Challenging Queer Geographies

Abstract

can a rigid Gay Male identity cope with that really cute guy, who used to be a butch baby dyke, and is still involved in a primary relationship with a woman, but considers herself basically a gay man? ... As it's finally sinking in that if gender is fluid, how can sexual orientation not be as well? How can you be rigidly orientated toward something that is amorphous shifting, fluid, tricky, elusive? Basing your identity on sexuality is like building your house on a foundation of pudding (Scott 1997:65-66) This short intervention seeks to challenge geographies of sexualities to further interrogate the possibilities and limitations of queer. Specifically it seeks to contend that geographies of sexualities should not be simplistically conflated with queer geographies. In exploring queer and its potentials beyond its deployment as an overarching term to describe multiple sexual dissidents (including lesbian, gay and bisexual) this intervention seeks to open up potentially productive avenues between geographies and queer theory. I engage with contemporary debates within queer studies and lesbian and gay studies as well as addressing the sub-discipline of geographies of sexualities. In emphasising fluidity and the slippages of queer, however, this piece does not offer clear answers or solutions. Instead, it seeks to open up potentialities of queer geographies and of geographies of sexualities beyond those offered by queer. The tensions between geographies of sexualities and queer geographies can offer ways of thinking through the problems of fluidity and naming, and the implications these questions have for political thought and action, beyond queer and sexualities, both within and outside of geography.