Geographies of Hegemonic Gay Masculinity: Interplays of Trans and Racialized In/Exclusions in the Gay Village of Toronto

Abstract

Little geographical work has explored the role of hegemonic gay masculinity in constructing queer spaces and its impacts on multiply marginalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit, and additional (LGBTQ2+) people. Building on interviews with LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness, and photographs taken by them, this article investigates how hegemonic gay masculinity materializes in visual representations of gendered bodies throughout Toronto’s gay village, and how this is reflected in feminine and trans or gender non-conforming (TGNC) youth’s social experiences of the neighborhood. Through a framework of hegemonic masculinity, gender and race are understood as co-constitutive and read simultaneously in the queer geographical productions of gendered inclusions and exclusions among LGBTQ2+ youth experiencing homelessness. This article analyzes how hegemonic gay masculinity links queer spaces to various structures of power through visual cultures, including whiteness, cisnormativity, nationalism, and able-bodiedness, and the implications of this in the everyday social relations of feminine and TGNC youth experiencing homelessness. Through this exploration, this article presents how visual representations of gendered bodies communicate hegemonic masculinity in built queer environments, instruct varying forms of gendered and racialized inclusions and exclusions, and (re)produce a sense of unbelonging for some of the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ2+ community. Key Words: gay village, hegemonic masculinity, queer geographies, race, trans geographies.