Lesbian Space Research Articles

Queer tourism geographies and placemaking: beyond homonormativity

Queer spaces emerge as a response to the restrictive nature of homonormativity, which compels queer individuals to conform to dominant cis-heteronormativities. This underscores the need for in-depth knowledge about queer spaces, particularly those that extend beyond the experiences of gay men. This study explores how lesbian and queer women as mobile transnationals create space for themselves in Copenhagen, a city recognised as the world’s most gay-friendly place. It employs an interpretivist research paradigm utilizing a critical feminist and queer geography lens. Findings from observations and interviews reveal the absence of a specific lesbian space in Copenhagen; instead, numerous queer spaces are characterised by fluidity, safety, community and their welcoming approach towards LGBTQIA+ travellers. Lesbian and queer women do not become visible through physical spaces but through the strong networks they have created for themselves. A queer space offers a sense of safety within a public setting for the community that gathers there. Additionally, lesbian and queer women actively reshape and conquer existing cis-heteronormative spaces through material and immaterial practices such as exclusive online community spaces or through hosting queer events in spaces such as churches. The study addresses the absence of feminist and queer perspectives in a discourse on sustainable tourism geographies. It provides policymakers with insights and recommendations for creating inclusive, queer-friendly spaces.

Mapping lesbians’ everyday community-making in a small city: (In)visibility, belonging and safety

This paper presents findings from a project exploring how lesbians make community in the ‘ordinary city’ of Southampton on the South coast of England. In the context of trans-exclusionary debates and the supposed demise of lesbian spaces, we sought to discover how self-identified lesbian people in Southampton conceptualised the location and boundaries of their community. The study used collaborative participatory mapping techniques, which resulted in a diffuse and multi-layered understanding of lesbian community in the city. The paper focuses on three key themes: (1) crafting ‘safe’ spaces; (2) terminology: naming ‘lesbians’ and (3) finding and creating places of community. The paper concludes that finding a space to articulate an explicitly lesbian identity can be fraught, but is deeply valued, continually becoming, and carefully negotiated both between peers and within urban space. Collaborative mapping is shown as a valuable tool in delivering more inclusive participatory research that can help foster transformative and emancipatory research into LGBTQ communities and spaces.

“The Great Lesbian Monster Show”: GLOW’s Lesbian Forum Navigating Johannesburg, South Africa, 1991–1995

The inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa, was regarded as a relatively gay-friendly space from the 1970s into the 1990s, but much of the research that interrogates this does so from an overwhelmingly gay and male lens. In this research, I seek to disrupt the view that Johannesburg’s gay subculture was dominated by gay men, and instead seek to examine the politico-queer spaces that lesbian women occupied. Queer literature often regards gay men as the norm within academic studies. In this article, I highlight the importance of lesbian women within South African history. I place the voices and movements of lesbian women within broader ongoing research in queer southern African history. Within this larger history the voices of women are further marginalised while those of gay men are brought to the fore. In this article, I seek to correct this by examining the prominence of lesbian women with South Africa’s gay and lesbian spaces in the 1990s. In order to examine these spaces, I analyse the Lesbian Forum, a group directly linked to the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW). In this article, I argue that the intricacies of Johannesburg was vital to allowing women in the Lesbian Forum a space to operate.

The place where only gays go: constructions of queer space in the narratives of sexually diverse refugees

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of how gay and lesbian spaces are constructed and deployed within the context of asylum claims by sexually diverse people. Through doing this, the author details the ways in which the present deployment of place, as a form of evidence for a relatively fixed conception of sexual difference, does not correspond to the self-conceptions of sexually diverse asylum seekers.Design/methodology/approachThis article draws on the experiences of eight sexually diverse refugees who agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews. Deploying a queer narrative analysis approach, these experiences are explored to develop a detailed understanding of how sexually diverse spaces are constructed within refugee status determinations. This interview-led approach is combined with a critical epistemology informed by the queer theory to understand the role of place in the construction of sexual identity.FindingsThe central finding of this article is that engagement/attendance with/in particular places and spaces is overdetermined as a form of evidence of LGBTIQA+ identity within refugee status determination. Further findings relate to the relationship between places and sexual identities more generally. The paper helps to shed light on how sexually diverse identities are conceived in essentially ontological and fixed terms, with the result that places are often flattened, with the diversity and tensions within them being ignored and occluded.Originality/valueThe originality of this study emerges from the analysis of new qualitative data. This originality is strengthened by the successful combination of empirical research, queer theoretical insights and the application of this combination to policy. This remaining a relatively rare combination. In addition, in contrast to the existing literature, the paper looks specifically at how LGBTIQA+ or queer spaces are conceptualised within refugee status determination processes.

