Lesbian Geographies

It has long been recognised that the spatialisation of sexual lives is always gendered. Sexism and male dominance are a pervasive reality and lesbian issues are rarely afforded the same prominence as gay issues. Thus, lesbian geographies continue to be a salient axis of difference, challenging the conflation of lesbians and gay men, as well as the trope that homonormativity affects lesbians and gay men in the same ways. This volume explores lesbian geographies in diverse geographical, social and cultural contexts and presents new approaches, using English as a working language but not as a cultural framework. Going beyond the dominant trace of Anglo-American perspectives of research in sexualities, this book presents research in a wide range of countries including Australia, Argentina, Israel, Canada, USA, Russia, Poland, Spain, Hungary and Mexico.

The Open Geography Journal, 2008

By focusing on often neglected lesbian geographies, this paper deconstructs the urban/rural divide which has pervaded discussions of (sexual) geographies. In particular, the paper addresses the intersections between imaginings of urban idylls (what could be termed the urban gay) and how these places 'beyond' can, in part, (in)form everyday lives in small towns (what could be termed the lesbian rural). In doing this, the paper furthers lesbian geographies by examining how fantasises and imaginings of cities become important to 22 lesbians women who live in a small town in the South West of England. The problematic assumptions of visible sexual expressions and 'gay' territories as central defining features of lives outside heterosexuality are contested. The paper examines the messy interstices, movements and interactions between towns and cities in the UK, through lesbian negotiations and understandings of everyday life.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1992

In the past two decades gay neighbourhoods have become familiar parts of the urban landscape. Although these aieas may include lesbians, gay men dominate their distinct subcultures, their businesses and their residences, their street life and their political activities. In 7he city and the grussroots (1983) Manuel Castells argues that the predominance of gay men in the creation of distinctly homosexual urban neighbourhoods reflects a profound gender difference. In relationship to space, gay men and lesbians, he says, behave first and foremost as men and women. Men seek to dominate space, while women attach more importance to networks and relationships, rarely having territorial aspirations: 'Lesbians, unlike gay men, tend not to concentrate in a given territory, but establish social and interpersonal networks.' Gay men require a physical space in order to conduct a liberation struggle, while lesbians are 'placeless' and 'tend to create their own rich, inner world' (1983: 140). Lesbians are also politically different from gay men, according to Castells. They do not acquire a geographical basis for urban political objectives, because they create a political relationship 'with higher, societal levels'. Lesbians 'are far more radical in their struggle. .. [and] more concerned with the revolution of values than with the control of institutional power' (1983: 140). Castells's analysis makes several assumptions that we question. First, is it true that lesbians do not concentrate in a given territory? Second, does the absence of a publicly identifiable lesbian neighbourhood reflect gender differences in interests, needs and values, or differences in resources available to gay men and lesbians? Third, do differences in the political orientation of politically active gay men and lesbians reflect gender differences in relationship to space or differences in political alliances, specifically the involvement of lesbians in feminist politics that include straight women? The literature on differences between gay men and lesbians in relation to urban space is generally ambiguous about the existence of lesbian spatial concentrations. In support of his argument, Castells cites Deborah Wolf's study of the lesbian community in San Francisco, which, according to Wolf, 'is not a traditional community in the sense that it has geographical boundaries' (Wolf, 1980: 72). However. Wolf also noted that lesbians did tend to live in particular parts of town, and that 'These areas bound each other and have in common a quality of neighbourhood life'. Wolf pointed out that since lesbians tend to be poor they live in older, ethnically mixed working-class areas, in low-rent * We should like to thank the lesbian organizations who allowed us to find a way to use their mailing lists while maintaining confidentiality of their membership. Without their help, this study could not have been conducted. We should also like to thank Mickey Lauria, Lawrence Knopp and this journal's reviewer for their comments and Chris Land for research assistance.

