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Abstract
Drawing on recent work that examines the contingent, personal nature of queer migration, this paper provides empirical support for recent claims that coming-out journeys are more complex than the linear, often rural-to-urban typologies that have framed them during the past two decades. Since coming-out journeys are rarely elaborated beyond a conceptual level, overly teleological understandings involving homophobic, rural places, inclusive urban homelands, and one-time, linear ‘flights’ and ‘escapes’ persist. Employing the migration narratives of 48 self-identified gay men who settled in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, DC, USA, this paper challenges the linearity and finality of coming-out migration by highlighting particular segments of the journey. These include short-term trips to scout the gay life potentials of places, migrations that result in a degree of re-entry into ‘the closet,’ relocations that allow men to test or try on different places and identities, and moves (or imminent moves) that ‘trigger’—rather than stem from—a coming-out process. Taken together, these segments suggest that coming-out journeys are ongoing, relational, and often discontinuous journeys influenced by both queer individuals' intersectional subjectivities (e.g., age, race, and class) and the social contexts of the places they encounter.
En tirant des études récentes qui examinent la nature personale et contingent de la migration homosexuelle [ndtr: il n'existe pas d'équivalent français du mot « queer » qui comprend d'un sens positif plus que la homosexualité tout simplement dit], cet article fournit du soutien empirique pour les affirmations récentes que le trajet d'un coming-out [déclaration de sa homosexualité] sont bien plus complexes que les typologies linéaires du genre rural – à – urbain qui ont été courant pendant les deux décennies précédents. Comme ces trajets ne sont que rarement élaborés au-delà d'un niveau conceptuel, notre compréhension de ce processus reste cadré par l'idée téléologique d'un échappement final d'un lieu rural et homophobe pour arriver à une « patrie » urbaine et inclusive. En utilisant les narratives de migration de 48 hommes qui s'identifient comme homosexuels et qui se sont installés à Ottawa, Ontario, Canada et Washington, DC, E.U., cet article s'appuie sur des segments particuliers de leurs trajets pour contester la linéarité et la finalité de la migration d'un coming-out. Ceux-ci comprennent des courts voyages pour explorer la qualité de la vie gay dans des lieux, des migrations qui s'aboutissent à une période de rentrée dans « le placard », des déménagements qui permettent aux hommes de tester de différentes identités sexuelles, et des déménagements qui déclenchent un processus de coming-out plutôt qu'en être le résultat. Compris dans leur ensemble, ces segments suggèrent que les voyages de coming-out sont continus, relationnels, et très souvent discontinus, toutes qualités issues de l'influence à la fois des subjectivités intersectionnelles des individus concernés (par exemple, leur race, leur âge, leur classe sociale) et les contextes sociaux des lieux avec lesquels ils rencontrent.
Llevando de investigaciones recientes que examinan la natura contingente y personal de la migración queer, este articulo se provee apoyo empírico para afirmaciones recientes que los viajes de salirse del closet con más complejos que los tipologías lineares rural a urbano que han sido prevalentes durante los últimos dos décadas. Ya que los viajes de salirse del closet son raramente elaborados más allá que un nivel conceptual, entendimientos demasiado teleológicos involucrando lugares rurales y homofóbicos, tierras urbanas inclusivas, y escapadas lineales por única vez se persisten. Utilizando las narrativas migratorias de 48 auto-identificados hombres gay quienes se establecieron en Ottawa, Ontario, Canadá, y Washington DC, Estados Unidos, este articulo se desafía la linealidad y finalidad de la migración de salirse del closet por destacar segmentos particulares del viaje, Estos incluyen viajes a corto plazo para reconocer lugares para su potencial de una vida gay, migraciones que resultan en un grado de reentrar ‘el closet’, deslocalizaciones que se permiten hombres ‘probar’ identidades sexuales diferentes, y mudanzas (o mudanzas inminentes) que se ‘provocan’ – en vez de originarse de – un proceso de salir del closet. Tomados en conjunto, estos segmentos sugieren que los viajes de salirse del closet están en desarrollo, relacionales, y a menudo viajes discontinuados influidos por ambos las subjetividades interseccionales de individuos queer (edad, raza, clase) y los contextos sociales de los lugares que se encuentran.
Acknowledgments
This article is a revised version of the winning entry from the Sexuality and Space Specialty Group's student paper competition for the 2011 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting. I would like to thank judges Andrew Gorman-Murray, Eric Olund, and Judy Han, as well as my anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Most importantly, I thank the 48 men who participated in this research project. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which supported this research through the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship program.
Notes
1. Here, the term ‘queer’ is used to signify individuals whose sexual identities diverge from heterosexual norms, including gay men. Despite its presumed ability to capture the diversity and fluidity of sexualities, the term ‘queer’ has been critiqued as an inappropriately universalizing term. Some presumably queer people may not identify with the term. Others view it as Western construction that only applies to places that experienced the advent of ‘gay’ as an identifier for sexual non-normativity (itself a response to the emergence of ‘homosexual’ as category in the twentieth century), followed by a subsequent shift to ‘queer’ as a more critical and fluid signifier (see Green Citation2002; Jackson Citation2001). Since the respondents in this paper self-identify as ‘gay,’ this term is used when discussing their experiences or those of other gay men. Queer, in contrast, denotes the broader idea of sexual non-normativity.
2. This study focuses on gay men for two reasons. First, it contributes to the ongoing project of de-centering—both geographically and epistemologically—the proliferation of recent work on gay men, which has frequently reinforced stereotypical understandings of gay men's mobilities (e.g., those based on spending power, cultural consumption in metropolitan areas, and HIV status). Second, in acknowledging Kim England's (Citation1994) claim that ‘fieldwork is personal,’ the author employed experiential authority (having lived in both study sites) and tacit knowledge of gay men's mobilities (having relocated several times as an openly gay man) to shape the interviews and create productive dialogues between respondent and researcher, rather than a unilateral collection of information.
3. Previous studies of queer migration (e.g., Weston Citation1995) have been critiqued for describing rural places through the voices of people who have moved away. This ‘metronormative’ voice has been productively challenged both studies of queer life in rural areas (e.g., Osborne and Spurlin Citation1996) and on studies of queer migration to small towns (Waitt and Gorman-Murray Citation2010). Although the respondents are now urban-dwellers and there is an emphasis here on trips to Ottawa and Washington, DC (i.e., cities, though not ones typically imagined as gay homelands), including those between small towns. The section on ‘migrations as coming-out tests and triggers’ in particular shows that trips to rural areas are often formative parts of the coming-out journey. Moreover, respondents typically avoided the rural–urban generalizations that have characterized past coming-out narratives; few categorically dismissed the places they left as homophobic, conservative, or repressive; instead typically discussing why the social contexts they encountered in places (e.g., family circumstances, workplace challenges) motivated them to move.
4. The specific questions of migration to capital cities and the regulation of gay men as public servants are discussed elsewhere (Lewis Citation2011).
5. Randomly assigned pseudonyms are used to protect the identities of the respondents. Here, first-name pseudonyms are used due the biographical nature of the article. In other papers using the same research (Lewis Citation2011), surname pseudonyms are used.