Lesbutantes, Guerilla Queers, and Dyke Nights: Transgressing Heteronormative Borders and the Folklore of Queer Resistance

Abstract: Recent publications have lamented the death of lesbian bars and the absence of distinct urban gayborhoods. The Lesbian Bar Project points out that there are just fifteen lesbian bars left in the United States as of 2021. The rise of social-sexual mobile applications, the impact of gentrification, and a cultural shift in attitudes surrounding acceptance have all contributed to the decline of dedicated lesbian spaces. Comparing the popularity and availability of mobile applications and social-sexual outlets for gay men, such as Grindr, with those designed for queer women—as well as new and unique queer pop-up events, social media forums, and networking opportunities—reveals the ways queer women are subverting authority, resisting changes, and disrupting space through shared practices and experiences. New opportunities and sites for queer spatial resistance have emerged and mobile applications like Meetup facilitate the literal takeover of popular urban spaces. Though technology may have reterritorialized certain sexual geographies for the lesbian community, this essay shows how queer practices are now informing place in ways that assert a queer spatial justice.

Lesbutantes, Guerilla Queers, and Dyke Nights: Transgressing Heteronormative Borders and the Folklore of Queer Resistance

Abstract: Recent publications have lamented the death of lesbian bars and the absence of distinct urban gayborhoods. The Lesbian Bar Project points out that there are just fifteen lesbian bars left in the United States as of 2021. The rise of social-sexual mobile applications, the impact of gentrification, and a cultural shift in attitudes surrounding acceptance have all contributed to the decline of dedicated lesbian spaces. Comparing the popularity and availability of mobile applications and social-sexual outlets for gay men, such as Grindr, with those designed for queer women—as well as new and unique queer pop-up events, social media forums, and networking opportunities—reveals the ways queer women are subverting authority, resisting changes, and disrupting space through shared practices and experiences. New opportunities and sites for queer spatial resistance have emerged and mobile applications like Meetup facilitate the literal takeover of popular urban spaces. Though technology may have reterritorialized certain sexual geographies for the lesbian community, this essay shows how queer practices are now informing place in ways that assert a queer spatial justice.

Sexual micropolitics: twisting lesbiana and cuir (queer) genealogies in contemporary Mexico City

This article explores the circulation of the terms lesbiana and queer (cuir) in Mexico City. More particularly, I discuss how de ambiente and la diversidad sexual, which capture the spirit of queer politics, predominated in the 1990s and early 2000s, to be surpassed by lesbiana in the 2010s, in lesbian communities. While the circulation of lesbiana parallels, permeates, and impregnates cuir genealogies too, I suggest here that its continuity, and stronger resurgence in the 2010s, relates to acute attention to structural violence in the region, particularly in the face of feminicides. At such moment young activists “twist” lesbiana genealogies to give place to new terms such as lesboterrorism. I pay particular attention to lesboterrorismo, a new theoretical formulation young activists developed in the midst of militarization, gore capitalism, and graphic violence against women’s bodies. This paper is informed by ethnographic fieldwork I have conducted since 2000, including participant observation, 40 qualitative interviews with women participating in lesbian spaces in Mexico City, and the review of newspapers.

