The notion of queer and queerness is foundational to this research project, as a gay village is meant to be of service to LGBTQ+ people, as a safe space in which queer people can be protected from wider homophobic oppression (Castells, 1983). Halperin (1995) describes queer as “at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominate” (p.62), which is furthered by Edelman’s idea that queerness can never define an identity, it can only ever disturb one (2004); definitions of queer and queerness are often divergent and contradictory, due to the fluidity of the discourse (Sullivan, 2003), but is consistently affixed to LGBTQ+ issues and communities. Thus, queer is objectively defying (hetero)normative assumptions, of gender binaries, sexual relationships, and monolithic heterosexual institutions (Bell et al. 1994; Jackson 2006), aiding in promoting poststructuralist narratives. This is developed by Hall’s (2003) idea on queer theory, that ‘there is no “queer theory” in the singular, only many different voices and sometimes overlapping sometimes divergent perspectives that can loosely be called “queer theories”’ (p.5), as it is a highly individual positionality with differing experiences that are not coherent. The resistance to these hegemonic heterosexual institutions is an embodied, emotional statement, in which people must defy the norm, and (possibly) ‘come out’ (Corrigan and Matthews, 2003); consequently, this highly personal phenomena affects the formation of personal identity in relation to queerness and queer space (Coleman, 1982) which can insight emotions of pain, grief, happiness, anger and love which constitute and shape how place is experienced to individuals (Anderson and Smith, 2001). Being queer, impacts upon the constitution of self within place, the ontological understandings of feeling in or out of place, and the performativity of sexuality/identity in-situ (Butler, 1990).
Establishing Homonormativity?
Since the coming out of the geographical discipline (Binnie, 1997), academics in queer discourses have concerned themselves with critiquing heteronormativity, a socially-constructed culture that prioritises traditional heterosexual relationships, and alignment of biological sex with sexuality, gender identity and gender roles (Brown, 2011). Heteronormativity is society as we know it, that reinforces cisnormative gender assumptions and discriminate against those who do not conform (Aultman, 2014). But more recently, the queering of the discipline has allowed for the emergence of homonormativity, to describe and critique the forms of assimilated homosexuality into mainstream heterosexual culture (Brown, 2009). Duggan (2002) defines this new homonormativity as:
“A politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions
and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the
possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatised, depoliticised
gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (ibid., p.179)
This philosophy denotes that specific non-threatening gay identities, have become commercialised (Bell and Binnie, 2004), and as such integrated into presiding normative culture, a culture that is prejudicial toward anything that defies the stereotypical, idealised gay image; an image that is prioritised within both society and queer culture. As such, homonormativity sets hierarchal precedent of social norms and expectations, which reproduces heteronormative binaries and preferentialism but within an already oppressed community. This precedent can be examined through the different identities and sexual politics, such as gender-queer persons and their relational partners, queer race and ethnicities, and differing socio-economic class (Alexander and Yescavage, 2009). But there has been a shift from an identity politics to a more intersectional approach (Crenshaw, 1991; Peake, 2010). While it is important not to essentialise while discussing about intersectionality, as it discredits the prejudice and cumulative effect against individuals, it is also important to note the identity components that make up intersectional issues that attribute to the homonormative. These components are gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, aesthetical appearance, HIV status, class, and age (Parker and Aggleton 2003; Brown 2012; Held 2015) – while these may not be the traditional typologies of intersectionality laid out by Crenshaw (1991), there is nothing traditional about homonormativity, subjecting individuals to synergistic prejudice and oppression (Lewis, 2009) from inside the LGBTQ+ community.
This idea of the LGBT(Q+) people as a community is universally used within academia, journalism and everyday life, referring to collective groups of queer persons; the term community is used to reference a “group of people with something in common” (Middlemiss 2011, p.266), with the commonality being people identifying as something other than heterosexual. Thus, this imaginary of community collectivises individuals, and privileges unity over difference (Young, 1990), but it also has tendencies to standardise the community; this is problematic due to the discriminatory microaggression inequalities within the LGBTQ+ community, and as such exposing the false unifying umbrella which all ‘queers’ of all races, ethnicities and classes are shoved under, which homogenises struggles faced by many people who identify as queer (Anzaldùa, 1991). The idea of community is one that is often romanticised, but as the false unifying umbrella denotes, LGBTQ+ experience is not collective, it is highly individualised (Nash and Gorman-Murray, 2017), with different people discriminated against for different reasons, both inter and intra ‘community’.
