestion des Territoires at the École d’Ingénieurs de Purpan in Toulouse,
France. His doctoral research focused on identity construction processes
of rural gay men who grew up in France and in the United States. His
current research includes examination of changes affecting rural places in
postindustrial societies.
Jenny Björklund has a PhD in literature and teaches at the Center for
Gender Research, Uppsala University, Sweden. She has taught at various
universities in Sweden and the United States, and her research interests
include gender studies, queer theory, cultural studies, and feminist phe-
nomenology of the body. Björklund has published a book on women
poets and Swedish modernism as well as articles on lesbianism in twenti-
eth- and twenty-first-century Scandinavian literature and film, and wom-
en writers in Scandinavian modernism. She is currently working on a
book on lesbianism in Swedish literature.
Kath Browne is principal lecturer in human geography at the University
of Brighton, England, and has been the lead researcher on the Count Me
In Too project since 2005. Count Me In Too is a project where LGBT
people worked with service providers and others to undertake research
with the aim of progressing positive social change for LGBT people. She
has worked across university-community-service sectors to ensure the
applicability of this research. Her broader research interests coalesce
around geographies of gender and sexualities and encompass the areas of
sexualities, gender, feminisms, queer, spiritualities, and everyday lives.
Browne has co-authored and co-edited numerous books, articles, and
special issues. She has just finished, with Leela Bakshi, the book Where We
Became Ordinary? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Lives and Activism, due
in 2013.
Lia Bryant is senior lecturer in the School of Psychology, Social Work and
Social Policy at the University of South Australia. She is a sociologist who
has published widely on gender, sexuality, and embodiment in the rural,
with an ongoing interest in class and its intersections with gender in
shaping relations in rural communities. Bryant has authored Gender and
Rurality (Routledge 2011) with Barbara Pini and has published in numer-
ous journals including Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Interna-
265
266 About the Contributors
tional Journal of Qualitative Research, Kunapipi, Social Science Computer Re-

view, and Rural Society.
Mathias Detamore is a cultural/political geographer interested in femi-
nist and queer theories, alongside critical social theory, intersectionality,
and cultural studies. He defended his PhD dissertation, titled Queer Appa-
lachia: Toward Geographies of Possibility, in May 2010 at the University of
Kentucky. His research interests are in rural queerness and kinship, ex-
perimental methodologies and research ethics, social theories on the pro-
duction of bodies and embodiment, political power and social resistance,
and radical strategies for social justice. Detamore has two publications:
“The Carnal Body: Representation, Perfomativity and the Rest of Us” and
“Queer(y)ing the Ethics of Research Methods: Toward a Politics of Inti-
macy in Researcher/Researched Relations.” He currently lives in Nash-
ville with his partner and is an independent scholar in the process of
applying for university positions.
LaToya E. Eaves is a PhD student at Florida International University in
Miami. Her research interests are strongly informed by Black feminist
geographies and poststructuralist frameworks. Eaves’s research cen-
tralizes the importance of “peripheral” geographies by connecting multi-
ple material landscapes through qualitative inquiry into embodied his-
torical narratives, specifically of queer-identified Black women in the
United States.
Chris Gibson is professor in human geography at the University of Wol-
longong. Recent research projects have explored various aspects of cultu-
ral sustainability: in cultural-economic discourse as everyday practice,
and as questions for cultural planning. His publications include Sound
Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place (2003, with John Connell), Deadly
Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia (2004,
with Peter Dunbar-Hall), Music and Tourism (2005, with John Connell),
Festival Places: Revitalising Rural Australia (2011, with John Connell), and
Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia (2012, with John Con-
nell). Gibson holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship
exploring the cultural economy of household responses to climate change
and financial crisis.
Andrew Gorman-Murray is senior lecturer in social sciences at the Uni-
versity of Western Sydney. He is a social and cultural geographer. His
primary research interests include geographies of gender and sexuality
and rural social and cultural change. Gorman-Murray has conducted sev-
eral projects on sexual minorities and communities in rural and regional
Australia. This work is published in a number of outlets, including Jour-
nal of Rural Studies, Environment and Planning A, International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, Australian Geographer, Australian Humanities
Review, and Rural Society.
Hanna-Mari Ikonen holds a PhD in regional science. She works in the