The impact of lesbian bar ownership on USA lesbian bar geographies: all-gender/straight-integrated LGBTQ places by design

One longstanding explanation for the scarcity of lesbian bars in the United States is the lack of women’s ownership of durable spaces. This study interviewed 15 women owners of lesbian and LGBTQ bars to understand how they conceptualize the queer social spaces they control. Whether they owned a lesbian bar in a big city with a gayborhood or an ‘everybody’ gay bar serving a rural region, no owners prioritized women’s-only places, and all actively refused them. Many nevertheless reported practices to prioritize women in their spaces. Women’s ownership of LGBTQ spaces thus does not produce women’s-only spaces, even in self-described lesbian bars. These findings have three implications for our understandings of the spatial organization of lesbian and LGBTQ socializing. They shed light on the contested decline of women-only spaces, including the congruence between all-gender straight-integrated business philosophies and places that have survived the ‘great lesbian bar die-off’. They underscore the dramatic shift towards all-gender mixed LGBTQ spaces and the decline of gender-segregated socializing. Findings also raise the possible necessity for ‘time-space strategies’ of ephemeral placemaking practices even in erstwhile lesbian spaces due to the erasure faced by lesbians in straight-integrated spaces. Together, these findings underscore the necessary tension in lesbian geographies between a focus on durable places and ephemeral placemaking due to economic and spatial marginalization, time-space strategies that may increasingly be needed by all LGBTQ people in increasingly straight-integrated spaces.

Post-Lesbian Tensions: A Qualitative Inquiry of Lesbian Identity

This paper explores how lesbians aged 18 to 25 negotiate their sexual identity in relation to post-lesbian discourse. Post-lesbian discourse refers to the postmodern conceptualisation of lesbian identity as irrelevant, unnecessary, and minor because of increased acceptance of homosexuality and the popularity of queer theory and its deconstruction of identity categories. In three small focus groups with a total of 10 participants, we explored the themes of word usage, meanings, and associations, as well as exclusion, boundaries, and stigma. We found that our participants’ disdain and discomfort with the word “lesbian” does not result, as post-lesbian discourse would suggest, from its irrelevance but rather due to the old yet persisting stigmas towards lesbian sexuality. To mitigate these stigmas, most of our participants use gender-neutral terms, most notably the word “gay,” to describe themselves. Using relevant literature, we contextualise the usage of gender-neutral terms and analyse their often-overlooked negative impact on female and lesbian visibility. Moreover, we found that while participants wished to avoid the exclusion and specificity of lesbian spaces, they desired these spaces all the same, which had a positive effect on their identity formation, confidence, and sense of community.

Excluding the queer unwanted: Perspectives from older LGBTQ+ adults in New Zealand

This article focuses on the community connections of older people with diverse sexual, gender, and/or sex characteristics in New Zealand. Specifically, it is reporting on how access to social spaces is filtered through perceptions of who is welcome in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) spaces. Thirty-one qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with older adults (ages 60–80) who were part of LGBTQ+ communities. These interviews addressed the topics of social connection, wellbeing, and identity. The findings indicated that identity-based exclusion resulted in disconnection from LGBTQ+ social spaces, with participants reporting both active and passive actions that positioned these spaces for specific individuals, resulting in a group that has previously been described in research as the queer unwanted.

Indicios y espacios literarios para la reconstrucción del círculo sáfico madrileño en las obras de Elena Fortún, Rosa Chacel y Victorina Durán

Este trabajo pretende analizar varios escritos de carácter autobiográfico que dan algunas pistas e indicios para reconstruir las experiencias sáficas durante las décadas de los años veinte y treinta (hasta 1936) en España: Así es de Victorina Durán (manuscrito, 1970-1980 aprox.), Acrópolis de Rosa Chacel (1984) y Oculto sendero de Elena Fortún (2016). Estos textos principales se apoyarán en otros de las mismas autoras –y/o contemporáneas– para poder completar la visión de espacios y experiencias. Se utilizará un doble método de análisis ginocrítico y geocrítico para indagar en los lugares transitados por estas mujeres, así como para analizar la estructura y la asiduidad de sus encuentros y reuniones. Reconstruir los espacios físicos e íntimos lésbicos es el desafío delineado por una mirada geocrítica que ambiciona ofrecer más datos sobre estos otros grupos, pensamientos y sexualidades disidentes, de «otras» tertulias culturales y literarias tan poco estudiadas hasta el momento.