Homonormativity has also aided into the commercialisation, and commodification of LGBTQ+ districts and villages into the urban realm, which aids in creating a diverse urban economy (Gibson-Graham, 2005), in which capitalism and homosexuality are aligned to create a place in which sexual identities can emerge. This has led to the gentrification of areas, for cities to market themselves as cosmopolitan, liberalised and gay friendly (Haslop et al., 1998), to attract new demographics of individuals, and theoretically be able to become a city which can foster the creative class (Florida, 2002). These visible sites of resistance have become a honey-pot site (Pritchard et al., 1998) wherein monetary capital is prioritised and organised around highly-commercial and visible anchor institutions of bars and clubs (Ghaziani, 2014).
Homonormative discourse has been furthered by some critical scholars (Paur 2013; Hubbard and Wilkinson 2015; McCaskell 2018), who have commented on homonationalism (a neology of homonormative and nationalism); this can be described as a transition in how queer subjects are relating to nation-states (Paur, 2007), normalising queerness into everyday life, patriotism, marriage and through monolithic state institutions. However, homonationalism furthers racist rhetoric through problematic universalisation of western nationalistic ideology, that favours the white conforming homonormative gays (and lesbians) (Heike Schotten, 2016); thus pushing idealised images about these conforming groups into the public realm through politics and further dissemination into LGBTQ+ communities (Currah, 2013). These politics as such, have discriminated queer people racially, and through other sexual or gender identities that do not conform to LGB (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual), and have othered (Said, 1978) people within this population, due to existing prejudice (Nash, 2010; Han 2007).
Conversely this notion of homonormativity is based upon the metropolitan and urbanised lifestyle of gay and lesbian people in the global north (Phillips et al., 2000), and is an increasingly westernised queer positionality, however within academia it is often universalised to places that are not urbanised and to the people who do not buy-in to queer commodities (Brown, 2012). Furthermore, it can also be argued that homonormativity is at odds to the queer, rendering Halperin’s definition of queer as ‘at odds with the normal’ (1995) obsolete; suggesting the assimilation of queer into the (hetero)normative and mainstream culture. This reproduction of heteronormativity consequently prioritises gay white male masculinities (Nast, 2002) in the public sphere, therefore replicates certain gender binaries, racial and class issues, and patriarchal institutions.
Gay Villages and the deconstruction of safe space
The histories, and (continued) struggles of LGBTQ+ people globally are pertinent to the understanding of the contemporary needs of individuals within the community. Originally these villages were born out of a need for safe space, as these minorities were ostracised for their sexuality (Bronski, 2011), thus a place of political solidarity was needed. But throughout the 1960s individual rights regarding social attitudes of sexuality had been liberalising throughout North America and parts of Europe through counter-cultural experimentation, radical politics and increase in young educated people (Brown, 2008); this liberalisation of attitudes has continued, notwithstanding constant struggles by sexual minorities to be recognised. As such there has been an increase in gay villages/districts in the westernised world and gradual destigmatisation of these areas, as a spatially compact place in which an oppressed community can be protected from wider homophobic and heteronormative oppression through the collective habitation of queer people (Castells, 1983). This territorialisation of urban, fluid spaces (Nash, 2006) creates a space in which queer culture can be celebrated, through the believed subversion of heteronormative philosophies. Thus, gay villages and districts have become assimilated into urban metrospheric frameworks and economies, and promoted as being an inclusive, safe space in which queer culture can be celebrated.
The term safe space has become adopted by the academic community that has become widely recognised in social sciences (Stengel and Weems, 2010), especially in relation to queer theory and LGBT issues (Peters 2003; Poynter and Tubbs 2008); many consider these gay villages as a safe space due to their temporal solidarity and struggle. Historically that was true, but within contemporary queer society, these places have become an ever-more contested site through intra-community discrimination based upon identity components. There are bodies of literature demonstrating this, for people with disabilities (Ramlow 2009; Shakespeare 1996; Casey 2007), age (Hunter et al. 1998; Casey 2007; Simpson 2013), race (Held, 2015), gender (Stryker 2008), class (Taylor 2009), body size (Brand et al., 1992) and sexuality (Casey 2004) – using homonormative principles to describe what the idealised gay body, as a young and slim, or big and muscular homosexual male (Casey, 2007). Binnie (2004) furthers this idea of the ideal image, and the antitheses of it: the queer unwanted, which denotes the inability to fully participate in queer activities. Casey (2007) develops this thought, as these villages/districts have become increasingly-marketed towards this idealised gay or lesbian image. This is problematic as these places are commonly thought about as a safe space in which people can perform their sexuality free from outside persecution, and are increasingly becoming less safe due to the pressures to conform, exhibited through relational semiotics (Zebracki and Milani, 2017). As such, gay villages that should be places of topophila (Tuan, 1990), are coming to be topophobic landscapes in which queer people feel restricted to freely act, thus being repressed by hetero and homonormative cultures, deconstructing the notion of safe space.