School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tampere,
Finland, and has a post-doctoral researcher’s project on gender, emotion-
al, and aesthetic work in rural tourism, funded by the Academy of Fin-
land. Ikonen’s research interests include rural entrepreneurship, rural
media representations, and commercializing of rurality from a gender
perspective.
Lynda Johnston is professor in geography and tourism programs at the
University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has published on
topics such as wedding tourism, gay pride parades, sun-tanning, body-
building, and feminist and queer methodologies. Her publications in-
clude: Space, Place and Sex: Geographies of Sexualities (2010, co-authored
with Robyn Longhurst); Queering Tourism: Paradoxical Performances of Gay
Pride Parades (2005); and Subjectivities, Knowledges and Feminist Geogra-
phies: The Subjects and Ethics of Social Research (2002), which she co-au-
thored.
Robyn Mayes is research fellow in the John Curtin Institute of Public
Policy at Curtin University. She is currently involved in a large research
project on the social and cultural dimensions of mining with a particular
focus on meanings and understandings of corporate social responsibility
in the industry. She has published in Social and Cultural Geography, Aus-
tralian Geographer, and Sociology (of the British Sociological Association).
Mayes is currently working on a book Badlands: Mining, Gender and Resis-
tance for Zed Books.
Nick McGlynn is a PhD student and researcher in the School of Environ-
ment and Technology at the University of Brighton, United Kingdom.
His research examines the U.K. public sector’s development and imple-
mentation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) equalities in an age
of “austerity” and in “rural” areas of deprivation—in particular the Has-
tings and Rother areas of East Sussex. Previous research publications
include the “Drugs and Alcohol Report” for Brighton and Hove’s award-
winning Count Me In Too project, and a public service equalities policy
“Mapping Exercise Report” for the LGBT Equalities in Hastings, Rother,
and East Sussex project.
Samu Pehkonen works in the Institute for Advanced Social Research at
the University of Tampere, Finland. He has a PhD in human geography.
His post-doctoral researcher’s project, funded by the Academy of Fin-
land, discusses corporeality, choreography, and knowledge production
from the actors’ point of view. Pehkonen’s research interests include non-
verbal interaction, visual representations, and spatial politics.
Richard Phillips is professor in human geography at the University of
Sheffield. He specializes in cultural geography, histories of empire, and
268 About the Contributors
postcolonialism. His research on historical geographies of empire charts

the spaces through which historical and contemporary forms of imperial-
ism have been constructed and contested, including their contemporary
significance. Sexuality is central to this work: an important vehicle for
constructing and contesting power relations between national and cultu-
ral (including religious) groups. His research has traced imperial sexual-
ity politics through key sites within the British Empire, and investigated
the legacies of these colonial histories and geographies in ex-colonies
including Jamaica and Sierra Leone. Phillips also examines these dynam-
ics within Europe, investigating cultural practices through which Mus-
lims are constructed as “non-liberal” minorities, via representations of
forced marriage and homophobia. His is the author of Mapping Men and
Empire (1997); Sex, Politics and Empire: A Postcolonial Geography (2006); and
Liverpool 81: Remembering the Riots (2011, with D. Frost), and the editor of
De-centring Sexualities: Representations and Politics beyond the Metropolis
(2000, with D. Watt and D. Shuttleton); Muslim Spaces of Hope: Geographies
of Possibility in Britain and the West (2009); and Fieldwork in Human Geogra-
phy (2012, with J. Johns).
Barbara Pini is professor in the school of humanities at Griffith Univer-
sity. She has an extensive publication record in the field of rural social
science, with expertise in gender and class dynamics in rural spaces and
industries. She has authored Masculinities and Management in Agricultural
Organizations Worldwide (Ashgate 2008) as well as Gender and Rurality
(Routledge 2011) with Lia Bryant. She has edited Labouring in New Times:
Young People and Work (2011, with R. Price, P. McDonald, and J. Bailey),
Transforming Gender and Class in Rural Spaces (2011, with R. Leach), Repre-
senting Women in Local Government: An International Comparative Study
(2011, with P. McDonald), Men, Masculinities and Methodologies (2012,
with B. Pease), and Gender, Work and Ageing (2012, with P. McDonald).
Pini’s writing has appeared in numerous journals including Journal of
Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Gender, Work and Organization, Work, Em-
ployment and Society, Information, Communication and Society, New Technolo-
gy, Work and Employment, and Social and Cultural Geography.
Claire E. Rasmussen is associate professor of political science and the
director of the sexuality and gender studies minor at the University of
Delaware. Her work explores intersections of queer and animal studies
and contemporary continental theory. Her work has appeared in Society
and Space, Signs, and Social and Cultural Geography. Rasmussen’s book The
Autonomous Animal is available from the University of Minnesota Press.
Meredith Redlin is professor in the Department of Sociology and Rural
Studies at South Dakota State University. Her research includes examina-
tion of population groups and inclusive community sustainability in the
Great Plains region of the United States. In addition, she has presented
and published on alternative agriculture and diverse rural populations.
Gordon Waitt is professor at the University of Wollongong, New South
Wales, Australia. He is the co-author of Gay Tourism: Culture and Context
(Haworth Press 2006) and Introducing Human Geographies (Longman
2000). He has also co-authored published papers exploring the relation-
ship between sexualities and space in range of journal including Progress
in Human Geography, Antipode, Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and Gender, Place
and Culture.

