Rolling in the Hay: The Rural as Sexual Space

Journal of Rural Studies

Scholars of rural studies have investigated a range of places and subcultures to identify varieties of rural masculinitydboth new and olddand to understand how they shape social relations (e.g., Bell, 2004; Campbell, 2000; Hennen, 2008). Yet a similarly energetic effort to understand rural femininity and its consequences on social life is lacking. Simultaneously, while cultural studies of boundary-making processes have intensified in recent years, more work is needed to understand how " cultural narratives " shape gendered boundary-making processes (Lamont and Molnar, 2002). In this article we ask: how do representations of rural femininities vary across different media sources? And, how do symbolic boundaries in these representations work to valorize specific rural femininities? Drawing in part on the recent emergence of a hip, countryside consumerism, we analyze gender on the symbolic and cultural level, making use of images and language to understand how representations of rurality and femininity intersect. Analyzing content from two magazines in different genres, Successful Farmer and Country Living, our findings revealed that rural femininities are contextual and depend on multiple and often shifting understandings of both rurality and femininity. We specifically identified two distinct forms of rural femininity, which we refer to as productivist rural femininity and transformative country chic. Further, we found that in both magazines symbolic boundary-making relied on the gendered division of labor to construct rural femininities, but that Country Living tended to use symbols of social class to portray desirable rural femininity, more so than Successful Farming. The article concludes with a discussion of further directions for the study of rural femininities and symbolic boundaries.

Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2022

What does it mean to be (in)visible for the LGBTQ women living in the rural Midwest? Is visibility the only political project that enables progress and community building for LGBTQ persons? What political possibilities are foreclosed when becoming visible is the political project? These are some of the questions that Carly Thomsen poses in her recent book and that are placed at the heart of recent debates within rural queer studies. Faithful to queer's inherent volatile contingency, this book convincingly foregrounds antinormativity as the foundation of its political scope. Thomsen critically engages in an interrogation of dominant metronormativity discourses that often take for granted the benefits of outness and LGBTQ visibility and render the rural as backward and unintelligible. Drawing upon an eclectic methodology that comprises interviews with LGBTQ women living in South Dakota and Minnesota, close readings of books, media texts, bloggers' articles, social network posts and a short documentary produced and directed by Thomsen herself, this work rigorously attests to the importance of examining "the unexplored problematics of visibility politics" (p. x) in the subfield of rural queer studies. Visibility Interrupted relies on concepts and theoretical moves that will be familiar to the informed reader in queer theory, from Judith Butler's discursive formation of abject (1993), (un)intelligible and (un)grievable (2004) subjects to José Esteban Muñoz's "disidentification practices" (1999) exerted by marginalized people. Thomsen also engages Sara Ahmed's envisioning of (queer) "use" as a principle that may "call for knowledge that is useful to others, with this 'to' being an opening, an invitation, a connection" (qtd. in Thomsen 143). Indeed, the reader is invited to travel to the rural Midwest and to listen to the voices of LGBTQ women who shake the normative foundations of progressive discourses that align rural queer lives with backwardness, sadness and oppression. Their experiences and testimonies should alert individuals, Thomsen contends, "to rethink the cultural narratives that pair closeted, violent, and homophobic with the rural and liberated, safe, and tolerant with the city, challenging the

Historically rooted in cities, GLBT identities and communities have been mapped onto a narrative of rural-to-urban migration. Often represented as homophobic, rural space is valued insofar as it is left behind. !is article posits rurality as an often-ignored yet pervasive thread of identity, which is absent from hegemonic conceptualizations of queer visibility. While urban queer visibil- ity politics center on the di"erent-but-equal paradigm, I argue that rural queer visibility politics involve a delicate balance of queerness and localness, putting forth an approach of di"erent- but-similar. !e construction of GLBT identities in non-urban contexts may therefore complicate dominant conceptions of the closet model.

This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the Office of the Provost at Wellesley College, who facilitated my travel to the archives at Smith College and University of Massachusetts, Amherst to perform archival research. Further thanks are owed to the library staff at Wellesley, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts for their support and guidance throughout my research process.

Research points to the increasing geographical diversity of gays and lesbians, in contrast to cultural narratives that link gay and lesbian sexualities to urban spaces. Examining the sexual identity constructions of rural gays and lesbians thus provides an opportunity to analyze the connection between cultural and personal levels of narrative identity. Drawing on data from thirty interviews with rural gays and lesbians, I address how this group negotiates cultural narratives about queerness and constructs sexual identities in rural locales. I find that their interpretations of geography make clear distinctions between urban/rural and draw on elements in rural culture. These interpretations provide resources to modify cultural understandings that narrate gay/lesbian identities in rural areas as closeted, hidden, and oppressed.