Everyday erotics in urban density: an ethnography of older lesbian and bisexual women in Hong Kong

Lesbian spaces, in terms of their social, cultural, sexual or political purposes, have been dwindling in recent years within global North lesbian geographies. For this article, I would like to put forward a historical analysis of social spaces in Hong Kong through a qualitative ethnographic study of 12 older lesbians and bisexual women aged 60 years and above. Expanding upon Yue and Leung’s theoretical assertion of disjunctive modernity and urban neoliberalism, I proceed to develop my argument that lived experiences in an urban environment diffuses and decenters the assertion of one’s lesbian identity and sexual subjectivity across time and space. Under the British colonial era, the assertion of one’s Chinese womanhood as independent and modern intersects with rapid industrialization and social transformations which lead to culturally-specific spatial practices in locating lesbian desires. I call this mode of spatial practice as everyday erotics in density to describe the way of navigating sexual desires in relation to urban development, where becoming a woman with lesbian desires mean not only carving out one’s alternative erotic space but also disengaging with traditional gender roles in one’s life course and redefining gender and sexuality for an older generation of women.

Seeing The Untold, Speaking The Invisible: Lesbian Co‐Formations In Milan

AbstractThis paper investigates how lesbian spaces in Milan are created, inhabited and reproduced in order to explore the existing ways of being lesbians, here and now. I reflect on how scholars can un/intentionally reinforce or challenge the dominant viewpoints of understanding difference. I use the concept of co‐formations, a non‐linear approach to intersectionality, that focuses on the relationality of difference and takes space and time into account. I argue that what is excluded from space is also excluded from the identities shaped by the same space. To conclude, I reflect upon the responsibilities and the possibilities presented by taking a critical and racialized White positionality seriously.

Lesbian nightlife in Amsterdam: an explorative study of the shift from ‘queer-only’ to ‘queer-friendly’ spaces

This paper explains the decline of lesbian space in Amsterdam through a better understanding of young lesbians' lived experiences of in/exclusion in urban nightlife. The study is situated in Amsterdam, a city internationally known as a queer capital. In-depth interviews were conducted with young lesbian clubbers, owners of local lesbian bars, and organizers of lesbian-oriented parties. The results show that straight and queer spaces should be understood as fluid since the clientele has become a queer and non-queer blend after a shift towards an ‘inclusive’ and open-minded vibe. That shift goes hand in hand with the commodification of queer venues, which puts pressure on the few women-only spaces left. As the interviews revealed, a commodified open-minded, ‘inclusive’ venue or party is not necessarily a safe space for lesbian clubbers. The interviews also foregrounded the diversity among lesbian clubbers, which partially explains the widening range of venues and party concepts with a concomitant decline in visibility. This paper suggests some ways to create safe lesbian nightlife space, in light of the experiences of interviewed clubbers and information gathered from entrepreneurs within the scene.

Making lesbian space at the edge of Europe: Queer spaces in Istanbul

There is limited research regarding queer spaces in Turkey, and even less on lesbians because women have struggled to have an active public presence in Turkey. Accordingly, lesbian spaces are more embodied and less explicitly visible in public spaces than in the West. This study aims to make the invisible more visible by examining the space-making strategies of the lesbian community during the late 20th and early 21st century when lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) activism reached a high point in Turkey. In particular, we examined the ways that lesbians challenged narrow conceptions of “territoriality,” through their use of spaces such as bars, homes, and restaurants in one neighborhood across time, by reviewing print media archives with LGBTQ coverage and interviewing a sample of activist lesbian women who participated in the lesbian scene in Istanbul during this period. Our findings reveal that lesbians opted to live in Beyoglu due to its multicultural and welcoming character, and formed their businesses as venues to socialize as well as serve LGBTQ clientele. They also expanded the openness of gay bars in the district and opened their houses for home parties within the lesbian community. Furthermore, they used all these arenas as meeting places for lesbian activist support groups.

