‘They’re gay bars, but they’re men bars’: Gendering questionably queer spaces in a Southeastern US university town

Abstract

The increased acceptance of LGBTQ people in U.S. society has arguably led explicitly queer social spaces, such as the gay bar, to be displaced by more ‘questionably queer’ venues—fluid spaces where LGBTQ people seek to build community while not foreclosing sociality with their straight peers. This paper uses 34 interviews with the patrons and managers of two ‘questionably queer’ bars in a small Southeastern city to show how the masculine domination of these spaces converges with the greater willingness of straight people to occupy them to create an atmosphere where many LGBTQ women feel excluded and alienated. By examining the processes through which this marginalization occurs and analyzing the cultural narratives and pragmatic strategies that LGBTQ women construct to legitimate or contest that marginalization, this study sheds light upon how these women are being impacted by changes in queer spaces and what can be done to address their exclusion.

Keywords:

• Gender
• identity politics
• inequality
• sexuality
• space & place

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following individuals for their invaluable feedback on this project: Allison Pugh, Sarah Corse, Ekaterina Makarova, Jennifer Bickham-Mendez, Tristan Bridges, Sabrina Pendergrass, Rachel Rinaldo, Simone Polillo, Adam Slez, Claire Raymond, Yuliya Dudonarak, Tamika Richeson, Sarah Mosseri, Fauzia Huzain, Gabriella Smith, Matthew Braswell, Roscoe Scarborough, Allister Pilar Plater, Francesca Tripodi, Julia Schroeder Ticona, Eric Reed, Clare Forstie, Shawn Trivette, Matthew Morrison, and Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl. I presented earlier versions of this paper at the University of Virginia and at an Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, and I would like to thank those audiences as well for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaime Hartless

Jaime Hartless is a Sociology PhD Candidate at the University of Virginia. Her research interests are located at the intersection of gender, sexuality, culture, and social movements. More specifically, her work examines how privilege is negotiated within spaces designed to serve marginalized communities and organizations created to address inequality. Her dissertation project examines allyship, intersectionality, and privilege negotiation within feminist and LGBTQ activism. All correspondence about this project and its data should be directed to the author at [email protected].