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Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography by Andrew Gorman-Murray

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Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography

Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography

Edited by Andrew Gorman-Murray,

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2013 by Lexington Books

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

1: Intimacies and Institutions

10 Coming Out, Coming In: Geographies of Lesbian Existence

4: Production and Consumption

Conclusion: Sexuality, Rurality, and Geography 219

We would like to acknowledge the individuals and organizations that

Andrew Gorman-Murray, Barbara Pini,

In both academic and popular literature, “rurality” is recognized as a set

mans and non-humans in rural areas and industries; and experiences of

GAY, LESBIAN, AND QUEER EXPERIENCES OF THE RURAL

tended to draw attention to “non-heterosexual” identities, lives, and

life” experience by return and peripatetic migration paths (Knopp and

man-Silva’s (2009) comprehensive ethnography of the historical social

HETEROSEXUALITY AND THE RURAL

cy.” Thus, it seems that despite notable disruptions to the mythologizing

structures and practices, are dramatically reshaped by globalization with

with a “pluralistic notion of heterosexualities” (Hockey, Meah, and Rob-

Despite the initial explorations into rurality and heterosexuality on

ANIMAL SEXUALITIES AND THE RURAL

The newest area of scholarship on rural sexualities, which is rapidly

In terms of the range of work on non-human animal sexualities specif-

Longhurst 2010, 111). Of course, such justifications, based as they are in

THEMES OF THIS COLLECTION

We have arranged the subsequent chapters into four thematic sections:

ities in rural communities by considering the intersections of race, gen-

Intimacies and Institutions

This chapter examines relationships between sex, space, and power

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

In the late 1990s I was teaching at the University of Aberystwyth, in a

Shuttleton 2000)—described the sexual life of rural districts and provin-

significance: in shaping ideas about sexuality, on the one hand, and in

THE TRAVELLERS’ AID SOCIETY

H. T., most respectably connected, came up to London from a far-off

means of counteracting the organized dangers at home and abroad for

age, for example, was twelve). Notwithstanding the philanthropic inten-

licity (TAS Executive Committee 1886), and forbidding station workers

The figure of the “respectable country girl” was also instrumental in

lers’ aid networks from Germany and Switzerland to England, after a

These institutions and practices gave some substance to rhetoric about

settlement were seen as spaces of moral renewal, in which feminine vir-

Kath Browne and Nick McGlynn

Rural settings have historically been, and popularly are, conceptualized

activists who can now make demands of services without needing to

ENGAGING WITH “THE ENEMY”

Here we build on conceptualizations of LGBT activisms, understanding

Monro 2003). However, “defacto firewalls” are also a possibility as local

WHERE IS RURAL? SEXUALIZING AND GENDERING

Following recent theorizations in rural studies, we understand the rural

people), is perceived as “rural” in terms of the “backwardness” of sexual-

ACTION RESEARCH IN THE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND

Seeing “the state” as diversely enacted through how it is performed, we