“You out-gayed the gays”: Gay aesthetic power and lesbian, bisexual, and queer women in LGBTQ spaces

In lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) spaces, gay male practices, sexualities, and priorities often dominate. I argue that in mixed-gender LGBTQ festival spaces in the South, gay aesthetics are normative, which often minimizes the contributions of lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women. I compare two festival events run by the LGBTQ community—Cornyation, a mock debutante pageant that is part of Fiesta in San Antonio, Texas, and Osiris Ball, a formal Carnival ball during Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. This research is based on participant observation data collected at both events over several years and 38 interviews conducted with event participants. I argue that at these events, gay aesthetic power is exerted through the expectation that LBQ women should master these aesthetics, a dynamic that often relies on gay men as arbiters of successful mastery. These processes were more dramatic in organizations and spaces where men were a numerical majority. This marginalization fits within a pattern of androcentric bias in both the arts and the workplace.

Balancing safety and visibility: Lesbian community building strategies in South Korea

Heteronormative and gender hierarchical organization of economic, legal, and family life intersect to marginalize the lesbian community in South Korea. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) and women’s rights movements achieved some gains after democratic transition in the 1990s, but anti-LGBTQ activists target lesbians with harassment and violence. How do lesbians build networks and safe space under these conditions? How do they balance competing needs for visibility and safety? Drawing on 16 months of participant observation and ethnographic interviews, I analyze the relationship between lesbian community growth and safety practices. My intersectional approach examines the heterosexist context in which lesbian social spaces are maintained, and relations of power among LGBTQ, feminist, and anti-LGBTQ groups. Under threat of intersectional violence, lesbian social entrepreneurs withhold information, screen members and rely on spatial tactics to hide in plain sight, prioritizing safety over visibility. Finally, I discuss how some community members marginalized by these safety practices gain access to lesbian spaces.

Staging Dissents: Drag Kings, Resistance, and Feminist Masculinities

The relationship between feminism and drag king performance is complicated. While many drag kings hail their performances as feminist, feminists critical of drag king performance often accuse drag kings of valorizing hegemonic masculinity, reinforcing patriarchal norms, or engaging in the subjugation of femininity through performances that use masculine tropes. In particular, strains of radical feminism that reify the connection between gender presentation and biological sex are unable to imagine a female-born person’s relationship to masculinity that is not about access to male privilege and the assertion of patriarchal ideologies within lesbian spaces. In opposition to this trend, many drag kings understand their performances as specifically feminist because they create a subcultural language and feminist-centered spaces. This counters the claim that femininity and biology correlate directly to each other and rejects the impulse to draw strict boundaries around the category of “woman.” This article intervenes in this conversation by asserting that drag king masculinity has aspects of feminist performance embedded in its structure. Drag kings manipulate gendered agency through both parody and reappropriations of hegemonic masculinity in ways that have the potential to act as subversive feminist performances. In light of these factors, I contend that even dominant masculinities can do the work of feminism when written onto the bodies of drag kings. Further, I propose that we reimagine the language we use to talk about drag king identity more generally. Most analyses of drag king culture follow J. Jack Halberstam’s understanding of drag kings as a representation of female masculinity. I suggest, instead, that we shift from talking about drag kings as embodying female masculinity to talking about drag kings as engaging feminist masculinities.

Disappearing Dykes? Post-Lesbian Discourse and Shifting Identities and Communities

ABSTRACT Researchers and activists have argued that the term “lesbian” has been disappearing, in decline for decades, and have focused on tensions around gender and sexual identities as the source of its decline. I identify “post-lesbian discourse” as key concept in the changing landscape of LGBTQ terminology, and I highlight four concerns that emerge in this discourse: shifting lesbian politics, a too-inclusive community, a loss of lesbian spaces, and the meaning of embodied lesbian identity. Rather than focusing solely on gender and sexuality, my aim is to explore the development of post-lesbian discourse and its effects on lesbian identities and communities.

The “Penis Police”: Lesbian and Feminist Spaces, Trans Women, and the Maintenance of the Sex/Gender/Sexuality System

I provide a textual analysis to show how lesbians determine gender in sexualized spaces. As members work toward recognition, agentic embodiment, and the safeguarding of lesbian spaces, how do members differently determine gender for insiders and outsiders in order to preserve a particular kind of feminism? I show how public narratives of gender, essentialism, and heterosexuality circulate in some lesbian spaces as members use the “penis police” to maintain exclusionary feminism. I expand upon the concept of determining gender to move beyond questions about how gender is socially recognized to an analysis of how gender attribution challenges/maintains the sex/gender/sexuality system.