Planning Perspectives, 2022

City & Community, 2012

Research on urban growth and vitality suggests that gay men concentrate in high quality of life cities, indicated by high-tech development, diversity, and city amenities. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which theories of urban renewal and economic development-including Florida's creative class-can explain the neighborhood-level distribution of lesbians and gays within a city. Using 2000 U.S. Census data, tax parcel data, and other data sources, we conduct multivariate spatial regression to investigate the distribution of lesbians and gays in Columbus, Ohio, and their relationship to diversity, openness, and amenities. While the neighborhood distribution of gay men is associated with many of these characteristics, lesbian housing patterns are not. We do, however, find both lesbians and gays concentrate in tracts with other gay and lesbian households and that gay residential patterns are influenced by gay concentration in neighboring tracts suggesting that geographic clustering may also be a protective mechanism.

Lesbian relationships have largely been excluded from the geographical agenda. This paper focuses on women currently in a relationship with another woman and examines particular geographies of lesbian relationships through a conceptualisation of the 'betweeness of space'.

Although some qualitative research has noted differences in gay and lesbian enclaves based on characteristics such as race and sex, in this article, we draw upon quantitative data from the U.S. Census to demonstrate the manner in which enclave formation is affected by the interaction of sexual orientation and other demographic characteristics (such as sex, race, age, and income). We focus our attention on enclaves located in three counties in the San Francisco Bay Area: San Francisco County, Alameda County, and Sonoma County as one example. Even though these spaces fall within close proximity to one another and share similar geographic appeal, our analyses indicate that these enclaves are far from homogenous in terms of the demographic composition of their inhabitants. These quantitative analyses provide further support to past qualitative findings, as well as highlight additional distinctions in the manner in which demographics affect enclave selection. We supplement our demographic analyses with supporting field research and interviews, further highlighting both the variation and the commonalities of these enclaves. Overall, our findings promote an expansion of the understanding how intersecting demographic.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1995

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. The work was funded by ESRC award number ROOO 23 3600. I also wish to thank the two referees for their helpful comments and the editor, Michael Harloe, for his patience and willingness to persevere with this paper even though it took me over a year to get round to making changes to the original draft.

2014

On-going research for my MPhil in sociology describes, documents and analyses self-identified non-heterosexual women (bisexual, lesbian, pan-sexual) from various parts of Trinidad, and how they construct an image of "Home", "Work", physical place and virtual space. This paper interrogates the cultural geographies of space and place. In particular how material cultures and social histories get grafted onto spaces to create a physical geography of place, as it relates to lesbian identity and citizenship. My ongoing aim is to illustrate the subjectivities created for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) women within certain places and spaces. Through the women's experiences, addressing the intersections of gender, identity and ethnicity with space, I examine the sexing of spaces and the pervasive nature of heteronormativity in Trinidadian society.

Area, 2015

The geopolitical focus on territory as a fixed and cohesive nation-state simultaneously conceals the ways territories form and are operationalized at other scales. At the same time, the fleeting ability of minority bodies to make and retain cohesive, property-owned territories overlooks the limited agency that marginalized groups possess while they continually reproduce social territories as they navigate their everyday lives. Lesbians, gay, bisexuals, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people began to develop urban territories—often dubbed neighborhoods or gay districts or villages—in which to find, build, and share a sense of safety and refuge. Yet all urban territories are not neighborhoods or districts because not all groups possess the power and capital to secure their boundaries through property ownership. In this paper I draw specifically upon the experiences of urban lesbians’ and queer women’s often overlapping public displays of affection (PDA) and harassment in New York City to demonstrate the shifting dimensions of territory in these women’s lives beyond the neighborhood/district model. I make use of two cases: the popular “gayborhood” of Greenwich Village in Manhattan and the border zone of Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Using a queer-feminist theoretical approach and drawing on Elden’s geopolitical theorization of territorial “volume,” I argue that a broader meaning of territory is possible. When lesbian and queer women produce and then return to them or their former sites, they experience what feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa describes as “crossing over.” This approach highlights the role of the body for rethinking social and cultural territories and borders across scales. I suggest that territory plays a significant role at the urban scale as operationalized through the everyday movements of bodies.